Your search

Globalization has created a whole new working class - and they are reliving stories that were first played out a century ago. In Live Working or Die Fighting, Paul Mason tells the story of this new working class alongside the epic history of the global labour movement, from its formation in the factories of the 1800s through its near destruction by fascism in the 1930s and up to today's anti-globalisation movement. Blending exhilarating historical narrative with reportage from today's front line, he links the lives of 19th-century factory girls with the lives of teenagers in a giant Chinese mobile phone factory; he tells the story of how mass trade unions were born in London's Docklands - and how they're being reinvented by the migrant cleaners in skyscrapers that stand on the very same spot. It is a story of urban slums, self-help co-operatives, choirs and brass bands, free love and self-education by candlelight. And, as the author shows, in the developing industrial economies of the world it is still with us. Live Working or Die Fighting celebrates a common history of defiance, idealism and self-sacrifice, one as alive and active today as it was two hundred years ago. --Publisher's description

This book examines life in Canada for the estimated 5,000 blacks, both African Americans and West Indians, who immigrated to Canada after the end of Reconstruction in the United States. Through the experiences of black railway workers and their union, the Order of Sleeping Car Porters, the author connects social, political, labor, immigration, and black diaspora history during the Jim Crow era. By World War I, sleeping car portering had become the exclusive province of black men. White railwaymen protested the presence of the black workers and insisted on a segregated workforce. Using the first-hand accounts of former sleeping car porters, the author shows that porters often found themselves leading racial uplift organizations, galvanizing their communities, and becoming the bedrock of civil rights activism. Examining the spread of segregation laws and practices in Canada, whose citizens often imagined themselves as devoid of racism, she historicizes Canadian racial attitudes and explores how black migrants brought their own sensibilities about race to Canada, participating in and changing political discourse there. --Publisher's description

The story of the expansion of European civilization into the wilderness continues to shape perceptions of how Aboriginal people became part of nations such as Canada. This groundbreaking study subverts this narrative of progress and modernity by examining Canadian nation building from the perspective of a northern community and its residents. Drawing on decades of research and fieldwork, Patricia McCormack argues that Fort Chipewyan--established in 1788 and situated in present-day Alberta--was never an isolated Aboriginal community but a plural society that stood at the crossroads of global, national, and indigenous cultures and economies. The steps that led Aboriginal people to sign Treaty No. 8 and accept scrip in 1899 and their struggle to maintain autonomy in the decades that followed reveal that Aboriginal peoples and others can - and have - become modern without relinquishing cherished beliefs and practices. --Publisher's description. Contents: Writing Fort Chipewyan history -- Building a plural society at Fort Chipewyan: a cultural Rababou -- The fur trade mode of production -- The creation of Canada: a new plan for the Northwest -- Local impacts: state expansion, the Athabasca District, and Fort Chipewyan -- Christian missions -- The ways of life at Fort Chipewyan: cultural baselines at the time of treaty -- Treaty no. 8 and the Métis script: Canada bargains for the North -- The government foot in the door -- Fort Chipewyan and the new regime -- Epilogue: Facing the future -- Appendix: Personal testimony from Fort Chipewyan residents and related persons: memoirs and interviews.

Ce livre dresse un portait pénétrant de la complexité des valeurs, des attitudes et des croyances relatives au travail de la population active québécoise. Quelle importance et quelle signification revêt le travail aujourd’hui ? Le travail est-il de plus en plus un lieu de réalisation de soi ou n’est-il qu’une valeur en perdition, voire un simple moyen en vue de financer la vie à l’extérieur du travail ? Quel est le modèle de travail idéal auquel aspirent les travailleurs et quelles sont leurs attitudes envers les nouvelles normes et pratiques de gestion mises de l’avant par les employeurs au cours des deux dernières décennies ? Plus fondamentalement, de quelle manière l’identité personnelle est-elle reliée ou dissociée du rôle professionnel ? Issu d’une vaste enquête auprès d’un millier de travailleurs québécois, ce livre montre que le travail est toujours une valeur importante, mais que la réalisation de soi et la quête d’équilibre entre la vie privée et la vie professionnelle sont des aspirations de plus en plus partagées par les individus. Les grands schèmes de valeurs et d’attitudes par rapport au travail mis au jour dans l’ouvrage témoignent de changements culturels récents ainsi que de la diversité des situations de travail vécues. À des degrés divers, ces schèmes convergent vers les exigences du modèle productif contemporain ou s’en distancient : ils contribuent à l’émergence d’un nouveau monde du travail. Cet ouvrage a été réalisé par une équipe de recherche de l’Université Laval et de l’Institut national de la recherche scientifique, sous la direction de Daniel Mercure et de Mircea Vultur, avec la collaboration de Marie-Pierre Bourdages-Sylvain, Charles Fleury et Lilian Negura. --Publisher's description

