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This is the first comprehensive work in the field of Canadian women's legal history. Author Constance Backhouse, an internationally-recognized authority on Canadian women's legal history, has compiled here the most important of her decade's worth of research. This highly-readable book highlights the status of women through in-depth case profiles of individual women who were swept up into the 19th century legal process as litigants, accused criminals and witnesses. The cases span the country, providing information about all the common law provinces as well as Quebec. --Publisher's description(Osgoode Society)

A Word to Say is a penetrating account of how inshore fishermen, most of them Acadian, came together to take control of their industry and their livelihood. Threatened with the loss of their way of life, they fought long and hard to be heard by governments and companies alike. In the process, they saw their union spread from the east coast of New Brunswick to the shores of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. As the only union in the country made up strictly of inshore fishermen, the MFU is unique. Although it has not altered the social fabric of the region, it has played a major role in the momentous changes in the fishery since the mid-1970s. In telling the story, Sue Calhoun gives fishermen more than a word to say. She offers clear insights into the lives of inshore fishermen, so often ignored and taken for granted. Her characters aren't rich. They aren't powerful. Many aren't educated. They are ordinary people who have done extraordinary things. --Publisher's description

Le Québec compte plus de un million deux cent mille syndiqués et, chaque année, des milliers de nouvelles demandes d'accréditation sont accordées. Le syndicalisme, en dépit des crises qui l'ont secoué, reste donc un important partenaire social et économique. Dans cet ouvrage, Bernard Dionne trace l'histoire du mouvement syndical au Québec depuis le XIXe siècle. Il brosse le portrait du syndicalisme québécois, de son cadre légal, de ses effectifs et de ses structures, en marquant bien ce qui fait sa spécificité. Il explique ensuite les défis qui se posent aujourd'hui au syndicalisme québécois, qu'ils touchent des questions économiques - comme le libre-échange -, sociales - comme la place des jeunes et l'équité salariale des femmes - ou stratégiques - comme la négociation collective dans le secteur public. --Description de l'éditeur

[This book] is the story of the Canadian men and women who, during the period from 1865 to 1924, struggled against the corruption of political patronage, abysmal working conditions and poverty-level salaries in the federal civil service. This is an account of the history of some of the organizations formed to overcome these adverse conditions, and the story of the dedicated men and women who guided them, often at great personal risk. The book documents their few victories and many defeats, and the significant impact that their dogged perseverance has had on the Canadian federal service of today. --Publisher's description

Papers presented at the Pay Equity: Theory and Practice Conference organized through York University's Centre for Public Law and Public Policy, May 14-15, 1990.

James Shaver Woodsworth (1874-1942) stands as one of the half-dozen most important national political figures in twentieth-century Canadian history. Allen Mills acknowledges his outstanding achievements while providing a critical account of the Woodsworth legacy and revising the received opinion of him as a man of unbending conviction and ever-coherent principle. A product of western Canada's pioneer society and a stern Methodist household, Woodsworth grew up to make his way into social service and politcal action. A member of parliament for over twenty years, he rejected the traditional forms of political activity, seeking a new politics and a new political party. The latter turned out to be the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation founded in 1932. Its first leader was Woodsworth himself. In a crucial period between the World Wars, Woodsworth helped define the character of the modern Canadian, non-Marxist Left and of many of Canada's important economic and social institutions. Among them are the welfare state, the Bank of Canada, and Canada's internationalist role in the contemporary world.--Publisher's description.

James Naylor traces the transformation of class relations in the industrial cities of southern Ontario, examining the character of the regional labour movement, the nature of employer and state response, and the reasons for the failure of labour's "new democracy." --Publisher's description. Inside front-cover summary: The period during and after the First World War was marked by tremendous labour unrest, not only in Winnipeg where the general strike of 1919 was a watershed, but across the country. James Naylor focuses on southern Ontario, in the industrial heartland of Canada, as a key to understanding the character of this phase of labour history. In the 1919 provincial election, the Independent Labor Party of Ontario swept most of the province's industrial constituencies outside Toronto and formed a coalition government with the organized farmer. Strike activity soared to unprecedented levels. The Toronto Trades Council organized a general strike, and new forms of industrial unionism began to emerge. If these events lacked some of the drama of those in the West, they reflect both an increasingly articulate working-class view of democracy and labour's determination not to be overlooked in the postwar reconstruction. Naylor examines a number of issues: the nature of working-class views of democracy and the state; the role of women in these movements; the logic participation in the electoral process; the dynamic between 'industrial' and 'political' activity in the context of a liberal-democratic system. He also considers the responses of employers and government with a view to undertanding the 'negotiated' character of postwar reconstruction in the context of social classes.

