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This paper traces the steps in the denouement of the Supreme Court of Canada's 1987 Labour Trilogy, which denied constitutional protection to collective bargaining and strikes. The first blow to those decisions came in Dunmore, where the Court adopted a collective rather than individual definition of the Charter freedom of association, while another was dealt by B.C. Health, where the Court extended s. 2(d) pro- tection to collective bargaining. The Supreme Court might still avoid finding a constitutional right to strike, but, in the author's view, the Court has probably gone too far to turn back. If and when the time comes to read the Trilogy its "last rites," the author argues against set- ting a high threshold for a breach of s. 2(d), by adopting the "substantial interference" test set out in B.C. Health. In this respect, she points to an important difference between collective bargaining and strikes: the for- mer is a positive obligation which imposes on governments a correspon- ding duty, whereas the latter is a negative entitlement to be free from government interference. While there is a risk that the constitutionaliza- tion of strike activity may involve the courts in reviewing labour policy, the solution is not to dilute the content of s. 2(d), but to create a "cus- tomized" s. I test for justifying infringements of the guarantee in the labour context - one which would explicitly defer to policy decisions by the legislature.

The Canadian labour revolt was about more than wages and working conditions. The year 1919 was also a moment of socialist possibility in which the Russian Revolution and the influence of Marx and Engels fuelled the revolutionary intent of a radicalizing Canadian working class. The idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, long since lost in the shadow of Stalin’s terror, fuelled this moment of socialist possibility. The longing for a workers’ state was a nation-wide phenomenon, but it manifested itself more deeply and broadly in western Canada than in the east. West of the Great Lakes, the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat was hotly debated in the pages of socialist papers and in the halls of the labour movement. Knowledge of the debate concerning the dictatorship of the proletariat provides a more complete understanding of the labour revolt of 1919 and its legacy for Canadian history and the international left.

High unemployment rates, humiliating relief policy, and the spectre of eviction characterized the experiences of many Ontario families in the Great Depression. Respectable Citizens is an examination of the material difficulties and survival strategies of families facing poverty and unemployment, and an analysis of how collective action and protest redefined the meanings of welfare and citizenship in the 1930s.Lara Campbell draws on diverse sources including newspapers, family and juvenile court records, premiers' papers, memoirs, and oral histories to uncover the ways in which the material workings of the family and the discursive category of 'respectable' citizenship were invested with gendered obligations and Anglo-British identity. Respectable Citizens demonstrates how women and men represented themselves as entitled to make specific claims on the state, shedding new light on the cooperative and conflicting relationships between men and women, parents and children, and citizen and state in 1930s Canada. --Publisher's description

We study the propensity of persons with disabilities to engage in volunteer activity using the Participation and Activity Limitation Survey (PALS). Our principal focus is on the effects of various income support programs on persons with disabilities participation in volunteer activities because income support programs can differ with respect to their treatment of unpaid work. For example, workers' compensation programs embody strong disincentives to volunteering while public disability insurance programs explicitly encourage unpaid work. We find that workers' compensation is associated with decreases in the probability of volunteering while public disability insurance is associated with increases in the propensity to volunteer. The relevance of these results to both theories of volunteerism and public policy is discussed.

The article reviews the book "Makúk: A New History of Aboriginal-White Relations," by John Sutton Lutz.

In several parts of the world, the number of poor people in rural areas surpasses the capacity of agriculture to provide employment opportunities. The increasing role of off-farm income has highlighted the importance of rural migration, both within Mexico and to the United States (US) and Canada, as a vehicle for poverty reduction. A significant number of Mexican migrants are participating in guest worker programs, performing mainly agricultural activities. These programs allow Mexicans to enter the US and Canada through formal channels. Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Workers' Program (CSAWP) lets Mexican farmers enter Canada to work legally in agriculture, and participants in this Program send remittances home that are an important contribution to rural development. The main reasons to participate in guest worker programs relate to economic factors, such as the opportunity to earn a relatively high, stable income abroad and the lack of employment opportunities in Mexico, particularly in rural areas. The number of Mexican agricultural workers temporally migrating to Canada through CSAWP has increased significantly over time and now exceeds 12,000 annually. In Mexico, the program provides an estimated C$70 million in remittance income annually, mainly directed to rural and poorer regions. In these regions, this fungible income supports consumption activities and expenditures on family education. However, there are also investments in farming activities, in turn enhancing agrarian incomes. This research explores the impact of remittances on farm investments by migrant workers participating in CSAWP, which in turn impact farm income levels. The results highlight the extent to which temporary migrant labour to Canadian agriculture allows Mexican farmers to enhance their agricultural activities through increased farm investments, such as buying better seeds, fertilizer and farm equipment. The results show that, on the one hand, remittances can significantly enhance farm investments in Mexico that in turn increase farm incomes and, on the other, remittances increase non-farm incomes in Mexico, allowing farm migrants to expand their income portfolio. Hence, these results support the New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM) hypothesis that remittances relax the liquidity constraint in production/investment decisions. Furthermore, family labour availability counterbalances any temporary labour loss because of migration.

