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À partir des fiches du personnel et de livres de paie de deux sociétés minières de Kirkland Lake, la Lake Shore Gold Mines et la Wright-Hargreaves Mines, l’auteur aborde la question des absences au travail entre 1927 et 1943. Les mineurs examinés, qui font partie des travailleurs les mieux payés du secteur industriel canadien, ont profité d’une organisation du travail qui les sollicite à faire des heures supplémentaires ou à toucher des primes de rendement. Ces revenus additionnels tout comme les hauts salaires que commande leur travail contribuent à une pratique d’absentéisme occasionnel qui se présente sous deux formes : des semaines de vacances non payées et le prolongement du congé dominical pour profiter de ce qu’on appellera la fin de semaine. Ces pratiques, qui varient d’une mine à l’autre et selon le type de travail, sont ainsi en place bien avant l’adoption des deux semaines de vacances en Ontario en 1944 et bien avant l’adoption de la semaine de travail de 40 heures au début des années 1950. Les absences au travail ne seraient donc pas seulement provoquées par des accidents, des maladies ou du chômage, mais elles pourraient être aussi volontaires, signalant ainsi la très grande indépendance de ces travailleurs face au patronat.

The article reviews the book, "Labor's Cold War: Local Politics in a Global Context," edited by Sheldon Stromquist.

Ce travail vise à comprendre comment des intérimaires subissant ce statut y font face. Il apparaît que confrontés à une situation vécue comme stigmatisante, ces salariés réagissent de façon différente selon les raisons qui les ont conduits vers le travail temporaire, selon les ressources qu’ils parviennent à mobiliser pour définir et poursuivre différents objectifs et, en partie au moins, selon la durée de leur passage dans cette forme d’emploi. Trois réponses émergent : la résignation, la résilience et l’adaptation. Loin des schémas explicatifs unidimensionnels valorisant un précaire contraint ou acteur de son développement de carrière, cette recherche suggère une réaction au travail contingent subi qui questionne les différents modèles de coping, c’est-à-dire de stratégies adaptatives., Insecure and discontinued work has spread significantly in France and in other developed industrialized countries over the last thirty years. A significant number of employees are experiencing precarious employment, for lack of finding a secure job which remains a strong social norm in France. This situation of imposed insecurity is to be found in particular in temporary employment and concerns two million employees in France, predominantly low-skilled or unskilled young people. Many studies tend to show that low-skilled contingent workers accept their situation very passively, having no real means to do anything about it, waiting for the situation to improve. On the other hand, in contrast, one can find the description of self-willed, better skilled, mobile workers who implement strategies including chosen mobility to develop their employability, helped by their independence and their ability to diversify their competencies. In spite of the relevance of this dichotomy that enables us to characterize two typical situations, it has a downside which is to assume that involuntary contingent workers have almost no room at all for maneuver. We have tried to understand to what extent low-skilled, involuntary contingent workers get organized to make do with and face up to their difficulties. We then tried to distinguish how they reacted, the strategies and the tactics they adopted to put up with their situation, and if need be, how they tried hard to turn it around to their benefit. We carried out a field survey in the Paris area among 16 temporary work agencies belonging to three large temporary work companies and an SME in the sector to collect data that would enable us to know more about the subject. Resorting to semi-directive interviews, in situ observations, and questionnaires put to temporary workers as well as to the permanent employees of the agencies that employed them, we identified three types of response to the constraint on the part of low-skilled workers. The first type of response was adjustment, and corresponded to constructive acceptance of the situation the worker was confronted with, by trying to optimize the conditions in which it was experienced; the objective was to force the constraint to find a way out. The worker displayed conspicuous good will, as well as permanent cooperation with the agency during his assignment to serve this adjustment, aimed at showing that he was a good and reliable contingent worker even if his main objective was to become a good stable employee. The second type of response was resilience and consisted in doing everything in order not to give up in the face of difficulties, acting with a view to attempting to access stable employment which was the permanent hope. The worker tried to respond to the constraint so as to create an opportunity for development. This posture often involved a twofold refusal of being victimized as a contingent worker on the one hand, and being trapped in this status on the other. This translated into asserting the reasons for and objectives of resorting to temporary work presented as a moment in one’s career that was accepted if not really chosen, and during which the worker refused to be the victim of circumstances. This positive re-interpretation led to the adoption of active individual tactics. The third type of response was resignation and defined the position of those who felt unable to react to the constraint imposed on them and which generated a lot of suffering. The wide gap between the stable employment they aspired to and the durable job insecurity they suffered put these workers in front of a gap between expectations that could only be coped with by being on the defensive. This frequently led, often after many years, to a passive approach similar to a descent into despair. In quite a few cases, we noticed a scenario in which the three attitudes appeared successively: adjustment, which often characterized the first phase, was followed by a phase of resilience during which the worker tried to get organized so as to hold out without suffering too much, followed by resignation when the time spent in contingent work lasted and generated the feeling that one was trapped within precariousness, from which one increasingly felt unable to escape. However, this succession did not take place systematically in this order; neither did it affect all the career paths of the contingent workers studied. Available professional capital (experiences, acquired experience) and social capital (support, know-how) as well as socio-demographic (age, ethnic origin) and family (parents, spouses able or not to provide emotional and material support) characteristics were elements that were often correlated with the level of reactivity and, in particular, the ability to avoid falling into depression. There again, however, it was difficult to establish very recurrent causality links On the other hand, however, it appeared possible to assert that the duration of contingent work suffered and the fact of being stuck in a position which one hoped would be temporary gradually atrophied the ability of many actors to act with a minimum of room for maneuver and often reduced them to being less efficient agents before sometimes turning them into agents in search of collective reasons that accounted for their situation and their helplessness in escaping from it., Este trabajo se propone comprender cómo los trabajadores temporales bajo este estatuto hacen frente a la situación. Confrontados a una situación vivida como estigmatizante, estos trabajadores reaccionan de manera diferente según las razones que les han conducido hacia el trabajo temporario, según los recursos que logran movilizar para definir y conseguir diferentes objetivos y, al menos en parte, según la duración de su pasaje en este tipo de empleo. Tres respuestas emergen: la resignación, la resilianza y la adaptación. Lejos de los esquemas explicativos unidimensionales que valorizan un trabajador precario obligado o actor del desarrollo de su carrera, esta investigación sugiere una reacción al trabajo eventual no deseado que cuestiona los diferentes modelos de “coping”, es decir de estrategias adaptativas.

