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The article reviews the book, "Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code," by Amy Kiste Nyberg.

The companion book to The Labour Millenium Project, a four-part documentary film series and CD-ROM --Page 4 of cover. Text in English and French.

This collection of compelling and original research makes connections in Canada, the US and Mexico among women who work in fast-food restaurants, supermarkets and agricultural production. The fourteen chapters take a critical look at how the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has affected these women's working and living conditions, sharpening our understanding of how the workplace has been restructured in order to fulfill consumer demands for tomatoes, exotic flowers and fruits, as well as fast-food burgers and fries. Food activists in Latin America, the US and Canada propose alternatives to counteract the oppressive conditions of free trade and globalization. --Publisher's description. Contents: "Perhaps the world ends here" / Joy Harjo -- Introduction: In the belly of the beast: A moveable feast / Deborah Barndt -- Remaking "traditions": How we eat, what we eat and the changing political economy of food / Harriet Friedmann -- Whose "choice"?: "Flexible" women workers in the tomato food chain / Deborah Barndt -- Serving the McCustomer: Fast food is not about food / Ester Reiter -- The "poisoning" of Indigenous migrant women workers and children: From deadly colonialism to toxic globalization / Egla Martinez-Salazar -- Mexican women on the move: Migrant workers in Mexico and Canada / Antonieta Barrón -- "From where have all the flowers come?": Women workers in Mexico's non-traditional markets / Kirsten Appendini -- Putting the pieces together: Tennessee women find the global economy in their own backyards / Fran Ansley -- Serving up service: Fast-food and office women workers doing it with a smile / Ann Eyerman -- Not quite what they bargained for: Female labour in Canadian supermarkets / Jan Kainer -- Putting food first: Women's role in creating a grassroots system outside the marketplace / Debbie Field -- Grassroots responses to globalization: Mexican rural and urban women's collective alternatives / Maria Dolores Villagomez -- Women as organizers: Building confidence and community through food / Deborah Moffett & Mary Lou Morgan -- A day in the life of Maria: Women, food, ecology and the will to live / Ofelia Perez Peña -- A different tomato: Creating vernacular foodscapes / Lauren Baker.

The article reviews the book, "Flexibilité et créations d'emplois : un défi pour le dialogue social en Europe," by Hedva Sarfati.

The article reviews the book, "Changing Industrial Relations in Europe," edited by A. Ferner and R. Hyman.

The article reviews the book, "Les politiques de l'emploi en Europe et aux Éats-Unis," edited by Jean-Claude Barbier and Jérôme Gautié.

This thesis examines the effects of the Workers' Educational Association of Toronto (WEA) on social change in Canada between 1917-1945. This study attempts to establish the social importance of this organization in the history of adult education in Canada. The WEA was an educational organization that attempted to provide a link between labour and learning by making educational opportunities available to the working class. The data for this study were obtained from an analysis of the Ontario and Canadian WEA archives. The thesis first examines the history of the WEA and demonstrate its place in the history of adult education in Canada. Secondly, this study suggests that the WEA was the impetus for change in Canada, and in particular for Toronto's working class. The study found that the WEA used a form of critical pedagogy to achieve its goals which brought about social change. This study reinforces the usefulness of critical pedagogy as an approach for adult education when social change is an objective.

A unique data set is used to examine how different practices associated with high performance work systems in the steel industry affect the job satisfaction of workers. While the effect of these practices on organizational performance is widely studied, few have examined their effects on workers. Their analysis in this paper is based on data from a sample of 1,355 hourly workers in the US steel industry across 13 plants. The results indicate that the effect of high performance practices on job satisfaction depends primarily on how work roles and job duties are defined, on good employee-management relations and on practices that help balance work and family responsibilities. These results show that those who are able to use their skills and knowledge on the job, those who report positive employee-management relations, and those who believe the company helps them balance work and family responsibilities have relatively high probabilities of being very satisfied with their jobs.

The article reviews the book, "Sixties Rock: Garage, Psychedelic, and Other Satisfactions," by Michael Hicks.

Ce texte questionne la thèse aujourd'hui dominante d'une tendance à la requalification du travail. Il resitue d'abord le débat théorique entre la thèse de la déqualification et celle de la requalification du travail en montrant comment toutes deux présentent le même problème à savoir une vision linéaire et uniforme de l'évolution des qualifications. Il démontre ensuite qu'actuellement, la question ne se pose plus tant en termes d'évolution qu'en termes de rupture par rapport au modèle taylorien/fordien d'organisation du travail et appelle donc un changement de paradigme. Sur cette base, l'auteure reprend des données d'études de cas effectuées sur une quinzaine d'années dans le secteur tertiaire pour se demander si se met en place un nouveau modèle de qualification/formation. Les données récentes permettent de voir un nouveau modèle en train d'émerger dans certains secteurs. Ce modèle met de l'avant une organisation basée sur la polyvalence des emplois faisant appel à de nouveaux savoirs et donnant une importance certaine à la formation. Pourtant, ce modèle n'est pas synonyme d'une requalification générale dans ces secteurs où se dessinent plutôt des mouvements opposés de déqualification/requalification qui s'appliquent différemment aux personnels en place. En conclusion, l'auteure appelle à sortir de l'entreprise pour analyser les restructurations actuelles du travail à la lumière des mutations tout aussi importantes du marché de l'emploi qui ont nom l'exclusion et la précarisation.

