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The article reviews the book, "Echoes from Labor's Wars: The Expanded Edition," by Dawn Fraser,
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In the first half of the twentieth century, many of Toronto's immigrant Jews eked out a living in the needle-trade sweatshops of Spadina Avenue. In response to their expliotation on the shop floor, immigrant Jewish garment workers built one of the most advanced sections of the Canadian and American labour movements. Much more than a collective bargaining agency, Toronto's Jewish labour movement had a distinctly socialist orientation and grew out of a vibrant Jewish working-class culture. Ruth Frager examines the development of this unique movement, its sources of strength, and its limitations, focusing particularly on the complex interplay of class, ethnic, and gender interests and identities in the history of the movement. She examines the relationships between Jewish workers and Jewish manufacturers as well as relations between Jewish and non-Jewish workers and male and female workers in the city's clothing industry. In its prime, Toronto's Jewish labour movement struggled not only to improve hard sweatshop condistions but also to bring about a fundamental socialist transformation. It was an uphill battle. Drastic economic downturns, hard employer offensives, and state repressions all worked against unionists' workplace demands. Ethnic, gender, and ideological divisions weakened the movement and were manipulated by employers and their allies. Drawing on her knowledge of Yiddish, Frager has been able to gain access to original records that shed new light on an important chapter in Canadian ethnic, labour, and women's history. --Publisher's description
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The article reviews the book, "The World of Our Mothers: The Lives of Jewish Immigrant Women," by Sydney Stahl Weinberg.
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This paper develops the concept of interlocking hierarchies [within the working class] by focusing on the Canadian situation. While emphasizing the complex dynamics of worker resistance and adaptation, the paper briefly examines the shortcomings of Canadian working-class historiography. The paper then explores the significance of interlocking hierarchies and sketches the ways in which this analytical framework can be applied, first by emphasizing gender issues and secondly by emphasizing ethnicity in the Canadian context, particularly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (I use the term ‘‘ethnicity’’ broadly in order to avoid using the term ‘‘race’’ as much as possible, so as not to lend credence to the notion that ‘‘race’’ represents a fixed biological category.) In emphasizing ethnicity, the paper focuses first on issues concerning immigrant workers from Asia and then on issues concerning immigrant workers from southern and eastern Europe. --From author's introduction
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Women's activism in unions has increased dramatically in the last decade, creating a sense of renewed vitality and excitement in the trade union movement. Union Sisters is a attempt to document the struggles and victories of the movement of union women as well as to provide some direction to women and unions as they fight to defend the interests of working people. --Introduction
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