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The article reviews the book, "Federalism, Democracy, and Labour Market Policy in Canada," edited by Tom McIntosh.

In the turbulent 1960s Canadians debated foreign control of the Canadian economy and Canada’s relations with the United States. The Canadian section of the United Auto Workers (UAW) also struggled with these questions as it faced a number of government policies designed to bolster the auto industry and solve balance of payments difficulties, culminating in the 1965 Canada-United States Auto motive Products Trade Agreement (auto pact). The auto pact rationalized the Canadian Big Three (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler) production into their parent corporations and by 1970 the Canadian industry was fully integrated into a continental system of North American automobile manufacturing. The Canadian UAW played an ineffectual role in shaping this transformation, one which rekindled and exacerbated conflict within the membership and between militant locals and the union’s leadership. Nonetheless, by the end of the decade, the union had become a strong advocate of the new continental auto regime, a reflection of the increased employment and production resulting from the changes. The essay explains the issues the union faced in this period and some of the long-term consequences which the continentalization of the auto industry had on the union.

While long life society constitutes progress in terms of healthier, better and longer lives, it is also associated with higher pension and health expenditures to an extent that threatens the long term adequacy and sustainability of existing welfare systems. It therefore requires adaptation on the part of society and of social institutions and policies, in particular the labour market and the welfare systems, in order to stem or even reduce the growing dependency ratios of the population. This article thus starts by signalling the six main changes that have occurred in the European Union and US labour markets and the workforce, which concern in particular women in all age groups. It then highlights the main responses of the welfare systems to these changes, emphasizing activation measures and indicating their successes and shortcomings. The article concludes by suggesting policies that may enhance female activity and employment rates, from both the labour supply and demand perspectives.

The article reviews the book, "Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction, and the State in Kenya," by Lynn M. Thomas.

The article reviews the book, "Death of a Nation: American Culture and the End of Exceptionalism," by David W. Noble.

The article reviews the book, "The State of Working America 2002/2003," by Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Heather Boushey.

In response to increasing public concern over the accountability of transnational corporations (TNCs) for violations of human rights in the states in which they operate, governments, corporations and NGOs have promoted the development and implementation of voluntary self-regulatory regimes. However, TNC practices under these regimes call into question their adequacy and effectiveness in preventing complicity in egregious violations of human rights by corporations operating in conflict zones and repressive regimes. This article reviews and assesses the language, human rights content and compliance mechanisms of the voluntary policies and/or codes developed by a number of corporations, industry groups, intergovernmental organizations and multistakeholder initiatives, as well as associated corporate practices. The analysis shows that these voluntary regimes are flawed and inadequate, and therefore unable to ensure that TNCs are not complicit in human rights violations in their extraterritorial activities.

The article reviews the book, "Women, Gender, and Transnational Lives: Italian Workers of the World," edited by Jan Kok.

The article reviews the book, "Hollywood Utopia," by Justine Brown.

Largement dominant à l’époque de la production industrielle dans l’entreprise hiérarchisée, le contrat de travail à durée indéterminée comme mode de régulation des relations de travail est aujourd’hui doublement fragilisé par l’organisation des entreprises sous forme de réseaux et par le recours à des outils de la responsabilité sociale de l’entreprise qui visent à réguler les relations de travail dans ces réseaux. L’objectif de cet article est d’analyser les enjeux de l’émergence de cette nouvelle forme de régulation pour le droit du travail. Le recours aux instruments de la responsabilité sociale renforce-t-il la crise du droit du travail ou, au contraire, permet-il de l’atténuer ? En d’autres termes, faut-il considérer que la responsabilité sociale concurrence les normes du droit du travail, ou peut-elle utilement les compléter, voire même leur donner une opportunité de renouvellement dans le contexte difficile des entreprises en réseaux ?

The article reviews the book, "Innovation and Knowledge Creation in an Open Economy: Canadian Industry and International Implications," by John R. Baldwin and Petr Hanel.

