Your search

The article reviews the book, "The Failed Welfare Revolution: America's Struggle Over Guaranteed Income Policy," by Brian Steensland.

Like migratory birds, most of Canada’s 20,000 “guest” farm workers arrive in the spring and leave in the autumn. Hailing primarily from Mexico, Jamaica, and smaller countries of the Caribbean, these temporary workers have become entrenched in the Canadian labour force and are the mainstay of many traditional family farms in Canada. Many of them make the trip year after year after year.Vincenzo Pietropaolo has been photographing guest workers and recording their stories since 1984 – in the process travelling to forty locations throughout Ontario and to their homes in Mexico, Jamaica, and Montserrat. The resulting photographs have been highly acclaimed internationally through many publications and exhibitions, including a travelling show curated by the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography that opened in Mexico City.With a foreword by Naomi Rosenblum, this beautiful and timely book of photography and exposition aims to shed light on a subject about which many Canadians know all too little. --Publisher's description

Comparing Hofstede and GLOBE deepens our understanding of the influence of different measures and dimensions of national culture on union membership. Data from the World Values Survey were matched to GLOBE and Hofstede country culture scores (n = 43,867 employees, 32 countries). Union membership was positively related to GLOBE's Institutional Collectivism, but not Hofstede's Individualism; and was negatively related to both Performance Orientation (GLOBE) and Masculinity (Hofstede), suggesting that differences in culture measures may account for prior inconsistent findings. Curvilinear relationships between union membership and Age (inverted U-shaped) and Uncertainty Avoidance (U-shaped) suggest that Uncertainty Avoidance may explain why younger and older people were less likely to be union members.

This paper explores the impact of the adoption of neoliberal economic policies and practices on public sector jobs within the Canadian Federal government. In recent years, employment in the public sector has been increasingly shifted to a call-centre format, thereby transforming the working conditions of public servants as well as access to services enjoyed by Canadians. By adopting work practices, technologies and managerial techniques usually found within the private sector, we argue that the call-centre format fundamentally transforms the notion of public 'service' from secure employment and a dynamic career to that of a routine, Taylorised job. In this process, standardised interactions redefine the notion of public service and the role of the public servant.

The article reviews the book, "Dying for a Home: Homeless Activists Speak Out," by Cathy Crowe.

The article reviews the book, "Brilliant Women: 18th Century Bluestockings," by Elizabeth Eger and Lucy Peltz.

This study applies an IPE approach to examine the economic conditions, motivations and interests which have driven the Canadian government and two sending countries, Mexico and the Philippines, to accept the terms and conditions of a regulatory framework encouraging short-term labour migration between them. The features of program development which underpin the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) and the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) have not been compared side by side. Nor have the two programs been compared for the relationship that has developed over the years between the Canadian government and the two sending governments of Mexico and the Philippines. The study's core research question asks how the process of regulating cross-border labour migration works and how it is coordinated between two or more governments that form part of a migration system. An important research finding that emerges from the comparison is the categorization of different types of migration systems. I argue that the SAWP and LCP differ in how they are administered because relations between the various actors differ. Furthermore, what defines these relationships is the set of geopolitical and economic interests that each government carries when it negotiates the regulation of cross-border labour migration. Findings suggest that the geopolitical and economic imperative which has driven the SAWP's development is not the same for the LCP.

New Brunswick nursing history is a little-known but significant story, and it helps us to understand women's paid work and how women organized to protect their interests in this occupation. While the profession's history demonstrates the importance of professional ideals, the New Brunswick, case also illuminates the struggle between these ideals and nurses' growing sense of dissatisfaction with wages and working conditions. In the mid-1960s in New Brunswick as elsewhere in Canada, nurses began to explore collective bargaining as a solution to poor wages and conditions and as a means to express concern for deteriorating patient care. This study examines the early stages of unionization among New Brunswick hospital nurses in 1965-1969. The evidence for this study is drawn from archival collections, interviews, newspapers, journals and secondary sources. Particular emphasis is placed on the pioneering efforts of the Social and Economic Welfare Committee (SEWC) of the New Brunswick Association of Registered Nurses (NBARN) and their efforts to educate members, lobby government, obtain outside expert advice and generally guide nurses towards a sense of collective identity that fostered a willingness to take collective action. By the end of the decade, nurses were included in a new Public Service Labour Relations Act, an outcome of the Royal Commission on Employer-Employee Relations in the Public Services (known as the Frankel Commission) which, among other features, greatly expanded the civil service and consequently the number of government employees with collective bargaining rights. Despite the fact that the new PSLRA had not yet been proclaimed, nurses in mid-1969 negotiated their first (if unofficial) collective agreement using the tactic of mass resignation to force a settlement. This thesis places the NBARN's early explorations of collective bargaining in the context of the political, economic and labour landscape of the 1960s.

