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Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement, by Marshall Ganz, is reviewed.

Since well before the official endorsement of "peace, order and good government" in the British North America Act of 1867, Canada has understood itself as a peace keeping and socially-progressive collective. Both before and after the BNA Act, Canadian poets critiqued as well as celebrated this persistent national mythology, offering their poetry as social commentary and as impetus to change. This thesis considers the shifting understanding of the role of Canadian poets in shaping the nation and in establishing social justice. After tracing a history of theoretical understandings of social justice with specific attention to the arrival and evolution of such theory within Canada, the thesis reads poetry from before Confederation to the end of the Second World War in relation to its political and social moment. The first chapter investigates Canadian poetry from its beginnings to 1900, and through consideration of the poems of Alexander McLachlan, Isabella Valancy Crawford, Duncan Campbell Scott, and Archibald Lampman, among others, charts the persistent concern with what the historian Ian McKay calls "imagining otherwise;" that is, the desire to discover in Canada a place with the potential to envision alternatives, free from the hierarchies and injustices of the old world. These poets use the space of their work to reimagine labour and to explore the benefits of cooperation, and they persistently return to the role of the poet in crafting the just state they imagine. The second chapter turns to the Canadian modernist understanding of literary inheritance and re-creation Through a focus on F.R. Scott, the chapter considers the nation's artistic response to the Depression, as well as the influence of America's Federal One program, which extended employment to the nation's artists. The third chapter investigates modernist collectives in greater detail, reading the artistic and critical output of such artistic collaborations as Masses, Contemporary Verse, Preview and First Statement as challenges to the Canadian definition of artistic responsibility. Across the time periods considered, this thesis investigates ways in which poets balance idealism and pragmatism, commitments of form and content, and concern for the welfare of the individual and the wellbeing of the collective.

The article reviews the book, "Sojourner Truth's America," by Margaret Washington.

The article reviews the book, "The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution," by Mobo Gao.

The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, which involved approximately 30,000 workers, is Canada's best-known strike. When the State Trembled recovers the hitherto untold story of the Citizens' Committee of 1000, formed by Winnipeg's business elite in order to crush the revolt and sustain the status quo. This account, by the authors of the award-winning Walk Towards the Gallows, reveals that the Citizens drew upon and extended a wide repertoire of anti-labour tactics to undermine working-class unity, battle for the hearts and minds of the middle class, and stigmatize the general strike as a criminal action. Newly discovered correspondence between leading Citizen lawyer A.J. Andrews and Acting Minister of Justice Arthur Meighen illuminates the strategizing and cooperation that took place between the state and the Citizens. While the strike's break was a crushing defeat for the labour movement, the later prosecution of its leaders on charges of sedition reveals abiding fears of radicalism and continuing struggles between capital and labour on the terrain of politics and law. --Publisher's description. Contents: Permitted by Authority of the Strike Committee -- Who? Who? Who-oo? -- Seven Hundred and Four Years Ago at Runnymede -- The Anointing of A.J. Andrews -- The Flag-Flapping Stage -- To Reach the Leaders in this Revolutionary Movement -- Time to Act -- Enough Evidence to Convict the Whole Strike Committee -- The Road through Bloody Saturday -- The Only Way to Deal with Bolshevism -- They are all dangerous: Immigration Hearings -- They Started the Fire: Preliminary Hearing -- Poor Harry Daskaluk -- Duty to God, Country, and Family: The Russell Trial.

Cet article examine la gestion des ressources humaines qui était faite à l’usine de la General Engineering Company de Scarborough, durant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. L’étude de ce cas, conceptualisée de manière à y inclure les caractéristiques structurelles de l’économie capitaliste ainsi que l’interventionnisme gouvernemental, démontre à quel point le secteur privé et le marché de l’emploi furent des facteurs déterminants dans la transformation des conditions de travail pendant cette période. L’importance de la production de certains articles militaires pour l’effort de guerre conditionna une collaboration entre le gouvernement et les entreprises privées pour garantir une stabilité de la main-d’oeuvre. Les stratégies utilisées pour assurer une continuité de la production, telles que le choix d’une main-d’oeuvre féminine, l’adoption de mesures issues du welfare capitalism ou la lutte aux syndicats externes, contribuèrent à transformer le milieu de travail et à développer un climat propre à cette période de guerre et aux usines financées par le gouvernement fédéral.

