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The article reviews the book, "The Empire Reloaded," edited by Leo Panitch and Colin Leys.

La dynamique de transformation de l’organisation du travail dans un contexte de changements technologiques et organisationnels dans une organisation industrielle de haute technologie a conduit à la fragmentation de la communauté technicienne et à la refonte de son identité professionnelle historique. Cette dynamique n’apparaît pas comme le résultat d’un quelconque déterminisme technologique. Les changements technologiques ont été, en dernière instance, un enjeu stratégique autour duquel se sont cristallisés les rapports de force dans l’organisation. Ils ont fait l’objet d’une instrumentalisation sur laquelle se sont appuyées les instances de l’entreprise pour légitimer leurs choix stratégiques en matière d’organisation du travail.

The article reviews the book, "¡Cochabamba! Water War in Bolivia," by Oscar Olivera and Tom Lewis.

[E]valuates the experience of the Winnipeg-based Workers' Organizing And Resource Centre, an initiative of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) and community activists drawn from several communities. --Editors' introduction

Case study of the British Columbia Government and Service Employees Union's strategy for renewal as an ongoing process. A more formal exercise was begun in 1998 to improve union servicing that resulted in the adoption of five objectives as pilot projects; recommendations were adopted in 2000 to improve them. The devastating impact of the provincial government's cutbacks of 2001 is described, as well as subsequent renewal efforts.

The article focuses on the life and works of A.E. Johann, a Winnipeg Communist and a labourer on farms in northern British Columbia. He wrote a total of 18 volumes of both fiction and nonfiction along with numerous articles for newspapers and magazines in Germany. His nonfictional books were commonly anecdotal in form and one volume can plausibly claim to be at least a semi-scholarly study of its subject. It notes that the success of his initial volume in Canada prompted his publisher to finance his travels generously, which he therefore undertook driving an almost new Ford purchased when he arrived in Montreal. Moreover, Johann appears to have been a generally trustworthy chronicler of the Canadian situation.

"[P]rovides a historical analysis of worker participation and occupational health and safety regulation in Ontario from 1970 to 2000 in light of the rise of neoliberal policies. [The authors] describe a shift from systems of mandated partial self-regulation in which workers had to participate, supported by external enforcement of regulations, to more ambiguous models that included the downsizing of government and voluntary compliance by employers." --Editors' introduction. Contents: Acts of God, acts of man: the invisibility of workplace death / Jordan Barab -- Criminal neglect: how dangerous employers stay safe from prosecution / Rory O'Neill -- Regulating risk at work: is expert paternalism the answer to workers irrationality? / Peter Dorman -- Silicosis and the on-going struggle to protect workers's health / Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner -- How safe are U.S. workplaces for Spanish-speaking workers? / Laura H. Rhodes -- Got air? The campaign to improve indoor air quality at the City University of New York / Joan Greenbaum and David Kotelchuck -- State or society? The rise and repeal of OSHA's ergonomics standard / Vernon Mogensen -- The ten-percenters: gender, nationality, and occupational health in Canada / Penney Kome -- All that is solid melts into air: worker participation in Ontario, 1970-2000 / Robert Storey and Eric Tucker -- The sinking of the neoliberal P-36 platform in Brazil / Carlos Eduardo Siqueira and Nadia Haiama-Neurohr -- Health and safety at work in Russia and Hungary: illusion and reality in the transition crisis / Michael Haynes and Rumy Husan.

The article reviews the book, "Civic Capitalism: The State of Childhood," by John O'Neill.

The article reviews the book, "Almost Home: Reforming Home and Community Care in Ontario," by Patricia M. Baranek, Raisa B. Deber and A. Paul Williams.

The diverse conceptual perspectives and practical experiences with non-union employee representation (NER) in the USA and Canada are reviewed. We first propose a six-dimensional descriptive schema to categorise observed NER practices. Dimensions of diversity include (i) form; (ii) function; (iii) subjects; (iv) representational modes; (v) extent of power; (vi) degree of permanence. We then turn to the NER controversy, which is a tangled skein consisting of many different threads of values and prescriptions. To unbundle the controversy, we develop four ‘faces’ of NER—(i) evolutionary voice; (ii) unity of interest; (iii) union avoidance; and (iv) complementary voice—so that future research can more consciously test the validity of competing perspectives with hard data. Generalising about NER is problematic because of these many dimensions of diversity, and because NER is viewed through different ideological and conceptual lenses. We conclude that NER’s future trajectory is uncertain due to conflicting trends but in the short run is most likely to remain a modest-sized phenomenon.

Terms such as labor-community coalitions, community unionism and social movement unionism are important features of current strategies for union renewal. This article develops a three-part framework of union-community relationships, from ad hoc to deeply engaged relationships. Criteria such as common interest, coalition structure, scale and union participation are identified as important variables for relationship variation and campaign success. The article explores the framework by analyzing three case studies from Sydney, Australia, involving the central labor council -- Unions NSW. The paper argues that union-community relationships vary significantly: ad hoc relationships are useful to react to a crisis while deeper relationships are most useful to build a long-term agenda. Deeper relationships are supported when they are built alongside a process of internal union renewal. Deeper relationships are more successful if unions develop workplace leaders, support political union education and provide space for workplace stewards to connect to community campaigns.

The article reviews the book, "Framed!: Labor and the Corporate Media," Christopher R. Martin.

