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Call centres have in the last three decades come to define the interaction between corporations, governments, and other institutions and their respective customers, citizens, and members. From telemarketing to tele-health services, to credit card assistance, and even emergency response systems, call centres function as a nexus mediating technologically enabled labour practices with the commodification of services. Because of the ubiquitous nature of the call centre in post-industrial capitalism, the banality of these interactions often overshadows the nature of work and labour in this now-global sector. Advances in telecommunication technologies and the globalization of management practices designed to oversee and maintain standardized labour processes have made call centre work an international phenomenon. Simultaneously, these developments have dislocated assumptions about the geographic and spatial seat of work in what is defined here as the new international division of knowledge labour. The offshoring and outsourcing of call centre employment, part of the larger information technology and information technology enabled services sectors, has become a growing practice amongst governments and corporations in their attempts at controlling costs. Leading offshore destinations for call centre work, such as Canada and India, emerged as prominent locations for call centre work for these reasons. While incredible advances in technology have permitted the use of distant and “offshore” labour forces, the grander reshaping of an international political economy of communications has allowed for the acceleration of these processes. New and established labour unions have responded to these changes in the global regimes of work by seeking to organize call centre workers. These efforts have been assisted by a range of forces, not least of which is the condition of work itself, but also attempts by global union federations to build a bridge between international unionism and local organizing campaigns in the Global South and Global North. Through an examination of trade union interventions in the call centre industries located in Canada and India, this dissertation contributes to research on post-industrial employment by using political economy as a juncture between development studies, critical communications, and labour studies.

The article pays homage to the life and work of Gilbert Levine (1924-2009), the first research director of the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

The article reviews the book, "Newfoundland and Labrador: A History," by Sean T. Cadigan.

Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations, Vol 17, edited by David Lewin, Bruce Kaufman, and Paul J. Gollan, is reviewed.

International studies indicate temporary agency workers are more likely to be injured at work than other types of employees. However explanations for this have been less forthcoming. This paper seeks to begin filling this gap. A study was undertaken in Victoria, Australia, of occupational health and safety (OHS) amongst temporary agency workers drawing upon workers' compensation claim files for injured agency and directly hired workers from 1995-2001, and focus groups of temporary agency workers conducted in 2003. In analyzing the results, use was made of risk factors identified in a model that has been developed to explain how precarious employment affects OHS -- the pressure, disorganization and regulatory failure (PDR) model (Quinlan and Bohle, 2004, 2009). Drawing principally on qualitative data, the paper finds that whilst agency workers share common risk factors with other forms of precarious workers, unique characteristics associated with the triangular nature of agency employment heighten their vulnerability further.

The book, "Droit fédéral du travail," by Michel Coutu, Julie Bourgault, and Annick Desjardins, with the collaboration of Guy Dufort and Annie Pelletier, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "The Employment Relationship : A Comparative Overview," edited by Guiseppe Casale.

In early April 1935 hundreds of dissatisfied, disillusioned men walked out of federally run relief camps throughout British Columbia and descended on Vancouver in a bold attempt to reverse their dead-end lives and bring about some kind of "work for wages" program. No one wanted to deal with the men, least of all Conservative prime minister R. B. Bennett, who believed that the Communist Party of Canada had orchestrated the protest. As the stalemate dragged on week after numbing week, the men decided to go to Ottawa and lay their grievances directly before the government....

In recent years, trade unions in Canada have become increasingly reliant on constructing workers’ rights as part of the broader rubric of human rights. While the topic of labour rights has become popular in recent academic literature, it remains under-explored. An important element of constructing labour rights as human rights is its impact on union democracy and rank-and-file mobilization, though this has yet to be fully explored. Utilizing the case study of the Hospital Employees’ Union (HEU) struggle against Bill 29, this paper suggests that a reliance on the construction of labour rights as human rights and the corresponding judicial strategy prevents the development of a more radical, grassroots social movement unionism and instead facilitates the proliferation of hierarchical, elite dominated forms trade unionism. It concludes by suggesting that unions must be cautious of the potential downfalls of quelling militant grassroots activism in lieu of a rights-based challenge.

With increasing vigor, unions are championing the claim that "labor rights are human rights." This is especially true in Canada and is aided by a Supreme Court of Canada ruling in 2007 that affords constitutional protection to the right to bargain collectively. Constructing labor rights as human rights relies on a judicial-based strategy at both the national and the international level, including the use of the International Labour Organization (ILO). This article seeks to determine how useful the ILO is to the Canadian labour movement. It finds that the ILO is of little use to Canadian unions in and of itself, but that it is more useful when Canadian courts apply the provisions of international law to domestic legislation. As a recent case history shows, however, there is no guarantee that the Supreme Court will elect to adopt the provisions of international law.

