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The book, "Worked Over: The Corporate Sabotage of an American Community," by Dimitra Doukas, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "Taxing Illusions: Taxation, Democracy and Embedded Political Theory," by Phillip Hansen.

The BC Labour Heritage Centre Society was founded in 2004 with JJ (Jack) Munro as Chair. The Society preserves, documents and presents the rich history of working people in British Columbia. The Society engages in partnerships and projects that help define and express the role that work and workers have played in the evolution of social policy and its impact on the present and future shaping of the province. --Website "About" page.

Inspirés par les explications « pull » et « push » de la résurgence du travail autonome dans les années 1980 et 1990, nous proposons un modèle inédit de l’entrée dans le travail autonome et une évaluation de sa pertinence à partir des résultats d’une enquête originale via l’Internet auprès de 748 travailleurs autonomes québécois. La principale hypothèse de notre modèle propose que le passage au travail autonome découle le plus souvent d’une décision motivée à la fois par des aspirations personnelles et professionnelles spécifiques et par des conditions d’emploi précaires ou insatisfaisantes. Les résultats de notre étude exploratoire confirment la pertinence de notre hypothèse quant à l’influence combinée des facteurs « push » et « pull » sur la décision d’entrer dans le travail autonome. Elle révèle néanmoins des différences significatives entre les déterminants des décisions des hommes et des femmes.

The article reviews the book, "Silicon Valley, Women, and the California Dream: Gender, Class, and Opportunity in the Twentieth Century," by Glenna Matthews.

The article reviews the book, "La relation de service : opportunités et questions nouvelles pour l’ergonomie," edited by François Hubault.

The article reviews the book, "La convention collective au Québec," by Gérard Hébert, Reynald Bourque, Anthony Giles, Michel Grant, Patrice Jalette, Gilles Trudeau and Guylaine Vallée.

In Common and Contested Ground, Theodore Binnema provides a sweeping and innovative interpretation of the history of the northwestern plains and its peoples from prehistoric times to the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The real history of the northwestern plains between a.d. 200 and 1806 was far more complex, nuanced, and paradoxical than often imagined. Drawn by vast herds of buffalo and abundant resources, bands of Indians, fur traders, and settlers moved across the northwestern plains establishing intricate patterns of trade, diplomacy, and warfare. In the process, the northwestern plains became a common and contested ground. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Binnema examines the impact of technology on the peoples of the northern plains, beginning with the bow-and-arrow and continuing through the arrival of the horse, European weapons, Old World diseases, and Euroamerican traders. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Jacques-Victor Morin: Syndicaliste et Educateur Populaire," by Matieu Denis.

The article reviews the book, "Le pouvoir de négocier. S’affronter sans violence : l’espace gagnant-gagnant en négociation," by François Delivré.

This study explores the ways in which spatial configurations have shaped the use of contractors in the export coalfields of Queensland (Australia) and western Canada since the late 1960s. It is argued that the divergent employer strategies pursued after 1996 - whereby Queensland producers dramatically increased their use of contractors while their Canadian counterparts did not-reflects their different spatial placement within the global coal trade. In Canada, the main problem was locational disadvantage due to distance from deep-water. In consequence, employers responded to falling prices by concentrating production in the area of greatest locational advantage. For Queensland producers, the issue was high mine-site labour costs. In this context, using contractors was part of a strategy to transform labour relations through the Workplace Relations Act.

The article reviews the book, "Rebellious Families: Household Strategies and Collective Action in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," edited by Jan Kok.

This innovative book is concerned with the power relations, complexities, and contradictions in the paid workplace. Workplace learning is not value-free or politically neutral, and cannot be studied independently of the political economy of work. [This book] is part of a growing body of work that offers an alternative to mainstream approaches to workplace learning, recognizing that power relations, politics and conflicts of interest all shape learning. The authors emphasize the lived experiences of working people, avoiding prescriptive accounts and uncritical Human Resource Development views. --Publisher's description. Contents: 1. Introduction -- 2. Management strategies and workplace learning -- 3. Groups, teams and workplace learning -- 4. Organizational learning and learning organizations -- 5. Unions and workplace learning -- 6. Adult education, learning and work -- 7. Toward the future of workplace learning. Includes bibliographical references (p. [181]-194) and index.

[Excerpt] In this chapter we seek to answer the following questions: Why has it been so difficult for unions to turn the organizing efforts and initiatives of the last six years into any significant gains in union density? Why have a small number of unions been able to make major gains through organizing? And most importantly, which organizing strategies will be most effective in reversing the tide of the labor movement's organizing decline? What our findings will show is that while the political, legal, and economic climate for organizing continues to deteriorate, and private sector employers continue to mount aggressive opposition to organizing efforts, some unions are winning. Our findings also show that the unions that are most successful at organizing run fundamentally different campaigns, in both quality and intensity, than those that are less successful, and that those differences hold true across a wide range of organizing environments, company characteristics, bargaining unit demographics, and employer campaign variables.

This is a study of horizontal and vertical solidarity within a national labour movement, based on a nationwide survey of members of affiliated unions of the Congress of South African Trade Unions. On the one hand, the survey reveals relatively high levels of vertical and horizontal solidarity, despite the persistence of some cleavages on gender and racial lines. On the other hand, the maintenance and deepening of existing horizontal and vertical linkages in a rapidly changing socio-economic context, represents one of many challenges facing organized labour in an industrializing economy. COSATU's strength is contingent not only on an effective organizational capacity, and a supportive network linking key actors and interest groupings, but also on the ability to meet the concerns of existing constituencies and those assigned to highly marginalized categories of labour.

Canada experienced its worst economic crisis during the Great Depression of the 1930s with unprecedented numbers of Canadians suffering extreme economic and social hardship. Survival and struggle to change those conditions became as much a mark of the times as the economic circumstances themselves. The Communist Party of Canada (CPC) was one organization that played a significant role in this national upsurge of struggle. The Party believed that the worsening material conditions would engender class consciousness of Canadian workers, leading to the overthrow of the capitalist system to achieve a worker-farmer socialist state. The Party was instrumental in organizing workers, farmers, the unorganized and the unemployed, however, it was not successful in raising Canadian working class consciousness to a revolutionary level. The factors that will be analyzed as being the main contributing factors to the Party's limitations are the CPC1srelationship with the Comintern, repression by the Canadian state, and dominant ideology that prevailed in Canada during the Depression. From its inception in 1921 the CPC worked assiduously to meet the needs of Canadian workers in a rapidly changing economy in the 1920s and one that was also collapsing in the Depression. In many ways it recognized Canadian workers' needs in these times and was at the head of the labour movement fighting for workers' needs and defending them. However, the CPC was somewhat hamstrung by its very close relationship with the Comintern allowing this international communist body to dictate almost every move it made whether or not it was the best for Canadian workers. State repression of the CPC and labour movement, also had a curbing effect on the advancement of the CPC in its work with Canadian workers, forcing the Party underground, decimating its leadership and intimidating Party activists, unions and workers. Finally, dominant ideology during the Depression, in spite of serious threats by alternate sets of ideas, particularly those promulgated by the CPC, largely stood its ground as defender of the present capitalist system that relied on the exploitation of Canadian workers for its survival.

The article reviews the book, "At Odds: Gambling and Canadians, 1919-1969," by Suzanne Morton.

The article reviews the book, "Neither Lady nor Slave: Working Women of the Old South," edited by Susanna Delfino and Michele Gillespie.

Reviewed: Between History and Tomorrow: Making and Breaking Everyday Life in Rural Newfoundland. Sider, Gerald M.