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Dans quelle mesure le Code civil du Québec de 1994 retient-il une nouvelle conception du salarié ? Les treize dispositions (articles 2085 à 2097 C.c.Q.) qui traitent directement du salarié et de l'employeur sont-elles à ce point différentes qu'il nous faudrait reconsidérer les bases juridiques de la relation de travail ? Pour répondre à de telles questions, l'auteur rappelle la conception du salarié retenue au Code civil du Bas-Canada (1866) de manière à mieux saisir l'importance des modifications apportées en 1994. En un deuxième temps, une analyse critique de ces treize dispositions nouvelles lui permet de distinguer ce qui serait vraiment nouveau et aussi ce qui lui apparaît comme de simples mises en forme de l'état du droit au moment de cette codification. En cette période de changements profonds des «modes d'emploi», il importe de saisir la portée réelle ou virtuelle de toutes les modifications effectuées à la définition du salarié, base fondamentale du droit du travail.

An important new critique of Marx's labour theory of value. Using the fishing industry in British Columbia as a case study, Alicja Muszynski explores how Marx's labour theory of value can be applied to a specific industry and the creation of a specific labour force. She reworks Marx's theory in order to incorporate race and gender as principles that not only created a proletarianized labour force but also legitimized the payment of low wages to particular groups. Cheap Wage Labour is the first analysis of shore work and shore-workers in British Columbia from the 1860s to the mid-1980s. Muszynski provides an interpretation of the events that led to the creation of a cheap wage labour force of shoreworkers, shows how they organized within the framework of the fishermen's union (the UFAWU), and explains how as a consequence their numbers steadily shrank until today they represent only a small portion of the labour force. She looks at factors contributing to the destruction of First Nations culture and economy, such as the displacement of aboriginal peoples from key fishing sites and from working in the salmon canneries, and examines the structure and patterns of Chinese and Japanese immigration and the development of the capitalist class and the white working class. Cheap Wage Labour situates the history of B.C. shoreworkers within the much larger and complex historical enterprise of industrialization, patriarchy, colonialism, and imperialism and provides keen insights into the current fisheries crisis on the West Coast. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction: The Problematic -- Marx's Labour Theory of Value: A Critique -- Patriarchy and Capitalism -- The First Nations, Property Rights, and Salmon Canning -- The Dialectics of Cheap Wage Labour -- Organized Resistance: The United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union -- -- State, Labour, and Capital -- Conclusion: Marx's Labour Theory of Value Reconsidered -- Appendix: J.H. Todd & Sons Ltd.

The article reviews the book, "Modern Capitalism: Privatization, Employee Ownership and Industrial Democracy," by Nicholas V. Gianaris.

The article reviews the book "The Limits of Affluence: Welfare in Ontario 1920-1970," by James Struthers.

n the Skin of a Lion is a love story and an irresistible mystery set in the turbulent, muscular new world of Toronto in the 20s and 30s. Michael Ondaatje entwines adventure, romance and history, real and invented, enmeshing us in the lives of the immigrants who built the city and those who dreamed it into being: the politically powerful, the anarchists, bridge builders and tunnellers, a vanished millionaire and his mistress, a rescued nun and a thief who leads a charmed life. This is a haunting tale of passion, privilege and biting physical labour, of men and women moved by compassion and driven by the power of dreams—sometimes even to murder. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Un État réduit? A Down-Sized State?," edited by Robert Bernier and James Iain Gow.

The article reviews the book, "Forging American Communism: The Life of William Z. Foster," by Edward P. Johanningsmeier.

This speculative essay presents a preliminary statement on the paradoxical character of 19th-century class formation in the two white settler dominions of Canada and Australia. Outposts of empire, these social formations were early regarded with disdain, the one a classic mercantilist harvester of fish, fur, and wood, the other a dumping ground for convicts. By the mid-to-late 19th-century, however, Canada and Australia were the richest of colonies. Within their distinctive cultures and political economies, both supposedly dominated by staples, emerged working classes that were simultaneously combatative and accommodated. By the 1880s impressive organizational gains had been registered by labour in both countries, but the achievements of class were conditioned by particular relations of fragmentation, including those of 'race' and gender.

