Your search

The article reviews the book, "Working Construction: Why White Working-Class Men Put Themselves - and the Labor Movement - in Harm's Way," by Kris Paap.

Aboriginal women have a long history of paid labour in Canada, yet there is little scholarly writing examining their work experiences. Using enfranchisement case files for the Ontario Indian agencies of Parry Sound and Manitowaning, supplemented by oral histories from the Tyendinaga Mohawks, this article explores the work lives of Anishinabe and Mohawk women in the 1920s and 1930s. Aboriginal women's economic roles involved a continuum of labour ranging from non-cash-oriented subsistence production to commercially-oriented farming, handicraft production, and berry-picking, to wage labour in the capitalist economy. In response to increasing economic hardship on the reserves, First Nations men and women turned increasingly to off-reserve wage labour. While men around Georgian Bay had access to seasonal jobs in lumbering, sawmilling, transportation, and tourism, women faced much more limited employment opportunities in the area. Some responded by moving to towns and cities to work. Further south, the Mohawk women of Tyendinaga could take domestic service jobs and commute from the reserve, or they could move to larger cities to work. For both groups of women, as for women in general, domestic labour was the most common occupation. The Tyendinaga women also had considerable involvement in manufacturing and migrant farm labour. A few women from both groups were able to finish high school and obtain clerical jobs, which offered better pay and shorter hours. Aboriginal women's occupational distributions were similar to those of other women in the labour force, especially working-class, immigrant, and racialized women. Contrary to today's persistent media images of Aboriginal unemployment, their records and reminiscences reveal lifetimes of hard work, self-support, and self-respect.

The article reviews the book, "Les temporalités sociales : repères méthodologiques, ouvrage collectif," edited by Jens Thoemmes and Gilbert de Terssac.

This paper re-examines the concept of work-family balance by analyzing qualitative data from interviews conducted with Australian senior female staff and managers at a major metropolitan bank and a large, regional hospital. Extant research suggests that managers and staff in senior roles, who have greater autonomy and discretion than other employees, are better able to balance their work and family demands. This paper finds evidence for work-family conflict among participants, who perceive they have "no balance" and must make many personal sacrifices to meet the conflicting demands of work and family. Our findings are confronted with the greedy institutions framework which provides a suitable metaphor to understand the role of organizations in supporting the dual demands of work-family.

The article reviews the book,"Craft Capitalism: Craftsworkers and Early Industrialization in Hamilton, 1840-1870," by Robert B. Kristofferson.

The article reviews the book, "Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global," by Paul Mason.

Based upon unique Canadian administrative data from the years 1996 to 1999, this study examines the duration of absences from work due to injuries arising from workplace violence with a hazard model. We find that policing and nursing occupations, larger health care expenditures and more severe acts of violence are associated with longer absences from work. On the other hand, workers from larger firms have shorter absences from work. Our estimates are also quite sensitive to the inclusion of unobserved heterogeneity distribution, i.e., an individual specific random effect. This suggests that unobservable factors, such as stress and psychological or psychosomatic problems resulting from the workplace violence could have a large impact on the duration of work absences.

