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In the late 1980s of London, Ontario—a time in Canada when the recession lay like a lead weight on the shoulders of young people, leaving the future bleak—an eighteen-year-old girl is working for the summer at a corn canning factory. Her story is told through a series of masterfully-sculpted linked poems, following her relationship with her boyfriend, her alcoholic mother, her terminally-ill grandfather, the factory job, and the man who every night “peels an onion and eats it as if it were an apple.” The Onion Man doesn’t speak English and is tormented by the other workers, and ater his son dies, he commits suicide at the factory. The girl finds his body and the traumatic event prompts her to rethink the direction of her life. -- Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "The New Economy of the Modern South," by Michael Dennis.

Over the past decade, mental illness in the workplace has become a key issue in the health and business communities, fueled in part by recognition of the high prevalence rates and significant costs for individuals and organizations. Although research in the field is starting to emerge, there are significant gaps in what is known, particularly with respect to the workplace context and its impact on workers. The overall objective of this study was to characterize, from a sociological perspective, the experiences of healthcare workers with mental health issues, and to account for how their experiences were shaped by the social relations of work. A qualitative approach, based on principles of institutional ethnography, guided exploration of the interactional, structural and discursive dimensions of work within a large mental health and addictions treatment facility. Data collection included in-depth interviews with twenty employees regarding their personal experiences with mental health issues, interviews with twelve workplace stakeholders regarding their interactions with workers, and a review of organizational texts related to health, illness and productivity. Analysis of the transcripts and texts was based on an institutional ethnography approach to mapping social processes; examining connections between local sites of experience and the social organization of work. The study findings revealed a critical disjuncture between the public mandate of advocacy, open dialogue, and support regarding mental health issues, and the private experience of workers which was characterized by silence, secrecy and inaction. Practices of silence were adopted by workers and workplace stakeholders across the organization, and were shaped by discursive forces related to stigma, staff-client boundaries, and responsibility to act. The silence had both positive and negative implications for the mental health of workers, as well as for relationships and productivity in the workplace. In accounting for the practices and production of silence, I argue that silence is complex, multi-dimensional, and embedded within the social relations of healthcare work. It serves to maintain institutional order. This conceptualization of silence challenges current beliefs and practices related to stigma, disclosure, early identification, support, and return to work for employees with mental health issues.

The article reviews the book, "Ce que sait la main: la culture de l'artisanat," by Richard Sennett (translation of: The Craftsman by Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat).

The article reviews the book, "Le droit de l’emploi au Québec," 4e édition, by Fernand Morin, Jean-Yves Brière, Dominic Roux and Jean-Pierre Villaggi.

The article reviews the book, "Che’s Travels: The Making of a Revolutionary in 1950s Latin America," edited by Paulo Drinot.

The article reviews the book, "AFL-CIO's Secret War Against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity or Sabotage?," by Kim Scipes.

For six weeks in the early summer of 1919, Winnipeg, then the largest city in the Canadian Prairies, was shut down by a general strike. More than 30,000 of the city's workers walked off their jobs in a test of strength that was to prove the focal point of a labor explosion that was national and international in scope. The strike was provoked by the refusal of employers to recognize and bargain with the metal and building trades federations of unions. The Winnipeg Trades and Labor Council organized a poll of its affiliates' members, and a general strike was approved by a vote of 11,112 to 524. The response to the strike call on May 15 was overwhelming. Not only did organized workers respond solidly, shutting down factories, newspapers, telephones, and streetcars, but thousands of unorganized workers joined them. The city fell silent....

The article reviews the book, "Solidarity Stories: An Oral History of the ILWU," by Harvey Schwartz.

The article discusses employment-related mobility in Canada and examines ways in which it impacts the well-being and health of communities, families, and workers. It explores various reasons individuals would need to partake in labor mobility including seasonal employment, commuting from rural to urban areas, and being employed in the trucking, seafaring, or airline industries. It also discusses Canadian census information regarding migrant and foreign workers, describes various risks that employment-related mobility poses to the social, emotional, and physical health of workers, and analyzes how labor mobility can impact the social formation of communities.

The study examines how Aboriginal workers and workers of colour experience union solidarity and explores the necessary conditions for the remaking of solidarity and the renewal of the labour movement. Grounded in anti-colonial discursive framework, the study analyzes the cultures and practices of labour solidarity through the lived experiences of Aboriginal activist and activists of colour within the Canadian labour movement. Utilizing the research methodologies of participatory action research, arts-informed research and critical autobiography, the research draws on the richness of the participants’ collective experiences and visual images co-created during the inquiry. The study also relies on the researcher’s self-narrative as a long time labour activist as a key part of the embodied knowledge production and sense making of a movement that is under enormous challenges and internal competing tension exacerbated by the neoliberal agenda. The findings reveal sense of profound gap between what participants experience as daily practices of solidarity and what they envisioned. Through the research process, the study explores and demonstrates the importance and potential of a more holistic and integrative critical education approach on anti-racism and decolonization. The study proposes a pedagogical framework on solidarity building with four interlinking components – rediscovering, restoring, reimagining and reclaiming – as a way to make whole for many Aboriginal activists and activists of colour within the labour movement. The pedagogy of solidarity offers a transformative process for activists to build solidarity across constituencies in the pursuit of labour renewal and social justice movement building.

The article discusses the involvement of Aboriginal women in trade unions in Canada. Holly Page of the British Columbia Government and Service Employees Union (BCGEU) explains that unions are a jump-start for social justice and care about the Aboriginal community. Particular focus is given to the challenges facing Aboriginal women including poverty. Information on the "Unionism on Turtle Island" developed by Darla Leard's Saskatchewan Federation of Labour Aboriginal Committee is presented.

