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Since the late nineteenth century, clerical work has transformed from a small cluster of respected occupations dominated by men to a rapidly changing group of occupations 90 percent of which are held by women. Due to bureaucratization and the feminization of clerical work, clerical jobs are assumed to be routinized and simple, and clerical workers deemed easily replaceable. With further changes to the occupation caused by technology and globalization, clerical workers today have become increasingly vulnerable to unemployment, precarious employment and underemployment. In this research, an Ontario-wide survey with approximately 1200 respondents (including 120 clerical workers) and in-depth interviews with 23 Toronto clerical workers were combined to explore the employment situation of Ontario clerical workers. It is apparent that clerical workers are underemployed along all measured conventional dimensions of underemployment, including credential, performance and subjective as well as work permanence, salary levels and job opportunities. Relational practice is a largely unexamined aspect of clerical work that is often essentialized as a female trait and seldom recognized as skilled practice. In this dissertation, I argue that relational practice is critical to the successful performance of clerical roles and that relational practices are not innate but rather learned skills. I explore some ways in which clerical workers acquire these skills. I conclude by noting that recognizing and valuing relational skills will make the value of clerical workers more apparent to their employers, potentially reducing for clerical workers both their subjective sense of underemployment and their vulnerability to job loss.

The article reviews the exhibition, "Handel the Philanthropist," at the Foundling Museum in London, England in 2009.

Considering the increasing levels of unemployment and underemployment, and the limited evidence concerning the impact of underemployment on health, my study examines the relations between subjective, objective, and time-related underemployment and employees’ health-related quality of life, as manifested through self-rated health, activity limitations and work-related stress. The study compares an expanded model of work-health relations that, along with the factors addressed by control-demand, and social capital theories, includes characteristics of the physical work environment, and employees’ economic class. In addition to the commonly examined factors related to employment and health (control-demand and social capital), my study explores the impact of the work environment (hazards, discomfort and physical demands) and economic class to determine the specific effects of underemployment on an employee’s health-related quality of life. My main argument is that underemployment, in conjunction with lower economic class, higher exposure to a harmful work environment, lack of control over work, and lower social capital, contributes to increased work-related stress and diminishes health-related quality of life. The study applies a mixed methodological approach based on data from the Canadian Work and Lifelong Learning Survey and the US General Social Survey, and qualitative analysis of interviews from the Ontario Survey on Education-Job Requirements Matching. Evidence based on cross-sectional and qualitative data analysis provides consistent findings and confirms the main assumption that high levels of underemployment have a significant effect on employees’ health-related quality of life. The study shows that employees’ economic class, characteristics of work environment and control over work carry the highest associations with health-related quality of life, while underemployment has a significant additive association with health-related quality of life, most importantly with work-related stress.

A fire in Salem, Mass., in 1914 and an explosion in Halifax, N.S., in 1917 provide an opportunity to explore working-class institutions and organizations in the United States-Canada borderlands. In a historical moment in which the state greatly expanded its responsibility to give protection and rescue to its citizens, after these two disasters ordinary survivors preferred to depend on their friends, neighbors, and family members. This dissertation examines which institutions--including formal organizations like unions and fraternal societies as well as informal groups like families and neighborhoods--were most relevant and useful to working-class survivors. Families, neighbors, friends, and coworkers had patterns and traditions of self-help, informal order, and solidarity that they developed before crisis hit their cities. Those traditions were put to unusual purposes and extreme stress when the disasters happened. They were also challenged by new agents of the state, who were given extraordinary powers in the wake of the disasters. This dissertation describes how the working-class people who most directly experienced the disasters understood them and their cities starkly differently than the professionalized relief authorities. Using a wide array of sources--including government documents, published accounts, archived ephemeral, oral histories, photographs, newspapers in two languages, and the case files of the Halifax Relief Commission--the dissertation describes how elites imposed a progressive state on what they imagined to be a fractured and chaotic social landscape. It argues that "the people" for whom reformers claimed to speak had their own durable, alternative modes of support and rescue that they quickly and effectively mobilized in times of crisis, but which remained illegible to elites. By demonstrating the personal, ideological, political, and practical ties between New England and Nova Scotia and Quebec, it also emphasizes the importance of studying American and Canadian history together, not only comparatively but as a transnational, North American whole.