L’industrie de la construction connaît une mobilité de la main-d’oeuvre particulièrement élevée en regard de la moyenne des autres secteurs de l’économie. En effet, le taux annuel des cessations d’emploi est pratiquement le double dans la construction par rapport à l’ensemble des secteurs d’activité économique. Cela s’explique par diverses caractéristiques de l’activité productive de cette industrie. Par ailleurs, cette mobilité doit être distinguée selon que l’on considère les déplacements de la main-d’oeuvre au sein même de l’industrie ou les départs permanents de cette industrie. Recourant à des données originales de Statistique Canada, nous présentons une analyse de certains facteurs explicatifs de cette double réalité. Nous nous intéressons notamment au cas du Québec qui offre un profil institutionnel particulier en matière de régulation du marché du travail., The construction industry has often been described in terms of its distinctive features, that is, its industrial organization, the specificity of its workforce, the nature of its work processes or its labour relations system. An important feature of the industry is unstable employment and the resulting high level of workforce mobility. Empirically, this industrial mobility is reflected in a rate of workforce mobility in the industry that is practically twice higher than in the economy as a whole. This is based on the mobility indicator of terminations of “permanent” employment during the course of one year as used by Statistics Canada. However, the usual statistical measure of workforce mobility expresses a break in the employment relationship for a given employer. This measure therefore does not necessarily describe adequately the reality of an industry with characteristics such as those found in the construction industry, since the Statistics Canada data do not indicate if the workers find other employment in the same or another sector. These important distinctions are rarely considered in either official statistics or the literature. For an industry whose labour market tends to be regulated on a sectoral basis, which is the case in Quebec, workforce mobility within the industry or sector itself does not have the same significance as permanent departures from the industry. The latter would represent a net loss of human capital. Considering the possible impacts on the workforce, employers and the industry in general, it is important to examine this phenomenon of high workforce mobility, to measure it, and to try to evaluate its causes and effects. This article thus seeks to understand, in particular, whether workforce mobility in the construction industry is truly exceptional. We will examine original comparative data for Quebec and Canada. More particularly, we have sought to distinguish between workforce mobility within the construction industry and mobility expressed through workforce departures to other sectors. The main results of our research indicate that construction workers’ movement to other sectors in Quebec is a real and significant phenomenon, although it is among the lowest when compared to other Canadian provinces. The proportions of construction industry workers who move to other economic sectors are similar to those observed for other industries. Thus, our data on this mobility correspond to certain explanatory factors found in the literature to explain workforce mobility, such as age and income level. In fact, in line with most studies identified in the literature on workforce mobility, the workers who leave the industry are younger than those in the industry as a whole. Moreover, it can also be suggested that they are more inclined to leave the industry if, in addition to being among the youngest, they are not highly skilled. In terms of income, our results are in line with the literature. On the one hand, mobility is more often correlated with low initial gains for workers, and on the other, a logical consequence is that mobility reflects the workers’ desire to improve their economic situation. It can also be hypothesized that changing sector will tend to also correspond to workers’ changing their occupations. This hypothesis is supported by two facts. First, most construction trades are very specific to the industry and as such, are not easily exported to other sectors. Second, the sectors to which workers who have left construction tend to move often have little to do with the latter (e.g., transportation, commerce, public services or manufacturing industries). Workforce mobility in the construction industry is an ongoing challenge for an industry with characteristics of production activity that often result in employment instability. Thus, how can workers be attracted to and retained by the industry which, year after year, has twice as many employment terminations as in other sectors? Our data suggest an initial conclusion regarding the conditions that should be put in place to minimize permanent departures from the industry. The workers recruited should be guaranteed a satisfactory number of working hours, which will provide them with an income level that is at least comparable to other sectors. The recruitment of workers who hold a diploma, as compared with workers without experience or specific knowledge of the industry, also seems to have a positive effect on their retention. Our data also suggest that sectoral regulation of the workforce, and particularly the centralized management of benefits, are organizational features that mitigate certain disadvantages of employment instability for workers. In other words, it is argued that this model of sectoral regulation results in workforce management that reconciles the imperatives of the high mobility specific to this sector while at the same time ensuring a degree of economic security for workers., La industria de la construcción conoce une movilidad de la mano de obra particularmente elevada comparativamente a otros sectores de le economía. En efecto, la tasa anual de cesación de empleo es prácticamente el doble en la construcción comparativamente al conjunto de sectores de actividad económica. Esto se explica en razón de las diversas características de la actividad productiva de esta industria. Es más, esta movilidad debe ser distinguida según que se considere los desplazamientos de mano de obra dentro de la misma industria o los alejamiento permanente de esta industria. Utilizando datos originales de Estadísticas Canadá, presentamos un análisis de ciertos factores explicativos de esta doble realidad. Nos interesamos en especial al caso de Quebec que presenta un perfil institucional particular en materia de regulación del mercado de trabajo.

Union members (n = 187) completed surveys assessing five affective measures (organizational commitment, job satisfaction, work climate satisfaction, management satisfaction, and union commitment) following a five-month long strike. Paired t-tests (using retrospective questions where participants assessed pre and post-strike affect on a single survey) found that the strike had a negative impact on worker reactions to both their management group and their union across all five measures. The significance of this study is that the negative effects of strikes can, and do, carry over into the workplace in terms of worker affect towards their union and employer. From a theoretical perspective, these findings are consistent with the IR systems' concept of a feedback loop and suggest that future strike research and theories should be expanded to examine issues related to worker reaction.

