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How Canadians rate the prestige of their occupations, and what this says about our understanding of the knowledge economy, social mobility and inequality, and our working selves. "What do you do?" is often the first question posed when strangers meet, as occupation reveals a great deal about both social identity and social standing or "occupational prestige." Sociologists have studied occupational prestige for decades, including a landmark national survey in 1965 by Peter Pineo and John Porter. John Goyder updates Pineo and Porter's work, providing a detailed comparison of their results with a similar national scale survey conducted in 2005. The results challenge the accepted view that prestige ratings are constant over time and across societies. Goyder shows that there have been some surprising changes in these ratings: instead of the expected premium on jobs in the knowledge sector, more traditional occupations - such as the skilled trades, even if they require little education or pay a low wage - have gained the most prestige. There has been a significant decrease in consensus about occupational prestige ratings and the tendency for respondents to upgrade the prestige of their own occupation is much more pronounced in the recent data. Goyder argues that these changes are a sign of the shifting nature of values in a meritocratic society in which increasing income inequality is a growing reality. Results from prestige surveys help in the construction of socio-economic scales for occupations and inform career counselling for young people and negotiations by labour unions and associations. "The Prestige Squeeze" goes beyond this to question the very nature of how we measure social equality and mobility. --Publisher's description

Le Canada et le Québec ont procédé, depuis le milieu des années 1990, à des changements importants de leur système de protection sociale ; les objectifs visés par ces réformes ont été de contrôler les dépenses publiques ou d’atteindre le déficit zéro, d’augmenter l’efficacité des politiques sociales, en particulier par rapport à l’incitation à l’emploi, et de garantir des conditions de vie convenables. Ceci s’est traduit par une restructuration de plusieurs dispositifs de protection sociale qui s’est réalisée par la reconfiguration des paramètres de protection et par l’activation de ces mêmes dépenses sociales. Pour comprendre cette restructuration, cet article analyse les changements introduits dans certains dispositifs de sécurité du revenu que sont le dispositif de l’assurance chômage, le régime universel des allocations familiales et le système d’assistance sociale, tant au niveau fédéral que québécois. Pour rendre compte de cette démarche, le texte a été divisé en trois parties : la première porte sur la reconfiguration de chacun des dispositifs, la deuxième sur l’activation des dépenses sociales et la troisième introduit des éléments d’analyse vis-à-vis cette restructuration récente des politiques sociales. Le texte est traversé par une question, celle de savoir si ces réformes traduisent un virage néo-libéral dans le sens d’un désengagement de l’État et d’une érosion des droits sociaux ou s’il vaut mieux plutôt y voir une réorganisation, une modification de son architecture, traduisant un changement de paradigme ou de référentiel dans le sens d’un État social actif ou d’investissement social.

Alors que la confiance organisationnelle est appréhendée comme un élément central à toute relation d’échange, elle n’a pas été étudiée dans le cadre d’une approche globale de l’échange social employeur-employé. Cet article vise à préciser le concept de confiance organisationnelle et à montrer son rôle lorsque l’organisation fait preuve de bienveillance à l’égard de ses employés. Le rôle médiateur de la confiance entre le soutien organisationnel perçu et les attitudes au travail est tout particulièrement étudié. Les résultats obtenus auprès de 249 cadres et gestionnaires confirment que la confiance en l’organisation est au coeur du processus d’échange social, et se présente comme une variable intermédiaire nécessaire pour expliquer l’engagement organisationnel et l’intention de quitter l’entreprise.

Contents: Canadian labour and employment relations / Daphne G. Taras and Morley Gunderson -- Understanding the unionization decision / Ann C. Frost and Daphne G. Taras -- Labour history and the development of modern capitalism / Richard Marsden -- Unions : membership, structures, actions and challenges / Gregor Murray -- The management of industrial relations / Mark Thompson -- Managing the high-involvement workplace / Anil Verma and Daphne G. Taras -- Social, political, and economic environments / Frank Reid and Rafael Gomez -- Collective bargaining legislation in Canada / Sara Slinn -- The individual employment contract and employment / Geoffrey England -- Collective bargaining : structure, process, and innovation / Richard Chaykowski -- The collective agreement / Anthony Giles and Akivah Starkman -- Strikes and dispute resolution / Morley Gunderson, Bob Hebdon, and Douglas Hyatt -- The grievance arbitration process and workplace / Kenneth Wm. Thornicroft -- Union impact on compensation, productivity, and management of the organization / Morley Gunderson and Douglas Hyatt -- Public-sector collective bargaining / Mark Thompson and Patrice Jalette -- Union-management relations in Québec / Esther Déom and Jean-Noël Grenier with Marie-Pierre Beaumont -- Trade unions and labour relations regimes: international perspectives in a globalizing world / Carla Lipsig-Mummé. Previous eds. published under title: Union-management relations in Canada; Includes bibliographical references and index.

Dependent Self-Employment: Workers on the Border between Employment and Self-Employment, by Ulrike Muehlberger, is reviewed.

Pensions at Work: Socially Responsible Investment of Union-Based Pension Funds, edited by Jack Quarter, Isla Carmichael and Sherida Ryan, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "Renegades: Canadians in the Spanish Civil War," by Michael Petrou.

