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Through painful struggles and changing relationships, Thunder Bay’s working class defined itself during the tumultuous years before World War I. Labour Pains looks at many responses to the harshness of industrialism: trade unionism and labour politics, unrest and violence, the Social Gospel and socialism, mediation and conciliation. Alliances and conflict, many ethnicities and various expressions of class consciousness all contributed to the making of the working class whose members and defenders embraced many remarkable individuals, known and unknown. --Publisher's description. Contents: The beginnings of Thunder Bay's working class [Thunder Bay, Northwestern Ontario] -- Trade unions, municipal ownership & labour politics : Harry Bryan and the advent of organized labour] -- Dock workers, immigrants and the railways -- Socialism, the social gospel and labour politics [labor] -- The 1909 Freight Handlers Strike -- Who won the 1909 strike? -- Labour, socialists and the 1912 Coal Handlers Strike -- The Justice system, immigrants and waterfront strikes : socialists and violence -- The 1913 Street Railwaymen's Strike -- Reformers and rebels, good deeds and discord -- Appendix A. Labour unions in Port Arthur and Fort William in 1910. Includes bibliographical references (p. 170-174) and index.

The article reviews the book, "On the Move: The Caribbean Since 1989," by Alejandra Bronfman.

The article reviews the book, "Taking Back the Workers' Law: How to Fight the Assault on Labor Rights," by Ellen Dannin.

The article reviews the book, "Fair Future: Resource Conflicts, Security and Global Justice," edited by Wolfgang Sachs and Tilman Santarius.

The article reviews the book, "Landing Native Fisheries: Indian Reserves and Fishing Rights in British Columbia, 1849-1925," by Douglas C. Harris.

The NFU was formed in 1969 through a merger of the Saskatchewan Farmers Union, the Ontario Farmers Union, the Farmers Union of British Columbia, and the Farmers Union of Alberta. In addition to these provincial unions, farmers from the Maritime provinces—not organized into farmers’ unions at the time—also became part of the NFU structure. Prior to ’69, these provincial unions each had worked autonomously in its respective province, but increasingly they were finding themselves at a disadvantage in attempting to work with the federal government. In an effort to solve that problem, the unions created a coordinating body, the National Farmers Union Council, consisting of representatives of the executives of each provincial union and representatives from the Maritime provinces. Over time, the officials and members from the provincial unions and the Maritimes realized that the major policy decisions affecting farmers were being made at the federal level. At a joint meeting of the executives of the provincial unions and others in Winnipeg in March 1968, the executive members passed a motion to strike a committee to develop a constitution for a direct membership national farm organization. The founding convention of the National Farmers Union was held in Winnipeg in July 1969. In the following months the provincial unions were phased out and their assets and liabilities transferred to the national organization. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West," by Scott Martelle.

The International Labour Organization’s supervisory bodies responsible for assessing state compliance with “freedom of association” have established an extensive jurisprudence on the right to strike. This jurisprudence is based on their interpretation of the ILO Constitution and various key ILO conventions concerning the right to organize and collective bargaining, in both the private and the public sector. Since the end of the Cold War, the employer lobby within the ILO has increasingly tried to undermine this aspect of ILO jurisprudence, so as to deny that there is any necessary link between freedom of association and the right to take industrial action. This pressure has come at a time when ILO norms are beginning to receive greater attention and respect, and are being applied in the human rights jurisprudence of other legal systems, including those of Canada and Europe. In 2007, the European Court of Justice for the first time explicitly recognized a right to strike, referring to ILO Convention 87 as a source of this entitlement, but limited it by imposing a proportionality requirement on its exercise. In 2009, the European Court of Human Rights indicated for the first time that the right to strike was implicit in Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, again in reliance on ILO standards. This paper compares and contrasts those cases, investigating the extent to which European recognition of a right to strike can serve to reinforce or undermine ILO standards. The paper also considers the more general implications of these developments for Canadian human rights jurisprudence.

This bibliography aims to help anyone studying English-speaking Quebec find material about the nature, history, contributions, and concerns of this diverse official language minority community. It reveals the wealth of available material and catalogues it in a useful way in the hope of stimulating further research on English-speaking Quebec. The bibliography contains secondary sources related to the study of English-speaking Quebec. It covers the period from the Conquest to the present day. Types of resources include everything from scholarly studies to magazine articles, by way of films and websites. Despite this, the bibliography does not claim to be exhaustive and excludes documents such as encyclopedia articles and entries in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.... Website description

The article reviews the book, "A Shoemaker's Story, Being Chiefly About French Canadian Immigrants, Enterprising Photographers, Rascal Yankees, and Chinese Cobblers in a Nineteenth-Century Factory Town," by Anthony W. Lee.