The article reviews the book, "All Hell Can't Stop Us: The On-to-Ottawa Trek and Regina Riot," by Bill Waiser.

The article reviews the book, "Gender Myths v. Working realities: Using Social Science to Reformulate Sexual Harassment Law," by Theresa M. Beiner.

New South Wales is at the forefront globally in the protection of labour standards in the clothing industry by regulating the supply chain from the bottom to the top, from home workers to clothing retailers. This is the first case in which retailers are effectively brought under a legal regulatory framework in which they are acknowledged as having responsibilities in which the clothing that they sell is manufactured. This is the critical difference between and the great advantage of this model over other models that have attempted to regulate the manufacturing nodes in the supply chain or which rely solely upon voluntary codes. In Canada during the Great Depression and subsequently in the 1930s, a regulatory system was developed in Quebec, which attempted to restrict the more destructive of competitive practices between manufacturers and to (and in part through) generalise negotiated labour standards throughout the industry by way of a Parity Committee. This case holds particular significance for current supply chain regulation developments in New South Wales, Australia and, indeed, globally. Its significance lies in the documented evidence of the exertion of the retail sector over the manufacturers in the clothing industry in Quebec, the practices of manufacturers and contractors to attempt to respond to the demands of the retailers by reducing labour costs, and by the dynamism of a labour movement that was able to win a system of regulation to protect unionised and nonunionised workers within the clothing supply chain. Its significance for current initiatives, however, also lies in what the model was unable to achieve, in particular, bringing the retail sector into the regulatory framework, and, the industrial model of regulation which, which sought supply chain regulation without accounting for all nodes of the chain.

[This thesis is] a labour history of Russian Mennonites employed in three Mennonite-owned factories in Manitoba: Friesens Corporation of Altona, Loewen Windows of Steinbach, and Palliser Furniture of Winnipeg. Each of these businesses had a primarily Mennonite workforce at their founding, and eventually became the largest employers in the community in which they were established. This comparative microhistory makes a significant contribution to the literature: though approximately one-quarter of North American Mennonites are working-class, few scholarly works have investigated their experiences. The history of immigration of these Mennonites is important in understanding their adaptation to North American capitalism. Immigrants had common experiences of some aspects of settlement, such as language acquisition and finding employment. Immigrants exhibited a variety of responses to government efforts to promote assimilation, and demonstrated different attitudes toward job security and expectations for their children, in part because of their diverse prior experiences of war, religious conservatism, and prejudice in their country of origin. The result was the development of an increasingly urban and heterogeneous Mennonite community in Manitoba, which perhaps contributed to the failure to develop a strong sense of class consciousness among them. The historical development of Mennonite religious thought in the twentieth century is connected to the geographical shift of North American Mennonites from rural to urban environs. This move necessitated a re-assessment of Mennonite religious beliefs, particularly of their understandings of 'Gelassenheit ', to nonresistance, and 'agape' love. The Christian's responsibility to the world came to be stressed at the expense of traditional values such as submission to the community and separation from the world. Religious belief had a role in restraining the behaviour of both workers and owners, encouraging the former to accept work discipline, and limiting the latter in their conspicuous consumption. In a case study, Barthes' semiological approach is used to demythologize an advertising campaign at Loewen Windows as a means of examining the linkages between religion and capitalism. The role of religion differentiated the operation of paternalism at these businesses from their non-Mennonite counterparts. Though Mennonite workers rarely expressed their views in class-conscious ' language', the 'content' of their remarks, particularly with respect to the labour process and their autonomy, points to the existence of a class division in these factories. The nature of their employment as factory workers affected not only their job mobility and security, the speed of their work, their sleeping patterns and social lives, but also their identity. Class differences between Mennonite employers and employees clearly existed; class consciousness on the part of workers is less evident. With the transformation of Friesens Corporation, Loewen Windows, and Palliser Furniture from small family businesses to large corporations, the relationship between Mennonite workers and their employers was reinterpreted. Employers made use of Mennonite religious motifs to craft a common ethos, but increased ethnic diversity in the workforce at Palliser Furniture, together with objective class differences between workers and owners at all three companies, resulted in some splits in the unity of the Mennonite workplace. The interplay of competing interests nonetheless resulted in redefinitions of ownership rights and their meaning for workers with respect to profit sharing and employee share ownership, as well as several unsuccessful attempts to unionize. The tension between Burkholder's emphasis on social responsibility, as exhibited by labour's demands for economic justice, and Hershberger's insistence on avoidance of confrontation was evident in the struggle of Manitoba Mennonites with their response to labour activism in the 1970s. Pacifism often had been dismissed as passivity in the past; now the adherence to the principle of nonviolence could be seen as an excuse for accepting economic exploitation. Mennonite support for cooperatives and credit unions could have translated into support for labour unions, but in late twentieth-century Manitoba, it did not. Though North American Mennonites' attitudes toward unions may have undergone change during this period, they continued to avoid becoming members. The conclusion explores whether Mennonite involvement in industrial capitalism is (or can ever be) in any way distinct from that of secular participants. Are there theological resources within Mennonitism that can mount an effective challenge to the negative results of global capitalism? This work is a modest attempt to contribute to the debate, both within the Mennonite community and without, regarding the possibilities for social and economic transformation. It is also an attempt to argue for the relevance of the consideration of religion in scholarly discourse in general, and historical study in particular.