The article reviews the book, "What's New: Memoirs of a Socialist Idealist," by Ben Swankey.

This paper will review the historical development of professionalism as a contested construct in the public education project and briefly explain how it was employed to achieve the right to strike for Ontario’s public school teachers in 1973. Although all six teachers’ unions are included in the study, the more particular standpoint is from the elementary teachers’ unions, the Federation of Women Teachers’ Associations of Ontario and the Ontario Public School Men Teachers’ Federation, as it is from their archives that the research was gathered.

The article reviews the book, "Fair Future: Resource Conflicts, Security and Global Justice," by Wolfgang Sachs and Tilman Santarius.

In late 2008, the world’s economy began to tumble at avalanche speed, and at the forefront of the manufacturing collapse were the Big Three automakers: Chrysler, General Motors and Ford. For decades, these companies had been shining stars, providing billions of dollars of new investments and thousands of well-paying jobs. Yet suddenly the heads of these and other manufacturing giants found themselves begging governments for financial packages to save their industries. What the hell happened? Buzz Hargrove, the former head of the Canadian Autoworkers (CAW), retired right before the collapse, but not before witnessing the decades of bad decisionmaking— by federal governments and CEOs—that set the stage for the sudden crisis. No one knows the ins and outs of manufacturing like Hargrove, a man who championed the cause of on-the-line workers but who also earned the immense respect of political and business leaders. In Laying It on the Line, Hargrove explains the crisis from his side of the table, what it means for Canada and how the manufacturing sector can again become this country’s foremost economic driver. Along the way, he shares the behind-the-door dealings with GM, Ford, Air Canada and others, explaining the controversial agreements he reached over his decades as Canada’s chief labour leader. Laying It on the Line is a timely call to arms for industry, governments and indeed all Canadians. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Canada's Rights Revolution: Social Movements and Social Change, 1937-1982," by Dominique Clément.

A strike is the withholding of labour by workers in order to obtain better wages or working conditions. A lockout is the opposite, being the temporary shutdown of a business by an employer to compel employees to accept certain conditions. Both have been important in establishing the working conditions of Canadians over the last two centuries....

The article reviews the book, "A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World," by Gregory Clark.

The article reviews the book, "Cross-Border Social Dialogue and Agreements: An Emerging Global Industrial Relations Framework?," edited by Konstantinos Papadakis.

In the first part of this paper, the author reviews the historical development of the right to strike in international instruments. In his view, that process was shaped during the Cold War by an artificial dis- tinction between socioeconomic rights and civil and political rights, resulting in a narrow interpretation of freedom of association. The author argues that while workers' rights have more recently been con- ceived of asfundamental human rights, an emphasis on social justice is equally necessary. In this context, the right to strike is critical to main- taining an equilibrium of power between labour and capital, and thus to protecting the dignity and human rights of workers. Turning to the chal- lenges posed by globalization, the author suggests that countries can gain a "comparative institutional advantage" by pursuing a program of rights-based regulation or "regulated flexibility." On this view, employ- ment rights - including the right to strike - are beneficial to economic development. The question, then, is whether constitutionalizing the right to strike is the best way to ensure Canada's comparative advantage. In considering this question, several issues arise, including whether consti- tutionalization would lead to excessive limitations on the right to strike; whether it would undermine the majoritarian character of our collective bargaining system; and whether the application of abstract constitu- tional principles by judges is a suitable way of settling labour disputes.

Over the past twenty years, International Labour Standards have been cited increasingly as the authoritative, worldwide body of jurisprudence on workers' rights as human rights. Continuing the debate on what constitutes labor rights, the author contrasts the definition of workers' rights under international human rights standards with U.S. labor history's notion of “pure and simple unionism,” examining the boundaries of rights defined by international standards in a comparative historical context. The standards examined include workers' right to organize; coercive employer speech; access to employer premises; nonmajority representation; the right to strike, picket, and boycott; union security clauses; the scope of bargaining; government enforcement; and the legal doctrine of employer association rights. Aligning U.S. labor relations law with international human rights standards would in part be a social advancement, but significant aspects of the standards advocate pure and simple unionism more than the original National Labor Relations Act, raising questions about how labor movements should use international standards as advocacy tools and public policy goals.

Working conditions have been an ongoing topic of scholarship and government for more than a century, yet the understanding that workers’ health and safety are human rights has a short history and has until recently not been a significant justification for industrial and labor relations policy. In this chapter I respond to this gap, challenging industrial relations and labor economics to examine the scope and nature of the problem and articulate a framework of workers’ health and safety as human rights concerns. The field of industrial relations has historically characterized workers’ health and safety as less than fundamental human rights. This paper is an exploration of the human rights framework and a response to critics in an effort to establish a new foundation for industrial relations scholarship and in turn build the human rights foundation for labor policy. --Author's introduction

The article reviews the book, "Canada's Jews: A People's Journey," by Gerald Tulchinsky.

The article reviews the book, "Union-Free America: Workers and Antiunion Culture," by Lawrence Richards.