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This paper explores relations of workers' power, in terms of unionization and delegated workplace authority, with incidence of participation in adult education and job-related informal learning activities. Empirical analysis is based primarily on the first Canadian survey to document both aspects of workers' power and both formal and informal learning. Prior inconsistent research on unionization and adult education is critically reviewed. The current study focuses on non-managerial employees between 25 and 64. The findings of this 2004 survey, as well as secondary analysis of other relevant surveys, confirm that union membership is consistently positively related to both participation in adult education and some informal learning topics. Delegated workplace authority also has positive effects on both adult education and some informal learning topics. While delegated workplace authority is not related to unionization, their positive effects on workers' intentional learning are additive. Implications of these findings for further research and optimizing workplace learning are discussed.

The article reviews the book, "Women and the Making of Built Space in England, 1870-1950," by Elizabeth Darling and Lesley Whitworth.

Compilation of recent English/French publications on Canadian labour history that emphasize the period 1800-1975. Materials pertaining to the post-1975 period may also be included, although more selectively. [See the database, Canadian Labour History, 1976-2009, published at Memorial University of Newfoundland.]

The Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management, edited by Peter Boxall, John Purcell, and Patrick Wright, is reviewed.

The history of Aboriginal-settler interactions in Canada continues to haunt the national imagination. Despite billions of dollars spent on the "Indian problem," Aboriginal people remain the poorest in the country. Because the stereotype of the "lazy Indian" is never far from the surface, many Canadians wonder if the problem lay with "Indians" themselves. John Lutz traces Aboriginal people's involvement in the new economy, and their displacement from it, from the first arrival of Europeans to the 1970s. Drawing upon oral histories, manuscripts, newspaper accounts, biographies, and statistical analysis, Lutz shows that Aboriginal people flocked to the workforce and prospered in the late 19th century. The roots of today's wide-spread unemployment and "welfare dependency" date only from the 1950s, when deliberate and inadvertent policy choices--what Lutz terms the "white problem"--drove Aboriginal people out of the capitalist, wage, and subsistence economies, offering them welfare as "compensation." -- Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction: Molasses stick legs -- Pomo Wawa: the other jargon -- Making the lazy Indian -- The Lekwungen -- The Tsilhqot'in -- Outside history: labourers of the aboriginal province -- The white problem -- Prestige to welfare: remaking the moditional economy -- Conclusion: the outer edge of probability, 1970-2007 -- Postscript: subordination without subjugation.

Since the 1980s, scholars have sought to understand how the Canadian fur trade shaped the Metis. Less attention has been paid to the impact of Metis concepts of family and community on the nature of their relationship with their employer, the Hudson's Bay Company (hbc). This article focuses on how Metis family structures in the English River District molded the contours of the community's relationship with the hbc in the 19th century. More specifically, only certain families established a relationship with the Company, wherein male servants and their extended families laboured for the hbc in return for wages and/or access to Company resources. The Company's willingness to participate in these types of exchanges with its employees' families cultivated an intergenerational loyalty amongst those Metis, as successive generations were employed by the Company and, in turn, drew upon it as part of their economic resource network. Still, Company officials faced a dilemma. They recognized that these extended families were loyal contributors to the Company's trading successes, but likewise regarded them as burdensome and a drain on precious resources. Throughout the 19th century, the ambivalence of the Company grew, negatively impacting its relationship with once loyal hbc servants and their families. The loyalty of families to the Company was only as strong as its loyalty to them. By the end of the century, as the Company's focus turned to reducing its obligations to families, Metis loyalties also shifted to competing economic ventures, thereby threatening the hbc monopoly in the region.

In regional enclaves throughout North America where labour and capital have fought battles over the years, there are many songs and verses about labour and protest. ...This article explores some previously unexamined protest songs and verses of Cape Breton Island. I will show how these vernacular materials were used for solidarity during times of upheaval and change in the mid 1920s. I will examine a body of songs culled largely from the Maritime Labour Herald, a newspaper of the 1920s that included both locally and internationally composed works. ...My intent is to show that a well-developed protest song tradition was alive and well and played an important role in the labour struggles of the 1920s. --From introduction

Industrial Relations in the New Europe: Enlargement, Integration and Reform, edited by Peter Leisink, Bram Steijn and Ulke Veersma, is reviewed.