This paper presents empirical evidence about HRM practices in Chilean organizations with the aims of providing an overview of employment relations and adding to limited existing literature. Research was conducted in a sample of 2000 Chilean workers in the Metropolitan Region. The paper argues that HRM practices in Chilean organizations illustrate the normative perspective of modern HRM discourse, where managers understand the nature of employment relationships to be the control of workers. While HRM processes are articulated under a discourse of worker emancipation, in reality, discursive practices perpetuate patterns of subordination that have historically shaped employment relations in Chile.

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

Much has written about the growth of legislative interference in collective bargaining and the right to strike in Canada in the latter part of the 20th century. However, consideration of the specifically gendered impacts of this interference has been largely neglected. This paper argues that suspension of collective bargaining rights and the right to strike impacts women workers in unique and disproportionate ways. Two cursory case studies from Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador provide examples of how suspension of bargaining rights has a differential impact on women. The paper calls attention to the need for a heightened focus on the specifically gendered impacts of neoliberal governments´ growing propensity to suspend collective bargaining rights in Canada.

The article reviews the book, "Regulating Flexibility: The Political Economy of Employment Standards," by Mark P. Thomas.

The article reviews the book, "Bodies of Work: Civic Display and Labor in Industrial Pittsburgh," by Edward Slavishak.

Based on National Hockey League club and league correspondence, congressional transcripts, newspapers, and government documents, this essay examines the first attempt to organize a National Hockey League Players' Association. For just over a year, the NHLPA struggled to overcome the resistance of NHL owners, the uncertainty of its own members, and the confusing legal environment created by overlapping transnational, interstate, and inter-provincial jurisdictions. These issues make the NHLPA a compelling case study of the way in which the borders between business and sport began to shift in the 1950s, a time when new forces-technological (television), legal (congressional investigation and judicial decisions), and social (player activism)-were preparing the way for the struggle for free agency.

Interrogating the New Economy: Restructuring Work in the 21st Century, edited by Norene J. Pupa and Mark P. Thomas, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "Contemporary Latin America: Development and Democracy Beyond the Washington Consensus," by Francisco Panizza.

The role of the Left in unions, women´s activism, and the rise of industrial unions in the post-World War II decades have been the subject of valuable academic scrutiny. This article seeks to add to our understanding of these topics by looking at the role that one prominent activist—Al Campbell—played in building UAW/CAW Local 27 from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s. Campbell strongly advocated an independent Canadian autoworkers´ union, supported women´s activism, and was instrumental in helping expand a major composite local in the union. I argue in this article that, in order to understand the nature of the post-war Canadian labour movement, we need to devote greater attention to the role of devoted leftists in building local unions.

The article reviews the book, "If You're in My Way, I'm Walking" by Thom Workman.

The article reviews the book, "Why Is There No Labor Party in the United States?," by Robin Archer.

The article reviews the book, "The Importance of Being Monogamous: Marriage and Nation Building in Western Canada to 1919," by Sarah Carter.

This article is intended to highlight the basic differences between Canada and the United States in the legal principles governing collective bargaining law. While Canadian labour relations legislation is modeled on the U.S. National Labor Relations Act, there are striking differences arising from the particular socio-economic conditions, cultural traditions, and historical experiences of both countries. Generally speaking, it is not widely disputed on either side of the border that Canadian labour relations law is more "progressive" than its U.S. counterpart. The question arises: Why?

Explores the evolution of a new women's labour history in the post-1960s era, with attention to the similarities and differences characterizing scholarship in Britain, Canada and the United States. The debates the field animated, and how these shifted over time as the political and intellectual context changed, are critically and comparatively examined. By tracing the movement of ideas, themes and inspiration across borders, one can gain a better understanding of the transnational creation of a feminist labour history.

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