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In this indispensable study of Canadian industrialization, Craig Heron examines the huge steel plants that were built at the turn of the twentieth century in Sydney and New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, and Trenton, Hamilton, and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Presenting a stimulating analysis of the Canadian working class in the early twentieth century, Working in Steel emphasizes the importance of changes in the work world for the larger patterns of working-class life. Heron's examination of the impact of new technology in Canada's Second Industrial Revolution challenges the popular notion that mass-production workers lost all skill, power, and pride in the work process. He shifts the explanation of managerial control in these plants from machines to the blunt authoritarianism and shrewd paternalism of corporate management. His discussion of Canada's first steelworkers illuminates the uneven, unpredictable, and conflict-ridden process of technological change in industrial capitalist society. As engaging today as when first published in 1988, Working in Steel remains an essential work in Canadian history. --Pubisher's description

This research undertakes an examination of the employment opportunities and experiences of black Caribbean women in Canada, particularly within the context of the growing trend towards precarious jobs—casual, part-time and low paying—in the restructured Canadian labour market. The specific purview of this study is the labour history and employment experience of a representative group of black Caribbean women who work as Personal Support Workers in nursing homes across the Greater Toronto Area. A main concern of the study is to understand the ways in which precarious work affects these women’s settlement and integration experiences, particularly their ability to gain economic independence; this, in turn, affects a number of variables related to their, and others, perception regarding their status and place in Canada. By focusing on the case of Personal Support Workers, the study aims to shed light not only on the employment experiences of black Caribbean women in this sector but also to examine more closely the policies and employment practices that create labour market “niches” or labour “segregation” along racial and gender lines.

The article reviews the book, "The Rich Man," by Henry Kreisel.

The extremely poor have often been cast as deviants or others, in both the past and the present. Historians of Atlantic Canada have used the idea of deviance as an acceptable approach to the poor and homeless of the past and tacitly encourage us to see the contemporary homeless as deviants. Victorian theorists such as Malthus and Mayhew pejoratively characterized the poor as an underclass. Contemporary writers have provided evidence that challenges the use of the concept in Canada. But it remains a powerful force within American sociology, which is able to cast its influence over Canadian historical writing. It is the contention of this research that it is possible to be true to the past, to reflect the warts and downfalls of the extremely poor and homeless who lived there, but at the same time recognize their efforts to follow prevailing norms and to empathize with their plight and in doing so generate at least the possibility of recognition and empathy in the present. Such recognition and empathy may be the keys to creating and maintaining humane solutions to poverty and homelessness. The examinations conducted by this research address an area of our past that has been largely overlooked. This research supplements broad historical surveys of social welfare legislation by examining social welfare policy in action at the local level. By positioning itself at the convergence of labour history and studies of poverty, and by demonstrating that the populations examined by these discrete areas of research are more alike than different, this research shows that labour history can be extended to include many of those who lived "rough" in the past. Through its approach this research hopes to encourage a view that can help to integrate the study of extreme poverty and homelessness into the mainstream of Canadian historiography.

Fairness at Work: Federal Labour Standards for the 21st Century, by Harry Arthurs, is reviewed.

This eclectic and carefully organized range of essays--from women's history and settler societies to colonialism and borderlands studies--is the first collection of comparative and transnational work on women in the Canadian and U.S. Wests. It explores, expands, and advances the aspects of women's history that cross national borders. Out of the talks presented at the 2002 "Unsettled Pasts: Reconceiving the West through Women's History," Elizabeth Jameson and Sheila McManus have edited a foundational text with a wide, inclusive perspective on our western past. --Publisher's description. Contents: Connecting the women's Wests / Elizabeth Jameson -- Unsettled pasts, unsettling borders: women, Wests, nations / Sheila McManus -- Making connections: gender, race and place in Oregon contry / Susan Armitage -- A transborder family in the Pacific North West: reflecting on race and gender in women's history / Sylvia van Kirk -- Writing women into the history of the North American Wests, one woman at a time / Jean Barman -- "That understanding with nature":region, race, and nation in women's stories from the modern Canadian and American Grasslands West / Molly P. Rozum -- The perils of rural women's history: (a note to storytellers who study the West's unsettled past) / Joan M. Jensen -- The great white mother: maternalism and American Indian child removal in the American West, 1880-1940 / Margaret D. Jacobs -- Pushing physical, racial, and ethnic boundaries: Edith Lucas and public education in British Columbia, 1903-1989 / Helen Raptis -- "Crossing the line": American prostitutes in Western Canada, 1895-1925 / Char Smith -- "Talented and charming strangers from across the line": gendered nationalism. class privilege, and the American woman's club of Calgary / Nora Faires -- Excerpts from Pourin' Down Rain / Cheryl Foggo -- "A union without women is only half organized": Mine Mill, women's auxiliaries, and cold war politics in the North American Wests / Laurie Mercier -- Jailed heroes and kithen heroines: class, gender, and the Medalta Potteries strike in postwar Alberta / Cynthia Loch-Drake -- Gendered steps across the border: teaching the history of women in the American and Canadian Wests / Margaret Walsh -- Latitudes and longitudes: teaching the history of women in the U.S. and Canadian Wests / Mary Murphy.

