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The article reviews the book, "Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire," by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri.

A renewal of the study of public sector unionism in Canada is long overdue. This article explains why public sector unions deserve more attention from researchers than they have received of late and proposes that studies of public sector unions would benefit from adopting a new theoretical framework that conceptualizes contemporary unions as not only labour relations institutions but also as particular kinds of working-class movement organizations within a historically-specific class formation. It also identifies two obstacles to the production of accounts of contemporary public sector unions from this perspective.

The article reviews the book, "What's Class Got to Do with It? American Society in the Twenty-First Century," edited by Michael Zweig.

Established in 1940 in response to the Great Depression, the original goal of Canada’s system of unemployment insurance was to ensure the protection of income to the unemployed. Joblessness was viewed as a social problem and the jobless as its unfortunate victims. If governments could not create the right conditions for full employment, they were obligated to compensate people who could not find work. While unemployment insurance expanded over several decades to the benefit of the rights of the unemployed, the mid-1970s saw the first stirrings of a counterattack as the federal government’s Keynesian strategy came under siege. Neo-liberalists denounced unemployment insurance and other aspects of the welfare state as inflationary and unproductive. Employment was increasingly thought to be a personal responsibility and the handling of the unemployed was to reflect a free-market approach. This regressive movement culminated in the 1990s counter-reforms, heralding a major policy shift. The number of unemployed with access to benefits was halved during that time. From UI to EI examines the history of Canada’s unemployment insurance system and the rights it grants to the unemployed. The development of the system, its legislation, and related jurisprudence are viewed through a historical perspective that accounts for the social, political, and economic context. Campeau critically examines the system with emphasis upon its more recent transformations. This book will interest professors and students of law, political science, and social work, and anyone concerned about the right of the unemployed to adequate protection. --Publisher's description. Contents: Why UI? -- The British Act of 1911 -- Developing a Canadian system -- The UI Act of 1940 -- UI expansion, 1940-75 -- Vision under siege, 1975-88 -- Rights enshrined in case law, 1940-90 -- The system hijacked, 1989-96 -- Onward to EI -- Case law in the neoliberal riptide of the 1990s. Translation of: De l'assurance-chômage à l'assurance-emploi.

Le présent article interroge l'action syndicale en France dans un contexte caractérisé par une remise en cause de la loi relative à la réduction de la durée du travail. En prenant appui sur le cas d'un établissement qui s'engage dans un processus d'allongement de la durée du travail, l'auteur retrace le cheminement parcouru par les acteurs en présence qui débute par la renégociation de la règle sur les 35 heures pour aboutir à l'invention d'une nouvelle régulation entre salariés et direction. Loin d'abroger les lois Aubry, ce mouvement d'allongement de la durée du travail questionne la capacité des acteurs à mener des négociations collectives. // This paper questions the way French trade unions have dealt with the effects of the legislation purporting to limit maximum working time to 35 hours per week. The research is based on a case study of a manufacturing firm. The author examines the ways in which local actors evolved from the negotiation over the implementation of the 35 hour work week to the development of new relationships between the employees and their employer. In this specific case study, the negotiation actually ended up lengthening working time. This result does not deny the importance of working time legislation but it does call into question the capacity of local unions to achieve in collective bargaining the objectives set out legislatively.

The article reviews the book, "Workplace Equality: International Perspectives on Legislation, Policy, and Practice," edited by Carol Agocs.

We examine the connections between neo-liberal forms of state restructuring and intervention in disabled people’s lives, looking in particular at how these have affected disabled women’s experi- ences of an income support program, the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), in Ontario, Canada. We first outline why and how state programs have been re-designed and imple- mented in increasingly harsh ways as a result of such neo-liberal forms of state restructuring. Even groups formerly considered among the ‘deserving poor’ have found their access to social assistance diminished. We then argue that this is an outcome of state programs, policies and practices which are re-asserting and more deeply entrenching ‘ableness’ as a necessary condition of citizenship, inclusion and access to justice. Finally, we illustrate how disabled women’s lives and well-being have been altered as a result of changes in the provision of these forms of state assistance using in- depth semi-structured interviews conducted with 10 women in Ontario.

The article reviews the book, "Farm to Factory: A Reinterprétation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution," by Robert C. Allen.

The article reviews the book, "Industrial Relations in China," by Bill Taylor, Chang Kai and Li Qi.

This study examines the multi-dimensional nature of the dual commitment to the organization and the union. Most research that has examined this concept has used only one dimension for each commitment. The most established, multi-dimensional scales of organizational and union commitment were examined in their relationship to work and union correlates. The participants were 489 members (a 65% response rate) of the Union of Nurses in Israel. The findings showed that while affective commitment and union loyalty are related to the correlates examined here, the additional dimensions added significant variance to the results already explained by affective commitment and union loyalty. For example, normative commitment is related to four correlates and the variable "willingness to work for the union" is also strongly related to the correlates. The study concluded that utilizing only one dimension to examine each commitment might result in the loss of valuable information on dual commitment.

The thesis examines the role, efficacy and influence of the five national English-language independent film and television production sector unions in the Canadian broadcasting policy network. While labour is typically classified as a civil society organization within policy networks studies, this thesis will examine the blanket applicability of this typology in analysing labour's engagement with issues that involve both their vested economic/industrial interests as well as broader social/cultural goals, using the unions' engagement with the issue of Canadian dramatic programming from 1998 to present as a case study.

The article reviews the book, "CCF Colonialism in Northern Saskatchewan: Battling Parish Priests, Bootleggers, and Fur Sharks," by David M. Quiring.

The book From Consent to Coercion: The Assault on Trade Union Freedoms, 3rd edition, by Leo Panitch and Donald Swartz, is reviewed.

Editorial introduction to the issue.

Over a million self-employed Canadians work every day but many of them are not entitled to the basic labour protections and rights such as minimum wages, maternity and parental leaves and benefits, pay equity, a safe and healthy working environment, and access to collective bargaining. The authors of "Self-Employed Workers Organize" offer a multi-disciplinary examination of the legal, political, and social realities that both limit collective action by self-employed workers and create huge impediments for unions attempting to organize them. Through case studies of newspaper carriers, rural route mail couriers, personal care workers, and freelance editors - four groups who have led pioneering efforts to organize - the authors provide a window into the ways political and economic conditions interact with class, ethnicity, and gender to shape the meaning and strategies of working men and women and show how these strategies have changed over time. They argue that the experiences of these workers demonstrate a pressing need to expand collective bargaining rights to include them. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Making Public Pasts: The Contested Terrain of Montreal's Public Memories, 1891-1930," by Alan Gordon.

The article reviews the book, "The Internet in the Workplace : How New Technology is Transforming Work," by Patricia Wallace.

The article reviews the book. "Working Children Around the World: Child Rights and Child Reality," by G.K. Lieten.

The article reviews the book, "Trade Unions in Europe: Meeting the Challenge," edited by Deborah Foster and Peter Scott.

The article reviews the book, "L’économie sociale dans les services à domicile," edited by Yves Vaillancourt, François Aubry and Christian Jetté.