The article examines the impact of labor market reorganizations on women in the Quebec province of Canada. An overview of an employment model (modèle de la centrifugation de l’emploi vers les marchés périphériques (coeur-périphérie) proposed by sociologist Jean-Pierre Durant is presented. Based on results from the Institut de la statistique de Québec (ISQ), the authors claim that dynamic centrifuge employment leads to the hierarchical reorganization of labor markets based on gender. It is suggested that women are more confined to atypical work conditions such as part-time work with lower wages and restrained employment benefits. Also examined is the relationship between atypical work development and the precarious work conditions of women.

Women have always been under-represented in the professoriate, despite purported regulation of Australian universities under both state and federal sex discrimination and equal opportunity regulatory frameworks. Research from Australia and around the world has highlighted longstanding problems for the career trajectories of women in academia, such as ingrained sex segregation both within and across disciplines, and the masculine culture of universities evident in the undervaluing of teaching activities for the purposes of promotion, an area where women have historically dominated. This paper discusses the relationship between such issues and the policies designed to address them, in order to illustrate how and why these regulatory frameworks are not achieving their aims.

Personal care homes have become increasingly dependent on the employment of immigrant care workers. This qualitative study explored the high concentration of Filipino health care aides in personal care homes from their own perspectives, as well as that of policy stakeholders. In depth interviews were conducted with seven Filipino health care aides working in personal care homes in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Semi-structured interviews with policy stakeholders examined the policy context of the health care aide labour force. The study identified several factors that influenced the migration and employment of Filipino health care aides including: poverty and unemployment, migrant social networks, barriers in the labour market and financial incentives. The lack of regulations for health care aides sustained the flow of immigrant labour and enabled the expansion of social networks. Although their employment decisions were primarily based on financial need, health care aides valued their work and viewed themselves as critical care providers.

The article reviews the book, "Hobos, Hustlers and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco," by Teresa Gowan.

Rapid resource development in northern and rural Canada is leading to unprecedented social, political, economic and environmental changes in a number of communities. In particular, gendered identities and divisions of labour in northern Canadian communities are poised to be dramatically altered by increasing labour demands, shifting time-use patterns, and intensifying income inequalities. Through a feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis of print media coverage of gendered issues in Fort McMurray, and semi-structured interviews with thirty-two women working in either the male-dominated oil sector or the female-dominated social services sector, this dissertation examines how women in Fort McMurray, Alberta—the host community for the Athabasca oil sands—negotiate their identities and make sense of the opportunities and challenges associated with the recent oil boom. Drawing on materialist feminist and feminist poststructuralist theory, this dissertation first elaborates a comprehensive analytical framework for investigating gender in the context of natural resource extraction. This framework contends that gendered identities are inherently multiple, and divisions of labour are embedded in particular temporal and spatial contexts. Furthermore, this framework examines discursive and material contradictions in diverse gendered experiences of resource extraction in order to move beyond universalizing gendered interests and identities. Second, this dissertation examines how discursively constructed female subject positions in local and global print media over the past decade adopt a frame of frontier masculinity. I demonstrate that these subject positions become resources upon which women in Fort McMurray draw on to negotiate their identities in ways that perpetuate a sense of dependency and anomalousness. Finally, I explore how neoliberal discourses of individualism and meritocracy provide a potential site of resistance to hegemonic frontier masculinity in women’s narratives of their opportunities and challenges. However, I ultimately argue that neoliberal discourses and practices do not prove transformative of gendered identities and divisions of labour because women are only able to partially engage with neoliberal subjectivity, which neglects collective interests and wellbeing.

Organisations operating in today's market are facing an upcoming shift in workforce demographics. A majority of today's current workforce belong to the Baby Boomer generation (individuals born between 1946 and 1964). Many of these workers have already reached retirement age with many more reaching retirement age in the near future. The workers who are next in chronological line to fill the vacancies created by these departures belong to Generation X. There has been much speculation in the popular press concerning these workers, their work histories, and their workplace expectations. There has also been extensive study of the employment relationship (the psychological contract), a worker's assessment of that relationship, and the outcomes associated with it. However, there is no model directly tying worker experiences to the psychological contract and in turn outcomes of the psychological contract. This case study applied qualitative and quantitative methodologies to investigate the role work experiences play in the formation of the psychological contract with a present employer and the outcomes associated with it. Survey data were collected and in-depth personal interviews were completed with 66 Generation X middle level managers working for one of Canada's top employers competing in the knowledge sector. Findings suggest that several key work experiences in the labour market as well as experiences with a present employer are influential in perceptions of the relationship employees have with their employer, how they assess that relationship, and ultimately the outcomes of engagement and trust. The study concludes with: (1) a model illustrating the relationships between workers' experiences and the psychological contract process, and (2) a typology of worker types based on the effects of previous work experiences and perceptions of experiences with a current employer.

In 1944 the first social democratic government in North America was elected in the province of Saskatchewan. The new government of Premier Tommy Douglas intended to introduce plans to insure both medical and hospital services immediately following the election; however, because of financial limitations, it decided instead to establish a provincewide system of hospital insurance. The Saskatchewan Hospital Insurance Plan, established in 1947 and funded mainly from provincial tax revenue, provided free inpatient hospital care for all residents of the province. ...on July 1, 1962, the date the Medical Care Insurance Plan was to go into effect, more than 90 percent of the province's doctors withdrew their services. This strike, although relatively short–it only lasted twenty-three days–was very bitter....

The article reviews the books "Global Capitalism in Crisis: Karl Marx and the Decay of the Profit System" by Murray E.G. Smith, "In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives" by Greg Albo, Sam Gindin, and Leo Panitch, and "The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development" by Michael A. Lebowitz.