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Using strategies first developed in the inter-war years, the ILO has repositioned itself to play a leading role in our understanding of the relationship between employment policies and growth, particularly in relation to poverty reduction strategies. To do this, the ILO has forged increasingly strong relationships with key international financial institutions (IFIs), in which the inclusion of ILO-driven strategies for Decent Work and core labour standards has been important. Whilst this repositioning has been questioned by some who fear that an original purpose of the 110 may be lost, and the technical implementation of the ILO agenda in conjunction with the IFIs is not without difficulties, the ILO's status as a major international agency for the advancement of human development has been reinforced.

The article reviews the book, "Burlesque West: Showgirls, Sex and Sin in Postwar Vancouver," by Becki Ross.

Unions, Equity, and the Path to Renewal, edited by Janice Foley and Patricia Baker, is reviewed.

Ethical Socialism and the Trade Unions: Allan Flanders and British Industrial Relations Reform, by John Kelly, is reviewed.

Discusses the growth of precarious work in Canada in the context of labour law, employment law, and union density. Analyzes two organizing initiatives at a community level and at an industry level in which the Service Employees International Union, Local 2 Canada, participated: the Good Jobs for All campaign in Toronto and the Justice for Janitors national campaign. Contents: Development, globalization and decent work: an emerging Southern labour paradigm / Edward Webster -- Beyond the capitalist logic: theoretical debates and social experiences / Melisa Serrano and Edlira Xhafa -- Economy, ecology and the national limits to growth: the global poly-crisis and South Africa responses / Devan Pillay -- Understanding the past to change the present: the social compromise, the corporate theory of society and the future shape of industrial relations / Conor Cradden -- The new economy and labour's decline: questioning their association / Bill Dunn -- Global unions, local labour, and the regulation of international labour standards: mapping ITF labour rights strategies / Mark P. Thomas -- Private equity investment and labour: faceless capital and the challenges to trade unions in Brazil / José Ricardo Barbosa Gonçalves and Maria Alejandra Caporale Madi -- Labour and the locusts: trade unions responses to corporate governance regulation in the European Union / Laura Horn -- Transnational framework agreements: new bargaining tools impacting on corporate governance? / Isabelle Schömann -- Collective actions push trade union reform in China / Lin Yanling and Ju Wenhui -- Creating a functional state: redefining the labour-capital relationship in Nepal / Chandra D. Bhatta -- A rowing boat on the open sea, or in a haven from financial and environmental crises? New Zealand, the global financial crisis and an union response / Bill Rosenberg -- Turkey after 2008: another crisis - the same responses? / Yasemin Özgün and Özgür Müfüoglu -- Addressing competition: strategies for organizing precarious workers: cases from Canada / Maya Bhullar -- Perils and prospects: the US labour movement's response to the economic crisis / Jason Russell -- Meeting the right's attack on public sector unions in the United States: are there effective strategies? / Lee Adler.

[This book] tells the compelling story of British Columbia workers who sustained a left tradition during the bleakest days of the Cold War. Through their continuing activism on issues from the politics of timber licenses to global questions of war and peace, these workers bridged the transition from an Old to a New Left.In the late 1950s, half of B.C.'s workers belonged to unions, but the promise of postwar collective bargaining spawned disillusionment tied to inflation and automation. A new working class that was educated, white collar, and increasingly rebellious shifted the locus of activism from the Communist Party and Co-operative Commonwealth Federation to the newly formed New Democratic Party, which was elected in 1972. Grounded in archival research and oral history, Militant Minority provides a valuable case study of one of the most organized and independent working classes in North America, during a period of ideological tension and unprecedented material advance. --Publisher's description

While Canada’s immigration system is shaped primarily by the nation’s economic needs, refugee claimants’ motivations are, by nature, non-economic. Resultantly, refugee claimants are often portrayed as a drain on Canadian resources. Despite this however, refugee claimants’ employment experiences remain underrepresented in the literature. This study explores the employment experiences of refugee claimants in Toronto, and finds that claimants face distinct and unique barriers stemming from their precarious legal status. Additionally, as neither temporary workers nor permanent citizens, this study finds that refugee claimants perceive employment as an integrative expression of belonging and citizenship. Through the lens of refugeeness, this study traces the subjective employment trajectories of refugee claimants. Findings indicate that refugee claimants’ employability is shaped by real and ascribed barriers associated with their citizenship status, creating decidedly unique and often difficult employment experiences.