This article reviews the book, "A Measure of Fairness," by Robert Pollin, Mark Brenner and Jeannette Wicks-Lim.

The article reviews the book, "The Sweetest Dream: Love, Lies, & Assassination," by Lillian Pollak.

Jeunes intérimaires et ouvriers permanents en France : quelle solidarité au travail ? Si le chômage et la précarisation de l’emploi produisent des inégalités sociales, ces clivages ne s’arrêtent pas aux frontières des entreprises et contribuent aussi à la reconfiguration des collectifs de travail et des logiques productives. Si dans les espaces de travail, des solidarités naissent d’une commune condition et d’une subordination partagée, la coexistence dans un même espace de travail sur des postes identiques de statuts d’emploi distincts, dans des modalités d’accès elles-mêmes différenciées, pose la question des conditions d’émergence de solidarités possibles au travail. Sous la menace du chômage, les salariés sont conduits à jouer le jeu d’une « concurrence entre égaux », contribuant à fragiliser les homogénéités intra-catégorielles. On montrera ici, à partir de l’exemple de l’emploi intérimaire, saisi comme forme archétypique de l’emploi précaire, les logiques endogènes de ce processus de fragilisation des solidarités intra-catégorielles qui posent de nouveaux défis au syndicalisme. Le développement de l’intérim repose sur une logique tacite de mise en concurrence de travailleurs à statuts différents. Permanents et intérimaires sont pris dans une spirale de défiance réciproque qui freine leurs capacités d’action collective. À la crainte des permanents pour leur emploi répond l’amertume des intérimaires déclassés. Le souhait de ces derniers de n’être que de passage dans l’usine renforce les postures d’évitement et de mise à distance et constitue un obstacle à la reconnaissance d’une condition de subordination partagée. Investi comme « boulot de jeune » le souci d’en sortir prime sur celui d’en améliorer les conditions... Sans doute faut-il que le travail fasse enjeu pour que puisse naître le sentiment d’appartenance à une communauté de destin. La segmentation des collectifs de travail par le statut d’emploi engendre des transformations importantes et rapides des rapports sociaux de travail en affectant en profondeur la dynamique intergénérationnelle des systèmes de régulation autonome et les ressorts des résistances salariales., Young Temporary Workers and Permanent Workers in France: What Solidarity at Work? If unemployment and job insecurity produce social inequalities, these divisions do not stop outside companies’ borders and contribute to changes in work groups and productivity practices. If solidarity in the workplace stems from a common condition and shared subordination, the existence within the same workplace of different contracts and different career tracks for identical positions leads to ques-tions concerning possible forms of worker solidarity. Under threat of losing their jobs, employees are led to play the “competition among equals” game, thus con-tributing to the weakening of homogeneity within the same category. By examin-ing temporary employment, the archetypal example of job insecurity, we will explore the endogenous principles behind the process of undermining inter-category solidarity which afford new challenges to labour movements. The devel-opment of the use of temporary workers is based on a tacit policy of creating competition among workers of different statuses. Permanent and temp workers are caught up in a spiral of mutual distrust which limits their ability to take collec-tive action. The permanent employees’ fear of losing their jobs is met with the bitterness of lower-status temporary workers. Because in the factory the tempo-rary workers hope to be “only passing though,” avoidance and distancing between the two sets of workers constitute an obstacle to any recognition of their shared subordinate condition. As most temporary workers see their jobs as a first step towards a more permanent situation, coming out ahead is far more important to them than is improving working conditions… No doubt jobs must be at stake before a feeling of being a part of the community’s future can be instilled. The segmentation of work groups via the status of different workers brings about major, rapid transformations in social relations at work by profoundly affecting the intergenerational dynamics of autonomous regulatory systems and the workings of employee resistance., Jóvenes empleados temporales y obreros permanentes en Francia: existe una solidaridad laboral? El desempleo y la precarización del empleo producen desigualdades sociales. Pero estas divisiones no sólo afectan las empresas sino que contribuyen a la reconfiguración de los colectivos laborales y de las lógicas productivas. En los ámbitos laborales, las solidaridades nacen de una condición común y de una subordinación compartida. Sin embargo, la coexistencia de estatus de empleo distintos en un mismo espacio de trabajo, en puestos idénticos pero con modalidades de acceso diferenciadas, plantea el problema de las condiciones de aparición de solidaridades posibles al trabajo. Bajo la amenaza del desempleo, los empleados se enfrentan a una “competencia entre iguales”, lo que contribuye a debilitar las homogeneidades dentro de una misma categoría. A partir del ejemplo del empleo temporal – arquetipo del empleo precario – veremos aquí las lógicas endógenas de este proceso de debilitamiento de las solidaridades dentro de una misma categoría, las cuales se convierten en verdaderos desafíos para el sindicalismo. El desarrollo del trabajo temporal se apoya en una lógica tácita de inducir la competencia entre trabajadores con estatus distintos. Trabajadores permanentes y trabajadores temporales entran en una espiral de desconfianza recíproca que frena sus capacidades de acción colectiva. El temor de los trabajadores permanentes por su empleo se conjuga con la amargura notable de los trabajadores temporales desclasificados. La voluntad de estos últimos de sólo estar de paso en la fábrica fortalece la distancia y la evitación, y constituye un obstáculo al reconocimiento de una condición de subordinación compartida. Convertido en el arquetipo del « trabajo de los jóvenes », la voluntad de dejar el trabajo temporal supera el deseo de mejorar sus condiciones. Sin duda el trabajo tiene que ser un reto para que nazca el sentimiento de pertenencia a una comunidad de destino. La segmentación de los colectivos de trabajo por el estatus de empleo crea transformaciones importantes y rápidas en las relaciones sociales de trabajo. En efecto, esto afecta en profundidad la dinámica entre las generaciones respecto a los sistemas de regulación autónoma y las capacidades de las resistencias salariales.

