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This edited collection draws together original case studies written by leading researchers in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, and the United States that examine the politics of working disasters. The essays address two fundamental questions: what gets recognized as a work disaster? And how does the state respond to one? --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction: The Politics of Recognition and Response / Eric Tucker -- Trucking Tragedies: The Hidden Disaster of Mass Death in the Long-Haul Road Transport Industry / Michael Quinlan, Claire Mayhew, and Richard Johnstone -- The Australian Epidemic of Repetition Strain Injury: A Sociological Perspective / Andrew Hopkins -- "All Part of the Game": The Recognition of and Response to an Industrial Disaster at the Fluorspar Mines, St Lawrence, Newfoundland, 1933-1978 / Richard Rennie -- The Long Road to Action: The Silicosis Problem and Swedish Occupational Health and Safety Policy in the 20th Century / Annette Thörnquist -- Disaster, Meaning Making, and Reform in Antebellum Massachusetts / Patricia Reeve -- Regulating Safety, Regulating Profit: Cost-Cutting, Injury and Death in the British North Sea after Piper Alpha / Dave Whyte -- Courts, Crime, and Workplace / Richard Johnstone -- Blame and Causation in the Aftermath of Industrial Disasters: Nova Scotia's Coal Mines from 1858 to Westray / Susan Dodd -- Accountability and Reform in the Aftermath of the Westray Mine Explosion / Eric Tucker.

This edited collection draws together original case studies written by leading researchers in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, and the United States that examine the politics of working disasters. The essays address two fundamental questions: what gets recognized as a work disaster? And how does the state respond to one? --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction: The Politics of Recognition and Response / Eric Tucker -- Trucking Tragedies: The Hidden Disaster of Mass Death in the Long-Haul Road Transport Industry / Michael Quinlan, Claire Mayhew, and Richard Johnstone -- The Australian Epidemic of Repetition Strain Injury: A Sociological Perspective / Andrew Hopkins -- "All Part of the Game": The Recognition of and Response to an Industrial Disaster at the Fluorspar Mines, St Lawrence, Newfoundland, 1933-1978 / Richard Rennie -- The Long Road to Action: The Silicosis Problem and Swedish Occupational Health and Safety Policy in the 20th Century / Annette Thörnquist -- Disaster, Meaning Making, and Reform in Antebellum Massachusetts / Patricia Reeve -- Regulating Safety, Regulating Profit: Cost-Cutting, Injury and Death in the British North Sea after Piper Alpha / Dave Whyte -- Courts, Crime, and Workplace / Richard Johnstone -- Blame and Causation in the Aftermath of Industrial Disasters: Nova Scotia's Coal Mines from 1858 to Westray / Susan Dodd -- Accountability and Reform in the Aftermath of the Westray Mine Explosion / Eric Tucker.

The article reviews the book, "Lawyers Against Labor: From Individual Rights to Corporate Liberalism," by Daniel R. Ernst.

The article reviews the book, "Law and the Shaping of the America Labor Movement," by William E. Forbath

Despite the comprehensiveness of neo-liberal restructuring in Canada, it has not proceeded uniformly in its timing or outcomes across regulatory fields and political jurisdictions. The example of occupational health and safety (OHS) regulation is instructive. This article compares recent OHS developments in five Canadian jurisdictions, Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Ontario and the Federal jurisdiction. It finds that despite the adoption of a common model by all jurisdictions, there has recently been considerable divergence in the way that the elements of worker participation and protection have been combined. Modified power resource theory is used to explain a portion of this divergence.

The article reviews the book, "Work and Health," by M. Quinlan.

The Wagner Act Model has formed the basis of Canada's collective bargaining regime since World War II but has come under intense scrutiny in recent years because of legislative weakening of collective bargaining rights, constitutional litigation defending collective bargaining rights and declining union density. This article examines and assesses these developments, arguing that legislatively we have not witnessed a wholesale attack on Wagnerism, but rather a selective weakening of some of its elements. In the courts, it briefly appeared as if the judiciary might constitutionalize meaningful labour rights and impede the erosion of Wagnerism, but recent judicial case law suggests the prospects for this outcome are fading. While the political defence of Wagnerism may be necessary when the alternatives to it are likely worse, holding on to what we've got will not reverse the long-term decline in union density. The article concludes that at present there are no legal solutions to the labour movement's problems and that innovative efforts to represent workers' collective interests outside of formal collective bargaining provide a more promising alternative.