Social benchmarking is an evaluation method in which the performance levels of different public social programs are compared, either relatively to each other or to an absolute value. The first part of this research discusses the use of social benchmarking for the evaluation of active labour market policies. This part also develops a social benchmark model, which can be used to assess the performance of active labour market policies in general, and work-based employment programs in specific. The second part of this research consists of the actual benchmarking of the work-based employment programs in five countries: Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

[This report] draws on Statistics Canada data and broad academic literature to present a conceptual and empirical profile of the Ontario’s service class. We define the ‘service class’ as an occupational grouping of typically low-pay service jobs. This term was developed by Richard Florida as part of his framework for understanding creativity-led economic growth; however, it is a concept developed in counterpoint to the creative class, and has been neglected in recent research and policy debates.

Examines the intersectionality of emotional labour in terms of gender, race and class processes. The study is based on the literature arising from Hochschild's "The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling" (1983).

[D]ocuments the struggles of immigrant workers and analyses them within the context of neoliberal globalization and the international and national labour markets. Fight Back grew out of collaboration between a group of university-affiliated researchers who are active in different social movements and community organizations in partnership with the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal. The book shares with us the experiences of immigrant workers in a variety of workplaces. It is based on the underlying belief that the best kind of research that tells “how it really is” comes from the lived experience of people themselves. -- Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction -- Context -- Making immigrant workers -- Access to social rights for migrants to Canada: the long divide between the law and the real world -- Seasonal agricultural workers -- Canada's live-in caregiver program : popular among both employers and migrants, but structured for dependency and inequality -- Survival and fighting back.

The article reviews the book, "Sing It Pretty: A Memoir," by Bess Lomax Hawes.

On leur prête l’indépendance, la capacité à se protéger seuls et à établir un équilibre dans leurs rapports avec les donneurs d’ouvrages, mais ces attributs sont loin de refléter la réalité de certains travailleurs autonomes. En approchant l’industrie du taxi et plus précisément la situation des chauffeurs locataires de taxi, le présent article examine l’état du droit sur cette question au Québec et en France, en discute et propose élaboration d’un régime-cadre de représentation collective pour le Québec.

The article reviews the book, "A Power Among Them: Bessie Abramowitz Hillman and the Making of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America," by Karen Pastorello.

Philippe Vaillancourt (1913-1984) est venu à l'action syndicale par la politique et, durant toute sa carrière, il a conjugué ces deux formes d'engagement. Amorcé pendant la Grande Crise pour se terminer pendant la Révolution tranquille, le parcours militant de Philippe Vaillancourt a été particulièrement ardu, en butte entre autres à l'opposition du gouvernement de Maurice Duplessis. Suivre Philippe Vaillancourt dans cette période pionnière, c'est revivre des conflits du travail souvent violents, c'est suivre l'histoire des rivalités et des regroupements de syndicats, des tentatives de ces derniers de créer un parti ouvrier en s'alliant avec la Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), puis avec le Nouveau Parti Démocratique (NPD), de T.C. Douglas. Fermement convaincu de l'importance de l'éducation syndicale, Philippe Vaillancourt a consacré à cette priorité les dernières années de sa carrière au Congrès canadien du travail (CCT) pour le Québec, dont est membre la Fédération des travailleurs du Québec (FTQ). --Résumé de l'éditeur

In the summer of 2005, the Society of Energy Professionals Hydro One Local engaged in unprecedented strike action that lasted 105 days. This article documents the strike, and explores how and why it occurred, and with such significant support and participation from the 1000 members of a union that had no militant history. I trace the build-up, progression and resolution of the strike, drawing from Society materials, media reports and ethnographic observation, as well as the insights of elected leaders, staff representatives, and rank and file members of the Society collected through interviews and written questionnaires. I conclude that government policy and management behaviour caused worker anger but that union education, organization and democracy were integral to moving these "professional" workers into job action.

Le groupe des jeunes voyageurs combinant le travail dans leur expérience de voyage constitue le segment du marché touristique mondial qui enregistre la croissance la plus importante cette dernière décennie. Certaines économies régionales dépendent de cette force de travail temporaire. C'est le cas de l'industrie agricole des vallées de l'Okanagan-Similkameen et de Creston en Colombie-Britannique qui accueille annuellement des milliers de migrant fruit pickers provenant majoritairement du Québec. Ce mémoire porte sur le quotidien de ces jeunes québécois et s'attarde à comprendre le sens qu'ils accordent à leurs projets de mobilité. Sur la base d'entretiens, je dégage l'imaginaire commun, les mythes, les idéaux et les représentations qui ont incité les jeunes à partir: Les résultats indiquent que ces jeunes inscrivent leur mouvement dans une double logique de quête et de fuite et que le sens attribué à l'expérience de vacances-travail diffère entre les nouveaux arrivants et ceux qui reviennent d'année en année.

The article reviews the book, "European Unions: Labor's Quest for a Transnational Democracy," by Roland Erne.

Based on a qualitative study of the trajectories of 22 workers aged 50 or older who lost or left a standard job and then undertook some form of non-standard employment, this article wants to shed light on the quality of non-standard jobs often held by seniors. Can these jobs be categorized as precarious, and if so, what are the dimensions of this precariousness? Our analysis enabled us to identify three main profiles: early retirees, "competitive" non-standard workers, and vulnerable non-standard workers. This diversity is mainly related to the characteristics of the previous occupational trajectory but also to the characteristics of the repositioning job, the type of skills the worker has, gender, age, and the fact of living or not with a spouse.

Employment Regimes and the Quality of Work, edited by Duncan Gallie, is reviewed.