The article reviews the book, "Codes of Misconduct: The Regulation of Prostitution in Colonial Bombay," by Ashwini Tambe.

Through Feminist Eyes gathers in one volume the most incisive and insightful essays written to date by the distinguished Canadian historian Joan Sangster. To the original essays, Sangster has added reflective introductory discussions that situate her earlier work in the context of developing theory and debate. Sangster has also supplied an introduction to the collection in which she reflects on the themes and theoretical orientations that have shaped the writing of women's history over the past thirty years. Approaching her subject matter from an array of interpretive frameworks that engage questions of gender, class, colonialism, politics, and labour, Sangster explores the lived experience of women in a variety of specific historical settings. In so doing, she sheds new light on issues that have sparked much debate among feminist historians and offers a thoughtful overview of the evolution of women's history in Canada. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction: Reflections on Thirty Years of Women’s History -- Discovering Women’s History == The 1907 Bell Telephone Strike: Organizing Women Workers -- Looking Backwards: Re-assessing Women on the Canadian Left == The Communist Party and the Woman Question, 1922-1929 -- Manufacturing Consent in Peterborough -- The Softball Solution: Female Workers, Male Managers, and the Operation of Paternalism at Westclox, 1923–1960 -- Pardon Tales’ from Magistrate’s Court: Women, Crime, and the Court in Peterborough County, 1920–1950 --Telling Our Stories: Feminist Debates and the Use of Oral History -- Foucault, Feminism, and Postcolonialism -- Girls in Conflict with the Law: Exploring the Construction of Female ‘Delinquency’ in Ontario, 1940–1960 -- Criminalizing the Colonized: Ontario Native Women Confront the Criminal Justice System, 1920–1960 -- Constructing the ‘Eskimo’ Wife: White Women’s Travel Writing, Colonialism, and the Canadian North, 1940–1960 -- Embodied Experience -- Words of Experience/Experiencing Words: Reading Working Women’s Letters to Canada’s Royal Commission on the Status of Women -- Making a Fur Coat: Women, the Labouring Body, and Working-class History.

Discusses the history of the "Rand Formula," which established the compulsory union dues checkoff for collective work places. A cornerstone of Canadian labour law, the Formula originated in 1946 from an arbitration ruling by Supreme Court Justice Ivan C. Rand following a strike at the Ford motor plant in Windsor, Ontario, in 1945. The political and legal aspects of Rand's ruling are analyzed.

The authors use the 1999 North American Academic Study Survey to examine attitudes of American and Canadian faculty and administrators towards faculty unions and collective bargaining. Comparative and statistical analyses of the survey data show the effect of cultural, institutional, political, positional, socio-economic, and academic factors on support for collective bargaining and faculty unionism in American and Canadian universities. Analysis of the survey data shows that US-Canada differences generally outweigh positional differences among professors and administrators. Such factors as political ideology, experience with faculty bargaining, administrators' opposition, institutional quality, income, gender, and academic discipline, are found to be significant determinants of the attitudes towards faculty unions and collective bargaining.

The Great Recession has left in its wake an expected “age of austerity” where deficits accumulated to stave off economic collapse, are being addressed through steep cuts to government spending, with profound implications for social services and public sector employment. In an earlier era of austerity, eleven mass strikes and enormous demonstrations swept through the major cities of Ontario. This Days of Action movement – which has real relevance for the current period – began in the fall of 1995, continued through all of 1996 and 1997, and came to an end in 1998. This article, part of a larger research project, focuses on the movement’s origins. Two themes shape the overall project: the relation between social movements “outside” the workplace and union struggles themselves; and the relationship between the energetic inexperience of newly‐active union members, and the pessimistic institutional experience embodied in a quite developed layer of full‐time union officials. It is the former – the dialectic between social movements and trade unions in the Days of Action, that will be the focus of this article.

