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Labour rights are increasingly being constructed as human rights. While this construction is gaining popularity, there is still considerable opposition to it. Recently, the debate has made its way to the pages of Just Labour. Building upon a pragmatic approach utilized by feminist legal scholars, the present article seeks to continue this important dialogue and offers an alternative that combines elements of both rights-based pluralism and critical legal scholarship. It contends that the labour movement ought to employ a multi-faceted strategy to protect and promote the rights of working people. Such a strategy recognizes the limitations of rights-discourse, but also recognizes its potential benefits. The paper argues that the labour movement cannot rely solely on rights-discourse to protect its interests but that it should also not be dismissed out of hand. Thus, the construction of labour rights as human rights can be only part of the labour movement's broader fight back strategy.

The article reviews the book, "Queer Inclusions, Continental Divisions: Public Recognition of Sexual Diversity in Canada and the United States," by David Rayside.

[D]raws on the [the author's] experiences in the Canadian Labour Congress and the Ontario labour movement to elaborate on the causes and consequenes of the limited progress made in advancing equity for racialized people within the labour movement. --Editor's introduction

[P]resents statistics documenting the changing face of Canada's labour force, which is projected to become more feminized, more racialized, and more Aboriginal. ...[The author] warns that many of the most underprivileged workers are already turning to worker advocacy centres for help, rather than unions, because of unions' continuing failure to respond to their needs. --Editor's introduction

In most advanced capitalist societies, the feminist challenge to labour unions began well over twenty-five years ago. This essay examines the history of the ambivalent relationship between women and unions and assesses the difference feminism has made in terms of the structure, practices and overall vision of unions' role and goals. Has feminism helped to renew union movements across the capitalist world and moved them at all towards socialism? The answer to this is complex and involves assessing both the different strands of feminist influence and the way these were interwoven with the attack on unions and working people that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s.

Examines the legal dispute that occurred during the Stelco restructuring that occurred between 2004 and 2006, in which labour law was trumped by corporate law. The union ultimately emerged victorious because it made no concessions despite the series of legal defeats.

If a city is its people, and its people are what they eat, then shouldn’t food play a larger role in our dialogue about how and where we live? The food of a metropolis is essential to its character. Native plants, proximity to farmland, the locations of supermarkets, immigration, the role chefs can and should play in society – how a city nourishes itself makes a statement about the kind of city it is.With a cornucopia of essays on comestibles, The Edible City considers how one city eats. It includes dishes on peaches and poverty, on processing plants and public gardens, on rats and bees and bad restaurant service, on schnitzel and school lunches. There are incisive studies of food-security policy, of feeding the needy and of waste, and a happy tale about a hardy fig tree.Together they form a saucy picture of how Toronto – and, by extension, every city – sustains itself, from growing basilon balconies to four-star restaurants. Dig into The Edible City and get the whole story, from field to fork. --Publisher's description

Global Unions, Global Business: Global Union Federations and International Business, by Richard Croucher and Elizabeth Cotton, is reviewed.

“If you’re in my way I’m walking.” This arrogant statement by former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien on the occasion of his physical altercation with a protester in Hull, Quebec in the mid-1990s symbolizes the spirit of the relentless drive of capital to rewrite the historical compromise reached with working people after World War II. This early post-war compromise—sometimes referred to as the Fordist Compact—was associated with improving wages and rising living standards for working people. But in recent decades those achievements of the working class are being deliberately rolled back. Workman surveys many features of this experience: changing public perceptions of working life, the deregulation of labour law, the decline in unionization rates, the eclipse of union militancy, the stagnation of real wages, the disproportionate absorption of women into the low-wage sphere and the dismantling of social policy. He demonstrates the unravelling of the post-war compact and its replacement with a far more ex-ploitative relationship between capital and labour. He also points to the decline of the Canadian left and its inability to counter the capitalist onslaught effectively. Nevertheless, there are reasons to be hopeful. Workman calls for a rebuilding of the left through the restoration of left culture. To do this he says that the left must “quit politics,” work to promote the collective memory of working-class achievements, create venues to listen to working people in today’s economy, reject nationalism outright and encourage the labour movement to exploit its disruptive capacity. This revitalized left will form the basis of a deepening social critique, the political lessons of which will prove to be invaluable for working people in the long run. -- Publisher's description