Cette étude analyse le taux de pénétration des nouvelles formes d’organisation du travail (NFOT) ainsi que leurs déterminants. Pour ce faire, les perspectives contingente et institutionnelle ont été mises à profit afin de caractériser les facteurs explicatifs des NFOT dans 252 entreprises québécoises. Les résultats de cette étude sont concluants : la perspective contingente explique mieux la présence des NFOT lorsque le taux de pénétration de ces pratiques est élevé, alors que la perspective institutionnelle s’avère dominante lorsque ce taux est faible. Concrètement, les résultats suggèrent que la stratégie d’affaires, la gestion participative, le type de culture et la qualité totale, caractérisant la perspective contingente, sont les facteurs déterminants d’une pénétration élevée des NFOT, alors que le secteur d’activités, la concurrence à l’international et la structure de gouvernance, caractérisant la perspective institutionnelle, expliquent mieux la présence des NFOT lorsque celles-ci sont implantées superficiellement., This study deals with new forms of work organization (NFWO). Whereas, in the past, this subject has been approached by many authors from the perspective of the impact of innovative practices on business performance (Arthur, 1994; Handel and Gittleman, 2004; Handel and Levine, 2004), this study rather sets out to study the diffusion and the determinants linked to work organization. Consequently, we can ask the following question: what differentiates firms having implemented new forms of work organization (NFWO)? To answer this question, two perspectives will be used: the institutional perspective and the contingent perspective. On the one hand, according to the institutional perspective, businesses could be tempted to imitate competitors and/or to follow the enthusiasm which increasingly, many industries show for NFWO (Dirsmith, Fogarty and Gupta, 2000). They might equally be compelled to adopt NFWO due to surrounding coercive forces. According to this approach, the choice would thus be rather the result of sectoral imitation (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983) limited or encouraged by the different groups of actors in the business. On the other hand, according to the contingency theory, businesses should be bound to their internal structure as well as to their policies and human resource management practices on their business strategies and their internal strategies. The choice to adopt or to implement NFOW would stem, from this perspective, from a rational and strategic choice (Dunphy and Bryant, 1996). Thus, businesses opting for participative management and having initiated a quality management approach would be more inclined to adopt new forms of work organization oriented towards autonomy and, conversely, those having adopted autocratic management and mass production without concern for quality would be less attracted by these practices (Dean and Bowen, 1994; Handel and Levine, 2004). The results of this study show that 27% of establishments surveyed chose to implement NFOW substantially, which is comparable to the results obtained by Osterman (1994a, 2000). Also, although we did not test for the presence of complete practice systems, it appears that few businesses chose to thoroughly implement several practices linked to work organization. To this end, we observe that autonomous work teams are less implemented than are the other selected practices. Our results suggest that the contingent perspective and mainly internal strategies better account for the presence of NFOW than does the institutional perspective. Concretely, we found that the presence of a leadership strategy by costs, of participative management, of a quality management approach, and a market culture based on performance are all linked to the presence of NFOW when the degree of penetration for these practices is considered. However, on the institutional perspective side, the sector to which the business belongs, the competitive pressure to which businesses are exposed, the governing mechanism and their level of growth are linked to the presence of NFOW only when these are superficially implemented. In conclusion, certain businesses implement NFOW in a way so as to be coherent with their strategies and values, while others seem rather to follow the style of the day, without achieving true change as concerns their work organization method., Este estudio analiza la tasa de penetración de las nuevas formas de organización del trabajo (NFOT) así que sus determinantes. Para ello hemos utilizado las perspectivas contingente e institucional para caracterizar los factores explicativos de las NFOT en 252 empresas quebequenses. Los resultados de este estudio son concluyentes: la perspectiva contingente explica mejor la presencia de NFOT cuando la tasa de penetración de dichas prácticas es elevada, mientras que la perspectiva institucional se revela dominante cuando esa tasa es baja. Concretamente, los resultados sugieren que la estrategia empresarial, la gestión participativa, el tipo de cultura y la calidad total, que caracterizan la perspectiva contingente, son los factores determinantes de una penetración elevada de NFOT, mientras que el sector de actividad, la concurrencia en el campo internacional y la estructura de gobernanza, que caracterizan la perspectiva institucional, explican mejor la presencia de NFOT cuando estas son implantas superficialmente.

The Realities of Work: Experiencing Work and Employment in Contemporary Society, third edition, by Mike Noon and Paul Blyton, is reviewed.