The article reviews the book, "Glass Houses: Saving Feminist Anti-Violence Agencies From Self-Destruction," by Rebekkah Adams.

The article reviews the book, "Qu’est-ce que l’intégration ?," by Dominique Schnapper.

This article examines the growth of one of the fastest-growing union locals in North America, the Services Employees International Union Local 880 in Chicago. As union membership has declined nationally, Local 880 has achieved exponential growth over the last twenty five years by being among the first to organize extremely low wage home based child care and home care workers. The article highlights the tenets of the local's organizing philosophy, including community organizing and political activism, as well as other strategies and tactics 880 has utilized in growing its membership to more than 65,000 members. Along the way, it has secured notable victories on behalf of its members, including winning the largest organizing campaign of home childcare workers in U.S. history.

Based on the premise that occupational health and safety concerns can directly impact an organizations productivity and profitability, this 4th Canadian edition of Management of Occupational Health and Safety helps Human Resource Managers understand health and safety issues, legislation and programs. This edition also provides an up-to-date review of current issues, and methodologies affecting the occupational health and safety standards and practices of Canadian organizations. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Traité de sociologie du travail," seconde édition actualisée, by Thierry Pillon and François Vatin.

Historians have long noted that policies of "progress" were integral to men and women throughout northern North America in the 19th century. A range of scholars have commented on the centrality of railway technology to these policies. Indeed, they have suggested that, in the 19th century, bourgeois nationalists were swept up in a kind of "railway fever," and that even though there were detractors, the tenacity of pro-railway elites, and the considerable patronage that huge construction loans and contracts provided them, ensured that these projects triumphed over other possibilities. The Newfoundland case suggests that there is a need for both a slightly revised assessment of elites and their views and goals, and a more nuanced reading of the role of ordinary men and women in the policy-making process. While elites in the colony did view the railway as a means of becoming a "progressive" or "modern nation," and while they viewed economic prosperity and "enlightenment" as central to modernity and progressiveness, commercial dynamism was only one important component of a more encompassing program. Tlites supported the railway because it provided them with a way of living according to standards of Britishness that became important to Newfoundlanders and others in "white" settler dominions, especially after the mid-19th century. Central to "Britishness" as policy makers understood the term, was the idea that "British societies" were those in which men lived according to their "god given manly independence." A careful analysis of the daily press suggests that many working people took these ideals seriously, and that they saw railway work, and the future employment and other economic opportunities its promoters promised, as a means of living according to them. When opponents of railway development did maneuver themselves into power, they found efforts to change course were met with popular upheaval. Ultimately, it was a broadly based solidarity founded on notions of male entitlement that determined which policies were "feasible."

The article reviews the book, "Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital," by Amiya Kumar Bagchi.

Analyzes from a legal and political perspective important events in Sudbury, including the punitive treatment of the poor (the Kimberly Rogers case) and the resort to strikebreakers and injunctions in the 2001-2002 Falconbridge Strike. Concludes that such events are the outcome of the neo-conservative policies of the provincial government of Mike Harris.

