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In this article, I examine the Service, Office, and Retail Workers’ Union of Canada (SORWUC), an independent, grassroots, socialist-feminist union that organized workers in unorganized industries in Canada in the 1970s and 1980s. I look at SORWUC’s role in Canadian labour history in general, and its efforts to organize workers in the service industry in particular. My central thesis is that SORWUC’s socialist-feminist unionism and commitment to organizing unorganized workers positioned the union as radically differ­ent from the mainstream labour movement. This difference both helped and hindered the union. Specifically, SORWUC’s experiences organizing workers at Bimini pub and Muckamuck restaurant in British Columbia demonstrate that although its alternative structure and strategies aided organizing and strike efforts, these factors made little difference in the union’s dealings with the labour relations boards and the courts: in both cases, the action or inaction of the state ultimately determined the outcome. Although SORWUC no longer exists, it remains an important historical example of how workers in Canada have been and can be organized. SORWUC thus offers important lessons about service worker organizing, alternative forms of unionization, and the powerful role of the state in labour relations in the postwar period.

Relatively little attention has been paid to understanding and addressing the potential health-related barriers faced by older workers to stay at work. Using three representative samples from the Canadian Community Health Survey, we examined the relationship between seven physical chronic conditions and labour market participation in Canada between 2000 and 2005. We found that all conditions were associated with an increased probability of not being able to work due to health reasons. In our adjusted models, heart disease was associated with the greatest probability of not working due to health reasons. Arthritis was associated with the largest population attributable fraction. Other variables associated with not being able to work due to health reasons included older age, female gender and lower educational attainment. We also found particular combinations of chronic conditions (heart disease and diabetes; and arthritis and back pain) were associated with a greater risk than the separate effects of each condition independently. The results of this study demonstrate that chronic conditions are associated with labour market participation limitations to differing extents. Strategies to keep older workers in the labour market in Canada will need to address barriers to staying at work that result from the presence of chronic conditions, and particular combinations of conditions.

The article reviews the book, "An Environmental History of Canada," by Laurel Sefton MacDowell.

The article reviews and comments on the books, "Connecting Canadians: Investigations in Community Informatics," edited by Andrew Clement, Michael Gurstein, Graham Longford, Marita Moll, and Leslie Regan Shade; "Alternative Media in Canada," edited by Kirsten Kozolanka, Patricia Mazepa, and David Skinner; "Public Engagement and Emerging Technologies," edited by Kieran O’Doherty and Edna Einsiedel; and "Networks Of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age," by Manuel Castells.

Book review of: Articuler emploi et famille : le rôle du soutien organisationnel au coeur de trois professions by Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay.

This article reviews the book, "Climate@Work," edited by Carla Lipsig-Mummé.

This article reviews the book, "Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life," by James Daschuk.

Critiques the Conservative Party's attack on evidence-based research and the teaching of Canadian history as part of a broader, neoliberal assault on equality, including feminism, environmental protection, and minority rights.

The article reviews and comments on the books, "Foodopoly: The Battle over the Future of Food and Farming in America," by Wenonah Hauter; "Health and Sustainability in the Canadian Food System: Advocacy and Opportunity for Civil Society," edited by Rod MacRae and Elisabeth Abergel; and "Food Sovereignty in Canada: Creating Just and Sustainable Food Systems," edited by Hannah Wittman, Annette Aurélie Desmarais, and Nettie Wiebe.

"Constitutional Labour Rights in Canada: Farm Workers and the Fraser Case," by Fay Faraday, Judy Fudge and Eric Tucker, is reviewed.

This article reviews the book, "American Anarchism," by Steve J. Shone.

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.

This article reviews the book, "Union Voices: Tactics and Tensions in UK Organizing," by Melanie Simms, Jane Holgate, and Edmund Heery.

The 2008 financial crisis continues to have profound implications for workers worldwide, as governments have embarked on “austerity” programs and employers have confronted organized labor with concessionary demands, placing unions on the defensive. At the same time, populist movements have arisen across North America and Europe as increasing numbers of people grow disenchanted with government action and corporate incompetence. We examine the interplay among what we characterize as “uneven austerity,” union strategic capacities, and rising populism. At the intersection of these processes, we see elements of “populist unionism” as the labor movement confronts both austerity and declining union power. The article develops this concept through an examination of organized labor’s engagement with the Occupy movement in Toronto, Ontario, and the growth of the Christian Labour Association of Canada.

This article examines trends in Canadian human rights history, with a focus on three major themes that have guided the scholarship: challenges to the characterization of Canada as a historically tolerant nation; a study of how, when, and through what mechanisms human rights became an important project for Canadians; and a critical assessment of the historical effectiveness of the human rights movement in promoting equality within Canadian society. In assessing where this vibrant and growing field of study could expand in the future, the article also contextualizes the Canadian historiography in the international literature on the development of the global human rights framework.

The Portuguese Revolution , the process popularly known as the "Carnation Revolution” that lasted from 25 April 1974 to 25 November 1975, took place against a backdrop of military humiliation in defeat by peasant guerilla movements in the Portuguese colonies of Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique. However, an analysis of four distinct types of social conflicts - strikes; demonstrations; occupations of factories, other workplaces, and public services; and occupations of vacant houses - suggests that class struggle within Portugal was the essential dynamic of the Revolution. Revolution came to Portugal through an active workers’ movement against fascism within the context of a global economic crisis. Working people had decided it was time for democratic change.

The article reviews and comments on the books, "Images du travail, travail des images" edited by Jean-Paul Géhin et Hélène Stevens, and "Le travail, entre droit et cinéma," edited by Magalie Flores-Lonjou.

This article reviews the book, "Eyes on Labor: News Photography and America's Working Class," by Carol Quirke.

The organization of contemporary labour markets has radically altered the nature of work and its embodied or bodily performance. Changes from standard, permanent jobs to non-standard or precarious work arrangements have increasingly become the normative template for many workers, including persons with disabilities. Drawing on findings from 13 qualitative interviews associated with ‘Project EDGE,’ Episodic Disabilities in the Global Economy, I describe how Canadian workers with “episodic” or fluctuating disabilities experience and negotiate barriers to work within precarious work environments in Toronto, Ontario. Implications that consider the episodic dimension of disability for workforce participation and employment policy are considered.

This article delves into the nexus between workers' conversions of troubled firms in Argentina into worker cooperatives (empreseas recuperadas por sus trabajadores, or ERTs), the processes of learning new cooperative skills and values through struggle, and the subsequent transformations of communities. To do so, the study deploys research findings from workplace ethnographies and in-depth interviews at four ERT case studies. The article shows how transformations of employees to self-managed workers; troubled firms into worker cooperatives; and the social, cultural, and economic revitalization of communities catalyzed by ERTs are rooted simultaneously in inter-cooperative and intra-cooperative informal learning dynamics. A theoretical framework combining class-struggle analysis and workplace and social action learning approaches helps clarify how this informal "learning in struggle" ultimately makes ERTs transformative learning organizations for workers, organizations, and communities.