Changing Contours of Work: Jobs and Opportunities in the New Economy, by Stephen Sweet and Peter Meiksins, is reviewed.

Using Canadian national data from the Workplace and Employee Survey (WES), this study aims to identify predictors of participation in voluntary vocational training for female and male managers, respectively. Results show a higher rate of participation for female managers and a differential effect of predictors by gender. For men, schooling is the sole human capital variable significantly linked to the probability of participating in voluntary vocational training. For women, the probability of participating in voluntary vocational training varies by age, organizational tenure and schooling. Results also indicate that both participation in mandatory training and family responsibilities are significantly and negatively linked to participation in voluntary training for female managers but not for male managers.

The article reviews the book, "La contractualisation de la relation de travail," by Christian Bessy.

The article reviews the book, :Les intermittents du spectacle. Sociologie d’une exception," by Pierre-Michel Menger.

1 Le 11 septembre 2007, Rodrigue Blouin, professeur au Département des relations industrielles de l’Université Laval, décédait subitement. Sa famille perdait un mari et un père aimés, la revue RI/IR, un collaborateur constant et indéfectible, le Département des relations industrielles perdait un collègue inestimable, les étudiantes et étudiants, un enseignant passionné, le monde du travail perdait un collaborateur de haut niveau apprécié par tous et toutes et beaucoup perdaient un ami irremplaçable. Les témoignages reçus de partout au Québec, du Canada et de l’Europe révèlent l’attachement que collègues et amis témoignaient à Rodrigue et mettent en lumière son influence importante comme référent dans le monde du travail. // On Sep 11, 2007, Rodrigue Blouin, Professor in the Department of Industrial Relations of Universite Laval, died suddenly. The tributes received from all corners of Quebec, Canada and Europe are an eloquent testimonial to the attachment to Rodrigue felt by his colleagues and friends and to his important influence as a model in the world of labor relations. He was impassioned by the subjects that he taught, highly organized, disciplined and always available to his students. After being accustomed to seeing a colleague like Rodrigue every day, everyone is left with a deep sense of emptiness because his presence touched them in many ways and at many levels.

Every year in Canada and the U.S., the share of higher education faculty who teach off the tenure track grows. One might expect that faculty unionization would limit this process, but the data examined here indicate that this is not so. While Canadian universities are significantly more unionized than their U.S. counterparts, they rely at least as heavily on contingent faculty. Similarly, U.S. states with high levels of unionization do not exhibit lower levels of casualization. Union strategies that institutionalize divisions between tenure-track and non-tenure-track, and/or between part-time and full-time faculty, probably play a role in this outcome. They can and should also play a pivotal role in reversing these trends if they develop the political will to do so.