Interrogating the New Economy is a collection of original essays investigating the New Economy and how changes ascribed to it have impacted labour relations, access to work, and, more generally, the social and cultural experiences of work in Canada. Based on years of participatory research, sector-specific studies, and quantitative and qualitative data collection, the work accounts for the ways in which the contemporary workplace has changed but also the extent to which older forms of work organization still remain. The collection begins with an overview of the key social and economic transformations that define the New Economy. It then illustrates these transformations through examples, including essays on wine tourism, the regeneration of mining communities, the place of student workers, and changes in the public service workplace. It also addresses unions and their responses to the restructuring of work, as well as other forms of resistance. --Publisher's description

This report is a fully updated and concise discussion of leading cases in workplace violence (including physical and mental harrassment) and the various laws that apply to them, including human rights, health & safety, workplace insurance and the Criminal Code of Canada. This edition will help you to identify what constitutes violence, what obligations are created by the common law and what employers need to do to protect their workers and themselves. --Publisher's description

The increased participation of women in the labour force was one of the most significant changes to Canadian social life during the quarter century after the close of the Second World War. Transforming Labour offers one of the first critical assessments of women's paid labour in this era, a period when more and more women, particularly those with families, were going 'out to work'. Using case studies from across Canada, Joan Sangster explores a range of themes, including women's experiences within unions, Aboriginal women's changing patterns of work, and the challenges faced by immigrant women. By charting women's own efforts to ameliorate their work lives as well as factors that re-shaped the labour force, Sangster challenges the commonplace perception of this era as one of conformity, domesticity for women, and feminist inactivity. Working women's collective grievances fuelled their desire for change, culminating in challenges to the status quo in the 1960s, when they voiced their discontent, calling for a new world of work and better opportunities for themselves and their daughters. --Publisher's description

As one of the most difficult periods of the twentieth century, the Great Depression left few Canadians untouched. Using more than eighty interviews with women who lived and worked in Toronto in the 1930s, Breadwinning Daughters examines the consequences of these years for women in their homes and workplaces, and in the city's court rooms and dance halls. In this insightful account, Katrina Srigley argues that young women were central to the labour market and family economies of Depression-era Toronto. Oral histories give voice to women from a range of cultural and economic backgrounds, and challenge readers to consider how factors such as race, gender, class, and marital status shaped women's lives and influenced their job options, family arrangements, and leisure activities. Breadwinning Daughters brings to light previously forgotten and unstudied experiences and illustrates how women found various ways to negotiate the burdens and joys of the 1930s. --Publisher's description

[E]xplores the precarious margins of contemporary labour markets. Over the last few decades, there has been much discussion of a shift from full-time permanent jobs to higher levels of part-time and temporary employment and self-employment. Despite such attention, regulatory approaches have not adapted accordingly. Instead, in the absence of genuine alternatives, old regulatory models are applied to new labour market realities, leaving the most precarious forms of employment intact. The book places this disjuncture in historical context and focuses on its implications for workers most likely to be at the margins, particularly women and migrants, using illustrations from Australia, the United States, and Canada, as well as member states of the European Union. Managing the Margins provides a rigorous analysis of national and international regulatory approaches, drawing on original qualitative and quantitative material. It innovates by analysing the historical and contemporary interplay of employment norms, gender relations, and citizenship boundaries. --Publisher's description