Cet article se concentre sur l’acteur patronal et ses préférences en matière de structures de négociation collective. Les nouvelles réalités économiques, conjuguées aux nouvelles stratégies organisationnelles et étatiques, conduiraient les employeurs dans bon nombre de pays à vouloir décentraliser les structures de négociation. Il y a toutefois des cas d’exception auxquels nous portons une attention particulière. Nous présentons les résultats d’une étude auprès des employeurs de l’industrie du vêtement pour hommes au Québec où prévaut toujours la négociation coordonnée malgré les pressions de la mondialisation. Pour analyser cette réponse différenciée des employeurs, nous avons utilisé une méthodologie qualitative. Grâce à des entretiens en profondeur et une analyse documentaire, nous avons construit un cadre analytique regroupant quatre types de facteurs en mesure d’influencer les préférences patronales pour des structures de négociation centralisées ou décentralisées : économique, organisationnel, institutionnel et stratégique.Au plan empirique, nous dégageons deux principaux constats de nos observations. D’abord, nous avons observé une volonté partagée par les parties patronale et syndicale à poursuivre une négociation coordonnée. Notons toutefois qu’une certaine hétérogénéité dans la propension des employeurs à adhérer à ce type de négociation a pu être remarquée surtout en raison de la diversité des firmes en termes de taille, de marchés desservis et de capacité de payer. Ensuite, nos résultats suggèrent une tension entre les influences exercées par les facteurs considérés dans l’étude : d’une part, les facteurs économiques et organisationnels influencent les acteurs patronaux vers l’individualisation des négociations collectives ; d’autre part, les facteurs institutionnels, en imposant certaines contraintes qui limitent leurs choix stratégiques, influencent les employeurs vers l’action collective. Au plan théorique, les résultats démontrent que les facteurs généralement associés à la mondialisation ne surdéterminent pas le comportement des acteurs. Au contraire, les acteurs conservent une marge de manoeuvre pour réagir aux pressions de l’environnement. En fonction du contexte institutionnel en place, différentes réponses peuvent ainsi être offertes par les employeurs en regard du type de structure de négociation à privilégier.

The article reviews the book, "Men, Mobs, and Law: Anti-Lynching and Labor Defense in U.S. Radical History," by Rebecca Hill.

The article reviews the book, "Travail et genre : regards croisés France, Europe, Amérique latine," edited by Luis L.M. Aguiar and Andrew Herod

The article reviews and comments on three books: "Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880-1914" by Tom Goyens, "Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism" by Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt, and "Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism" by Paul McLaughlin.

During the interwar period, Quebec was a strongly patriarchal society, where men in the Church, politics, and medicine, maintained a traditional norm of social and sexual standards that women were expected to abide by. Some women in the media and religious communities were complicit with this vision, upholding the "ideal" as the norm and tending to those "deviants" who failed to meet society's expectations. By examining the underside of a staid and repressive society, Andrée Lévesque reveals an alternate and more accurate history of women and sexual politics in early twentieth-century Quebec. Women, mainly of the working class, left traces in the historical record of their transgressions from the norm, including the rejection of motherhood (e.g., abortion, abandonment, infanticide), pregnancy and birth outside of marriage, and prostitution. Professor Lévesque concludes, "They were deviant, but only in relation to a norm upheld to stave off a modernism that threatened to swallow up a Quebec based on long-established social and sexual roles. --Publisher's description --T.p. verso; Includes bibliographical references and index

The article reviews the book ,"Managing the Human Factor: The Early Years of Human Resource Management in American Industry," by Bruce E. Kaufman.

