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The article examines the social and political developments in Germany, with particular emphasis on the working class, from the downfall of the Nazi regime to 2007. Analyzes the similarities and differences between East and West Germany during the Cold War years and the rising discontent following reunification in 1989.

The article reviews and comments on the books, "European Unions: Labor's Quest for a Transnational Democracy," by Roland Erne, "The Struggle for a Social Europe: Trade Unions and EMU in Times of Global Restructuring," by Andreas Bieler, and "Labour and the Challenges of Globalization: What Prospects for Transnational Solidarity?," by Andreas Bieler, Ingemar Lindberg, and Devan Pillay.

The article reviews the book, "Work," by Lars Svendsen.

The author, former Director of the International Labour Organization, provides a succinct overview of the principles developed by the ILO's supervisory bodies (especially the Committee on Freedom of Association) in relation to the right to strike. The topics discussed include general recognition of the right to strike, as well as the types of conditions and restrictions on collective action that may be permitted, e.g. in the area of essential services. The paper also examines the extent to which public authorities may interfere in strikes, and whether sanctions and anti-strike measures imposed by employers are allowed. In the second part of the paper the author turns to a consideration of the ILO standards that apply to alternative means of dispute resolution, with particular emphasis on the use of conciliation, mediation and arbitration. The paper concludes with some general observations based on the ILO's accumulated experience.

The article reviews the book, "Latin American Neostructuralism: The Contradictions of Post-Neoliberal Development," by Fernando Ignacio Leiva.

The article reviews the book, "A Social History of Spanish Labour: New Perspectives on Class, Politics and Gender," edited by José A. Piqueras and Vicent Sanz Rozalén.

This thesis examines the Service, Office, and Retail Workers' Union of Canada (SORWUC), an independent, grassroots, socialist feminist union that organized unorganized workers in Canada in the 1970s and 1980s. It looks at SORWUC's role in Canadian labour history in general, and its efforts to organize unorganized workers in particular, focusing on SORWUC's efforts to organize workers at a pub and a restaurant in British Columbia. The central thesis of this work is that SORWUC's socialist feminist unionism and commitment to organizing unorganized workers positioned the union as radically different from much of the 1970s Canadian labour movement, and that this difference both helped and hindered the union in its efforts to organize the unorganized. By examining SORWUC from this neglected perspective, this thesis ultimately aims to demonstrate SORWUC's importance to the historiography of class and labour organizing in Canada.

Objectives: To examine the burden of work-related injuries among immigrants to Canada compared to Canadian-born labour force participants. Methods: Using data from the 2003 and 2005 Canadian Community Health Surveys (n = 99 115), two nationally representative population samples, we examined the risk of self-reported, activity limiting work-related injuries among immigrants with varying time periods since arrival in Canada. Models were adjusted for hours of work in the last 12 months as well as various demographic and work-related variables. Results: Immigrant men in their first 5 years in Canada reported lower rates of activity limiting injuries compared to Canadian-born respondents. Surprisingly, the percentage of injuries that required medical attention was much higher among recent immigrants compared to Canadian-born respondents, resulting in an increased risk of activity limiting injuries requiring medical attention among immigrant men compared to Canadian-born labour force participants. No excess risk was found among female immigrants compared to Canadian-born female labour market participants. Conclusions: Immigrant men in their first 5 years in Canada are at increased risk of work-related injuries that require medical attention. A similar risk is not present among immigrant women. Further, given differences in the number of activity limiting injuries requiring medical attention across immigrant groups, we believe this excess risk among immigrant men may be underestimated in the current data source. Future research should attempt to fully capture the barriers faced by immigrants in obtaining safe employment, the number of injuries that are sustained by immigrants while working, and the consequences of these injuries.

The article reviews the book, "Hiroshima Immigrants in Canada, 1891-1941," by Michiko Midge Ayukawa.