Cet article analyse les conditions associées au développement de la relation de confiance entre les gestionnaires et les représentants syndicaux au sein d’entreprises qui ont adopté des innovations de différentes formes. Nous nous intéressons à la confiance entre des agents qui interviennent au nom de commettants. Notre étude démontre que si le développement de la confiance bénéficie d’un climat de travail moins conflictuel, d’autres conditions sont également requises, particulièrement le partage des informations entre les parties. Par ailleurs, un contexte de transformation peut améliorer la relation de confiance, particulièrement lorsqu’un processus participatif confiant un rôle au syndicat est adopté pour introduire les innovations. Celles-ci peuvent ainsi favoriser le développement de la confiance cognitive entre les parties, tout en respectant des intérêts spécifiques à chacune., This article examines the development of relationships of trust between managers and union representatives in a context of social innovations. Trust acts as a social lubricant and thus plays an important role in social relations within organizations undergoing change and which depend more on cooperation. However, trust is a multidimensional concept that appears in various forms that can be dichotomized between cognitive trust, which is based more on knowledge and reason, and identity-based trust, which is more emotional and may even involve holding common values. Within organizations, studies of trust have most often examined relations between workers and managers, or even members’ trust in their organization. Few studies have examined the relationship of trust between employers and unions. However, the interactions between institutional agents at work tend to encourage the development of the cognitive dimension of trust rather than its identity-based dimension. While encouraging cooperation between these agents and leading them to develop new relationships outside the traditional institutional framework, innovation nevertheless conceals two essential conditions for the development of trust: the interdependence of actors, and risk in the face of the future and unknown behaviour of their counterpart. Trust is not a given, but is rather a social construction that develops through the interactions of the actors at work according to the diverse conditions that we will examine. The data come from a study on new work relations between employers and unions. The sample includes union representatives and managers in goods and services firms that adopted different kinds of innovations. One thousand firms, each with more than 50 workers, were included in the study. A total of 242 union representatives and 221 managers returned their questionnaires. The sample was generally characterized by medium- or large-sized firms with a high proportion of male workers occupying permanent positions and with several years of seniority. However, there are differences between manufacturing sector firms and services sector firms. The latter employ more women who are less likely to have permanent positions and who have fewer years of seniority. Trust was measured using the average of four dimensions of the Butler scale: integrity, discretion, promise of results, and overall trust. The alpha coefficient of this trust indicator is 0.93 for both union representatives and managers. A second dependent variable measures the improvement in the trust relationship following the adoption of the innovation that the respondent considers to be the most significant. The two dependent variables (trust relationship and improvement of this relationship) have been analyzed using multiple regression and according to a model that includes several dimensions: socio-demographic characteristics, socio-economic context, labour relations climate, access to information, types of innovations, implementation process for innovations and their impacts. The union representatives indicated a lower level of trust (3.15 vs. 3.81/5) and fewer of them believe that trust increased following the adoption of the most significant innovation (27% vs. 44%). The differences between the union representatives and managers remain significant, after adjustment for different dimensions of the analytical model. This shows that the relationship is asymmetrical: the union representatives have less control over the situation and feel more vulnerable to potential opportunistic behaviours on the part of their management counterpart. Nevertheless, both the trust relationship and its improvement following the adoption of the most significant innovation are influenced by different dimensions of the analytical model. First of all, both the managers and the union representatives in the manufacturing sector are less likely than those in the services sector to feel trust. Trust is not highly related to the socio-economic context, although managers have more trust when the work force is declining; the trust of union representatives is lower when subcontracting increases. Trust is influenced by the labour relations climate. Thus trust is lower when there are more grievances or when grievances are increasing. However, trust is stronger when grievances tend to be resolved internally. Trust is also higher when respondents have access to the information requested from their counterpart. Innovations also influence trust, which is lower following the adoption of monetary innovations, but higher when other types of innovations are adopted: labour relations, work organization, training. The process of adopting innovations is important for improving the trust relationship, both when they are adopted to respond to human factors rather than factors linked to productivity, as well as when they are established through a negotiation process and a joint monitoring mechanism. Finally, negative impacts decrease trust while positive impacts do not influence the relationship of trust between union representatives and managers. The study revealed the factors that can favour the development of a relationship of trust between union representatives and managers following the adoption of social innovations. The process of adopting these innovations rather than the type of innovations seems to have a more important impact on the improvement of the trust relationship. However, this development should not be seen as an automatic transposition of the trust relationship to other members of the organization. Another question to be addressed is to what extent trust can be built without the parties losing their own identity. Our results support those of other studies that seem to show that although the cognitive dimension of trust can be developed readily between the agents at work, this is not true of identity-based trust., Este artículo analiza las condiciones asociadas al desarrollo de la relación de confianza entre directivos y representantes sindicales al interior de empresas que han adoptado diferentes formas de innovaciones. Nos interesamos a la confianza entre agentes que intervienen en nombre de comitentes. Nuestro estudio demuestra que si el desarrollo de la confianza beneficia de un clima de trabajo menos conflictivo, otras condiciones son igualmente requeridas, particularmente el hecho de compartir las informaciones entre las partes. De otro lado, un contexto de transformación puede mejorar la relación de confianza, particularmente cuando se adopta un proceso participativo para introducir las innovaciones, confiando así un rol al sindicato. De esta manera, estas innovaciones pueden favorecer el desarrollo de la confianza cognitiva entre las partes sin dejar de respetar los intereses específicos de cada uno.

