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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.

This paper focuses on the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on the gender pay gap along the wage distribution. Our empirical analysis relies on two complementary French surveys conducted in 1998 and 2005 on a large sample of employees. We estimate quantile regressions and use a difference-in-difference strategy to assess the effect of new technologies. Both in 1998 and 2005, we find that the gender gap estimated for the group of ICT-users is not really different from the gap for non-users. Among ICT-users, wage differentials between men and women are mostly explained by a divergence in the rewards to identical characteristics.

The article reviews the book, "Psychological Socialism: The Labour Party and Qualities of Mind and Character 1931 to the Present," by Jeremy Nuttall.

This paper reports on a project that examines trends in North American labour movements, and specifically in the workforce, in the converging communications, culture, and information technology sectors. Drawing on documentary evidence and interviews, the paper concentrates on two important developments: efforts to unify workers across the knowledge and communication industries, and the rise of worker movements that operate in conjunction with, but outside, the formal trade union structure. The paper begins by situating these developments within debates about labour in a 'post-industrial', 'information', or 'network' society. It describes the challenges facing workers in the knowledge sector, especially rapid technological change, massive corporate consolidation, the rise of the neo-liberal state and divisions between cultural and technical workers in the knowledge sector. The paper proceeds to describe how North American workers are responding within the traditional trade union system, primarily through forms of consolidation or trade union convergence (such as the Communication Workers of America), and also through worker movements operating outside the traditional trade union system in the information technology and cultural sectors (for example WashTech and the National Writers Union). The paper concludes by addressing the significance of these developments. Do they portend a rebirth of North American labour activism or do they represent its last gasps?

One of the first women to be hired as a miner by Inco in Sudbury, Ontario, in 1974, Mulroy recounts her experiences of the company, the work place, and the union.

Formed in January 1905, the Socialist Party of Canada's anti- reformist, anti-statist revolutionary platform led to ideological disputes with rival socialist groups and even arguments within the Party itself over what it stood for. Peter E Newell's absorbing and thorough account of the life and times of the Socialist Party of Canada charts the Party's pre-history in the 1890s, when the availability of translations of the works of Marx and Engels fuelled the radicalism of such figures as Daniel De Leon. It also covers the early years of the twentieth century when, with the merger of like-minded Provincial socialist parties, the SPC was founded. In the present day the party remains a beacon for socialists worldwide for its refusal to compromise its passions and beliefs. --Publisher's description

Examines the Supreme Court's B.C. Health Services decision (2007) as a crucial change in the discourse of labour rights in Canada.

As working people’s lives become increasingly fragmented, competitive, and unequal, debates about social cohesion capture the unease of contemporary society over growing economic restructuring. Solidarity First examines the concept and practice of social cohesion in terms of its impact on, and significance for, workers in Canada. Contributors examine how social cohesion functions on multiple levels. They challenge standard approaches by highlighting the experiences of women and non-Canadians. They investigate attempts by Toyota and Magna to construct corporate forms of cohesion and efforts by a local community to forge cohesion via the new cultural economy. And they explore the relationship between cohesion in Canada and the international environment. Critically examining the issue from the ground up, Solidarity First concludes that reinvigorated worker solidarity is a prerequisite to a more worker-friendly form of social cohesion. It will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of public policy, political science, sociology, and labour studies. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Wal-Mart: The Face of 21st Century Capitalism," edited by Nelson Lichtenstein.

The article reviews the book, "Red Chicago: American Communism at Its Grassroots, 1928-1935," by Randi Storch.