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Written from a neo-institutionalist standpoint, this paper focuses on the influence of employers' networks on the dissemination of managerial practices through the example of skill management in French companies. Previous studies suggest that employers' organizations can be perceived as social networks that affect Human Resources policies. Studying the development of skill management confirms the idea that this type of management becomes institutionalized under the influence of such networks. We evaluate this influence through the use of a quantitative methodology that shows the correlation between the dissemination of skill management techniques and the number of chief executives belonging to employers' networks in a given company. We use data that were collected from 3,000 companies by the French Ministry of Labour for the Reponse survey. Our approach led us to formulate a brief--but new--account of employers' networks in France. But mostly, it allowed us to measure the impact that belonging to these networks has on the implementation of skill management. Though almost three quarters of all 3,000 companies belong or are related to employers' networks, the reality behind this fact is complex and concerns a limited number of the companies considered. We then show that a connection with an employers' network -- especially with clubs of heads of human resources or with entrepreneurs' organizations -- is one of the reasons why a skill management-oriented human resources policy is adopted. The most influential employers' networks are therefore those that rely on voluntary subscription, the research of legitimacy and the exchange of tools and ideas.

The article reviews the book, "Indigenous Screen Cultures in Canada," edited by Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson and Marian Bredin.

La théorie de l’action raisonnée et les modèles du roulement volontaire ont toujours considéré l’intention de quitter son emploi pour un autre employeur comme le meilleur prédicteur du roulement de personnel. Cependant, dans les faits, les employés disposent de deux autres options, à savoir progresser vers un autre emploi au sein de leur entreprise (roulement interne) ou encore rester dans leur emploi actuel pour une certaine période. Dans une perspective de prévention du roulement, la recherche aurait avantage à identifier des profils d’intentions en fonction de ces trois options. La présente étude vise à vérifier si les employés présentent des profils d’intentions différents et si leur satisfaction au travail, leurs comportements de recherche d’emploi et les taux de roulement volontaire et interne diffèrent selon ces profils.L’analyse des résultats recueillis auprès de 434 agents issus de trois centres d’appels suggère l’existence de quatre profils d’intentions à peu près équivalents en nombre : (1) rester dans l’emploi actuel (forte intention de rester dans l’emploi actuel, faible intention de progresser à l’interne et faible intention de quitter à l’externe); (2) rester en attendant de progresser (forte intention de rester dans l’emploi actuel, mais forte intention de progresser à l’interne et faible intention de quitter à l’externe); (3) priorité à la progression (faible intention de rester dans l’emploi actuel, forte intention de progresser à l’interne et faible intention de quitter à l’externe); (4) priorité à la mobilité (faible intention de rester dans l’emploi actuel, forte intention de progresser à l’interne et de quitter à l’externe).Les résultats de l’étude montrent que ces quatre profils d’intentions présentent des niveaux de satisfaction au travail et des comportements de recherche d’emploi différents. De même, les taux de roulement volontaire du personnel et le taux de roulement interne, mesurés un an plus tard, diffèrent selon les profils d’intention// The theory of reasoned action and voluntary turnover models have always regarded the intention to terminate employment in order to go to another employer as the best predictor of turnover. However, in practice, employees have two other options: to move to another job within the same company (internal turnover) or stay in their current job for an indefinite period. From the perspective of turnover prevention, it would be advantageous if research would identify intention profiles according to these three options. This study aims to explore the different intention profiles of employees and whether job satisfaction, job-search behaviour and rates of voluntary and internal turnover differ according to these profiles. The analysis of results collected from 434 agents from three call centres suggests the existence of four intention profiles, which are about equal in number: (1) Stay in present job (strong intention to remain in current job, low intention to progress internally and low intention to leave for a job externally); (2) Stay whilst waiting to progress (strong intention to remain in current job, but strong intention to progress to a job internally and low intention to leave for a job externally); (3) Priority is to progress (low intention to stay in current job, strong intention to progress internally and low intention to leave for an external job); (4) Priority is to move on (low intention to stay in current job, strong intention to progress internally and leave for a job externally). The results of the study show that these four intention profiles reveal different levels of job satisfaction and job-search behaviour. Similarly, the rates of voluntary staff turnover and internal turnover vary according to the intention profile.

