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The role of the Left in unions, women´s activism, and the rise of industrial unions in the post-World War II decades have been the subject of valuable academic scrutiny. This article seeks to add to our understanding of these topics by looking at the role that one prominent activist—Al Campbell—played in building UAW/CAW Local 27 from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s. Campbell strongly advocated an independent Canadian autoworkers´ union, supported women´s activism, and was instrumental in helping expand a major composite local in the union. I argue in this article that, in order to understand the nature of the post-war Canadian labour movement, we need to devote greater attention to the role of devoted leftists in building local unions.

The article reviews the book, "If You're in My Way, I'm Walking" by Thom Workman.

The article reviews the book, "Why Is There No Labor Party in the United States?," by Robin Archer.

The article reviews the book, "The Importance of Being Monogamous: Marriage and Nation Building in Western Canada to 1919," by Sarah Carter.

This article is intended to highlight the basic differences between Canada and the United States in the legal principles governing collective bargaining law. While Canadian labour relations legislation is modeled on the U.S. National Labor Relations Act, there are striking differences arising from the particular socio-economic conditions, cultural traditions, and historical experiences of both countries. Generally speaking, it is not widely disputed on either side of the border that Canadian labour relations law is more "progressive" than its U.S. counterpart. The question arises: Why?

Explores the evolution of a new women's labour history in the post-1960s era, with attention to the similarities and differences characterizing scholarship in Britain, Canada and the United States. The debates the field animated, and how these shifted over time as the political and intellectual context changed, are critically and comparatively examined. By tracing the movement of ideas, themes and inspiration across borders, one can gain a better understanding of the transnational creation of a feminist labour history.

The increased participation of women in the labour force was one of the most significant changes to Canadian social life during the quarter century after the close of the Second World War. Transforming Labour offers one of the first critical assessments of women's paid labour in this era, a period when more and more women, particularly those with families, were going 'out to work'. Using case studies from across Canada, Joan Sangster explores a range of themes, including women's experiences within unions, Aboriginal women's changing patterns of work, and the challenges faced by immigrant women. By charting women's own efforts to ameliorate their work lives as well as factors that re-shaped the labour force, Sangster challenges the commonplace perception of this era as one of conformity, domesticity for women, and feminist inactivity. Working women's collective grievances fuelled their desire for change, culminating in challenges to the status quo in the 1960s, when they voiced their discontent, calling for a new world of work and better opportunities for themselves and their daughters. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Où va la protection sociale ?," edited by Anne-Marie Guillemard.

The article reviews the book, "Another World is Possible: Globalization & Anti-Capitalism," 2nd ed., by David McNally.

The longstanding political alliance between the Canadian labor movement and the New Democratic Party (NDP) has experienced new stresses in recent years. Whereas the NDP was widely considered the political arm of the labor movement during the Keynesian post-war period, under neoliberalism, the relationship between most unions and the NDP has become more tactical and less cohesive. This article surveys contemporary party-union relationships in Canada, at both the federal and provincial levels, with a view to demonstrating that weakening party-union relations are rooted in larger macro-economic and political transformations and are shaped by factors related to region and language.

The expansive literature on alienation demonstrates how various treatments emphasize different parts of human estrangement. This recovery focuses on demonstrating how Marx´s theory of alienation can prove fruitful in understanding social movement activity and promoting social justice. At the centre of collective action is a hope and vision for an alternative future, an imagination of communities based on mutual reliance and a strategy for de-alienation. In this paper, I begin with a review of Marx´s theory with an emphasis on a philosophy of internal relations, followed by an application to a recently completed case study with housing activists in Scarborough, Ontario. By posing questions for further development, I conclude that social alienation and responses to it can be developed further when seen as a learning process; that is, to understand the learning processes of one´s own estrangement as central to taking positive steps to overcome alienation.