The article reviews two books: "New World Coming: The Sixties and the Shaping of Global Consciousness," edited by Karen Dubinsky, Catherine Krull, Susan Lord, Sean Mills, and Scott Rutherford, and "Canada's 1960s: The Ironies of Identity in a Rebellious Era" by Bryan D. Palmer.

The article reviews the book, "Modern Slavery: The Secret World of 27 Million People," by Kevin Bales, Zoe Trodd, and Alex Kent Williamson.

The article reviews the book, "Les Débardeurs au Port de Québec: Tableau des luttes syndicales, 1831-1902," by Peter C. Bischoff.

The article reviews the book, "Minds of Our Own: Inventing Feminist Scholarship and Women's Studies in Canada and Quebec, 1966-76," edited by Wendy Robbins, Meg Luxton, Margrit Eichler, and Francine Descarries.

The article reviews the book, "Some Like It Cold: The Politics of Climate Change in Canada," by Robert C. Paehlke.

Competitive pressure and desire for success drive enterprises in general to involve in knowledge acquisition and dissemination activities that are becoming increasingly significant in the rapid changing and globalising economic world. In addition, with the increased mobility of information and the global labour force, knowledge and experience can be transferred instantaneously around the globe; thus, any advantage gained by one company can be eliminated by comparative improvements overnight. Therefore, the only comparative advantage a particular company will face will be its process of innovation – combining market and technology know-how with the resourceful talents of knowledgeable labour to solve a constant stream of competitive problems- and its ability to derive value from information. In this context, internal and external knowledge acquisition, intra-firm knowledge dissemination and management decisions taken in response to the significant information generated and subsequently filtered became the key factors of entrepreneurial success. This thesis explores how market orientation, learning orientation and entrepreneurial orientation systematically contribute to and are sources of competitive advantage in growth-oriented SMEs. The objective of this study was to investigate the likelihood of a growth-oriented enterprise established in Atlantic Canada to be involved in knowledge acquisition and dissemination activities and to succeed conditional on numerous internal and external factors. A ‘mixed-methods’ research approach was used in this study, comprised of: 1) a web-based questionnaire to study the knowledge management process and other aspects of entrepreneurial success and 2) ‘semi-structured’ interviews with a sample of the responding entrepreneurs. The findings suggest that knowledge management practices: external acquisition, intra-firm dissemination and responsiveness, do vary across the levels of entrepreneurial performance among the Atlantic Canadian SMEs investigated in the study. Having a market orientation and investing in human resources of the firm were found to be critical drivers of innovation leading to potential competitive advantage.

During World War II thousands of workers entered the employ of wartime shipyards in British Columbia. Most Vancouver-area shipyards, following general practice in the United States along the Pacific Coast, operated on the basis of a closed shop, whereby membership was required in recognized labour unions holding agreements with the companies. Management at one shipyard, West Coast Shipbuilders Company Limited, however, bucked this trend and maintained an open shop in the face of growing pressure by the unions, in particular the marine boilermakers, to have a closed one. William McLaren, the main antagonist, reflected enduring older values among some employers in antithesis to labour-management cooperation prevalent in the United States and Canada in support of war production. Though the matter went to conciliation, the drawbacks of a legal approach were readily apparent when a board turned down labour’s request, and negotiations assisted by a judge resulted in adoption of a lesser maintenance of membership clause instead of the closed shop. Worker militancy and aggressive organizing, in the end, could not deliver the closed shop at West Coast Shipbuilders before war contracts concluded and shipbuilding contracted in the province. Taking a local, regional, and industry-specific perspective, this study argues that the union struggle for recognition and accommodation from employers in wartime Canada faltered in the case of obtaining a closed shop at this British Columbia wartime shipyard.

Human Rights in Labor and Employment Relations: International and Domestic Perspectives, edited by James A. Gross and Lance Compa, is reviewed.