At the close of the American Revolution thousands of American Loyalists were forced into exile and made their way to British colonies beyond the United States. Most of the Loyalists landed in British North America, particularly the Maritimes. Along with the trauma and losses of the conflict, the Loyalists brought with them a way of doing things, an intense political history, and ideas concerning the imperial structure that framed their everyday lives. This dissertation is a study of the Loyalists. Specifically, it explores a prominent Loyalist and his journey from Massachusetts to Nova Scotia along with family members, servants, and labourers, including enslaved persons. A central objective of the dissertation is to illuminate the story of the enslaved and magnify their place in Nova Scotia’s eighteenth century colonial history narrative. The objective is addressed by adapting a holistic perspective that considers a single geography – the plantation. The holistic perspective, developed through an interdisciplinary methodology, explores the people, places and culture that formed the Loyalist plantation and were informed by it. The picture that emerges is one that puts into place the structure and organization of a Loyalist plantation in the late eighteenth century. This dissertation argues that an interdisciplinary approach is fundamental when exploring the subject of the plantation and its inhabitants in Nova Scotia. Through study of the slaveholder and the comparison of his plantation spaces, the dissertation argues for Loyalist continuity. Such continuity confirmed a slaveholding culture during the mass migration. Finally, this dissertation argues that the Loyalist period can be described as Nova Scotia’s Age of Slavery. The Loyalist migration represents an unprecedented arrival of enslaved persons to the province. Furthermore, the Loyalist migration represents the unprecedented arrival of a political and ideological framework that carried within it perceptions of race and seeds of discrimination that took root.

[T]his chapter identifies different forms of anti-poverty work being pursued in Canada today and examines the relations among poor people, poverty and labour unions. ...[The author] concentrates on examples of three main intersections of labour union and anti-poverty relations: union organizing of low-wage workers, poor workers' organizations, and multi-organization campaigns and coalitions. --Editors' introduction

The article reviews the book, "Casino Women: Courage in Unexpected Places," by Susan Chandler and Jill B. Jones.

There has been a significant expansion in Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) over the past ten years. The Pilot Project for Occupations Requiring Lower Levels of Formal Training (PPORLLFT), a sub program of the TFWP, has been leading this expansion. Drawing upon testimony given to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, this thesis examines the development and expansion of the program, since its inception in 2002, and shows that it is connected to the ongoing process of neoliberalisation in Canada. One significant example of this connection is the program's support for increases in two-step immigration streams that involve employer sponsorship for successful transition to permanent residency; this increase represents a privatisation of citizenship decisions. More than this, the neoliberal aspects of the PPORLLFT have increased inequality and the ability of employers to have a more disciplined workforce. This has decreased the ability of working people to have influence in their workplace and over economic policy more generally.

During the Second World War, the Congress of Industrial Organizations in Canada grew from a handful of members to more than a quarter-million and from political insignificance to a position of influence in the emergence of the welfare state. What was it about the "good war" that brought about this phenomenal growth? And how did this coming of age during the war affect the emerging CIO? Labour Goes to War analyzes the organizing strategies of the CIO during the war to show that both economic and cultural forces were behind its explosive growth. Labour shortages gave workers greater power in the workplace and increased their militancy. But workers’ patriotism, their ties to those on active service, memories of the First World War, and allegiance to the "people’s war" also contributed to the CIO’s growth -- and to what it claimed for workers. At the same time, union organizers and workers influenced one another as the war changed lives, opinions, expectations -- and notions of women’s rights. Drawing on an impressive array of archival material, Wendy Cuthbertson illuminates this complex wartime context. Her analysis shows how the war changed lives, opinions, and expectations. She also shows how the complex, often contradictory, motives of workers during this period left the Canadian labour movement with an ambivalent progressive/conservative legacy. --Publisher's description

Drawing on historical sources and interviews, this paper discusses several key forces that have shaped the development of the snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio) fishery in Newfoundland. Once commonly discarded as a pest, snow crab has emerged as the economic foundation of many rural coastal communities since the cod moratorium of the early 1990s. While this fishery has brought unprecedented prosperity to some commercial fishers, it has also been prone to significant price fluctuations and the benefits accruing from it have not been widely shared. Accordingly, it has also been marked by frequent and often bitter conflicts between different crab fishing fleet sectors and between crab fishers, processing companies, and processing plant workers. These tensions reflect fundamentally different visions of how to sustain the fishery into the future and which priorities should decide who benefits most from the crab resource.