Research on labor and its treatment in the curriculum of K-12 schools has not been a popular topic. Society´s emphasis on individualism and consumerism has fostered veneration of capitalism throughout public education, with business control of the education policy system. Critical information about the US Labor Movement has been systematically excluded from the public school curriculum, so that labor´s centrality to the flow of history and its contributions to the present status of working people are underappreciated, and neoliberalism threatens public education and teacher unionism around the world. This article describes why and how an alliance of teacher educators, teachers, and unionists are advocating for labor consciousness to be infused into K-12 schooling. This perspective is presented in Organizing the Curriculum, an edited collection of essays, and is being implemented by the Education & Labor Collaborative, an advocacy group to promote economic, social and political empowerment through education for labor consciousness.

The article reviews the book, "Le travail à l’épreuve des paradigmes sociologiques," edited by Jean-Pierre Durand and William Gasparini.

The article reviews the book, "A Revolution for Our Rights: Indigenous Struggles for Land and Justice in Bolivia, 1880-1952," by Laura Gotkowitz.

Based on two case studies from Peru and Bolivia, this paper investigates why certain unions of water workers and not others have sought to form deep coalitions with community groups when confronted by privatization.

The article discusses the opportunities and challenges facing the labour movement in Canada during the global financial crisis and the neoliberal restructuring of the economy.

The article reviews the book "Inequality and Prosperity: Social Europe vs. Liberal America," by Jonas Pontusson.

The article reviews the book, "Reading Culture and Writing Practices in Nineteenth-Century France," by Martin Lyons.

Women and Labour Organizing in Asia: Diversity, Autonomy and Activism, edited by Kaye Broadbent and Michele Ford, is reviewed.

The advent of a modern workmen’s compensation system in Ontario in the mid-1910s was a moment of significant gain for injured workers. With the passage of the 1915 Workmen’s Compensation Act (WCA), injured workers would no longer have to rely on an uncertain, even hostile, judge and jury system to receive some form of compensation from their employers. The WCA was, however, a gendered, i.e., discriminatory, statute. As the paper outlines, the 1915 WCA statutorily enshrined the assumptions of the day that women’s paid work was of less value than that of men’s. The situation remained uncontested until the 1970s, when a vibrant and politically influential injured workers’ movement (IWM) emerged and, in small but important ways, began to challenge the gendered and racialized dimensions of the worker’s compensation system. As it happened, the victories secured at this juncture by the IWM that impacted on women – both as injured workers and as wives, mothers, and widows of injured workers – proved to be more symbolic than material. For while a 1982 change in the name from “Workmen’s” to “Workers Compensation Act” was symbolic of a formally gender neutral statute (continued with the passage of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act in 1997), women workers injured over the past two decades report that their claims are being processed by WCB officials who downplay the severity and the legitimacy of their injuries, on the one hand, and who circumscribe rehabilitation and job training programs with gendered notions that their jobs are secondary in importance to that of male members of their households, on the other hand. No longer totally ignored, injured women workers now confront a neo-liberal, increasingly welfarized workers’ compensation system whose formal gender neutrality does not address entrenched labour market inequalities or the regulatory and processual discrepancies between laws and their application.

This paper examines the evolution of Ontario's tree planting industry and the segmentation of its labour force since the end of WorldWar II. To. do so, it draws upon Jamie Peck's causal emphases of labour market segmentation: labour demand, labour supply, and the state. Concomitantly, it seeks to better conceptualize tree planting amongst other forestry and seasonal natural resource occupations, such as loggers and agricultural workers. The paper is organized around four distinct time periods, all of which are marked by significant changes to the structure and political economy of the forest products industry and legislation governing forest tenure and management. It also examines mechanization in the logging and tree planting industries, the shift from public to private service delivery, the role of unions, remuneration systems, the potential for the use of migrant guest workers, and the ensuing effects on the segmentation, marginalization, and stigmatization of tree planters in Ontario since the mid-1940s.