The article reviews the book, "Relations au travail, relations de travail," edited by François Aballéa and Michel Lallement.

Analyzes Sudbury as a hinterland of resource extraction, including the response of unions. Provides new policy strategies for labour and an assessment of the community's future prospects.

Sudbury is the largest hardrock mining centre in North America and among the largest in the world. Given the enormous mineral wealth that exists in the Sudbury Basin, one might think that prosperity would abound and that cultural, educational, health and social-welfare institutions would be of the highest order, existing within a well-maintained and attractive physical infrastructure. But this is not the Sudbury that people know. This book explores key aspects of Sudbury’s economic, health and social conditions. It analyzes how globalization and corporate power in a hinterland mining town have impacted on working people, how and why resistance has emerged and why alternative directions are needed. While Sudbury is the focus of this book, the Sudbury experience offers important lessons for other mining and resource communities. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction: Sudbury's crisis of development and democracy / David Leadbeater -- Mine Mill Local 598/CAW reaches a turning point / Rick Grylls -- Strikebreaking and the corporate agenda at The Sudbury Star / Denis St. Pierre -- Public-sector unions in Sudbury / John Closs -- The state and civility in Sudbury / Don Kuyek -- Environmental impacts of nickel mining: four case studies, three continents, and two centuries / Evan Edinger -- Some aspects of health and health care in the Sudbury area / K.V. Nagarajan -- Sudbury sleep / Kate Leadbeater -- The failing health of children and youth in Northern Ontario / Kate C. Tilleczek -- Hunger and food insecurity in Greater Sudbury / Carole Suschnigg -- "Sometimes I wonder": language, racism, and the language of racism in Sudbury / Roger Spielmann -- Excerpt from an untitled poem / Patrice Desbiens -- French Ontario: two realities / Donald Dennie -- Traditional elites and the democratic deficit: some challenges for education in French-speaking Ontario / François Boudreau; trans. by Kate Leadbeater -- Dispatches of longing: progressive art and culture in Sudbury / Laurie McGauley -- Lessons from the little blue schoolhouse / Ruth Reyno -- The rise and decline of local 6500 United Steelworkers of America / Bruce McKeigan -- My view from the blackened rocks / Cathy Mulroy -- Sudbury Saturday night / Stompin' Tom Connors.

As the global economy undergoes a major transformation, the inadequacy of labour relations theories dating back to Fordism, especially the systemic analysis model (Dunlop, 1958) and the strategic model (Kochan, Katz and McKersie, 1986), in which only three actors--union, employer and State--share the stage is becoming increasingly obvious. A good example is provided by companies offering information technology services to businesses, where new means of regulation emerge and illustrate the need to incorporate new actors and new issues if we are to account for its contemporary complexity. A survey of 88 professionals has revealed regulation practices that call into question the traditional boundaries of the industrial relations system from two points of view: that of the three main actors, by bringing the customer and work teams onto the stage, and that of the distinction between the contexts and the system itself.

The article reviews the book, "The New Left: Legacy and Continuity," edited by Dimitrios Roussopoulos.