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This article explores the “cultural project” of a hotel workers’ union in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is an examination of the efforts of HERE (now UNITE-HERE) Local 75 to transform the identity and image of hotel workers through the promotion of cultural activities involving rank-and-file members. Part of a larger union renewal project, the cultural project attempts to build solidarity by connecting with members’ lives beyond the workplace. Furthermore, the union's cultural strategies are linked to the development of the city's tourism sector, situating the union's efforts in broader processes of place promotion. The investigation seeks to identify how worker engagement with the cultural implicates organized labour in contradictory processes producing both emancipatory and oppressive economic landscapes.

This paper considers the presence of Christianity in the labour movement in early 20th-century Ontario. During this period labour leaders were unquestionably disillusioned with the established churches and did not hesitate to criticize clergy-men for their indifference and hostility to labour's cause. This disillusionment did not mean, however, that organized labour abandoned religion. Both moderate reformist and radical labour leaders articulated a non-sectarian, activist Christianity that helped them frame the issues they were concerned about. Alliances also developed between the churches and labour bodies at the national level and labour-friendly clergy and a small group of labour leaders in industrial centres in southern Ontario.

Ces dernières années, la problématique de la relation de service a conduit à l’analyse de situations de travail de plus en plus prégnantes en s’intéressant de très près au déroulement de l’activité. Cette perspective peut être poussée jusqu’à étudier le caractère sollicitant d’une activité fondée sur la confrontation aux clients et les implications de cette sollicitation sur les contraintes ressenties par les salariés dans l’exercice du travail. Il s’agit donc d’examiner les effets de l’organisation de l’activité – y compris les dispositifs de gestion qui y interviennent et l’influence du travail de l’encadrement – à l’égard des contraintes que ressentent les salariés. Cette organisation peut alléger ou renforcer ces contraintes et accentue l’envie des salariés d’en discuter pour adapter les finalités et modalités du travail.

In October 1976 one million Canadian workers walked off the job to protest the wage controls imposed by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. In a memorable personal account of this historic general strike, Saint John labour activist George Vair recalls how workers in one New Brunswick city mobilized to defend themselves and their unions and defeat the unpopular program. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Guide pratique de l’arbitrage de grief au Québec," by Jean-Serge Masse.

The article reviews the book, "Justice on the Job : Perspectives on the Erosion of Collective Bargaining in the United States," edited by Richard N. Block and Sheldon Friedman.

The article reviews the book, "Normes sociales, droit du travail et mondialisation : confrontations et mutations," by Marie-Ange Moreau.

Analyzes union membership data in 24 countries (including Canada) of past and present union density rates, including explanatory factors for the differences and trends in unionization.

This chapter initiates the conversation between theory, method, evidence, and practice that is the focus of this book. It conceptualizes precarious employment, probes its dynamics in Canada, and identifies avenues for fostering understanding in the service of positive social change by way of several linked arguments set in the three major sections that follow. --Author's introduction