There are tensions in federal political systems over whether the central government or the states/provinces are the most suitable jurisdictions for dealing with the relationship between employers and unions. As integrated national economies developed, there are growing pressures on federal governments to intervene in industrial relations. States/provinces, however, might still maintain unique economic and social conditions that render federal legislation inappropriate. This article examines the development of federal jurisdictions in Australia, Canada and the USA up until the late 1940s. While Australia, unlike the other the two countries, had a constitution that provided for federal coverage of industrial relations, it was a limited power. Despite this, there was a gradual spread of federal coverage beyond that originally intended by the original framers of the Australian Constitution. The Canadian and US constitutions predate the rise of organized industrial relations. However, federal governments in these countries also increased their involvement in industrial relations to resolve disputes in key national industries such as railways and in response to critical events such as the Great Depression and World Wars, which challenged existing assumptions about industrial relations. While there was a trend towards the federal regulation of industrial relations, states and provinces still played a key role as innovators in both experimenting with new ways of regulating relations between employers and unions and imposing restrictions on the power of organized labour.

The article reviews the book "Imagining Head-Smashed-In: Aboriginal Buffalo Hunting on the Northern Plains," by Jack W. Brink.

The article reviews the book, "The Failed Welfare Revolution: America's Struggle Over Guaranteed Income Policy," by Brian Steensland.

Like migratory birds, most of Canada’s 20,000 “guest” farm workers arrive in the spring and leave in the autumn. Hailing primarily from Mexico, Jamaica, and smaller countries of the Caribbean, these temporary workers have become entrenched in the Canadian labour force and are the mainstay of many traditional family farms in Canada. Many of them make the trip year after year after year.Vincenzo Pietropaolo has been photographing guest workers and recording their stories since 1984 – in the process travelling to forty locations throughout Ontario and to their homes in Mexico, Jamaica, and Montserrat. The resulting photographs have been highly acclaimed internationally through many publications and exhibitions, including a travelling show curated by the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography that opened in Mexico City.With a foreword by Naomi Rosenblum, this beautiful and timely book of photography and exposition aims to shed light on a subject about which many Canadians know all too little. --Publisher's description

Comparing Hofstede and GLOBE deepens our understanding of the influence of different measures and dimensions of national culture on union membership. Data from the World Values Survey were matched to GLOBE and Hofstede country culture scores (n = 43,867 employees, 32 countries). Union membership was positively related to GLOBE's Institutional Collectivism, but not Hofstede's Individualism; and was negatively related to both Performance Orientation (GLOBE) and Masculinity (Hofstede), suggesting that differences in culture measures may account for prior inconsistent findings. Curvilinear relationships between union membership and Age (inverted U-shaped) and Uncertainty Avoidance (U-shaped) suggest that Uncertainty Avoidance may explain why younger and older people were less likely to be union members.

This paper explores the impact of the adoption of neoliberal economic policies and practices on public sector jobs within the Canadian Federal government. In recent years, employment in the public sector has been increasingly shifted to a call-centre format, thereby transforming the working conditions of public servants as well as access to services enjoyed by Canadians. By adopting work practices, technologies and managerial techniques usually found within the private sector, we argue that the call-centre format fundamentally transforms the notion of public 'service' from secure employment and a dynamic career to that of a routine, Taylorised job. In this process, standardised interactions redefine the notion of public service and the role of the public servant.

The article reviews the book, "Dying for a Home: Homeless Activists Speak Out," by Cathy Crowe.