The literature of British Columbia and the study of labour therein have been largely ignored in academic criticism. I address this deficiency by foregrounding labour in the prose literature of British Columbia as well as the significance of British Columbia literature itself. My introductory literature review demarcates the field, situates the authors and texts I take up, and points to the general importance of such a study. Chapter two begins by analyzing the male-dominant labour narrative in Bertrand Sinclair’s The Inverted Pyramid and Roderick Haig-Brown’s On the Highest Hill and Timber—each focused on the theme of logging. Rather than an overarching argument, the section on Sinclair addresses many concepts, including Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of fields, a connection between environmental conservationism and loggers, and a cooperative economic model that opposes capitalism. Likewise, in Haig-Brown I focus on his treatment of danger in the logging industry, the oft-forgotten history of Canada’s national parks, the way that language connects people to nature, and the presence of homosocial and homosexual relationships in logging. My project shifts in chapter three from logging to orcharding and from novels to three works of creative non-fiction by Harold Rhenisch:Out of the Interior: The Lost Country, Tom Thomson’s Shack, and The Wolves at Evelyn: Journeys through a Dark Century. Operating out of a site of tension and contradiction,Rhenisch resists what he sees as the dominant discourses in the Interior of British Columbia. In my fourth chapter I return to novels but move from a study of manual labour to white collar labour. Here the phrase “white collar” becomes an analytical lens to view labour stratification, exploitation, authorship, sexism, and agency in Douglas Coupland’s JPod, Robert Harlow’s Scann, and Jen Sookfong Lee’s the end of east. In chapter five, I conclude by using Daphne Marlatt’s novel Ana Historic as a way to reflect on the positions of chapters two through four. Marlatt’s criticism of male dominant conceptions of history and patriarchal systems of power illuminates the texts I have taken up and reveals possibilities for further analysis, debate, and discussion.

This research uses data from a large Canadian research university to explore the sources of the gender pay gap. It is the first analysis of the joint impact on the pay gap of two recent factors: the increased use by universities of market supplements and the implementation of the Canada Research Chairs program. In addition, it considers both individual and structural determinants of the remuneration gap, something few other studies have done. We examine the contributions to the gap of the following: base pay, promotion to full professor, access to market supplements, and amounts of market supplements. We show that the effects of these factors vary with the proportions of female faculty members within units and that the magnitude of gender differences may vary with the degree of formalization in remuneration practices.

The article reviews the book, "Gender, Health, and Popular Culture: Historical Perspectives," edited by Cheryl Krasnick Warsh.