By the end of the nineteenth century politicians could no longer overlook the demands of the burgeoning labour movement. New laws began to set minimum standards in employment. One act protected striking Canadian workers by preventing employers from hiring across the line in the U.S. On paper it looked like progressive legislation. But when it came time to put the law into practice, there was an absence of will. Not even a tragic suicide could change the status quo. --Introduction

Debates over worker subordination are central to discussions of the efficacy of protective labour and employment law whose central mission in a capitalist political economy, after all, is to reduce but not eliminate subordination. When protective labour and employment law seems to be fulfilling its mission discussions of worker subordination seem to ebb, but the topic becomes more urgent as the efficacy of the law declines. Not surprisingly, as labour law’s efficacy has been declining over the past several decades, we are in the midst of a revival of debates over worker subordination, the premise of this special issue. While many seek to revive the classic mission of labour and employment law, ameliorating the worst excesses of subordination, while leaving in place labour’s structural dependency on capital, the goal of this article is to revisit and elaborate a marxist political economy perspective to demonstrate that workers’ structural subordination to capital is deepening and that this limits the possibility of achieving much of the reformist agenda. While there are no easy ways of overcoming that structural subordination, a progressive reform agenda must centre that subordination and think about how labour laws might contribute to a transformative project. --Introduction

North American regimes of industrial legality provide workers with protected rights to organize, bargain collectively and strike. However, they also limit the freedom to strike. Trade unions commonly accept and enforce these limits, but at great cost to solidarity and militancy. This article examines the many ways law works against labour by restricting the freedom to strike and explores the practice of unlawful strikes in North America, including recent examples that resulted in successful outcomes. It concludes with reflections on the revival of unlawful strikes as a tactic forrebuilding and remobilizing the North American labour movement. While the article’s focus is North America, the discussion of unlawful strikes may also be relevant in other countries that limit the freedom to strike.

The article reviews the book, "Caught in the Machinery: Workplace Accidents and Injured Workers in Nineteenth-Century Britain," by Jamie L. Bronstein.

The article focuses on the constitutional right to bargain collectively in Canada. Employers in Canada have adopted labour management policies that including resistance to and avoidance of collective bargaining, shifting from secure employment forms and increasing demand on the workforce. It mentions the Hospital Employees' Union (HEU) which had successfully fought a long battle to achieve pay equity for its largely female membership.

The article reviews the book, "The Accidental Republic: Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law," by John Fabian Witt.

The article reviews the book, "Safety First: Technology, Labor, and Business in the Building of American Work Safety, 1870-1939," by Mark Aldrich.

During the first three quarters of the nineteenth century, the question of whether trade unions in Ontario were criminal conspiracies under common law was never clearly determined. By examining the development and interaction of the legal and social zones of toleration we can illuminate how law was shaped by and shaped early struggles between workers and employers. The statutory reforms of 1872 clearly defined a narrow zone of legal toleration in which trade unions were accepted as labour market organizations while the means they could to pursue their objectives were restricted. The contours of industrial legality which began to emerge during this period remain a salient feature of current labour law.

The article reviews the book, "Back to Work? Labour, State and Industrial Relations in Canada," by Bob Russell.

The development of industrial capitalism in the second half of the nineteenth century in Ontario brought new and more serious hazards into the workplace and drew women and children into the waged labour force. As a result of working class lobbying and the efforts of middle class reformers, the state empowered itself to regulate health and safety conditions in factories and to protect child and female labour. The implementation of these regulations was left to an inspectorate which was armed with substantial legal powers to enforce the law. These powers were rarely invoked by the inspectors. However, the failure to prosecute does not in itself indicate that the law was unenforced. An alternative enforcement strategy based on persuasion was followed by most inspectors. It has been argued that persuasion was chosen over prosecution because it made more efficient use of the scarce enforcement resources available to the inspectors, and that persuasion was effective. This paper argues that although it is true that the government chose to devote woefully inadequate resources to enforcement of factory legislation, this is not an adequate explanation of the inspectors' enforcement behaviour. The belief that persuasion was an effective enforcement model also flowed from the inspectors' values and assumptions, including the following: that worker carelessness was the major cause of accidents; that employers were socially responsible; that workers and employers had common interests in occupational health and safety; and that women and children needed special protection. It is further argued that persuasion was not an effective enforcement strategy, especially because it was linked with an acceptance by the inspectors of 'normal' industrial practices, even where those practices generated significant risks for workers. In effect, health and safety regulation probably did as much to legitimate industrial capitalism as it did to protect workers health and safety.

This article reviews the book, "Assault on the Worker: Occupational Health and Safety in Canada," by Charles E. Reasons, Lois L. Ross, and Craig Paterson.

This article reviews the book, "Safety at Work : The Limits of Self Regulation," by Sandra Dawson, Paul Willman, Martin Bamford & Alain Clinton.