The third volume in the Canadian State Trials series examines Canadian legal responses to real or perceived threats to the safety and security of the state from 1840 to 1914, a period of extensive challenges associated with fundamental political and socio-economic change. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction: From State Trials to National Security Measures / Susan Binnie and Barry Wright -- Part One: Fenians -- 1 'Stars and Shamrocks Will be Sown': The Fenian State Trials, 1866-7 / R. Blake Brown -- 2 The D'Arcy McGee Affair and the Suspension of Habeas Corpus / David A. Wilson -- Part Two: Managing Collective Disorder -- 3 The Tenant League and the Law, 1864-7 / Ian Ross Robertson -- 4 The Trials and Tribulations of Riot Prosecutions: Collective Violence, State Authority, and Criminal Justice in Quebec, 1841-92 / Donald Fyson -- 5 Maintaining Order on the Pacific Railway: The Peace Preservation Act, 1869-85 / Susan Binnie -- 6 Street Railway Strikes, Collective Violence, and the Canadian State, 1886-1914 / Eric Tucker -- Part Three: The North-West Rebellions -- 7 Treasonous Murder: The Trial of Ambroise Lépine, 1874 / Louis A. Knafla -- 8 Summary and Incompetent Justice: Legal Responses to the 1885 Crisis / Bob Beal and Barry Wright -- 9 Another Look at the Riel Trial for Treason / J.M. Bumsted -- 10 The White Man Governs: The 1885 Indian Trials / Bill Waiser -- Part Four: Securing the Dominion -- 11 'High-handed, Impolite, and Empire-breaking Actions': Radicalism, Anti-Imperialism, and Political Policing in Canada, 1860-1914 / Andrew Parnaby and Gregory S. Kealey with Kirk Niergarth -- 12 Codification, Public Order, and the Security Provisions of the Canadian Criminal Code, 1892 / Desmond H. Brown and Barry Wright -- Appendices: Archival Research and Supporting Documents -- A. The Sir John A. Macdonald Fonds: Research Strategies and Methodological Issues for Archival Research / Judi Cumming -- B. Archival Sources in Canada for Riel's Rebellion / Gilles Lesage -- C. Supporting Documents

Using a proprietary dataset containing personnel records on over 22,000 full-time, non-unionized employees from a large Canadian firm with nationwide operations from 1996 to 2000, this paper explores the incidence of promotion for women and racial minorities. The findings show that women and racial minorities are less likely than their white male counterparts to be promoted. For both white women and minority women, the disadvantage is most severe at the lower rungs of the organizational hierarchy, lending support to the "sticky floor" hypothesis. Significant promotion disadvantages occur for white women, visible minority women, and visible minority men at the middle ranks of the organization, and visible minority men continue to experience a promotion disadvantage at the highest organizational levels.

Do low strike rates suggest that the ‘age of strikes’ has come to an end? Have we reached a time when unions can and should give up the right to strike as a weapon more suited to the ‘old’ economy, or ‘old’ unions who are themselves better suited for the industrial than the post-industrial age? Or should unions continue to defend the right to strike and if so why? This research note explores some answers to these questions that underline the critical importance of defending the right to strike. --From introduction

In this new edition the author shows why unions still matter. Unions mean better pay, benefits, and working conditions for their members; they force employers to treat employees with dignity and respect; and at their best, they provide a way for workers to make society both more democratic and egalitarian. The author uses both data, and examples to show why workers need unions, how unions are formed, how they operate, how collective bargaining works, the role of unions in politics, and what unions have done to bring workers together across the divides of race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation. The new edition not only updates the first, but also examines the record of the New Voice slate that took control of the AFL-CIO in 1995, the continuing decline in union membership and density, the Change to Win split in 2005, the growing importance of immigrant workers, the rise of worker centers, the impacts of and labor responses to globalization, and the need for labor to have an independent political voice, and the Employee Free Choice Act. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "GRH et genre : les défis de l’égalité hommes-femmes," edited by Annie Cornet, Jacqueline Laufer and Sophia Belghiti-Mahut.

