Search

The paper presents findings of an ethnographic case study on social relations in an existing General Motors vehicle assembly plant where the traditional drag chain has been replaced by Swedish automated guided vehicle technology and some aspects of Japanese work organization have been implemented. The findings challenge claims that Fordism is being replaced by a fundamentally new production model, and that this is resulting in more fulfilling work and cooperative social relations. There are many fulfilling work and cooperative social relations. There are many continuities with Fordism and highly contradictory social relations. This and other studies of new work systems suggest, in fact, that contradictions between control and commitment, rather than being minimized or dissolved, can actually be heightened.

The article reviews the book, "Stanley Bréhaut Ryerson, un intellectuel de combat," edited by Robert Comeau and Robert Tremblay.

In late 1936 steel worker activists in Sydney launched a new organizing drive at the plant under the auspices of the CIO's Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC). This effort drew the support of steel workers in a way that previous organizing attempts had not. However, the militant and self-reliant traditions of the steel workers collided with the cautious strategies and bureaucratic practices of the appointed SWOC leadership in the United States and Canada. As steel workers at Sydney showed great solidarity in their struggle with DOSCO, they also resisted what they saw as undemocratic and highly accommodationist practices by the union's national and international leadership. The struggles within the union embraced the issues of Canadian autonomy and nationalism as well as rank-and-file union control and the democratic rights of union members. It amounted to a struggle over what type of unionism was to be established within the Canadian steel industry.

The article reviews the book, "Grace Hartman: A Woman for her Time," by Susan Crean.

The article reviews the book, Les vrais maîtres de la forêt québécoise," by Pierre Dubois, preface by Richard Desjardins.

The article reviews the book, "Sizing Down: Chronicle of a Plant Closing: With Lessons for Understanding and Survival," by Louise Moser Illes.

The article reviews the book, "Crossing The Line: Unionized Employee Ownership and Investment Funds," by Jack Quarter.

The article reviews the book, "Le syndicalisme contemporain et son avenir," edited by Henryk Lewandowski and Zbigniew Hajn.

The article reviews the book, "Gentle Rebel: Letters of Eugene V. Debs," edited by J. Robert Constantine.

Public exhibitions about work safety assumed an importance for both workers and employers at the beginning of the 20th century that is difficult to evaluate from a late-20th-century perspective. In Quebec, Louis Guyon, chief inspector of industrial establishments and public edifices, noted with interest expositions in Germany and France. Through his efforts the first North American exposition concerning the prevention of accidents was inaugurated in Montreal on 23 September 1901. Only insufficient government funds prevented Guyon from following European models in creating a worker safety museum. Similarly, a worker health museum did not materialize in the province because of funding problems.

A study empirically examines the relationships between union status, union involvement, and the performance of gainsharing programs. The predictions of various competing theoretical perspectives are evaluated: 1. the agency/transaction cost approach, 2. the monopoly model, 3. the institutional voice model, and 4. a 2-faces model of labor organization. Gainsharing programs with union involvement in program administration resulted in better perceived performance than average programs in the nonunion sector. However, gainsharing programs in the union sector without union involvement had worse outcomes than those in the nonunion sector. These 2 divergent situations resulted in union status itself having an insignificant relationship with program performance.

The article reviews the book, "Wild Things: Nature, Culture and Tourism in Ontario, 1790-1914," by Patricia Jasen.

[This book] offers a progressive approach to the sociology of work and labour. Each chapter tackles an essential contemporary labour issue and includes original research from top scholars across Canada. The first of four parts is devoted to the contemporary turmoil of working Canadians caused by the upheaval in the manufacturing and service industries. Part Two discusses the tremendous impact of technology on the labour force. Specific case studies raise universal questions. ...Part Three examines issues specific to women in the new and changing workplace. The intrinsic conflict of work and family is established as the context for examining the division of labour inside and outside the family. ...Chapters in the final part examine the loss of manufacturing jobs, and the new realities of unemployment, underemployment, and under-qualification. --Publisher's description (abridged). Contents: Introduction: Debating the future of work (pages 1-5). Part 1. Canadian working lives in turmoil: The traditional workplace transformed (7). Lost horizons, leisure shock: good jobs, bad jobs, uncertain future / Daniel Glenday (8-34)-- From cars to casinos, from work to workfare: the brave new world of Canadian employment / Jamie Swift (35-52)-- The casualization of the labour force / Dave Broad (53-73). Part 2. The new workplace: technology, telework and restructuring (75). Technology and the deskilling of work: the case of passenger agents at Air Canada / Vivian Shalla (76-96 )-- The impact of teleworking on Canadian employment / Kay Stratton Devine, Laurel Taylor, and Kathy Haryett (97-116) -- Health care, hospitals, and reengineering: the nightingales sing the blues / Jerry P. White (117-142). Part 3. Tradition confronts the new employment: women, work, and family (143) -- Always working , never done: the expansion of the double day / Norene Pupo (144-165)-- The part-time solution: toward entrapment or empowerment? / Ann Duffy (166-188). Part 4. Negotiating the margins: unemployment and training (189). Changes in the patterns of unemployment: the new realities of joblessness / Patrick Burman (190-216) -- Living in the credential gap: responses to underemployment and underqualification / David W. Livingston (217-239) -- Editors' conclusion: The jobs crisis: looking ahead (240-43).

The article reviews the book, "Hard Lessons: The Mine Mill Union in the Canadian Labour Movement," edited by Mercedes Steedman, Peter Suschnigg and Dieter K. Buse.

The article reviews the book, "White Guys: Studies in Post-Modern Domination and Difference," by Fred Pfeil.

The article reviews the book, "The Invention of White Race: Racial Oppression and Social Control," Volume 1, by Theodore W. Allen.

The article reviews the book, "Roaring Days: Rossland's Mines and the History of British Columbia," by Jeremy Mouat.

The article reviews the book, "Highwire Act: Power, Pragmatism, and the Harcourt Legacy," by Daniel Gawthrop.

Domestic service was an institution of considerable importance for working-class women and middle-class householders in Canada between 1880 and 1914. Service was instrumental in shaping class relations, in large part because it brought the working class directly into the bourgeois home. It was thus an arena where bourgeois and working-class versions of respectability met, and sometimes clashed. Service was essential to the elaboration of a respectable bourgeois lifestyle, and was considered a satiable occupation for working women, yet the peculiar restrictions of the occupation ensured that domestics would often find the trappings of respectability difficult to maintain. Domestics walked a fine line between 'respectability' and 'deviance'; indeed, in the eyes of many, service was an institution that straddled this line.

The article reviews the book, "Wives and Mothers, Schoolmistresses and Scullery Maids: Working Women in Upper Canada, 1790-1840," by Elizabeth Jane Errington.