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The article reviews the book, "L'Histoire de la FTQ. Des tout débuts jusqu'en 1965," by Émile Boudreau and Léo Roback.

Cette étude vérifie la perception que les Canadiens se font du syndicalisme depuis la Deuxième Guerre mondiale grâce à l'analyse d'un très grand nombre de sondages effectués par plusieurs firmes. Les sondages de Gallup Canada se sont révélés particulièrement riches d'informations car cette firme interroge les Canadiens depuis 1941 et répète certaines questions depuis plusieurs décennies. Cette continuité permet de retrouver les grandes tendances de l'opinion publique au Canada.

Patriarchal domination is now, correctly, viewed as a major feature of social organization in pre-capitalist and non-capitalist societies. In capitalist market societies, it has been related to the operant division of labour, the separation of domestic from waged work and the implications that this has for both spheres of activity. Various theoretical approaches have been developed to account for structured gender inequality in the face of supposed labour market impartiality. By examining an explicit case of gender bias, the use of minimum wage laws to regulate the conditions of women workers, the paper offers an evaluation of these approaches, while at the same time bringing the state and relevant political issues back into the analysis of gender.

The history of labour at the Trenton Steel Works of the Nova Scotia Steel and Coal Company [Scotia] is explored in the context of dependent development from circa 1900 to 1943. The local owners and managers of Scotia sought profits by aligning themselves with foreign capital and by manufacturing semi-manufactured steel and staples for export. The investment outlook was short-term, few attempts were made to diversity production, and the steel facilities were left to deteriorate already before the contraction of regional and national markets in the 1920s. Before the post-World War I depression, workers at Scotia responded to corporate industrial strategy by resorting to industrial unionism, whose success was aided by a scarcity of labour and the possibility of moving away or moving into small commodity or subsistence production locally. With the post-World War I depression, capital and the state consolidated the Trenton steel works as a technologically obsolescent plant dependent on low-wage, seasonal and part-time labour, The corporate parents, in light of state concessions and favour, could not, however, close the Trenton Works for political reasons. Labour and community interests lobbied hard for industry retention and settled into a work pattern which was aimed at coping with industrial neglect and disinvestment. The combination of technological obsolescence, low-wage and seasonal labour was threatened with the formation of a union at the steel works in 1937 and the support of the federal state during the war in levelling wages of Scotia workers with steel workers elsewhere. The labour scarcity during the war provided the political precondition for closure of the rolling mills and nut and bolt plant, the wage increases awarded by the Federal Labour Board served as an excuse while the cause, a conscious corporate strategy of industrial neglect and winding down, was left unchallenged.

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

The article reviews the books, "Does Training Work for Displaced Workers? A Survey of Existing Evidence," by Duane E. Leigh and "Back to Work: Testing Reemployment Services for Displaced Workers," by Howard S. Bloom.

Pays tribute to the life and work of Gérard Dion.

The article reviews the book, "Violence in the Model City: The Cavanaugh Administration, Race Relations and the Detroit Riot of 1967," by Sidney Fine.

The article reviews the book, "Strikers And Subsidies: The Influence Of Government Transfer Programs On Strike Activity," by Robert Hutchens, David Lipsky, and Robert Stern.

The article reviews and comments on the book, "Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics: Opposition and Reform in Poland Since 1968," by David Ost.

The article reviews the book, "The Agony of Modernization: Labor and Industrialization in Spain," by Benjamin Martin.

L'objet de cette étude est de mettre en lumière l'évolution historique des interventions du gouvernement du Québec dans le domaine de la main-d'oeuvre à partir du début du XXe siècle. La démarche historique permet d'une part de dégager la rationalité économique de ces interventions et d'autre part d'offrir des explications à l'avortement des multiples tentatives du gouvernement du Québec de se doter d'une politique active du marché du travail.

The article reviews the book, "Change in Industrial Relations: The Organization and Environment," by P.B. Beaumont.