The article reviews the book, "Losing Control: Canada’s Social Conservatives in the Age of Rights," by Tom Warner.

The article reviews the book, "Zapatistas: Rebellion From the Grassroots," by Alex Khasnabish, part of the "Rebel" book series.

In Along the No. 20 Line, Rolf Knight takes the reader on a tour through working-class East Vancouver of a century ago. Knight's "through-line" is literally a line: the old No. 20 streetcar route that ran between downtown Vancouver and the present-day neighbourhood of the Pacific National Exhibition. From 1892 to 1949, when it was shut down and replaced by the No. 20 Granville / Victoria Drive bus, the No. 20 streetcar carried thousands of Vancouverites back and forth between their East Van homes and their jobs on the docks, and in the mills, factories, and workshops along the No. 20 line. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Respectable Citizens: Gender, Family, and Unemployment in Ontario's Great Depression," by Lara Campbell.

This article considers the significance of indigenous economic systems in contemporary society. It argues that indigenous economic systems have to be taken into account much more systematically than thus far in considerations of indigenous governance. The article contends that indigenous economic systems need to play a more central role in envisioning and shaping meaningful, comprehensive, and sustainable systems of contemporary indigenous self-governance. If indigenous economies are not taken into account, there is a serious danger of losing the very identities that constitute indigenous peoples. ...The article consists of three sections. The first section discusses definitions and contemporary significance of subsistence and indigenous economies. It questions the prevailing narrow, economistic analyses and interpretations of subsistence. Although economic development projects such as resource extraction may improve fiscal independence and strengthen the economic base of indigenous communities, they also present serious threats to indigenous economies.The second section examines the relationship between subsistence and wage labor, particularly from the perspective of women. It also considers the “war on subsistence” waged by the development and modernization theories, which continue to contribute to views of subsistence as “primitive” and “pre-modern.” The third section takes a closer look at the often glossed over roles of indigenous women in subsistence activities. It questions the conventional binary economic roles of man-the-hunter versus woman-the-gatherer and argues for a broader lens when assessing economic roles and divisions of labor along gendered lines. The article concludes with an examination of indigenous economic systems and the concept of the social economy as a foundation for contemporary indigenous governance. --From Introduction

Healing Together : The Labor-Management Partnership at Kaiser Permanente, by Thomas A. Kochan, Adrienne E. Eaton, Robert B. McKersie, and Paul S. Adler, is reviewed.

Cette étude examine le cas du Mouvement Desjardins dans le secteur financier au Québec. À partir d’un sondage téléphonique auprès de 576 employées syndiquées du Mouvement Desjardins, les principaux résultats de cette recherche quantitative font valoir une plus grande remise en question du syndicalisme par les professionnelles, les personnes développant de faibles sociabilités au travail et celles qui sont insatisfaites de leur salaire. En contrepartie, les conditions de travail défavorables et les actions syndicales proactives et démocratiques renforcent l’adhésion syndicale des femmes.Le cadre de la recherche sollicite quatre approches théoriques afin de dégager les principaux éléments du rapport d’emploi pouvant affecter l’adhésion syndicale. Tout en considérant les approches matérialiste et instrumentale, le principal apport théorique de cet article prescrit une jonction entre les nouvelles identités professionnelles des femmes, sources d’effritement du syndicalisme, et les actions syndicales, sources de renforcement du syndicalisme.En s’insérant dans les débats actuels sur l’avenir du syndicalisme, cet article se penche sur le rapport identitaire des femmes syndiquées à l’égard du syndicalisme. En abordant la crise du syndicalisme par la difficulté de représenter la main-d’oeuvre professionnelle dans le secteur des services, cette étude vise à saisir l’arrimage entre les nouvelles identités professionnelles des femmes et l’adhésion syndicale.

The article reviews the book, "Travail et citoyenneté : quel avenir ?," edited by Michel Coutu and Gregor Murray.