Cette étude s’intéresse aux déterminants et aux incidences de la rémunération basée sur les compétences. Les données ont été colligées par questionnaire auprès de 189 responsables de la gestion des ressources humaines à l’emploi d’entreprises du secteur privé comptant plus de 200 employés. Les résultats confirment que l’adoption de la rémunération basée sur les compétences est positivement reliée à la culture de gestion participative. Après avoir contrôlé pour la taille de l’entreprise et la présence syndicale, les résultats montrent que, comparés aux autres, les répondants qui sont à l’emploi des organisations où l’on adopte la rémunération des compétences sont statistiquement plus portés à estimer (a) que leur organisation est plus performante tant sur le plan de la finance que des ressources humaines et (b) que leur processus de gestion du rendement est plus efficace tant pour réaliser la stratégie d’affaires que pour traiter équitablement le personnel.

The article reviews the book, "Collective Bargaining and the Social Construction of Employment," edited by Mateo Alaluf and Carlos Prieto.

The article reviews the book, "Temps, travail et modes de vie," by Michel Lallement.

Minimum labor standards are legally established standards that apply to most employers and employees and include minimum wages, maximum hours of work, overtime, and paid time off. The regulation of minimum standards in Ontario was consolidated within the Ontario Employment Standards Act in 1968. While the provincial minimum standards of the late 19th and early 20th century have been well documented, the regulation of minimum standards during the postwar period has received little scholarly attention. This article explores the development of minimum standards legislation in Ontario from the immediate postwar years to the enactment of the Employment Standards Act. Social forces both internal and external to the state pressured for the enactment of comprehensive legislation to provide some statutory protection for the most vulnerable workers in the province. However, the ways in which the state negotiated the tensions associated with providing social protection for nonunionized workers, while at the same time minimizing interference in the market, severely compromised the capacity for the legislation to provide protection for the "pockets of exploitation" they were intended for. Further, this approach to minimum standards supported and reproduced patterns of gendered and racialized segmentation within a labor market that was built around the norm of the standard employment relationship and thereby ensured standards of a secondary status for workers with the least bargaining power.

The book, "Waterfront Blues: Labour Strife at the Port of Montreal, 1960-1978," by Alexander C. Pathy, is reviewed.

Toronto’s quest to host the Summer Olympic Games has dominated both contemporary planning discourse and practice. For some, the pursuit of the games embodies Toronto’s transformation into a ‘competitive’ global city. Relatively unexplored in this discourse are the contradictory roles that labour plays in contemporary urban development. I argue that the new labour geography can provide some interesting insights into such processes. Specifically, labour geographers have given workers with divergent interests greater agency in shaping economic landscapes and have noted the multi-scalar organisation of labour. The paper looks at the contradictory and conflicting positions held by different labour unions in Toronto toward the city’s bid to host the 2008 Olympics. The case study suggests that labour is an active agent in processes shaping contemporary Toronto and support the bid for complex reasons ranging from the promise of jobs to potential future organising opportunities.

The article reviews the book, "G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire," by Katherine Frank.

The study examines the incidence of abusive events at work and compares the self-rated health (SRH) assessments of young workers according to whether they have been victims or not. Subjects and materials were extracted from a data set covering the environmental and health conditions of the population of the Ostergotland region in Sweden. The focus was unpeople in paid employment aged 20-34 years. It appears that threats or acts of violence are more common than are bullying or sexual harassment among young working people, in particular among women. Further, when working conditions are relatively precarious, both men and women are comparably exposed to threat and violence but when conditions are more stable, women are proportionally more exposed than men. Furthermore, the study shows that, although less common than threat and violence are, exposure to bullying is associated with several SRH disorders among both men and women in employment.

The article reviews the book, "Le droit de l’emploi au Québec," 2nd edition, by Fernand Morin and Jean-Yves Brière.