The article reviews the book, "Technology and Nationalism," by Marco Adria.

This paper examines how gender and the occupation of one's spouse may explain differences in the amounts and types of spousal support individuals receive when coping with the stress of their job. We analyze survey data from a sample of married lawyers, some of whom are married to other lawyers and some of whom have spouses who are not lawyers. The results show that men receive more emotional support from their spouse than women, regardless of their spouse's occupation. In contrast, lawyers receive more informational support from their spouse if they are also a lawyer, regardless of their gender. Future research might explore not only the importance of shared statuses, such as occupation, but also the meaning of shared experiences in order to better understand spouses' support of one another.

The article reviews the book, "Creative Community Organizing: A Guide for Rabble Rousers, Activists & Quiet Lovers of Justice," by Si Kahn.

The study aimed to identify ways of strengthening trade union organization amongst peripheral workers in micro and small enterprises (MSEs) through a mapping exercise in nine countries drawn predominantly from the Global South, the periphery of the global economy. The paper identifies four main responses by trade unions to non-standard employees; indifference, attempts at extending existing forms of representation, resistance to non-standard employment and most significantly, the creation of specific kinds of representation and protection for the new forms of employment. We conclude that mapping on its own is a limited tool in recruiting new union members amongst peripheral workers. However, new institutional actors are filling the vacuum created by the failure of traditional industrial relations actors to respond to the representation gap.

The article reviews the book, "Clean Clothes: A Global Movement to End Sweatshops," by Liesbeth Sluiter.

The article reviews the book, "Reproducing the French Race: Immigration, Intimacy, and Embodiment in the Early Twentieth Century," by Elisa Camiscioli.

Active for over forty years with the Communist Party of Canada, Bert Whyte was a journalist, an underground party organizer and soldier during World War II, and a press correspondent in Beijing and Moscow. But any notion of him as a Communist party hack would be mistaken. Whyte never let leftist ideology get in the way of a great yarn. In Champagne and Meatballs — a memoir written not long before his death in Moscow in 1984 — we meet a cigar-smoking rogue who was at least as happy at a pool hall as at a political meeting. His stories of bumming across Canada in the 1930s, of combat and camaraderie at the front lines in World War II, and of surviving as a dissident in troubled times make for compelling reading. The manuscript of Champagne and Meatballs was brought to light and edited by historian Larry Hannant, who has written a fascinating and thought-provoking introduction to the text. Brash, irreverent, informative, and entertaining, Whyte's tale is history and biography accompanied by a wink of his eye — the left one, of course. --Publisher's description

Lynn Williams remains one of the most influential North American union leaders of the twentieth century. His two terms as president of the United Steelworkers of America, from 1983 until 1994, capped off a career in labour relations spanning nearly five decades. Among his many notable achievements were the new bargaining techniques he developed to face challenges from anti-union politicians such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Williams also played a major role in the structural readjustment of the North American steel industry during its most turbulent period, the 1980s and 1990s. In his memoirs, Williams vividly recounts his life in labour, with all its triumphs, challenges, hopes, and dreams. While telling his own story, Williams also traces the rise and transformation of the labour movement from the Second World War to today. Providing an insider's perspective on union developments and issues, One Day Longer is a profound reflection of Williams's impressive career. --Publisher's description. Contents: In the beginning -- War and peace -- The Eaton drive -- Joining the Steelworkers -- Back east -- Organizing -- Sudbury -- Director, District 6 -- On to Pittsburgh -- Assuming the presidency -- Trying times -- Union work and politics -- New directions -- Epilogue.

The purpose of this research is to examine whether differences exist in the work values of several generations among 186 respondents in Quebec and 252 Arab respondents in the United Arab Emirates. We used an abridged version of Wils, Luncasu and Waxin (2007) work value inventory, including 28 work values arranged on four poles: self-enhancement, self-transcendence, openness-to-change and conservation. In the Quebec sample, there were no significant differences between generations in their scores on the four work value poles. In the Arab sample, the younger generation attached less importance to self-enhancement, but more importance to self-transcendence than the older generation with a small effect size. Our results also demonstrate that cultural origin had no significant impact on the average score on the work value poles. The diversity in work values among generations and cultures that we found in our samples does not support the idea that human resource management practices should be adjusted for different generations.

The article reviews the books "Corporations in Evolving Diversity: Cognition, Governance and Institutions" by Masahiko Aoki, "The Institutions of the Market: Organizations, Social Systems and Governance" edited by Alexander Ebner and Nikolaus Beck, and "Internationalisation and Economic Institutions" by Mark Thatcher.