Cette recherche vise à aider à la compréhension de l’implication organisationnelle des salariés contingents grâce au cadre de la justice organisationnelle. Elle repose sur une étude empirique par questionnaire réalisée auprès de 183 salariés permanents et 71 contingents, embauchés pour une durée déterminée. Nos résultats démontrent le pouvoir explicatif des perceptions de justice sur l’implication. Ils soulignent la sensibilité des salariés contingents à la façon dont ils sont traités dans l’organisation et montrent que les entreprises n’ont pas intérêt à considérer les salariés contingents comme une main-d’oeuvre périphérique, peu encline à s’engager dans l’organisation. Sur la base des analyses effectuées, l’article propose une réflexion sur les effets du statut d’emploi et en tire des implications managériales., The traditional work relationship performed on a full-time basis with a single employer is tending to lose its hegemony. Polivka and Nardone (1989) defined these new work arrangements as contingent in opposition to permanent work positions. According to these researchers, contingent work includes “any job in which an individual does not have an explicit or implicit contract for long-term employment and one in which the minimum hours can vary in a non-systematic way” (1989: 11). Traditionally, contingent work includes part-time work, temporary work, “in-house” temporary arrangements and independent work. Today, these forms of employment represent a significant and growing proportion of the workforce in western countries. This research is dedicated to “in-house” temporary workers in the French context. Indeed, little research has dealt with this subject (Connely and Gallagher, 2004). The behaviours of this type of workers are quite unknown. Moreover, Conway and Briner (2002) point out that research which focuses on contingent work does not often use an explicit theoretical framework which may be helpful in understanding the organizational behaviours of contingent workers. In line with their recommendations, this study aims to identify the role of organizational justice on contingent workers’ organizational commitment and to show if established relationships are similar according to employment status (i.e., contingent or permanent). On the one hand, organizational justice perceptions have significant effects on several attitudes and behaviours (Colquitt, 2001) but this effect has rarely been tested on contingent workers. On the other hand, the employment status is likely to have an influence upon the relationships between organizational justice and organizational attitudes and behaviours. Moreover, according to the fairness heuristic theory (Lind, 2001) which describes the shaping of justice judgments and their use, it seems that a fixed-term relationship with the organization may lead contingent workers to focus primarily on the interactional aspects of their organizational treatment. This research is based on an empirical study carried out with a sample of 181 permanent employees and 71 contingent employees in French private clinics. The moderator effect of work status was tested with hierarchical regression analysis. The results partially support the predictions. However, they show the significant effects of justice perceptions on commitment, in the case of permanent workers, as had been already demonstrated in previous research, but also in the case of contingent workers, which has been less shown, especially for “in-house” temporary workers and in the French context. Nevertheless, the results show a moderator effect for work status on the relationship between informational justice and commitment. Several observations are drawn from these results. First of all, the results demonstrate that contingent workers are sensitive to the treatment they experience within their organization and that it influences their commitment as well as is the case for permanent workers. Therefore, organizational commitment of the permanent and contingent workers is significantly and positively influenced by their distributive, procedural and interactional justice perceptions. Secondly, the effects of informational justice are different according to job status. Indeed, the effect of informational justice is weaker in the case of contingent workers than in the case of permanent workers. These results present theoretical and practical interest. Firstly, they support and extend the predictive power of organizational justice upon commitment, mainly established in the context of traditional work. Thus, the organizational justice framework seems to be useful for the analysis of a non standard employment relationship. Moreover, this kind of employment arrangement may not be seen as an economic one as long as contingent workers seem to value the social aspects of their relationships with their organization. Secondly, our results show that according to the type of employment relation, the effects of justice perceptions may be different, even if this difference is marginal. For this reason, organizations could have an interest in implementing differentiated management of their workforce according to work status. We believe that the nature of the detected moderator effect does not decrease the importance of informational justice perceptions. It rather underlines the inappropriateness of the information given to contingent workers. Trombetta and Rogers (1998) have put the emphasis on this information and its appropriateness upon the organizational commitment of nurses and nursing auxiliaries. Thus, it seems of great importance to make sure that the explanations and information delivered to contingent workers are accurate and relevant. We also believe that our results reinforce the role of the direct supervisor. Because the direct supervisor is in charge of the integration of contingent workers within the service or the team, these supervisors have a key role. It could be necessary to make them aware of this. Therefore, the organizations which use contingent work arrangements should implement a specific human resource management approach in order to reap the benefits of quantitative work flexibility., Esta investigación pretende ayudar a la comprensión de la implicación organizacional de los asalariados eventuales gracias al enfoque de la justicia organizacional. Se basa en un estudio empírico por cuestionario realizado con 183 asalariados permanentes y 71 eventuales, contratados por un tiempo determinado. Nuestros resultados demuestran el poder explicativo de las percepciones de justicia sobre la implicación. Sobresale la sensibilidad de los asalariados eventuales respecto a la manera como son tratados en la organización y se muestra que las empresas no tienen interés en considerar los asalariados eventuales como mano de obra periférica, no muy favorable a comprometerse con la organización. Sobre la base de los análisis efectuados, el artículo propone una reflexión sobre los efectos del estatuto de empleo y deduce las implicaciones para la gestión.