The article reviews the book "Separate Spheres: Women's Worlds in the 19th-Century Maritimes," by Janet Guildford and Suzanne Morton.

The article reviews the book "Radicals of the Worst Sort: Laboring Women in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1860-1912," by Ardis Cameron.

The article reviews the book, "La judiciarisation de l'arbitrage de grief," by Rodrigue Blouin.

The article reviews the book, "100 Public Sector Collective Bargaining in Canada: Beginning of the End or End of the Beginning," by Gene Swimmer and Mark Thompson.

The article reviews the book, "Human Resource Management: A Critical Text," edited by John Storey.

The article reviews the book "By the Sweat of the Brow: Literature and Labor in Antebellum America," by Nicholas K. Bromell.

The article reviews the book "Organized Labor in the Asia Pacific Region: A Comparative Study of Trade Unionism in Nine Countries," edited by Stephen Frenkel.

The article reviews the book, "Union-Management Relations in Canada," 3rd edition, by Morley Gunderson and Allen Ponak.

One of the prevailing concerns about compulsory interest arbitration is its possible effect on genuine collective bargaining. Numerous studies report overall settlement rates (i.e., the proportion of settlements achieve prior to the final impasse procedure) are lower in arbitration systems than in strike-based systems. A study attempts to provide a broader assessment of the effect of compulsory arbitration by calculating settlements rates for different settlement stages. Based on over 28,000 collective agreements negotiated in Ontario between 1982 and 1990, the results show that settlement rates were generally lower under arbitration. At the same time, settlement behavior varied considerably across arbitration systems. These differences are associated with specific institutional and organizational aspects in bargaining.

[This book] is a collection of essays that surveys the burgeoning field of gender history in a Canadian context. Spanning a period from seventeenth century to the 1960s, and covering the regions of Canada, the selections focus on different historical representations and pratices of feminity and masculinity. Historians in the field examine neglected dimensions, and challenge previous interpretations of Canada's past, highlighting the importance of gender relations to our understanding of racism, sexuality, national identity, popular culture, class conflict, government policy, and family in Canadian history. --Publisher's description. As one of the most difficult periods of the twentieth century, the Great Depression left few Canadians untouched. Using more than eighty interviews with women who lived and worked in Toronto in the 1930s, Breadwinning Daughters examines the consequences of these years for women in their homes and workplaces, and in the city's court rooms and dance halls. In this insightful account, Katrina Srigley argues that young women were central to the labour market and family economies of Depression-era Toronto. Oral histories give voice to women from a range of cultural and economic backgrounds, and challenge readers to consider how factors such as race, gender, class, and marital status shaped women's lives and influenced their job options, family arrangements, and leisure activities. Breadwinning Daughters brings to light previously forgotten and unstudied experiences and illustrates how women found various ways to negotiate the burdens and joys of the 1930s. --Summary, Toronto Workers' History Project (email)

The article reviews the book "Learning History America: Schools, Cultures, and Politics," edited by Lloyd Kramer, Donald Reid and William L. Barney.

Les médias font régulièrement référence au taux très élevé de syndicalisation au Québec qui ferait de la province un château fort du syndicalisme en Amérique du Nord. Cette opinion est fondée sur les estimations de la densité syndicale fournie par le ministère du Travail du Québec dans sa publication annuelle Les relations du travail. Une analyse critique des sources et de la méthodologie utilisée par cet organisme montre que ses évaluations depuis le début des années 1980 ont tendance à surestimer fortement la syndicalisation. Les estimés fournis par Statistique Canada (CALURA et enquêtes) permettent une meilleure approximation du taux de syndicalisation qui se situerait à environ 41 % en 1992. Parmi les provinces canadiennes, le Québec est dans le peloton de tête avec la Colombie-Britannique, mais derrière Terre-Neuve. Ce taux relativement élevé le place au dixième rang parmi les pays industrialisés en 1989.