Why are class politics more prevalent in Canada than in the U.S., even though the two countries share similar cultures, societies, and economies? Many view this cross­border distinction as a byproduct of long­standing differences in political cultures and institutions, but I find that it is actually a relatively recent divergence resulting from how the working class was politically incorporated in both countries before, during, and after World War II. My central argument is that in Canada, this incorporation process embedded "the class idea"--the idea of class as a salient, legitimate political category--more deeply in policies, institutions, and practices than in the U.S.Out of the social and political struggles of that period emerged two working class movements that, although bearing a surface resemblance, were organized along different logics. In Canada, the working class was incorporated as a class representative, whereas in the U.S. It was incorporated as an interest group. That difference in political incorporation enabled or constrained labor's legitimacy and organizational capacity in different ways in both countries. Canadian labor's role as a class representative legitimized it and expanded its organizational capacity, while U.S. labor's role as an interest group delegitimized it and undermined its organizational capacity.I show this through a detailed analysis of trajectories of labor movement strength in both countries over the course of the twentieth century, as measured by unionization rates, or union density. Starting from the observation that union density was very similar in both countries until the mid-1960s, then diverged, I first examine competing explanations for this divergence. Having illustrated their strengths and limitations, I then develop an argument showing how the divergence in working class organizational strength was the outcome of struggles for political incorporation.I identify two key moments that shaped these different processes of political incorporation. The first was the restructuring of party-class alliances in both countries in the 1930s and 40s, where U.S. labor decisively abandoned the project of building an independent working class party in favor of an alliance with the Democratic Party, at the same moment that Canadian labor forged an independent class alliance with progressive agrarian forces under the banner of the CCF. The second was differences in the effects of postwar Red scares on the relationship between labor and the left in both countries. While anti-Communism took its toll on working class movements in both countries, the labor-left alliance was severed in the U.S., but only strained in Canada. The outcome of these processes was a U.S. labor movement that conceived of itself more as an interest group representing a specific constituency within the Democratic Party, and a Canadian labor movement that conceived of itself more as a class representative with closer ties to a broader social movement.Differences in labor's political incorporation also shaped the formation and development of the regimes governing labor-management relations in both countries. The Canadian labor regime was created as a result of working class upsurge from below, whereas the U.S. labor regime was created as part of an elite reform project from above. This original difference influenced the organizing logics of each regime. Whereas the Canadian labor regime was organized around recognizing the existence of class conflict and seeking to mitigate it, the U.S. regime was organized around protecting workers' individual rights. Although this created a more interventionist Canadian system that restricted labor's scope of action in important ways, it also reinforced a collective, oppositional class identity vis-à-vis both employers and the state. Meanwhile, the U.S. system's focus on rights led to a stronger focus on legalistic proceduralism and imposing a formal equality between labor and management that obscured the power imbalance inherent in the employment relationship. Additionally, labor drew different lessons from these different processes of regime formation. Whereas Canadian labor learned the value of winning gains through disruptive mass mobilization, U.S. labor learned the value of winning gains through sympathetic politicians and favorable legal precedents.The combination of a more protective and institutionally stable labor regime and a labor movement more accustomed to winning gains through mass mobilization, Canadian labor was better positioned to defend itself than its U.S. counterpart when employers began a counter-offensive beginning in the late 1960s. While U.S. labor spiraled into decline, Canadian labor proved more resilient, leading to the divergence in union density rates.

Tight labor markets driven by resource booms could increase the opportunity cost of schooling and crowd out human capital formation. For oil-producing economies such as the Province of Alberta, the OPEC oil shocks during the period from 1973 to 1981 may have had an adverse long-term effect on the productivity of the labor force if the oil boom resulted in workers reducing their ultimate investment in human capital rather than merely altering the timing of schooling. The authors analyze the effect of this decade-long oil boom on the long-term human capital investments and productivity for Alberta birth cohorts that were of normal schooling ages before, during, and after the oil boom. Their findings suggest that resource booms may change the timing of schooling but they do not reduce the total accumulation of human capital.

During the Great Depression, the conflicting interests of capital and labour became clearer than ever before. Radical Canadian workers, encouraged by the Red International of Labour Unions, responded by building the Workers' Unity League – an organization that greatly advanced the cause of unions in Canada, and boasted 40,000 members at its height. In Raising the Workers' Flag, the first full-length study of this robust group, Stephen L. Endicott brings its passionate efforts to light in memorable detail. Raising the Workers' Flag is based on newly available or previously untapped sources, including documents from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's Security Service and the Communist Party's archives. Using these impressive finds, Endicott gives an intimate sense of the raging debates of the labour movement of the 1930s. A gripping account of the League's dreams and daring, Raising the Workers' Flag enlivens some of the most dramatic struggles of Canadian labour history. -- Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Sounds of Ethnicity: Listening to German North America, 1850-1914," by Barbara Lorenzkowski.

The article reviews the book, "Champagne and Meatballs: Adventures of a Canadian Communist," by Bert Whyte, edited by Larry Hannant.