Presents a history of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 500.

Intended to be of interest to students of sociology, ethnic studies and history, this book assesses the political economy of migration. Labour shortages, the racialization of Caribbean migrant farm labour and alternatives to labour imports are discussed. --Publisher's description

Allen was raised in a Christian family, being the son of a United Church minister, and this no doubt influenced his academic interests, which took him to Duke University where he completed his doctoral studies. Out of this came his first major work, and one which still inspires scholars of Canadian socialism and Christianity to this day: The Social Passion: Religion and Social Reform in Canada, 1914-28. Published in 1971, it served as a defining work for how scholars understood the figures, events, motivations, ideologies, and theologies which shaped the social gospel movement in Canada. While of an age that many might deem ‘dated,’ this book was deeply influential on my own understanding of the Christian left in this country, which existed in rudimentary form given my interest in key CCF figures like J.S. Woodsworth and Tommy Douglas, but wasn’t developed in a meaningful way until graduate school. In Allen’s writing, I saw figures and movements that—however imperfectly—melded the ideas of secular social justice with a conviction that Christ was sent to earth not only to teach us about the afterlife, but about how to build a New Jerusalem in the here and now. --From "Remembering Richard Allen" by Christo Aivalis [blog posting, 2019-03-25]

The creation of the NDP out of the CCF in 1961 was intended to strengthen Canada's left-wing political party through a closer alliance with organized labour. This strength has failed to materialize. In Political Choices and Electoral Consequences, Keith Archer reveals why.The most important link between labour and the NDP is the direct party affiliation of union locals. While this sort of affiliation had existed with the CCF, the Canadian Labour Congress showed a greater commitment to encouraging union locals to affiliate with the NDP. Although, as Archer discusses in both theoretical and empirical terms, individuals who belong to union locals formally linked to the NDP are more likely to vote for that party than are other people with similar socio-demographic characteristics, this has had little positive effect on the NDP's fortunes. Archer reveals that although, in principle, each union local may favour high rates of affiliation, it is often not in a local's self-interest to affiliate. Archer suggests that the main reason for such a disappointing record of affiliation is structural rather than ideological or cultural. He compares the Canadian situation to that in Britain, where the Labour Party rules governing affiliation have supported high rates of affiliation. The rules of the NDP, Archer goes on to show, are not significantly different from those that were developed between labour and the CCF. However, the CCF was not a labour party as such but rather an amalgam of farmers, labourers, and members of constituency associations. Labour's role has consequently remained that of a junior partner with the constituency groups. Under these circumstances, Archer argues, one would expect rates of affiliation to remain low. --Publisher's description

Why was Winnipeg the scene of the longest and most complete general strike in North American history? Bercuson answers this question by examining the development of union labour and the impact of depression and war in the two decades preceding the strike. --Publisher's description

Have Mulroney, Reagan and Thatcher beaten labour into the ground? Are unions a spent force? Do ordinary people in Canada, the United States and Great Britain truly believe in the so-called free market? How are the Swedish social democrats handling challenges to their consensus society? Is there indeed a neo-conservative hegemony for the nineteen-nineties? These are some of the questions which the authors of this sixth Socialist Studies Annual try to answer. They present case studies from various countries, using the social and political insights of Gramsci and other progressive thinkers. --Publisher's description

"The heroic and principled struggle of the Industrial Workers of the World to become the organization representing the working class in its contest with capital has been celebrated in story and song for most of this century. That they eventually lost this struggle is well known; less well understood is why. It is this why that concerns Mark Leier in Where the Fraser River Flows. In recounting the IWW's glory days in British Columbia, particularly the famous Free Speech Fights of 1909 and 1912, Leier shows that they were pitted against not just the bosses and government, but also against conservative elements within labour and the left. To ask what happened to the IWW, says Leier, is to ask a larger question-why is there no socialism?"--Page 4 of cover

July 27, 1918. Heavy heat burned down on the small mining town of Cumberland on Vancouver Island. In the nearby wildernes of Comox Lake, a special police constable broke through the bush to come shockingly face to face with a stranger. A slight, red-haired man stood holding a rifle. This was the fugitive they sought, considered subversive and dangerous. With no time to aim, the constable shot as he raised his own weapon. This is the "official" version of the events of that day. The life of Albert "Ginger" Goodwin, one of British Columbia's most colourful figures, had come to a controversial end. [This book] is the story of a remarkable man, and a fascinating period in BC history. Arriving on Vancouver Island in 1910, Ginger Goodwin joined hundreds of others slaving in the hellholes of the Cumberland Mines. There he found blacklung, explosions, and deadly vapours; hazards which killed hundreds of miners in a short century of coal mining. What he saw made him one of the most effective labour leaders the province has ever seen, and led ultimately to his untimely end. Susan Mayse combines the skills of the historian and novelist in this gripping biography. From fragments of recorded history, official documents, and exhaustive interviews with the coal miners who knew Cumberland and knew Ginger Goodwin, she has pieced together an extraordinary tale. --Publisher's desscription

