Search

The article reviews the book, "New World Dawning: The Sixties at Regina Campus," by James M. Pitsula.

The article reviews the book, "Criminalizing Race, Criminalizing Poverty: Welfare Fraud Enforcement in Canada," by Kiran Mirchandani and Wendy Chan.

An influential strand of the finance literature focuses on the nature and extent of shareholder rights vis-a-vis employees. Most of the extant literature on the subject relies on a limited number of case studies and/or broad macroeconomic data, whereas this article draws on evidence from a large scale survey of organizations to test the predictions of the theories on the relative strength of workers and managers across the different governance regimes. This evidence highlights the complex relationship between societal institutions, legal traditions, political parties and electoral systems, on corporate governance regimes and the relative strength of unions and collective representation at workplace level, highlighting the limitations of the mainstream finance and economics rational-incentive based literature, and the value of alternative socio-economic approaches.

The article reviews the book, "U.S. Labor in Trouble and Transition: The Failure of Reform From Above, the Promise of Revival From Below," by Kim Moody.

The article reviews the book, "Working Girl Blues: The Life and Music of Hazel Dickens," by Hazel Dickens and Bill C. Malone.

Growing Older, Working Longer: The New Face of Retirement, by Monica Townson, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "La face cachée des conditions de travail : les situations d'atteintes à la santé psychologique," by Lucie France Dagenais in collaboration with Sabrina Ruta.

The McDonald's labour management strategy is widespread in the fast food industry. Literature that is critical of the approach often portrays the work as low paid, unchallenging and uninteresting. Others argue that industry jobs provide an enhanced resume, training opportunities, and the possibility of a career. Rather than being inherently disadvantageous or beneficial, it is possible that fast food employment addresses the needs and aspirations of some more than others. This article proposes such a view in relation to teenagers. It poses the question: what are the characteristics of those who are suitable for industry work? Surveys are used to develop a statistical profile of ideal workers. Findings have implications for stakeholder decision making and offer an empirical perspective of a contentious issue that attracts opinion and speculation. Results indicate that developmental change and an overt inclination to choose a fast food career are key considerations in determining employee suitability.

New Employment Actors: Developments from Australia, edited by Grant Michelson, Suzanne Jamieson and John Burgess, is reviewed.

Up in the Air: How Airlines Can Improve Performance by Engaging their Employees, by Greg J. Bamber, Jody H. Gittell, Thomas A. Kochan and Andrew Von Nordenflycht, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "Class and the Color Line: Interracial Class Coalition in the Knights of Labor and the Populist Movement," by Joseph Gerteis.

How Canadians rate the prestige of their occupations, and what this says about our understanding of the knowledge economy, social mobility and inequality, and our working selves. "What do you do?" is often the first question posed when strangers meet, as occupation reveals a great deal about both social identity and social standing or "occupational prestige." Sociologists have studied occupational prestige for decades, including a landmark national survey in 1965 by Peter Pineo and John Porter. John Goyder updates Pineo and Porter's work, providing a detailed comparison of their results with a similar national scale survey conducted in 2005. The results challenge the accepted view that prestige ratings are constant over time and across societies. Goyder shows that there have been some surprising changes in these ratings: instead of the expected premium on jobs in the knowledge sector, more traditional occupations - such as the skilled trades, even if they require little education or pay a low wage - have gained the most prestige. There has been a significant decrease in consensus about occupational prestige ratings and the tendency for respondents to upgrade the prestige of their own occupation is much more pronounced in the recent data. Goyder argues that these changes are a sign of the shifting nature of values in a meritocratic society in which increasing income inequality is a growing reality. Results from prestige surveys help in the construction of socio-economic scales for occupations and inform career counselling for young people and negotiations by labour unions and associations. "The Prestige Squeeze" goes beyond this to question the very nature of how we measure social equality and mobility. --Publisher's description