Global Competitive Strategy, by Daniel F. Spulber, is reviewed.

Industrial Relations: A Current Review, edited by Richard Hall, is reviewed.

Regulating Labour in the Wake of Globalisation: New Challenges, New Institutions, edited by Brian Bercusson and Cynthia Estlund, is reviewed.

US Labor in Trouble and Transition: The Failure of Reform from Above, The Promise of Revival from Below, by Kim Moody, is reviewed.

Rethinking the Future of Work: Directions and Visions, by Colin C. Williams, is reviewed.

The article focuses on declining and retreating of the North American labour movement. The combination of rapid and often reckless capitalist expansion and massive resistance by both unionized and non-unionized workers led to the collapse of the North American economy. Implying greater physical and cultural distance between employers and employees, technological displacement, industrial capitalism required new forms of organization and mobilization.

The article reviews the book, "Le développement durable comme compromis : la modernisation écologique de l’économie à l’ère de la mondialisation," by Corinne Gendron.

The article reviews the book, "Auteurs et textes classiques de la théorie des organisations," edited by Laurent Bélanger and Jean Mercier.

The article reviews the book, "Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development," by David Harvey.

The article reviews the book, "The Rich Man," by Henry Kreisel.

Fairness at Work: Federal Labour Standards for the 21st Century, by Harry Arthurs, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "Glass Houses: Saving Feminist Anti-Violence Agencies From Self-Destruction," by Rebekkah Adams.

The article reviews the book, "Qu’est-ce que l’intégration ?," by Dominique Schnapper.

This article examines the growth of one of the fastest-growing union locals in North America, the Services Employees International Union Local 880 in Chicago. As union membership has declined nationally, Local 880 has achieved exponential growth over the last twenty five years by being among the first to organize extremely low wage home based child care and home care workers. The article highlights the tenets of the local's organizing philosophy, including community organizing and political activism, as well as other strategies and tactics 880 has utilized in growing its membership to more than 65,000 members. Along the way, it has secured notable victories on behalf of its members, including winning the largest organizing campaign of home childcare workers in U.S. history.

The article reviews the book, "Traité de sociologie du travail," seconde édition actualisée, by Thierry Pillon and François Vatin.

Historians have long noted that policies of "progress" were integral to men and women throughout northern North America in the 19th century. A range of scholars have commented on the centrality of railway technology to these policies. Indeed, they have suggested that, in the 19th century, bourgeois nationalists were swept up in a kind of "railway fever," and that even though there were detractors, the tenacity of pro-railway elites, and the considerable patronage that huge construction loans and contracts provided them, ensured that these projects triumphed over other possibilities. The Newfoundland case suggests that there is a need for both a slightly revised assessment of elites and their views and goals, and a more nuanced reading of the role of ordinary men and women in the policy-making process. While elites in the colony did view the railway as a means of becoming a "progressive" or "modern nation," and while they viewed economic prosperity and "enlightenment" as central to modernity and progressiveness, commercial dynamism was only one important component of a more encompassing program. Tlites supported the railway because it provided them with a way of living according to standards of Britishness that became important to Newfoundlanders and others in "white" settler dominions, especially after the mid-19th century. Central to "Britishness" as policy makers understood the term, was the idea that "British societies" were those in which men lived according to their "god given manly independence." A careful analysis of the daily press suggests that many working people took these ideals seriously, and that they saw railway work, and the future employment and other economic opportunities its promoters promised, as a means of living according to them. When opponents of railway development did maneuver themselves into power, they found efforts to change course were met with popular upheaval. Ultimately, it was a broadly based solidarity founded on notions of male entitlement that determined which policies were "feasible."