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The article reviews the book, "Cooking in Other Women's Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, 1865-1960," by Rebecca Sharpless.

Detailed examination from a labour militancy perspective of work stoppages in Canada from 1960 to 2004. Statistical data is enhanced with qualitative measures (newspaper accounts) of two strikes: the 8-month Miki Skools strike in the 1980s, and the 3-month Puretex strike of women garment workers in the 1970s.

Drawing on nurses’ strikes in many countries, this paper explores nurse militancy with reference to professionalism and the commitment to service; patriarchal practices and gendered subordination; and proletarianization and the confrontation with healthcare restructuring. These deeply entangled trajectories have had a significant impact on the work, consciousness and militancy of nurses and have shaped occupation-specific forms of resistance. They have produced a pattern of overlapping solidarities – occupational solidarity, gendered alliances and coalitions around healthcare restructuring – which have supported, indeed promoted, militancy among nurses, despite the multiple forces arrayed against them. The professional commitments of nurses to the provision of care have confronted healthcare restructuring, nursing shortages, intensification of work, precarious employment and gendered hierarchies with a militant discourse around the public interest, and a reconstitution and reclamation of ‘caring’, what I call the politicisation of caring. In fact, nurses’ dedication to caring work in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries may encourage rather than dissuade them from going on strike. This paper uses a trans-disciplinary methodology, qualitative material in the form of strike narratives constructed from newspaper archives, and references to the popular and scholarly literature on nursing militancy.

The article reviews the book, "La dispersion au travail," by Caroline Datchary.

Combining contemporary articles with historical documents, this engaging reader examines the rich history of Canada's Aboriginal peoples. The 30 articles - half of which are original to this volume - explore a diverse range of topics, including spirituality, colonialism, self-identity, federal policy, residential schools, labour, and women's rights. With in-depth coverage of events and processes from the earliest times through to the modern day, [the reader] offers students a new appreciation for the long and complex history of Canada's First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples. --Publisher's description

La France se caractérise aujourd’hui par une forte proportion de salariés ayant des contraintes familiales et par un nombre élevé d’entreprises qui flexibilisent la durée et les horaires de travail : comment la diffusion de ces nouvelles contraintes temporelles affectent-elles les femmes, et plus particulièrement les mères ? Une typologie des conditions temporelles d’emploi des salariés français intégrant la durée du travail, la souplesse horaire dont bénéficie le salarié et la « localisation » de son temps de travail, construite à partir de l’enquête « Familles et employeurs » (Ined-Insee, 2004-2005), fait apparaître une surreprésentation des femmes dans les emplois les plus souples, mais aussi les plus contraignants temporellement, alors que l’effet de la présence d’enfant semble assez mineur.Trois hypothèses sont testées pour expliquer les conditions temporelles d’emploi : la préférence des salariés pour des horaires de travail commodes, les caractéristiques productives des emplois et le rapport de force salarié-employeur. Les résultats montrent que le fait d’avoir de jeunes enfants n’est pas corrélé aux conditions temporelles d’emploi. Être une femme accroît la probabilité d’avoir des horaires hyper-souples (plutôt que standards contraints) et diminue la probabilité d’avoir des horaires longs souples et non standards contraints. L’hypothèse d’une sélection en fonction des préférences n’est pas confirmée par l’analyse alors que les exigences productives des emplois et des employeurs ainsi que le pouvoir de négociation des salariés exercent des effets significatifs et expliquent la surreprésentation des femmes dans les horaires fragmentés contraints.

Analyzes the effects of the off-shore oil boom of the late 1990s in Newfoundland and Labrador, that has exacerbated the urban-rural divide. Concludes that despite the rhetoric of transformation, the provincial economy has not basically changed.

In 1973 the Supreme Court of Canada issued a ruling in Murdoch v Murdoch, denying Irene “Ginger” Murdoch an interest in the cattle ranch that she and her husband, James Alexander “Alex” Murdoch, had built together over many years. Irene performed extensive manual labour on the farm, including driving, branding, vaccinating and de-horning cattle, haying, raking, and mowing. She often did this work alone due to long, off-ranch, work-related absences by Alex. When their marriage began to break down, Irene sought to receive her ownership interest in the ranch property. However, the certificate of title to the property showed that the land belonged solely to Alex Murdoch. For Irene to receive an interest in the property it would be necessary for a court to declare that a portion of the title to the ranch was held by Alex Murdoch in trust for his wife. The principal basis for finding such a trust, her lawyer argued, was her contribution through labour to the ranch operations. That argument was rejected at trial and ultimately also by the Supreme Court of Canada, which held that under existing Canadian law no property claim was available to Irene Murdoch in the circumstances of her case. --Introduction

The article reviews the book, "Strike! The Radical Insurrections of Ellen Dawson," by David Lee McMullen.

Since the onset of the Great Recession, anti-union conservatives have been hammering out an arguably bogus yet politically potent argument: collective bargaining with government workers is unaffordable as their wages, health benefits, and pensions are driving states into deficits. What is going on in Wisconsin and other states ought to be seen for what it is: an attempt to exploit the economic crisis to win an eminently political victory over organized labour and allied Democrats. Even in their weakened state, US unions can mobilize opposition to the anti-government, anti-labour agenda of a Tea Party-shaped Republican Party. It is this capability that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and other conservative Republicans are determined to undermine by taking away public-sector workers' rights to organize and bargain collectively.

