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The need to reexamine academic orthodoxy in the light of recent feminist scholarship is particularly pressing in the case of industrial relations. A study focuses on industrial relations as conceptualized and practiced by academics in Canadian business schools where systems theory remains the predominant analytical paradigm. The purpose of the study is to show that industrial relations so constructed is profoundly gender-biased. As a discipline, industrial relations is growing out of touch, not only with the changing realities of the workplace, but also with academic discourse in the social sciences. While some attention is paid to the so-called women's issues - maternity leave, sexual harassment policies, pay equity, and other issues - attention is limited. What is missing from industrial relations as presently defined and practiced is an analysis of gender relations as power relations.
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The article reviews the book, "Success While Others Fail: Social Movement Unionism and the Public Workplace," by Paul Johnston.
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This paper investigates the role of women's issues in the decision to join unions by examining a successful organizing drive in a predominantly female workplace. The main focus of the discussion is the identification of women's issues where they were not immediately apparent to workers and union representatives. The theoretical question raised by this case study is the extent to which women workers' relationship to unions is similar to or different from men workers'. Contemporary industrial relations discourse tends to emphasize the similarities between women and men, without taking into account well-documented differences in women's paid and unpaid work and union experiences. From a feminist perspective, the conclusion that gender is unimportant in organizing campaigns often rests on an inadequate analysis of what constitutes women's workplace/union issues.
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The article reviews the book, "United Apart: Gender and the Rise of Craft Unionism," by Ileen A. DeVault.
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It is argued that labor's rights have been effectively the rights of working-class men because only men were constructed as family breadwinners for whom collective bargaining was both necessary and legitimate. Working-class women, by contrast, were defined as non-working wives and mothers, so had no claim to steady jobs at good wages or to union representation in their own right. Secondly, PC 1003 accorded rights to men (but not women) inasmuch as it codified an industrial model of workers' rights. Thirdly, PC 1003 supported and encouraged the growth of a male model of collective bargaining. The implications of a gendered analysis of PC 1003 for the study of industrial relations are discussed.
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Laboring for Rights: Unions and Sexual Diversity Across Nations, edited by Gerald Hunt, is reviewed.
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In this paper I challenge the prevailing theoretical framework [of study in industrial relations] that marginalizes women by examining how unpaid work on and off the job is and is not analyzed in the literature and by demonstrating its importance to issues as central to the discipline as wages, job allocation, and industrial conflict. In the section entitled, "Unpaid Work on the Job," I argue that the concept of the "effort bargain"— how unpaid work is currently studied in industrial relations — obscures pay discrimination against women because it is more likely to implicitly recognize as work the tasks associated with jobs traditionally performed by men than many of the tasks associated with jobs performed by women. Under the heading, "Unpaid Work in the Household," I argue that unpaid work in the home determines, in part, how paid work is allocated and, in particular, how the social construction of women as non-workers/wives and mothers by researchers naturalizes women's place in the secondary labour market and reifies men's access to "breadwinner jobs." Finally, I conclude by arguing that incorporating unpaid work into the study of industrial relations is necessary to move women from the margins to the centre of discourse. --From author's introduction
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The author addresses the questions of why industry-wide bargaining was developed in the Canadian meat-packing industry and why it suddenly collapsed.
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This paper examines how the recent amendment to the Labour Relations Actestablishing compulsory first contract arbitration in Ontario fits within the existing legal framework.
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This article elaborates the concept of knowledge activism as a way of understanding effective health and safety representation within the current Ontario legal regime of internal responsibility. Based on interviews with unionized health and safety representatives in the auto industry, we suggest that knowledge activism is a form of political activism by worker health and safety representatives that is organized around the strategic collection and tactical use of technical, scientific and legal knowledge. We argue that knowledge activism is more effective with reference to larger scale changes in work processes, workplace organization and technologies, and with reference to occupational health issues. Knowledge activism is conceptualized as an effective adaptation to a legislative regime which involves worker representatives in decisions without providing substantive power or proactive enforcement support.