The article reviews the book, "The World Bank: A Critical Primer," by Eric Toussaint.

The article reviews the book, "Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia," by Peter Cole.

The article reviews the book, "Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party," by Paul Frymer.

The article reviews the book, "Gay Men and the Left in Post-War Britain: How the Personal Got Political," by Lucy Robinson.

In Reasoning Otherwise, author Ian McKay returns to the concepts and methods of 'reconnaissance' first outlined in Rebels, Reds, Radicals to examine the people and events that led to the rise of the left in Canada from 1890 to 1920. Reasoning Otherwise highlights how a new way of looking at the world based on theories of evolution transformed struggles around class, religion, gender, and race, and culminates in a new interpretation of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. As McKay demonstrated in Rebels, Reds, Radicals, the Canadian left is alive and flourishing, and has shaped the Canadian experience in subtle and powerful ways. Reasoning Otherwise continues this tradition of offering important new insight into the deep roots of leftism in Canada. --Publisher's description

Chronicles the contested election of Dave Patterson as president of Local 6500, the 1978 Inco strike, and the intra-union turmoil that followed that resulted in a more conservative leadership.

As the twentieth century got underway in Canada, young women who entered the paid workforce became the focus of intense public debate. Young wage-earning women - "working girls"--Embodied all that was unnerving and unnatural about modern times: the disintegration of the family, the independence of women, and the unwholesomeness of city life. These anxieties were amplified in the West. Long after eastern Canada was considered settled and urbanized, the West continued to be represented as a frontier where the idea of the region as a society in the making added resonance to the idea of the working girl as social pioneer." "Using an interpretive approach that centres on literary representation, Lindsey McMaster takes a fresh look at the working heroine of western Canadian literature alongside social documents and newspaper accounts of her real-life counterparts. Working Girls in the West heightens our understanding of a figure that fired the imagination of writers and observers at the turn of the last century." --Publisher's description. Contents: Working women in the west at the turn of the century --The urban working girl in turn-of-the-century Canadian literature -- White slaves, prostitutes, and delinquents -- Girls on strike -- White working girls and the mixed-race workplace -- Conclusion: Just girls.

[In this bibliographic essay which focuses on historical studies of Chinese labour,] ... I summarize Western interpretations of pre-1949 Chinese labour and identify broad differences separating Western interpretations of Chinese labour movement trends from those conceived by Chinese scholars. Next, I present a discussion of major debates in labour historiography to shed some light on the different perspectives adopted by Chinese labour scholars relative to other social historians. Finally, I examine a number of factors that contribute to Chinese labour historians’ reticence to embrace and adapt newer models, and conclude by noting that beneath the apparent consistency of message characterizing pre-1949 Chinese labour studies in general, political and social changes are having a subtle impact on the ways in which Chinese labour historians depict the working-class. --Author's introduction

The article reviews the book, "The Cinema of Globalization: A Guide to Films About the New Economic Order," by Tom Zaniello.

The article focuses on the Indigenous Foundation of the Resource Economy of British Columbia's north coast. It discusses the emergence of capitalist resource extraction, and the canneries and village-based labour in the region. It also highlights the combined forestry, fisheries work, and harvesting of traditional food resources by Ts'msyen people until the middle of the 20th century.