Vancouver’s early twentieth century mainstream newspapers captured a feminine culture of the young woman worker caught in a moral paradox of naïveté and willing impropriety. Through images and narratives, the tumultuous social and economic changes of the day were rendered “class-based girl problems.” By contrast, radical labour newspapers represented women workers as “rebel girls” and valiant helpmates to the working class movement. This examination of images and narratives prompts consideration of how these class and gender discourses influenced real women workers. In particular, the telephone operators’ activism during Vancouver’s 1919 sympathetic strike demonstrates how women workers re-created discourses of class and gender in ways that brought greater control and meaning to their lives. While early twentieth century newspapers framed contemporary discourses of class and gender through images and narratives, they were unable to capture the resonance and pertinence of these discourses to the everyday lives of working women.

Few have examined the class politics of pre-Rebellion Toronto in any detail; a vocabulary of class born in an industrial setting appears poorly fitted to an agrarian colony where production took place in small workshops of independent journeymen and apprentices under the supervision of master craftsmen. This article, in contrast, examines the transformations in class relations of the period in a framework derived from Cain & Hopkins theory of “Gentlemanly Capitalism.” It examines the creation of the three “fictitious commodities” (money, land, and labour) that Polanyi places at the heart of the “Great Transformation” in the context of the “Gentlemanly Order” being constructed by Upper Canada’s elite. This Gentlemanly Order was corporate in nature. The article concludes with an analysis of class conflict that resulted in the era, in particular in the building trades, where workers helped form a province-wide “Mechanics Association.”

The article reviews the book, "Getting the Goods: Ports, Labor, and the Logistics Revolution," edited by Stephanie Morgan.

The article reviews the book, "Ageing Labour Forces: Promises and Prospects," edited by Philip Taylor.

The article reviews the book, "Earthly Plenitudes: A Study on Sovereignty and Labor," by Bruno Gulli.

Discusses the decline of the labour movement and what should be done about it, with a focus on the telecommunications industry in Canada.

In mid-1930s Vancouver, city authorities launched a campaign to ban white waitresses from Chinatown cafes. Canadian historians have overlooked this campaign because of the tendency to treat the Chinese in Canada as a separate history from working women and to focus on discourse analysis rather than experience. This obscures the importance of sexuality and cross-racial interaction to the lives of both Chinese “bachelors” and white working women in Canada. This paper shows how white waitresses, Chinese restaurant owners, and Chinese patrons created and defended a social space of cross-racial intimacies in Vancouver’s Chinatown cafes. By examining a variety of sources, including mainstream and labour newspapers, mayor’s and police records, oral histories, and Chinese-language newspapers, this paper considers the perspectives of the four groups involved in the campaign. City authorities constructed the cafes as immoral spaces, where white waitresses were enticed into prostitution by Chinese men. In the name of protecting white womanhood, they drew a gendered and racial line around Chinatown. Despite policies of racial and gender equality, labour organizations also viewed the campaign through this lens of morality. For the white waitresses and Chinese customers, on the other hand, these cafes opened up a social space to explore cross-racial intimacies. In the cafes, they flirted, formed friendships, and began sexual relationships. The Chinese “treated” the waitresses to dinner, gifts, or money in exchange for sexual intimacy. Some of these intimacies were purely functional, while others developed into relationships that fulfilled mutual interests, needs, and desires. Through these intimate practices, they created choices and opportunities not available outside of Chinatown. The ban forced the Chinese, and especially the white waitresses, to become self-reflective about their experience in the cafes. The Chinese condemned the ban as racial discrimination. Fifteen white waitresses marched on city hall, where they defended their rights as workers, their respectability, and their Chinese employers. The waitresses articulated why the Chinatown cafes held value in their lives and in Vancouver. They had lost their jobs and their reputations, but they took a political stand.

The article reviews the book, "To Plead Our Own Cause: Personal Stories of Today's Slaves," edited by Kevin Bales and Zoe Trodd.

The article reviews and comments on two books: "Globalization and Labor: Democratizing Global Governance" by Dimitris Stevis and Terry Boswell, and "Global Unions: Challenging Transnational Capital Through Cross-Border Campaigns," edited by Kate Bronfenbrenner.