This paper examines whether flexible work schedules in Canada are created by employers for business reasons or to assist their workers achieve work-life balance. We focus on long workweek, flextime, compressed workweek, variable workweek length and/or variable workweek schedule. Statistics Canada's 2003 Workplace and Employee Survey data linking employee microdata to workplace (i.e.. employer) microdata are used in the analysis. Results show that more than half of the workers covered in this data have at least one of the five specified types of flexible work schedules. Employment status, unionized work, occupation, and sector are factors consistently associated with flexible work schedules. Personal characteristics such as marital status, dependent children, and childcare use are not significantly associated with flexible work schedules, and females are less likely to have a flexible work schedule than are males. Overall, results suggest that flexible work schedules are created for business reasons rather than individual worker interests.

The article reviews several books including "Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt," by Ching Kwan Lee, "Creating Market Socialism: How Ordinary People Are Shaping Class and Status in China," by Carolyn L. Hsu and "Revolution, Resistance, and Reform in Village China," by Edward Friedman, Paul G. Pickowicz and Mark Selden.

[The author] brings to the pages of this journal two closely intertwined debates regarding the meaning of social movement unionism and strategies for rebuilding labour movement power in Canada and the United States. It offers an important overview of this debate and raises critical points about the meaning and place of union democracy. The author provides a pertinent critique of the “organizing unionism” “model” that has emerged in the United States. It also serves as a useful foil for distinguishing greater member participation of the sort called for by the organizing model from greater member control.

The Quebec labour movement's decision to withdraw its support for Canada's federal system in the 1970s and instead embrace the sovereignist option was unquestionably linked to the intersection of class and nation in Quebec. In this period, unions saw the sovereignist project as part of a larger socialist or social democratic societal project. Because the economic inequalities related to ethnic class, which fuelled the labour movement's support for sovereignty in the 1970s, were no longer as prevalent by the time of Quebec's 1995 referendum, organized labour's continued support for the sovereignist option in the post-referendum period cannot adequately be explained using the traditional lens of class and nation. This paper employs an institutional comparative analysis of Quebec's three largest trade union centrals with a view to demonstrating that organized labour's primary basis for supporting sovereignty has changed considerably over time. While unions have not completely abandoned a class-based approach to the national question, they have tended to downplay class division in favour of an emphasis on Quebec's uniqueness and the importance of preserving the collective francophone identity of the nation. Party–union relations, the changing cultural, political and economic basis of the sovereignist project and the emergence of neoliberalism in Quebec are offered as key explanatory factors for the labour movement's shift in focus.

The wage gap between Francophone and Anglophone men from 1970 and 2000 fell by 25 percentage points within Quebec, but only by 10 points Canada-wide, largely because the wages of Quebec Anglophones fell by 15 points relative to other Canadian Anglophones. Accordingly, the Canadian measure of the Francophone gap better reflects the changing welfare of Francophones than the Quebec measure. Over half of the reduction in the Canadian Francophone wage gap is explained by rising Francophone education levels. In Quebec, the declining number and relative wages of Anglophone workers is best explained by a falling demand for English-speaking labour. /// L'écart de salaires entre les hommes francophones et anglophones est tombé de 25 points de pourcentage au Québec entre 1970 et 2000, mais seulement de 10 points à l'échelle canadienne, largement parce que les salaires des anglophones au Québec sont tombés de 15 points par rapport aux autres canadiens anglophones. En conséquence, la mesure canadienne de l'écart prend mieux la mesure du changement de bien-être des francophones que la mesure québécoise. Plus de la moitié de la réduction dans l'écart au niveau canadien s'explique par l'accroissement des niveaux d'éducation des francophones. Au Québec, le nombre en déclin des travailleurs anglophones et la chute de leurs salaires relatifs s'expliquent par un déclin dans la demande de travailleurs parlant anglais.

Using cross-sectional data from a Canadian population-based questionnaire, this article develops a new approach to understanding the impact of less permanent forms of employment on workers' health. It concludes that employment relationships where future employment is uncertain, where individuals are actively searching for new employment and where support is limited are associated with poorer health indicators.