L’objectif de cet article est d’évaluer, sur la base de la théorie de l’échange social, dans quelle mesure le soutien et la confiance envers le supérieur et l’organisation permettent d’expliquer l’influence de chacune des dimensions associées au leadership transformationnel, transactionnel et laisser-faire sur l’engagement affectif des employés. De nombreuses études montrent que ces différentes formes de leadership ont un impact important sur plusieurs attitudes et comportements des employés, mais encore très peu de chercheurs se sont intéressés aux processus par lesquels les leaders produisent de tels effets. À cet effet, nos résultats font ressortir que la confiance et le soutien constituent des mécanismes cruciaux pour expliquer l’effet du leadership sur l’engagement organisationnel des employés., Over the last few years, the transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership theory has attracted the attention of many researchers (Judge and Piccolo, 2004; Lowe and Gardner, 2000, Yammarino et al., 2005). Furthermore, numerous studies (Bycio, Hackett and Allen, 1995; Dumdum, Lowe and Avolio, 2002; Rafferty and Griffin, 2004; Yammarino, Spangler and Dubinsky, 1998) have shown that these three forms of leadership have a significant impact on several employee attitudes and behaviours, including affective organizational commitment, which is characterized by an individual’s emotional attachment to his company (Meyer and Allen, 1997). Nevertheless, there are still very few researchers taking an interest in the processes through which leaders can produce such effects (Bass and Riggio, 2006; Bono and Judge, 2003; Yukl, 2006). Only a few authors have tackled this problem, particularly by identifying empowerment (Avolio et al., 2004) and fairness (Pillai, Schriesheim and Williams, 1999) as mechanisms explaining the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ affective commitment. We intend to build on these recent results in improving the understanding of this dynamic. Based on the social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), this research is aimed at exploring how supervisors can strengthen their employees’ affective commitment. More specifically, we will assess the extent to which support and trust can account for the influence of each of the dimensions associated with transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership has on commitment. These dimensions are: charisma, intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration, contingent reward, active management by exception, and passive avoidance. One of the primary contributions of this article resides in the fact that currently, there are still very few empirical research projects that have focussed on the effects of these dimensions on other variables, and that such research has only concentrated on the influence of global forms of leadership, and almost exclusively on the transformational form. However, recent works have indeed highlighted the importance of using specific dimensions rather than these three major forms of leadership since the later provide an imperfect and oversimplified image of all the leaders’ behaviours and potential (Antonakis, Avolio and Sivasubramaniam, 2003). In addition to filling a gap at this level, the second significant contribution of this project lies in the fact that, to our knowledge, no study has as yet validated the role of support as an intermediate mechanism lying between leadership and affective commitment. In concrete terms, we are first proposing that the charisma, intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration and contingent reward dimensions are positively related to employees’ perceived supervisor support and trust in their supervisor, whereas the active management by exception and passive avoidance dimensions are negatively related to those same two variables. Secondly, we are proposing that employees’ perceived organizational support and trust in their organization act as mediating variables between perceived supervisor support and trust in their supervisor and affective commitment, respectively. This research, which was conducted in the spring of 2004 among all the employees (excluding physicians) of a Quebec hospital center, allowed the collection of 568 questionnaires, representing a 46% response rate; 80% of the subjects in the sample were women, whose average age was 43, and who had been working in the organization for 12 years, on average. To test our hypotheses, confirmatory factorial analyses and structural equations were conducted, while controlling for gender and employment status (full time vs. part time). The results of the study indicate that only the charisma dimension seems to lead employees to trust their supervisor. This observation is particularly interesting for researchers with an interest in interpersonal trust since other studies have arrived at similar conclusions (Gillespie and Mann, 2004). However, our results indicate that charisma and contingent reward are positively related to perceived supervisor support whereas active management by exception is negatively associated to it. This observation is particularly important in that it provides responses to the theoretical arguments which were paving the way for such a possibility (Yammarino and Bass, 1990; Jung and Avolio, 2000). Lastly, this research shows that the constructs of perceived supervisor support and perceived organizational support constitute an important explanatory mechanism in the relationship between leadership and affective commitment. Trust in the organization also contributes to explaining the dynamic existing between leadership and commitment; however, it is not significantly influenced by trust in the supervisor. Our results open up several avenues of further research. Although our analyses have identified support and trust as intermediate mechanisms between leadership and commitment, other mediators could still account for this relationship. In addition to exploring this avenue, future research could simultaneously analyze the intermediate variables that have been identified to date in the literature (e.g., support, trust, fairness, empowerment) with respect to commitment, but also to other consequences which are often related to transformational and transactional leadership (e.g., satisfaction, mobilization, performance), in order to better understand their relative importance. Finally, this study has certain limitations, including the difficulty in generalizing results (sample composed of a single organization), the possible inflation of the strength of certain relationships (common variance bias) and the impossibility of inferring the causality of the observed relationships (cross-sectional design)., El objetivo de este artículo es de evaluar, sobre la base de la teoría del intercambio social, en qué medida el apoyo y la confianza hacia el superior y la organización permiten de explicar la influencia sobre el compromiso afectivo de los empleados de cada una de las dimensiones asociadas al liderazgo transformacional, transaccional y de “laisser-faire”. Numerosos estudios muestran que estas diferentes formas de liderazgo tienen un impacto importante sobre varias actitudes y comportamientos de los empleados, pero son pocos los investigadores que se interesan a los procesos por los cuales los líderes producen tales efectos. A este propósito, nuestros resultados resaltan que la confianza y el apoyo constituyen mecanismos cruciales para explicar el efecto del liderazgo sobre el compromiso organizacional de los empleados.

The article reviews the book, "Innovations sociales dans le travail et l’emploi : recherches empiriques et perspectives théoriques," edited by Paul-André Lapointe and Guy Bellemare.

Rethinking Work: Time, Space and Discourse, edited by Mark Hearn and Grant Michelson, is reviewed.