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This article interrogates the notion that women union leaders lead differently. Despite significant variation in the union movements in Australia, Canada, Sweden, the UK and the USA, similar discourses on women’s union leadership emerge in all five countries. Based on a materialist social construction approach which supports a recognition of difference without reference to essentialist ideas about women’s nature, this article seeks to identify what may be common across these countries to explain this phenomenon. The article argues that the fact that women face discrimination in unions, on the one hand, and organise as a constituency and have access to women-only education, on the other, supports the development of transformational leadership among women unionists, even across diverse contexts and cultures. Unpacking union women’s leadership practices in this way reveals a dialectic of victimisation and agency.

The article reviews the book, "The Heiress Versus the Establishment: Mrs. Campbell's Campaign," by Constance Backhouse and Nancy L. Backhouse.

The article reviews the book, "Young America: Land, Labor and the Republican Community," by Mark A. Lause.

The article reviews the book, "Workplace Justice without Unions," by Hoyt N. Wheeler, Brian S. Klaas, and Douglas M. Mahony.

Cet article brosse un portrait des plaintes écrites déposées à la Commission des normes du travail du Québec entre le 1er juin 2004 et le 30 avril 2005. Au total, 236 plaintes de harcèlement psychologique au travail ont constitué le corpus d’analyse. Les principaux résultats montrent que parmi l’ensemble des cas analysés, 63 % des plaignants sont des femmes. Près de 95 % des plaignants ont avancé avoir subi du harcèlement à caractère répétitif. Les cinq premiers motifs de plainte sont les propos et les gestes vexatoires, les atteintes aux conditions de travail, la menace de congédiement, la mise en échec de la personne et l’isolement. Par ailleurs, ce sont généralement les gestionnaires qui sont désignés comme personnes mises en cause. À la lumière de ces résultats, il est important que les organisations se dotent de systèmes de veille pour détecter les cas et d’outils de gestion pour désamorcer les situations qui comportent un potentiel de harcèlement psychologique.

The article reviews the book, "Dénouer les conflits relationnels en milieu de travail," by Solange Cormier

Iin British Columbia in the spring of 2004, over 40,000 hospital and long-term care facility workers, mostly members of the Hospital Employees Union [HEU], struck to defend their jobs and services against attacks from an aggressive neoliberal government and employers. This strike was distinguished by the social composition of the workforce, the fact that HEU had one of the more left-wing leaderships in the Canadian labour movement, and the determination of the strikers to persevere even in the face of back-to-work legislation. HEU'S resistance evoked an unusual degree of support that took the form of active solidarity rather than just passive sympathy. The BC labour leadership was pushed towards a confrontation of the kind that the existing regime of industrial legality was designed to prevent. This article identifies the systemic causes of the BC health care strike in public sector restructuring and the building of a lean state, explores its background, traces its trajectory, and explains and assesses its outcome. This strike highlights the significance of the character of the contemporary labour officialdom as a social layer whose conditions of existence lead it to usually oppose forms of collective action outside the bounds of industrial legality.

In 1986, British Columbia's Workers' Compensation Board introduced an experience rating program that provided a modest financial incentive for employers to reduce the costs of claims. Using a comprehensive panel data set, we find that claims frequency for health care only and short-term disability claims was reduced following the introduction of experience rating. The introduction of the program did not affect costs for most claim types, except for health care only claims.

The article reviews the book, "L’étude de cas comme méthode de recherche," by Yves-Chantal Gagnon.

The article reviews the book, "Banana Wars: The Price of Free Trade: A Caribbean Perspective," by Gordon Myers.

The article reviews the book, "The Riddle of Human Rights," by Gary Teeple.

This paper analyzes the political dynamics between a newly elected, right-leaning provincial government and a left-leaning public sector union that resulted in the privatization of 4000 health support housekeeping jobs in southwestern British Columbia in less than a year. The article documents how government set the stage for privatization, the struggle that ensued when the union resisted concessionary bargaining, and the new challenges that emerged for both union and management once housekeeping and other support services were taken over by multi-national service corporations. This case is significant because the size and scope of this privatization and the legislation that facilitated it are unprecedented in Canadian history.