[E]xplores the economic relationship that existed between the Blood Indian reserve and the surrounding region of southern Alberta between 1884 and 1939. The Blood tribe, though living on a reserve, refused to become economically isolated from the larger community and indeed became significant contributors to the economy of the area. Their land base was important to the ranching industry. Their products, especially coal and hay, were sought after by settlers, and the Bloods were encouraged, not only to provide them as needed, but also to become expert freighters, transporting goods from the reserve for non-Native business people. Blood field labor in the Raymond area sugar beet fields was at times critical to the functioning of that industry. In addition, the Bloods' ties to the merchant community, especially in Cardston and Fort Macleod, resulted in a significant infusion of money into the local economy. Regular's study fills the gap left by Canadian historiography that has largely ignored the economic associations between Natives and non-Natives living in a common environment. His microhistory refutes the perception that Native reserves have played only a minor role in regional development and provides an excellent example of a cross-cultural, co-operative economic relationship in the post-treaty period on the Canadian plains. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction -- 'Free Range or Private Property': Integrating Blood Reserve Land into the Non-Native Economy -- 'Selling to Outsiders': Marketing Coal, Hay, and Freighting Services -- 'All the Indians Have Gone to the Beet': Blood Labour in the Raymond Sugar Beet Fields -- 'A Prospective Citizen of No Mean Importance': The Bloods and the Business Community -- Conclusion: Change Over Time.

The article reviews the book, "Mexican Chicago: Race, Identity, and Nation, 1916-39," by Gabriela F. Arredondo.

This thesis explores the emergence and initial evolution of the British Columbia Nurses Union from 1976 to 1992. The thesis argues that class and gender framed interrelated processes of organizational change, labour action, and political consciousness for British Columbia’s nurses. These changes took place in the context of a historical struggle between professionalism and trade unionism in nursing, and during a turbulent and transformative era for western capitalism and the role of the capitalist state in the 1970s and 1980s. This thesis argues that class, as a socioeconomic relationship and as lived experience, was the driving force behind organizational, economic, and political change in the nursing occupation. This central assertion stands in sharp contrast to claims that class has ceased to be of socioeconomic or political importance in postindustrial, capitalist society.

The article reviews the book, "The Professionalization of History in English Canada," by Donald Wright.

This study traces the efforts of British Columbia teachers as they endeavour to have increasing input into the educational policies of the Department of Education. It is grounded in a study of primary archival records and written in the form of an historical narrative. Primarily, I focus on the English Teachers' Association in B.C.: I trace its growth as a professional organization and follow its increasingly strident attempts to address the growing professional interests of English/Language Arts teachers in response to government policies, especially those affecting curriculum. Three main interrelated themes permeate the study: the professionalization of B.C. English/Language Arts teachers, the growth in the political power of teacher associations in B.C., and the effects of the B.C. government's changing educational policies in English/Language Arts classrooms. My study follows the English teachers' association from its beginning in 1959 when it was known as S.A.T.E., the Secondary Association of Teachers of English; during the years of 1971-1994 when it was called B.C.E.T.A. , the British Columbia English Teachers' Association; to its later years as B.C.T.E.L.A., the British Columbia Teachers of Engli sh Language Arts. The study reveals that as the decades pass, the association becomes increasingly persistent in its efforts not only to further the professional interests of English teachers but al so to provide input to the government on curricular decisions affecting Engli sh/Language Arts classrooms. It al so becomes increasingly persistent in its dealings with the government as their philosophies of education become more diverse.

New Directions in the Study of Work and Employment: Revitalizing Industrial Relations as an Academic Enterprise, edited by Charles J. Whalen, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "Le deuxième âge de l’émancipation : la société, les femmes et l’emploi," by Dominique Méda an dHélène Périvier.

The Europeanisation of Social Protection, edited by Jon Kvist and Juho Saari, is reviewed.

This article reviews the arguments for and against adopting an anti-scab law and considers what impact such laws have on unions, businesses and individual workers. This article will then look at the constellation of players in today’s debate: governments, political parties, labour organizations, and the business community. The article will focus on the Canadian Labour Congress’ (CLC) unsuccessful campaign for a federal anti-scab law, in the form of bill C-257, to determine what, if anything, it says about labour politics and what lessons it provides for labour law reformers. (Excerpt from introduction)

This chapter reviews anticolonialist thought in relation to issues of organized labor, learning processes, and the emergent idea of “community unionism.” It explores the interlocking nature of relations of social class, gender, and race with special attention to Canada. This review is applied to issues related to current research on hotel worker organizing in Toronto (Canada), and suggestions on progressive forms of trade unionism are discussed. --Author's abstract

The article reviews the book, "Global Unions: Challenging Transnational Capital Through Cross-Border Campaigns," edited by Kate Bronfenbrenner.