Evidence on the relationship between technical innovation and nonmanual skills and work organization in the UK is drawn from 5 case studies covering a range of production and service environments and workplace size. In each case study, 3 months of intensive research was conducted between April 1983 and November 1986. Return visits were made 2 years after the detailed research to assess changes in the workplace. In none of the cases could the introduction of new technologies simply equate technical innovation with deskilling and enhanced managerial control. There was a tendency for overall skill polarization to occur rather than straightforward deskilling. It was found that technological change has been more favorable for technical than for clerical occupational groups. In telecommunications and metals research, the introduction of new technology led to a concentration of skills for technical workers that were primarily computer-related. The most important change in maintenance technicians' work was in the way that faults were diagnosed and repaired.

The article reviews the book, "Le travail en mutation," edited by Colette Bernier, with the collaboration of Catherine Teiger.

The article reviews the book, "The Practice Of Labour Relations," 3rd edition, by David A. and Paul Bergman.

[The] absence of mainstream inquiry in Canada [into teacher union history] has been lamented by some historians of education and ignored by others, while labour historians have not felt impelled to include teacher union histories in their surveys or discussions on the Canadian labour movement. Yet if the historiography of teacher unionism is uninspiring, the history of teacherunions in Canada, despite their recent origins (c. 1920), is rich and vibrant, and distinctive in character compared with their counterparts in the United States or the British Commonwealth of Nations. This essay hopes to generate a new historical interest in this fascinating, and relevant, field of inquiry, by attempting to fulfil two tasks. The first is to provide a critical discussion of what has already been written on Canadian teachers' unions; this discussion will have the additional dimension of an international perspective. The second task of the essay is to suggest by insight and example that what has been written over the past fifty years, whatever its merits, provides a foundation for renewed effort and fresh enterprise. ...From introduction

Examines trade unionism and working class politics in Great Britain since the Second World War with implications for Canada. Discusses national developments and local workplace experience with emphasis on the Labour government of Harold Wilson in the period after the Donovan Commission of 1968, that saw openness to pluralist approaches to industrial relations. Explores union and class consciousness, bureaucratization, sectionalism, and the current state of unions in the aftermath of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government. Also considers the position of white collar workers, women, and black workers. Concludes that the British and Canadian labour movements are in a similar situation, with both remaining in a defensive, reactive mode unless there is a much broader movement toward syndicalist/workers' control of production and services.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, racism, in the form of white supremacy, shaped relations between whites and Chinese British Columbians. In resisting and accommodating to white supremacy, the Chinese were active participants, along with the members of the dominant society, in shaping these relations. White supremacy was consequently a dynamic system, one whose many parts were continually in flux, and whose central constructs—notions of "race" and British Columbia as "a White Man's province"—were largely political in nature. The thesis argues that white supremacy, as both ideology and organization, was deeply imbedded in British Columbia society. Exclusion based on "race" was incorporated into government institutions as they were remade at Confederation in an effort to enhance the power of white male property-owners. By the early twentieth century, ideological constructs of "the Chinaman" and "the Oriental" were used as foils in the creation of identities as "whites" and as "Canadians." The official public school curriculum transmitted these notions, while schools themselves organized supremacy in practice by imposing racial segregation on many Chinese students. In reaction, the Chinese created their own institutions and ideologies. While these institutions often had continuities with the culture of South China, the place of origin of most B.C. Chinese, they were primarily adaptations to the conditions of British Columbia, including the realities of racism. Chinese language schools played an especially important role in helping to create a Chinese merchant public separate from the dominant society. This public was at once the consequence of exclusion and the greatest community resource in resisting white supremacy. The study concludes by questioning the workability of contemporary anti-racist strategies which treat racism as a marginal phenomenon, or as merely a set of mistaken ideas. Instead, it suggests that such strategies must recognize that racism is one of the major structures of Canadian society.