Ce mémoire relate l’expérience du Front d’action politique des salariés à Montréal (FRAP) de 1970 à 1974, un parti municipal émanant directement des milieux syndicaux et populaires. Après avoir présenté les grands traits de la conjoncture sociale, économique et politique de la décennie 1960 au Québec, nous analysons les conditions objectives qui ont favorisé l’émergence du FRAP à Montréal (problèmes sociaux, administration municipale autoritaire, logements insalubres, etc.). Le FRAP est fondé en mai 1970 et présente des candidats contre le maire Jean Drapeau aux élections du 25 octobre suivant. La Crise d’octobre et l’imposition de la Loi des mesures de guerre déroutent le FRAP qui ne fait élire aucun candidat. Les mois et années qui suivent, les groupes sociaux s’éloignent du FRÀP et ce dernier a vainement espéré que les organisations syndicales de la région de Montréal concrétisent l’idée qui avait été à l’origine de sa création, à savoir un parti politique propre aux travailleurs et aux travailleuses. Le FRAP met fin à ses activités au début de l’année 1974 quelques mois avant la naissance d’un nouveau parti municipal, le Rassemblement des citoyens de Montréal (RCM).

During the night of April 10, 1734, Montréal burned. Marie-Joseph Angélique, a twenty-nine-year-old slave, was arrested, tried, and found guilty of starting the blaze that consumed forty-six buildings. Suspecting that she had not acted alone and angered that she had maintained her innocence, Angélique's condemners tortured her after the trial. She confessed but named no accomplices. Before Angélique was hanged, she was paraded through the city. Afterward, her corpse was burned. Angélique, who had been born in Portugal, faded into the shadows of Canadian history, vaguely remembered as the alleged arsonist behind an early catastrophic fire. The result of fifteen years of research, [this book] vividly tells the story of this strong-willed woman. Afua Cooper draws on extensive trial records that offer, in Angélique's own words, a detailed portrait of her life and a sense of what slavery was like in Canada at the time. Predating other first-person accounts by more than forty years, these records constitute what is arguably the oldest slave narrative in the New World. Cooper sheds new light on the largely misunderstood or ignored history of slavery in Canada. She refutes the myth that Canada was a haven at the end of the Underground Railroad. Cooper also provides a context for Canada in the larger picture of transatlantic slavery while re-creating the tragic life of one woman who refused to accept bondage. --Publisher's description

In an environment of global economic competition, corporations and the state have focused their strategies of competitive adjustment on labour flexibility and deregulation and reductions in social expenditures. In many countries, these policies led to the abandonment of full employment and increases in precarious or non-regulated employment. This article analyzes the main political and institutional elements of labour within Canada and Brazil, as well as recent changes in their employment regimes and labour market structures. Key research findings show us that greater labour market flexibility in both countries resulted in a reduction of labour rights that has contributed to the precariousness of work, increasing inequality in Canada, and higher levels of underemployment and poverty in Brazil.

The article reviews the book, "Prévenir et gérer les plaintes de harcèlement au travail," by Groupe d’aide et d’information sur le harcèlement sexuel au travail.,

The article reviews the book, "Trafficking Subjects: The Politics of Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America," by Mark Simpson.

How are national and international labour laws responding to the challenge of globalization as it re-shapes the workplaces of the world? This collection of essays by leading legal scholars and lawyers from Europe and the Americas was first published in 2006. It addresses the implications of globalization for the legal regulation of the workplace. It examines the role of international labour standards and the contribution of the International Labour Organization, and assesses the success of the European experiment with continental employment standards. It explores the prospects for hemispheric co-operation on labour standards in the Americas, and deals with the impact of international labour standards on the rights of women and migrant workers. As the nature and organization of work around the world is being decisively transformed, new regional and international institutions are emerging that may provide the platform for new labour standards, and for protecting existing ones. --Publisher's description