This interdisciplinary volume offers a multifaceted picture of precarious employment and the ways in which its principal features are reinforced or challenged by laws, policies, and labour market institutions, including trade unions and community organizations. Contributors develop more fully the concept of precarious employment and critique outmoded notions of standard and nonstandard employment. The product of a five-year Community-University Research Alliance, the volume aims to foster new social, statistical, legal, political, and economic understandings of precarious employment and to advance strategies for improving the quality and conditions of work and health. --Publisher's description. Contents: Pt. 1. Mapping precarious employment in Canada: new statistical insights. Conceptualizing precarious employment: Mapping wage work across social location and occupational context / Cynthia J. Cranford and Leah F. Vosko -- Precarious by choice? Gender and self-employment / Leah F. Vosko and Nancy Zukewich -- Precarious employment and people with disabilities / Emile Tompa, Heather Scott, Scott Trevithick, and Sudipa Bhattacharyya -- Precarious work, privatization, and the health-care industry: The case of ancillary workers / Pat Armstrong and Kate Laxer. Pt. 2. Precarious health at work and precarious work in an unhealthy sector. The hidden costs of precarious employment: Health and the employment relationship / Wayne Lewchuk, Alice de Wolff, Andrew King, and Michael Polanyi -- Essential but precarious: Changing employment relationships and resistance in the Ontario public service / Jan Borowy -- Privatizing public employment assistance and precarious employment in Toronto / Alice de Wolff. Pt. 3. Regulating precarious employment: institutions, law, and policy. Precarious employment and the law's flaws: identifying regulatory failure and securing effective protection for workers / Stephanie Bernstein, Katherine Lippel, Eric Tucker, and Leah F. Vosko -- Mitigating precarious employment in Quebec: The role of minimum employment standards legislation / Stephanie Bernstein -- Precarious employment and occupational health and safety regulation in Quebec / Katherine Lippel -- Will the vicious circle of precariousness be unbroken? The exclusion of Ontario farm workers from the Occupational Health and Safety Act / Eric Tucker -- Regulating precarious labour markets: What can we learn from new European models? / Andrew Jackson. Pt. 4. Unions, unionisms, and precarious employment. The union dimension: Mitigating precarious employment? / John Anderson, James Beaton, and Kate Laxer -- Racism/anti-racism, precarious employment, and unions / Tania Das Gupta -- Union renewal and precarious employment: A case study of hotel workers / Chris Schenk -- Thinking through community unionism / Cynthia J. Cranford, Tania Das Gupta, Deena Ladd, and Leah F. Vosko -- Conclusion: What is to be done? Harnessing knowledge to mitigate precarious employment / Leah F. Vosko.

[S]ynthesizes the central findings of the volume ...[and] explores the implications of precarious employment for workers, households, and communities as well as its larger public costs and identifies several avenues for improving knowledge in an attempt to better workers' conditions of work and qaulity of health. --From editor's introductory chapter, p. 39.

[A]dvances a new methodological approach to understanding precarious wage work.... This approach considers how race and gender, as they intersect with occupation, shape and, in turn, are shaped by precarious employment. Its main empirical finding is that a "racialized gendering of jobs" characterizes the contemporary Canadian labour market. --From editor's introductory chapter (p. 34).

[Discusses] the concept and practice of community unionism and demonstrates the potential for building a union-community alliance for labour movement renewal through an analysis...of the Workers' Action Centre (WAC) in Toronto. --Editors' introduction

[Examines] forms of self-employment by select dimensions of precarious employment and finds a gendered continuum of precarious self-employment. The chapter also illustrates that many dimensions of precarious employment characterize key forms of self-employment, such as part-time and full-time solo self-employment. The conclusion...supports challenges to contemporary definitions of "entrepreneurship"...yet the adoption of a gender lens allows them to interrogate and challenge the notion of "choice" underpinning prevailing understandings of main reasons for self-employment. --From editor's introductory chapter (p. 34).

This paper is the first systematic attempt to provide an overview of industrial relations practices at firm level in Mozambique. Through a nationwide survey of firms, the paper assesses the extent to which specific sets of practices are associated with particular regions, and/or sectors, and explores the relationship between IR practice and national institutional realities. The survey revealed that informalism and autocratic managerialism characterize the practice of employment relations. But it would be mistaken to assume a convergence towards a global systematic archetype of low wage/low skill/low security of tenure set of practices. Instead, the authors conclude, contemporary Mozambique employment relations are an example of external market pressures being channelled and moulded by the persistence of national level realities that stretch back to the colonial era. In the absence of effective institutional mechanisms, familiar conventions are likely to persist because people know how these work in practice.

[E]valuation of the B.C. Organizing Institute, an initiative of the British Columbia Federation of Labour.... [P]rovides valuable insights into the problems that have to be overcome in developing coordinated education and training programs for leadership development, promoting inter-union cooperation, and creating a culture of organizing. --Editors' introduction

[E]xamines the Paid Education leave (PEL) program, a negotiated employer-funded worker education program administered by the Canadian Auto Workers. The primary purpose of the study is to evaluate the ability of the PEL to develop membership knowledge, activism and leadership to facilitate union renewal. [The author's] paper, based on survey research and interviews, maintains that the PEL program does contribute to leadership development and to the union renewal process by serving to alter the perceptions and attitudes of its participants. --Editors' introduction

The article reviews the book, "Mothers of the Municipality: Women, Work, and Social Policy in Post-1945 Halifax," edited by Judith Fingard and Janet Guildford.