The article reviews and comments on several books including "Solidarity Transformed: Labor Responses to Globalization and Crisis in Latin America," by Mark S. Anner, "The Struggle for Maize: Campesinos, Workers, and Transgenic Corn in the Mexican Country," by Elizabeth Fitting, and "Global Maya: Work and Ideology in Rural Guatemala," by Liliana R. Goldín.

The author, who was the farm workers' legal representative before the Supreme Court in the Fraser case, provides historical background and analyzes the court's decision, including its reliance on judicial deference to the legislature. Concludes that the court was preoccupied with the larger political battle rather than the constitutional merits of the case.

The objective of this report is to examine Aboriginal labour market performance in Canada from 2007 to 2011 using data from the Labour Force Survey, which excludes people living on-reserve or in the territories. This is performed by first providing an overview of how the recession affected the Canadian labour market, followed by a Canada-wide portrait of the Aboriginal labour market in 2011. The Aboriginal labour market performance from 2007 to 2011 is then compared to the rest of the labour force on a national level, before being broken down by province and main heritage group. Using this information, the report then discusses the implications of future labour market developments for Aboriginal Canadians and for the labour market policies and programs that support their labour market performance. [Prepared for the Métis National Council by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards.]

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether there are differences in satisfaction with pay and benefits between Canadian-born and immigrant workers, and if differences exist, to examine the factors associated with immigrants' pay and benefits satisfaction. Using Statistics Canada's 2005 Workplace and Employee Survey (WES), immigrants are examined both as a single group, and in four cohorts based on the year of arrival. Results show significantly lower pay and benefits satisfaction for immigrant cohorts, with the exception of the pre-1965 cohort, compared to Canadian-born workers. Our findings also suggest that existing theories and conceptual models on pay and benefits satisfaction may not be appropriate when examining them as they relate to immigrants.

In a context of changing demographics and workplace transformations, a number of authors are concerned about the issues related to knowledge transmission in organizations. The vast experiential knowledge and diverse skills developed by workers to cope with the numerous situations encountered in the course of their work constitute part of the intangible assets vital to the sustainability of expertise, if not to the survival of the organization itself. Based on three case studies, this article describes the impact of precarious employment, flexible management practices and work intensification on knowledge transmission in real work situations. Possible avenues for research are proposed with a view to ensuring better support for the transmission of experiential knowledge in organizations.

The aim of this study is to conceptualize and empirically validate the "perceived fairness in the context of collective bargaining", which refers to employees' justice perceptions formed during the collective bargaining process. Using confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) and hierarchical regressions, we find support for discriminant, convergent, and predictive validity. Overall, the results show that this concept includes eight distinct dimensions, combining the two sources of (in)justice (employer and union) and the four types of justice perceptions: procedural, distributive, relational (interpersonal) and informational justice. Employees clearly distinguish eight justice dimensions, which have a differential effect on their attitudes: trust in the employer and satisfaction with the union. Adding to the structural model (Leventhal, 1980) and the process control model (Thibaut and Walker, 1975), this study highlights new bases of justice: usefulness and profitability (cost-benefits ratio).

The article reviews the book, "Through Feminist Eyes: Essays on Canadian Women's History," by Joan Sangster.

Discusses whether capital's mobility always gives it bargaining power over labour, how labour markets are socially regulated and embedded in specific places, how workers can sometimes shape the economic system, the consequences of migration for labour, and possibilities of alternative or noncapitalist labour geographies. Under "Defending Place: Worker Actions in Situ" (pp. 172-174), the authors describe the role of the Canadian Auto Workers in shaping economic development and production in southern Ontario in the 1990s-2000s.

Written from a neo-institutionalist standpoint, this paper focuses on the influence of employers' networks on the dissemination of managerial practices through the example of skill management in French companies. Previous studies suggest that employers' organizations can be perceived as social networks that affect Human Resources policies. Studying the development of skill management confirms the idea that this type of management becomes institutionalized under the influence of such networks. We evaluate this influence through the use of a quantitative methodology that shows the correlation between the dissemination of skill management techniques and the number of chief executives belonging to employers' networks in a given company. We use data that were collected from 3,000 companies by the French Ministry of Labour for the Reponse survey. Our approach led us to formulate a brief--but new--account of employers' networks in France. But mostly, it allowed us to measure the impact that belonging to these networks has on the implementation of skill management. Though almost three quarters of all 3,000 companies belong or are related to employers' networks, the reality behind this fact is complex and concerns a limited number of the companies considered. We then show that a connection with an employers' network -- especially with clubs of heads of human resources or with entrepreneurs' organizations -- is one of the reasons why a skill management-oriented human resources policy is adopted. The most influential employers' networks are therefore those that rely on voluntary subscription, the research of legitimacy and the exchange of tools and ideas.

The article reviews the book, "Indigenous Screen Cultures in Canada," edited by Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson and Marian Bredin.