Search

This article reviews the book, "Workplace Democraticization: Its Internal Dynamics," by Paul Bernstein.

This article reviews the book, "Parliament vs. People," by Philip Resnick.

Presents work poetry including "Carlo's First Born," "White Wall," "Unlike Napoleon," "First Job," and "Mid-Season Strike."

Labour unrest and demands for social reform during and immediately after World War I prompted most provincial governments in Canada to enact limited minimum wage statutes, aplicable only to female wage-earners in specified industries. Minimum wage boards issued separate wage orders for each industry, after consultation with representative employers and employees. The standard for the minimum wage was decent subsistence for a single woman with no dependants and no need to save for sickness, layoffs, or old age. The Ontario Minimum Wage Board, established in 1920, insisted that if a minimum wage was a real minimum, employers did not object to paying it, or to cooperating with the board. To insure employer cooperation, the board provided employers with ample opportunity to present their views, but generally accepted employers' views over those of labour. Minimum wage statutes were justified not on the basis of a wage-earner's right to a fair wage, but on women's special needs as the mothers of the future generation; the Ontario Minimum Wage Board expressed a similar attitude towards women in its administration of the Ontario Act.

British Columbia's economy is heavily reliant on electrical processes, yet little is known of the electrical workers.... A major purpose of this thesis is to analyze the electrical workers through a sixty-year history of an important and often controversial union: Local 213 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). ...Three themes characterize the history of Local 213: the first is the union's struggle for better wages and better working conditions against recalcitrant employers. The second is the relationship between Local 213 and different varieties fo socialism in British Columbia. Electrical workers generally supported cautious social democratic practices, but there have been important exceptions. The third theme is the intervention of outside forces, in particular the international office of IBEW, whenever the electrical workers appeared to support either radical leaders or radical proposals.... From author's abstract. Contents: The structure of the electrical industry in British Columbia to 1961 -- Boomers, grunts and narrowbacks: the radical tradition, 1901-1919 -- The defeat of radicalism, 1919-1922 -- The Morrison years, 1922-1939 -- Radicalism renewed, 1939-1953 -- Unholy alliance, 1953-1955 -- Towards militancy at Lenkurt. Bibliography (pages 280-89).

Although the provincial Workmen's Association, founded in Springhill, Nova Scotia, in 1879, represented the greatest achievement of maritime workers in the nineteenth century, historians, guided by the records and recollections left by Robert Drummond and the union's demise in the massive strikes of 1909-11, have generally considered it as a highly conservative union, wedded to a conciliatory approach to management and reluctant to use the strike weapon. This article suggests, in contrast, that the PWA was never personified by Drummond and that the union was a remarkably decentralized body. Until 1885 it was a loose federation of craft lodges; from 1886 to 1890 it was a slightly more unified quasi-independent political and industrial movement; and from 1891 to 1897 it was a movement split between highly militant mainland lodges and more accommodating lodges in Cape Breton. This diversity within the union not only meant that highly militant and relatively quiescent lodges coexisted within it, but that there were equally striking ideological tensions, within both the "official philosophy" of the union as enunciated by Drummond, and within the "vernacular philosophy" of the rank and file. An overemphasis on Drummond's vision of "class harmony" has led historians to slight his zeal for radical democratic change and working-class independence; a corresponding preoccupation with the sources composed by Drummond — virtually all the sources usually cited in studies of the union — has obscured the less articulate, less developed, and far more important "vernacular" outlook of the rank-and-file miners, who fought tenaciously and even violently for working-class independence. Moreover, static appraisals of these tendencies at both the upper and lower levels of the union miss crucial shifts within them over time: a shift from a heavily-qualified paternalism to an explicitly political critique of industrial and political autocracy in the mid-1880s, and a shift to a drastic polarization between progressive militants and Liberal Party traditionalists in the mid-1890s. Except for the period 1895-7, in which the leadership was coopted by the Liberal Party, the PWA on both its upper and lower levels was serious about its pursuit of working-class political independence, and its lobbying achieved a record of political and social reforms unparalleled in nineteenth-century Canada. As a participant in some of Canada's largest nineteenth-century labour wars, and as an important force for the winning of working-class political rights, the PWA deserves to be remembered as one of the most successful and militant social movements in the maritime provinces.

...This article explores the mentality of the coal miners in the two distinct coalfields of Cumberland county from 1873 to 1927, the period in which they flourished within industrial capitalism. ...[It] does not attempt a full description of the intricate social history of these coalfields, nor to analyze their remarkable legacies of labour activism and workers' control. It focuses, instead, on the coal miners' underlying outlook. It seeks first to establish the basic structures of coal mining and suggest the strategic implications of these structures for coal miners. It then documents the emergence of a distinctive mining outlook, first by looking at the theme of the collective traditions of pit boys, and then by analyzing the outlook of inde­pendence of the colliers. It finally explores the ramifications of this mining out­look for society, taking as its theme the impact of pit deaths on the community. Its focus is on the "elementary forms of mining life", and this emphasis may allow us to come away from the study of one small group of coal miners with new questions for regional coal-mining history. --From author's introduction

This article reviews the book, "Dockers and Detectives: Popular Reading; Popular Writing," by Ken Worpole.

This article reviews the book, "Beatrice and Sidney Webb: Fabian Socialists," by Lisanne Radice.

This article reviews the book, "The Story of an African Working Class: Ghanaian Miners' Struggles. 1870-1980," by Jeff Crisp.

Même si on peut soutenir que la technologie informatique, à long terme, incitera les organisations productrices de biens et de services à adopter des formules de gestion plus souples et plus décentralisées, certains facteurs individuels, organisationnels et culturels inhibent, à court terme, ces tendances.

Le rationnel et le raisonnable : deux necessites distinctes et conjugees en droit.

This article reviews the book, "'Building the Co-operative Commonwealth': Essays on the Democratic Socialist Tradition in Canada," edited by J. William Brennan.

This article reviews the book, "Union and Politics in Washington State, 1885-1935," by Jonathan Dembo.

Contents: Introduction -- The Congés de traite as a method to control the fur trade, 1681-1715 -- The institutionalization of the Congés, 1715-1768 -- The trade licences: a new instrument to control the fur trade, 1760-1790 -- The notorial contracts and private contracts, 1680-1821 -- A conservative estimate of the labour force -- Conclusion. Appendix: The diet of the Engagé.

This article reviews the book, "British Workers and the Independent Labour Party, 1888-1906," by David Howell.

This article reviews the book, "Rebuilding From Within: Remedies for Canada's Ailing Economy," by Abraham Rotstein.

This article reviews the book, "A Working Majority: What Women Must Do for Pay," by Pat Armstrong and Hugh Armstrong.