Le Canada et le Québec ont procédé, depuis le milieu des années 1990, à des changements importants de leur système de protection sociale ; les objectifs visés par ces réformes ont été de contrôler les dépenses publiques ou d’atteindre le déficit zéro, d’augmenter l’efficacité des politiques sociales, en particulier par rapport à l’incitation à l’emploi, et de garantir des conditions de vie convenables. Ceci s’est traduit par une restructuration de plusieurs dispositifs de protection sociale qui s’est réalisée par la reconfiguration des paramètres de protection et par l’activation de ces mêmes dépenses sociales. Pour comprendre cette restructuration, cet article analyse les changements introduits dans certains dispositifs de sécurité du revenu que sont le dispositif de l’assurance chômage, le régime universel des allocations familiales et le système d’assistance sociale, tant au niveau fédéral que québécois. Pour rendre compte de cette démarche, le texte a été divisé en trois parties : la première porte sur la reconfiguration de chacun des dispositifs, la deuxième sur l’activation des dépenses sociales et la troisième introduit des éléments d’analyse vis-à-vis cette restructuration récente des politiques sociales. Le texte est traversé par une question, celle de savoir si ces réformes traduisent un virage néo-libéral dans le sens d’un désengagement de l’État et d’une érosion des droits sociaux ou s’il vaut mieux plutôt y voir une réorganisation, une modification de son architecture, traduisant un changement de paradigme ou de référentiel dans le sens d’un État social actif ou d’investissement social.

Alors que la confiance organisationnelle est appréhendée comme un élément central à toute relation d’échange, elle n’a pas été étudiée dans le cadre d’une approche globale de l’échange social employeur-employé. Cet article vise à préciser le concept de confiance organisationnelle et à montrer son rôle lorsque l’organisation fait preuve de bienveillance à l’égard de ses employés. Le rôle médiateur de la confiance entre le soutien organisationnel perçu et les attitudes au travail est tout particulièrement étudié. Les résultats obtenus auprès de 249 cadres et gestionnaires confirment que la confiance en l’organisation est au coeur du processus d’échange social, et se présente comme une variable intermédiaire nécessaire pour expliquer l’engagement organisationnel et l’intention de quitter l’entreprise.

Contents: Canadian labour and employment relations / Daphne G. Taras and Morley Gunderson -- Understanding the unionization decision / Ann C. Frost and Daphne G. Taras -- Labour history and the development of modern capitalism / Richard Marsden -- Unions : membership, structures, actions and challenges / Gregor Murray -- The management of industrial relations / Mark Thompson -- Managing the high-involvement workplace / Anil Verma and Daphne G. Taras -- Social, political, and economic environments / Frank Reid and Rafael Gomez -- Collective bargaining legislation in Canada / Sara Slinn -- The individual employment contract and employment / Geoffrey England -- Collective bargaining : structure, process, and innovation / Richard Chaykowski -- The collective agreement / Anthony Giles and Akivah Starkman -- Strikes and dispute resolution / Morley Gunderson, Bob Hebdon, and Douglas Hyatt -- The grievance arbitration process and workplace / Kenneth Wm. Thornicroft -- Union impact on compensation, productivity, and management of the organization / Morley Gunderson and Douglas Hyatt -- Public-sector collective bargaining / Mark Thompson and Patrice Jalette -- Union-management relations in Québec / Esther Déom and Jean-Noël Grenier with Marie-Pierre Beaumont -- Trade unions and labour relations regimes: international perspectives in a globalizing world / Carla Lipsig-Mummé. Previous eds. published under title: Union-management relations in Canada; Includes bibliographical references and index.

Dependent Self-Employment: Workers on the Border between Employment and Self-Employment, by Ulrike Muehlberger, is reviewed.

Pensions at Work: Socially Responsible Investment of Union-Based Pension Funds, edited by Jack Quarter, Isla Carmichael and Sherida Ryan, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "Renegades: Canadians in the Spanish Civil War," by Michael Petrou.

The article reviews the book, "What's New: Memoirs of a Socialist Idealist," by Ben Swankey.

This paper will review the historical development of professionalism as a contested construct in the public education project and briefly explain how it was employed to achieve the right to strike for Ontario’s public school teachers in 1973. Although all six teachers’ unions are included in the study, the more particular standpoint is from the elementary teachers’ unions, the Federation of Women Teachers’ Associations of Ontario and the Ontario Public School Men Teachers’ Federation, as it is from their archives that the research was gathered.