"Critical theory is no substitute for historical materialism; language is not life." With this statement, Bryan Palmer enters the debate that is now transforming and disrupting a number of academic disciplines, including political science, women’s studies, and history. Focusing on the ways in which literary or critical theory is being promoted within the field of social history, he argues forcefully that the current reliance on poststructuralism—with its reification of discourse and avoidance of the structures of oppression and struggles of resistance—obscures the origins, meanings, and consequences of historical events and processes. Palmer is concerned with the emergence of "language" as a central focus of intellectual work in the twentieth century. He locates the implosion of theory that moved structuralism in the direction of poststructuralism and deconstruction in what he calls the descent into discourse. Few historians who champion poststructuralist thought, according to Palmer, appreciate historical materialism’s capacity to address discourse meaningfully. Nor do many of the advocates of language within the field of social history have an adequate grounding in the theoretical making of the project they champion so ardently. Palmer roots his polemical challenge in an effort to "introduce historians more fully to the theoretical writing that many are alluding to and drawing from rather cavalierly." Acknowledging that critical theory can contribute to an understanding of some aspects of the past, Palmer nevertheless argues for the centrality of materialism to the project of history. In specific discussions of how critical theory is constructing histories of politics, class, and gender, he traces the development of the descent into discourse within social history, mapping the limitations of recent revisionist texts. Much of this writing, he contends, is undertheorized and represents a problematic retreat from prior histories that attempted to address such material forces as economic structures, political power, and class struggle. Descent into Discourse counters current intellectual fashion with an eloquent argument for the necessity to analyze and appreciate lived experience and the structures of subordination and power in any quest for historical meaning.--Publisher's description

This is a story of two Ontario towns, Hanover and Paris, that grew in many parallel ways. They were about the same size, and both were primarily one-industry towns. But Hanover was a furniture-manufacturing centre; most of its workers were men, drawn from a community of ethnic German artisans and agriculturalists. In Paris the biggest employer was the textile industry; most of its wage earners were women, assisted in emigration from England by their Canadian employer. Joy Parr considers the impacy of these fundamental differences from a feminist perspective in her study of the towns' industrial, domestic, and community life. She combines interviews of women and men of the towns with analyses of a wide range of documents: records of the firms from which their families worked, newspapers, tax records, paintings, photographs, and government documents. Two surprising and contrasting narratives emerge. The effects of gender identities upon both women's and men's workplace experience and of economic roles upon familial relationships are starkly apparent. Extending through seventy crucial years, these closely textured case studies challenge conventional views about the distinctiveness of gender and class roles. They reconfigure the social and economic change accompanying the rise of industry. They insistently transcend the reflexive dichtomies drawn between womena dn men, public and privae, wage and non-wage work. They investigate industrial structure, technological change, domesticity, militance, and perceptions of personal power and worth, simultaneously as products of gender and class identities, recast through community sensibilities. --Publisher's description

A book about succeeding because you are Canadian - not in spite of it. About doing all those things we're not supposed to be very good at. Things like outmaneuvering monster corporations; like standing up to the Americans; like putting regional differences aside; like blowing the whistle on polluters; like rising above linguistic differrences. But, most of all, it's about cracking the Canadian formula--about learning how to win on our own terms, in our own time, in our own way. No fuss. No muss. Cracking the Canadian Formula is not just the story of Canadians building a unique union. The story of how we succeed in Canada when we have the courage to try it our own way. That makes it the story of far. It also makes it a story that might just hold the secret of Canadian yet to come." -- Publisher's description. "This is the encyclopedia of what unions can do to help build a made-in-Canada movement for personal, social and economic independence." -- Mel Hurtig.

The central argument of this book is that getting people to work and getting them to stay there is a significant political achievement in its own right. ...[W]e may assume that in any social situation in which labour is experienced as a coercive aspect of daily life, work, or more accurately obtaining work effort, becomes problematical. Often it entails state intervention in a well-developed system of industrial relations that includes an important element of public policy. This book is a study of that element in Canadian industrial relations. Proceeding from this starting point, two central questions are posed throughout the remainder of this text: 1) What does the state do when it practices industrial relations; and 2) What are the implications of such practices on work and those groups that are brought together in labouring processes? --From introduction