Dans ce texte, l'auteure se demande si les pratiques récentes des entreprises québécoises dans le domaine de la formation de la main-d’œuvre sont de nature à développer les compétences de cette même main-d’œuvre. Pour répondre à cette question, elle examine les innovations de formation des entreprises en se demandant si elles vont dans le sens d'une formation continue de la main-d’œuvre. L'examen porte d'abord sur la dynamique des innovations de formation au sein de l'entreprise, ensuite sur les liens qu'elles entretiennent avec l'organisation du travail, sur les relations qu'elles induisent entre l'école et l'entreprise et, finalement, sur l'inscription de ces formations dans le temps. Si l'auteure conclut à un changement significatif des pratiques de formation des entreprises, elle note pourtant que celles-ci sont encore trop axées sur les objectifs productivistes de l'entreprise et s'inscrivent trop peu souvent dans le sens d'une formation « continue » de la main-d’œuvre.

The article reviews the book, "The Workers' Revolt in Canada, 1917-1925," edited by Craig Heron.

Cette étude présente les principaux résultats d'une recherche menée au Québec auprès de huit syndicats locaux des secteurs de la métallurgie et du papier affiliés à la CSN, qui ont négocié des ententes de participation syndicale à la gestion de l'organisation du travail au début des années 1990. La recherche a porté sur les contextes, les processus et les résultats de la coopération patronale-syndicale dans chacun des cas étudiés au cours de la période 1990 à 1997. L'analyse révèle d'abord que ces ententes, conclues pour la plupart dans un contexte de réduction des emplois, aménagent des modalités de participation formelle des syndicats à la gestion de l'organisation du travail. Les principaux changements intervenus concernent l'élargissement des tâches, le décloisonnement des métiers et le travail en équipe. Ces changements se sont accompagnés dans tous les cas de modifications aux règles conventionnelles de gestion des emplois et d'un allongement de la durée des conventions collectives. L'analyse longitudinale met en évidence un recul ou un plafonnement de la participation syndicale dans la majorité des cas après quelques années d'expérimentation. Les principaux facteurs associés au déclin de la participation syndicale sont l'imposition unilatérale par l'employeur de changements organisationnels et la perception de la part des salariés d'un partage inéquitable des gains découlant de la réorganisation du travail.

The article reviews the book, "Selling Tradition: Appalachia and the Construction of an American Folk, 1930-1940," by Jane S. Becker.

The article reviews the book, "The Representation Gap: Change and Reform in the British and American Workplace," by Brian Towers.

The article reviews the book, "Women Teachers and Feminist Politics 1900-39," by Alison Oram.

The article reviews the book, "The Yankee International: Marxism and the American Reform Tradition, 1848-1876," by Timothy Messer-Kruse.

A sense of determinism about the emergence of capitalism and the ruthless over-exploitation of nature in European colonial expansion pervades much of North American environmental and ecological history. The attempts of 19th-century Newfoundland fishing people to regulate access to common-property marine resources suggests that some European settlers were also capable of non-capitalist forms of ecological management. Fishers protested against the introduction of new fishing technology in response to localized exhaustion of cod stocks. Some of these protests involved the destruction of newer equipment, while others were anonymous assaults on the equipment's owners. The protests represented attempts to forestall the depletion of marine resources by the further capitalization of the fishery. By the late 1840s the demands for conservation measures became more organized politically under the leadership of mercantile agent Willam Kelson. Although he was conservative and paternalistic, Kelson's criticism of the unrestrained employment of technology in the fishing industry had radical implications. Kelson supported the desire to preserve a customary and equitable right of access to fish for present and future generations. The preservation of equitable access may been seen as an ecological norm of a moral economy that ran counter to the individualistic and accumulative values of a nascent local capitalist political economy.

Little historical work has been done in Canada on public drinking in general and public drinking after prohibition in particular. For British Columbia this neglect is a real oversight because hotel saloons were transformed into hotel beer parlours after prohibition. The first parlours opened in Vancouver in 1925, and, like saloons, they catered to a working-class clientele. Parlours held sway until 1954 when a new Government Liquor Act provided for additional venues of public drinking. One did not have to sit long in a Vancouver parlour to realize that more than alcohol consumption was being regulated. Parlours also regulated class, gender and sexuality, and race.

A tribute to the most important people in government. The most important people in government are not the prime minister, premiers, and senior bureaucrats but the people who work in government field offices across the country, providing service to Canadians. The first book to focus exclusively on the role of field-level public servants in Canada, Service in the Field examines the work they do and the relationship between field and head offices. As governments attempt to focus more on service delivery, it has become apparent that little is known about the people who actually provide the services. Barbara Wake Carroll and David Siegel discuss structural issues and analyse the various administrative reforms developed in the last few years. They highlight field officers' perceptions of the problems in the system and suggest ways to improve field office-head office relations and the operation of field offices generally. The authors' analysis is based on more than two hundred interviews with federal and provincial civil servants in all ten provinces, in the smallest hamlets and largest cities across Canada. Using extensive quotations from these interviews, the authors allow public servants to tell their own stories and, in so doing, provide examples of the application of systematic qualitative research to Canadian political science. --Publisher's description, Contents: Who Are These People and What Do They Do? -- Research Described -- "How We Do Things around Here" -- Service to the Public -- Workplace Environment -- Two Solitudes or One Big Happy Family? Dealing with Head Office -- Administrative Reform: How It Plays in the Field -- Bureaucrats Are People Too -- Where Do We Go from Here? Implications for Implementation and Management Theory.