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Did workplace characteristics, such as the degree of mechanization or the level of managerial control, systematically influence occupational mortality rates in France at the beginning of the 20th century? Data from an early 20th-century study of occupational mortality in France lead us to conclude that long hours of work, under conditions where labor had limited control of the pace of work, represented the most serious occupational risk facing early French workers. The effect of long hours of work on mortality dwarfed the impact of either mechanization or size of establishment.

This article reconsiders the shift in Canada from an exclusively government-regulated occupational health and safety system to the Internal Responsibility System (IRS). The IRS gives workers rights, or “voice,” to manage, know about, and refuse unsafe working conditions. I present new evidence that worker voice and the IRS have weakened with the decline of unions and the rise of precarious employment. Survey data are analyzed from Ontario workers who rated the likelihood that raising a health and safety concern with their current employer would negatively affect their future employment. My analysis models how workers’ sex, race, unionization, sector, and degree of employment precarity affect their probability of exercising voice. Results of a logistic regression suggest the most precariously employed are the least likely to use voice. Consequently, I argue that the IRS should be supplemented with more external oversight in sectors where employment is most insecure.

This paper explores changes in labour market outcomes between June 2005 and November 2010. It asks if the recovery in labour markets following the 2008 financial crisis favoured men or women. The analysis is based on a unique longitudinal database of individuals in the Toronto-Hamilton labour market. Men were the most likely to have paid employment in the post-financial crisis period, but only at the cost of a significant deterioration in its terms and conditions. The findings suggest that many middle-aged workers were not protected by job seniority or implicit lifetime employment relationships. The findings point to a further decline in the prevalence of the standard employment relationship and the male breadwinner model of employment.

The article reviews the book, "Canadian Labour in Crisis: Reinventing the Workers' Movement," by David Camfield.

The article reviews the book ,"Managing the Human Factor: The Early Years of Human Resource Management in American Industry," by Bruce E. Kaufman.

The article reviews the book, "Breaking from Taylorism: Changing Forms of Work in the Automobile Industry," by Ulrich Jurgens, Thomas Malsch and Knuth Dohse.

The article reviews the book, "Cooperation and Conflict in Occupational Safety and Health: A Multination Study of The Automotive Industry," by Richard E. Wokutch.

This article reviews the book, "Innovation and Management Control: Labour Relations at BL Cars," by Paul Willman and Graham Winch.

The article reviews the book, "Worker Protection, Japanese Style : Occupational Safety and Health in the Auto Industry," by Richard E. Wokutch.

By the end of the 20th century, there was general agreement that most labour markets were in transition and that employment was becoming less secure. However, official labour market data have not shown a dramatic increase in temporary or casual employment. This article takes a new look at the changing characteristics of employment and offers a new method to measure employment security: the Employment Precarity Index. We use the Employment Precarity Index to assess how insecure employment associated with a ‘gig’ economy might affect well-being and social relations, including health outcomes, household well-being and community involvement.

The article reviews the book, "The Dirt: Industrial Disease and Conflict at St. Lawrence, Newfoundland," by Rick Rennie.

The introduction of mass production transformed many skilled tasks into repetitive and monotonous jobs. In industries such as automobiles, the workforce remained predominantly male despite contemporary assessments that women could efficiently do many of these jobs. This article explores why. It is argued that employers such as Ford concluded that the conversion of labor time into effort would be more difficult in a mixed-gender workforce. The paper shows how Ford developed a fraternalist labor strategy, a men's club, whose objective was to accommodate men to monotony and maximize labor productivity.

The article reviews "Socialist Register, 2001: Working classes and global realities," edited by Leo Panitch and Colin Leys. The Register is published annually.

The article reviews the book, "Social Murder and Other Shortcomings of Conservative Economics," by Robert Chernomas and Ian Hudson.

The article reviews the book,"Markets, Firms, and the Management of Labour in Modern Britain," by Howard F. Gospel.

The objective of this paper is to examine the financial history of the British motor vehicle industry betweem 1896 and 1939. The study is based on data collected from 38 firms which issued shares publicly or were required to publish balance sheets. These firms represent the majority of British firms engaged in the quantity production of motor vehicles. ...Our interest in the industry's financial history, and in particular, the return to capital of firms using British production techniques was stimulated by the long standing argument that since 1870 British levels of productivity have lagged behind others countries, particularly the United States. --Introduction

The slowness with which British firms adopted Scientific Management and Fordism has often been noted.The paper argues that in Britain, management had difficulty controlling labor effort norms after 1870. The state intervened to resolve the issue and in the process became a major proponent of industrial democracy. It is argued that the early interest in industrial democracy retarded the adoption of American methods that assumed a greater degree of managerial control over factory organization.

The decline in the prevalence of the Standard Employment Relationship in Canada has created challenges for Canadian unions. This article reviews the available estimates of the prevalence of precarious employment and gig work in Canada. Using data from the Poverty and Employment Precarity in Southern Ontario (PEPSO) research group it evaluates both the success of unions in organising workers in precarious employment and bargaining for them. The last section reviews recent union strategies to organise workers in precarious employment with a focus on the subset of precarious employment referred to as gig work. Organising gig workers presents unique challenges for unions as many are deemed by their employers as independent contractors and as a result not covered by existing Canadian labour legislation and hence not eligible for union membership. The paper concludes by arguing that organising precarious workers is a work in progress, whose ultimate outcome remains uncertain.

We present some survey results on the preferences of workers for a coop as opposed to a private buy-out if faced with the closure of their workplace. Although there has been quite a lot of theoretical discussion of this issue there is relatively little empirical evidence. Although hedged about by reservations we conclude that the principal factor that determines preferences are the‘job risk’ characteristics of the coop and the privately owned firm. To a very large extent a worker will prefer the coop to a private buy-out if it leads to increased job security and if the coop is considered to be viable. We also find that workers expected that everyone would work harder in the coop and that this, together with increased shop floor control of production, was expected to lead to higher earnings. Significantly, however, these expected differences in the work/earnings trade-off between the coop and the privately owned firm did not lead workers to prefer one to the other.

The industrial relations system at Magna International is an example of an integrated, coherent, non-union human resource management strategy. It includes significant mechanisms of worker voice and conflict resolution as substitutes for union representation. Potential labor-management conflicts associated with Taylorized labor processes are often translated into group problem-solving. Redistributive conflicts are re-framed as mutual gains through profit-sharing. Corporate communications promote an ethos of competitiveness. Individualized pay and promotion schemes, segmented internal labor markets, and the exposure of individual plants to competitive pressures, promote cultures of labor cooperation in the pursuit of productivity gains. The success of this union avoidance model is situated in a context of the erosion of unionized labor relations, the disciplinary effects of precarious labor markets, and the vulnerability of workplaces to transnational competitive forces. Continued success is predicated on Magna's ability to survive sectoral and macroeconomic restructuring forces which are, in large measure, beyond management's control.