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The article reviews the book, "Feeding the World: An Economic History of Agriculture, 1800-2000," by Giovanni Federico.

The article reviews the book," Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Volume Two: 1968-2000," by John English.

The article reviews the book, "Children of Fate: Childhood, Class, and the State in Chile, 1850-1930" by Nara B. Milanich.

Against the background of the global demographic shift towards an aging workforce and its impacts on the labour market and the economy in industrialized societies, this dissertation pinpoints six salient challenges for future litigation and policy-making in the area of labour and employment discrimination law. These include the global tendency towards abolishing mandatory retirement and increasing the eligibility age for pension benefits; legislative age-based distinctions; cost as a justification for age discrimination; performance appraisals of senior workers; and the duty to accommodate senior workers. At the core of each challenge lies a normative question regarding our conception of senior workers’ right to age equality, its importance and relative weight compared with other rights and interests. The aim of this dissertation is therefore to critically review the current understanding of this right and its moral and economic underpinning. Most notably, the dissertation contends that the prevailing conception of equality assessment (the Complete Lives Approach to equality), according to which equality should be assessed based on a comparison of the total share of resources obtained by individuals over a lifetime, has substantial implications for age discrimination discourse. As it uncovers the numerous difficulties with the complete lives approach, the dissertation develops an alternative: the Dignified Lives Approach to equality, according to which an individual should be treated with equal concern and respect, at any particular time and regardless of any comparison. The dissertation then articulates five essential principles founded in Dworkin’s notion of equal concern and respect: the principle of individual assessment, the principle of equal influence, the principle of sufficiency, the principle of social inclusion, and the principle of autonomy. When one of these principles is not respected at any particular time, a wrong is done, and the right to equality is violated. Next, the dissertation elucidates when and why unequal treatment of senior workers based on age does not respect each of these five principles and therefore constitutes unjust age discrimination. It demonstrates that senior workers’ right to age equality is a fundamental human right. Finally, it examines the above-mentioned challenges through the lens of the new Dignified Lives approach.

The article reviews the book, "Gender and the Contours of Precarious Employment," edited by Leah F. Vosko, Martha MacDonald and Iain Campbell.

Globalization, Flexibilization and Working Conditions in Asia and the Pacific, edited by Sangheon Lee and Francois Eyraud, is reviewed.

No Small Change: Pension Funds and Corporate Engagement, by Tessa Hebb, is reviewed.

The Effects of Mass Immigration on Canadian Living Standards and Society, edited by Herbert Grubel, is reviewed.

Drawing on data collected as part of a larger study of the experience of restructuring in the nonprofit (voluntary) social services in Canada and Australia, this article explores the responses to four overlapping interview questions regarding what drew nonprofit social service workers to the sector, what were the positive and negative aspects of working in the sector, and, if given the power, what is the one thing they would change. Responses to these questions highlight the way social service workers wish they could work, factors that impede this work, decrease worker autonomy and increase management control over their labour process. These new findings will be compared to findings from an earlier study of restructuring in the public and nonprofit Canadian social services, highlighting the way that changes in the labour process suppress or facilitate the empowerment of workers, including their capacity to dream of a better future.

Drawing on comparative, qualitative data, this article explores unionization in the Canadian and Australian nonprofit social services. The article shows that the growth of unionization in this sector in Canada had little to do with deliberate strategies for union renewal. Instead, union growth and activism rose organically from the values orientation of the predominantly female workforce and the curtailment of workplace opportunities for social justice struggles. The Australian example reflects the conflux of legal contexts, political parties, managerial approaches, and the servicing model of unionism. The article concludes with a discussion of possibilities for those seeking to revitalize the union movement.

During the era of neoliberalism, the nonprofit services sector has simultaneously been a site of (a) promarket restructuring and collective and individual resistance and (b) alternative forms of service delivery. Drawing on data collected as part of an ethnographic study in the Canadian nonprofit social services sector, this article explores the impacts of some of restructuring on professional, quasi-professional, and managerial employees in eight unionized, nonprofit social services. The data show that the adoption of social unionism has permitted some nonprofit social service workers to initiate new processes through which to have a voice in far-reaching social issues, sometimes in coalition with management and/or clients. The findings of this study point to the irrepressibility of the participatory spirit and its capacity to seek new forms and practices despite the stretched and restructured conditions of today’s nonprofit social services sector.

Worker Representation and Workplace Health and Safety, by David Walters and Theo Nichols, is reviewed.

In 2002, approximately two-thirds of school teachers in the Canadian province of Alberta went on strike. Drawing on media, government and union documents, this case study reveals some contours of the political economy of labor relations in education that are normally hidden from view. Among these features are that the state can react to worker resistance by legally pressuring trade unions and justifying this action as in the public interest. This justification seeks to divide the working class and pit segments of it against each other. The state may also seek to limit discussion and settlements to monetary matters to avoid constraining its ability to manage the workplace or the educational system. This analysis provides a basis for developing a broader theory of the political economy of labor relations in education. It also provides trade unionists in education with information useful in formulating a strike strategy.

The Canadian province of Alberta does not effectively enforce its child labour laws. This non-enforcement interacts with the working-alone regulations in Alberta´s Occupational Health and Safety Act to deny workers under age 15 meaningful solo work protection. As a result, children and adolescents are exposed to the hazards adults face while working alone as well as hazards unique to children and adolescents working alone. This suggests that failing to enforce child labour laws has both obvious and subtle effects. The subtle effects are difficult to identify and remediate, in part because of the initial regulatory failure is politically difficult to acknowledge.

This study further develops our understanding of the employment experiences of children (ages 9-11) and adolescents (ages 12-14) in the Canadian province of Alberta, with particular attention to illegal employment and the effectiveness of complaint-based regulation. Survey data demonstrates there is a significant degree of illegal employment among children and adolescents. Interview data suggests that complaint-driven regulation of child labour is ineffective because parents, children and adolescents cannot identify violations and do not take action to trigger state enforcement.

Labour relations scholar Bob Barnetson sheds light on the faulty system of workplace injury compensation, highlighting the way some employers create dangerous work environments yet invest billions of dollars into compensation and treatment.

The article reviews the book, "An Independent Foreign Policy for Canada? Challenges and Choices for the Future," edited by Brian Bow and Patrick Lennox.