Your search
Results 15 resources
-
The article reviews the book, "From the Net to the Net: Atlantic Canada in the Global Economy," edited by James Sacouman and Henry Veltmeyer.
-
By the mid-19th century, the Mi'kmaq of Cape Breton Island, much like the Mi'kmaq on the Nova Scotia mainland, were nearly destitute. The outcome of over two centuries of political, economic, and cultural interaction with Europeans, this condition was exacerbated by the massive influx of Scottish settlers to the island after the end of the Napoleonic Wars -- nearly 30,000 between 1815 and 1838. With their lands occupied and access to customary hunting and fishing grounds severely limited, the island's Mi'kmaw population -- estimated to be about 500 in 1847 -- adopted numerous economic initiatives to stay alive: they pursued agriculture and wage labour, mobilized older skills toward different occupational niches, and maintained, at least to some extent, customary rounds of seasonal resource procurement. This essay examines this evolving pattern of occupational pluralism, and highlights how customary norms, codes, and behaviours provided part of the logic through which the island's Mi'kmaw people made decisions about what to do, economically, to survive. Mid-19th century Cape Breton was a contested place as the forces of immigration and settlement exerted new pressures on Mi'kmaw life. This paper is about that changing context and how the island's indigenous people sought to understand it, negotiate its pressures and possibilities, and blunt its negative effects.
-
The article reviews the book, "Making Men, Making Class: The YMCA and Workingmen, 1877-1920," by Thomas Winter.
-
The article reviews and comments extensively on the book, "Industrial Ruination, Community, and Place: Landscapes and Legacies of Urban Decline" by Alice Mah.
-
The article reviews the book, "The Failure of Global Capitalism: From Cape Breton to Colombia and Beyond," by Terry Gibbs and Garry Leech.
-
In the wake of President Roosevelt's New Deal for labour in the us, the International Woodworkers of America (IWA) experienced tremendous growth in Oregon and Washington. Fearing the arrival of the IWA in BC, the provincial government enacted the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration (ICA) Act as a means to stanch the growth of militant industrial unionism. It was at the company town of Blubber Bay, BC, that the ICA Act was tested for the first rime as capital, labour, and the state struggled over the pith and substance of the new legistation. Drawing on the insights of critical legal theorists and neo-institutionalists, this article examines the multiple ways in which the state, law, and legal process shaped both the formation of the IWA and the nature of class struggle itself. In particular, it illustrates how the expansion of formal collective bargaining, as well as the age-old legal remedies available at common and criminal law, worked together to set limits and erect boundaries on collective working-class action and, in the end, forge a "responsible union."
-
The article reviews the book, "Workers in a Lean World: Unions in the International Economy," by Kim Moody.
-
The article reviews the book, "Lunch-Bucket Lives: Remaking the Workers' City," by Craig Heron.
-
This essay examines Aboriginal longshoremen, most of whom belonged to the Squamish First Nation, on Burrard Inlet, British Columbia, from 1863 to 1939. Beginning with a consideration of the Squamish adaptation to wage labour in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, this essay analyses the ways in which Aboriginal workers negotiated the daily demands of waterfront work. Their encounter with the work process, labour politics, welfare capitalism, and class conflict are studied in depth. Despite intense competition from non-Aboriginal workers for limited job opportunities, Aboriginal longshoremen worked on Burrard inlet for a long period of time; in addition to the daily demands of waterfront work, this essay also explores the strategies that Squamish dockers adopted to protect their positions on the waterfront. Often mentioned in the scholarly literature, but never studied in a systematic way, the 'Indian'waterfront provides a window into the importance of waged work to Aboriginal people on Burrard Inlet and the sophisticated ways that the Squamish responded to Canadian colonialism and capitalism.
-
The article reviews several books including "Slave Ship Sailors and Their Captive Cargoes, 1730-1807," by Emma Christopher, "Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution," by Paul A. Glije, and "Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age," by Marcus Rediker.
-
The article reviews the book, "A Candle For Durruti," by Al Grierson.
-
The article reports that the monument honouring the Canadian veterans of the Spanish Civil War is almost completed. On 4 December 1998, Spanish Civil War veterans from Canada, Britain, Demark, Israel, and the United States witnessed the unveiling of a plaque and eight stone columns near the provincial legislature in Victoria, BC.
-
Documents the exposure of Jack Esselwein, also known as Sergeant John Leopold, who, as an undercover operative of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, joined the Communist Party of Canada. His identity was revealed after a series of police raids on August 11, 1931, which led to the arrest of a number of leading Communists, including Tim Buck. Esselwein testified at the trial in November 1931 whereby the Communists were convicted and sentenced to penitentiary terms under the notorious section 98 of the criminal code. They had already discovered that Esselwein was a police spy. The Toronto Daily Star report (published November 13, 1931) on Esselwein's unmasking is included in the article.
-
In July 1997, the CAW-backed workers at nine Vancouver Starbucks outlets became the first "barristas" in North America to secure a collective agreement with the trendy, Seattle-based international coffee giant. On the first anniversary of that historical union drive, Labour/Le Travail spoke with 25-year-old-Laurie Banong, Starbucks employee and union activist, about organizing young service sector workers, working with the CAW, and what trade unionism means to her. --Editors' introduction
-
The notebook opens with "Representations of a Radical Historian," a review of "You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train," a documentary on Howard Zinn by Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller (78 minutes, colour, (Brooklyn 2004)). In the second part, entitled "System Failure: The Breakdown of the Post-War Settlement and the Politics of Labour in Our Time," Bryan D. Palmer presents a revised version of an "educational and agitational address" given to the Alberta Federation of Labour's membership forum on 7 May 2004 in the aftermath of the British Columbia hospital and long-term care workers' strike.