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The article reviews the book, "American Multinationals in Europe: Managing Employment Relations across National Borders," edited by Phil Almond and Anthony Ferner.

This study examines 54 cases of restructuring public services in towns and counties in upstate New York. The 54 cases include 39 cases of privatization in the form of contracting out, nine cases of contracting back in, and six cases of contracting out services to another government. Local government privatization was found to have some harmful effects on workers. Few local employers had adjustment policies to protect affected employees and disproportionate negative impacts were found on women and minorities. Privatization was also found to have significant de-unionizing effects. On the other hand, it had no clear impact on wages and benefits. The role of unions in the restructuring process is more complex than was previously thought. Unions were the catalyst for opposition actions but only in cases involving for-profit restructuring. In the nine cases that involved contracting work back into the public sector, unions supported restructuring changes, and in the six cases of contracting out to another government, union opposition was not significant.

The first labour organizations in Canada appeared in the early 19th century, but their growth and development really occurred in the early decades of the 20th century. During most of the 19th century labour unions were local, sporadic and short-lived....

This research investigates the formation and maintenance of power relations within the organization and everyday practices of work and transnational living, and the social and economic impacts among Mexican migrants and their families participating in the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). Through the analysis of the qualitative data collected through ethnographic case studies in Mexico, 350 hours of participant observation, and semi-structured interviews with 25 migrant workers, 5 farmers and 5 representatives from other state and non-state intermediaries, findings have emerged pertaining to three research themes: power, racialization and transnationalism. This research finds that Mexican migrant workers are consistently located in subordinate power positions in the organization and the everyday practices of the SAWP; and governments, employers, and other intermediaries have significant control over migrants' daily lives and their migration parameters. Racialization processes in both the institutional and everyday practices of the SAWP produce, maintain, and legitimize a system of temporary migration characterized by imbalanced power relations and the unequal allocation of resources and rights through the differentiation of the "Mexican migrant worker" with reference to race and ethnicity. Migrant workers and their families actively participate in transnational practices that are integral to seasonal migration, including the family networks that facilitate entry into the program, the "migration work" performed by women, and the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). This essential "migration work" involves preparing the family for migration and sustaining the transnational family through managing and/or working within family farms and small businesses, receiving and managing international remittance transfers and telephone calling, managing and utilizing remittances for daily living and development, and performing carework. These findings support the "transnationalization of culture" hypothesis, and indicate that a gendered culture of migration is emerging within the SAWP. It is argued that the SAWP is an exemplar of "time-space compression" in action which leads to the exploitation and subordination of "Mexican migrant workers." Temporary migration systems like the SAWP are seen as recursively related to globalization, where foreign labour dependence and remittance economies are created and perpetuated through globalization and a "migration industry" powered by new information and communication technologies.

The article reviews the book, "Protecting Aboriginal Children," by Christopher Walmsley.

The article reviews the book, "Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might," by Mark Reutter.

The article discusses the experience of the Global Labour University project. Summarizing major challenges labour is facing in adapting to the structural changes of globalisation, the paper puts the idea of a Global Labour University in the broader context of labour's needs to respond to a dominantly pro-business, pro-market globalisation discourse. The second part of the article introduces and critically discusses the Global Labour University project as an initiative to contribute to the need for global research, teaching and networking for a fairer globalisation.

The article explains the persistent absence of women from the trades and industrial occupations. It notes that trades and industrial occupations are understood to be masculine because those who fill them have a gender and their gender rubs off on the jobs they mainly do. The second factor states the persistence of the dominance of men is a de-gendering of women as women by the workers by the workers themselves, unions, and the labour market. It has been concluded that women knew that their success could inspire others, but emphasized notions of individualism and formal equality rather than gender imbalances and discrimination on the job.

The article reviews the books "The World of Male Sex Workers," by Michel Dorais and "Taking it Off, Putting it On: Women in the Strip Trade," by Chris Bruckert.

This article assesses Canadian labour's response to changed demographics by considering the way unions have engaged with women and sexual minorities (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people). Many unions have now adopted inclusive policies. However, to consider how effectively these policies have been articulated and implemented at the local level, we consider two illustrative cases. One case involves a serious breakdown at the local level over pay equity for women; another case tells the story of a local's support for a gay man's challenge to a school board. We conclude that labour's apparent formal recognition of women and sexual minorities has not necessarily diffused into effective accommodation locally, although we also find grounds for optimism.

The article reviews the book, "Reconsidering the Bluestockings," edited by Nicole Pohl and Betty A. Schellenberg.

The article reviews the book, "The Blue Eagle at Work: Reclaiming Democratic Rights in the American Workplace," by Charles J. Morris.

[E]xplores how more widespread collective bargaiing, minimum employment in Nordic countries like Denmark, could have a favourable impact on the ways in which labour markets operate at the micro-level. --From editor's introductory chapter, p. 38.

[P]rovides an overview of the trends and patterns of union density in Canada and its implications for union renewal. Of particular interest is [the author's] analysis of the opportunities for new organizing in various industries and occupations. --Editors' introduction

The article reviews the book, "Labour Left Out: Canada's Failure to Protect and Promote Collective Bargaining as a Human Right," by Roy J. Adams.

Labour relations refers to the relations between employers and employees. They are affected by a number of factors, including labour organizations, collective bargaining, labour market, government policy, the structure of the economy, labour law and technological change....

Taken together, the fiction and non-fiction writing of these two nineteenth-century Canadian intellectuals [Agnes Maule Machar (1837-1927) and Albert Richardson Carman (1865-1939)] suggests both the vitality of the public debate about labour reform, and the broad social interest and significance attributed to the labour question as one of the issues that would define the moral character of the period. Both Machar and Carman approach the labour question as Christian intellectuals, and their sense of the middleclass’s social responsibility is clearly articulated in both their novels and their essays. These writers suggest that what is needed is not an increase in charity but a rejuvenation of each citizen’s sense of moral responsibility. The idea of “brotherhood,” emphasized in the writing of both Carman and Machar, connects the church’s rhetoric of spiritual brotherhood to the labour reform movement’s emphasis on the practical brotherhood that unites workers and which is manifested in their drive toward combination and unionization. Machar and Carman’s own efforts as brainworkers who speak out about the urgent necessity for reform are echoed in their fictional heroes’ quest to create a more egalitarian society. --Author's conclusion

The article reviews the book, "Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age," by Kevin Boyle.

The article reviews the book, "Doing IT: Women Working in Information Technology," by Krista Scott-Dixon.

The article reviews the book, "United Apart: Gender and the Rise of Craft Unionism," by Ileen A. DeVault.