Your search

The article reviews the book, "La révolution du travail : de l’artisan au manager," by Rolande Pinard.

L’analyse des organisations s’est-elle engagée dans une fausse voie depuis la première parution, il y a plus de quarante ans, de la revue Administrative Science Quarterly ? Il y aurait eu divorce entre la théorie et l’empirie, le lien aurait été perdu entre les deux. L’auteur montre que cette perte est due aux références à des ensembles théoriques structuraux, alors que les organisations, comme la société dans sa globalité, ne sont explicables qu’en partant des interactions entre acteurs, interactions qui permettent de comprendre comment se vivent les incertitudes de l’action. Des exemples précis montrent que le fondement de ces interactions est, dans les organisations productives, la relation des salariés aux objets techniques, la rationalité instrumentale. Elle leur permet d’entrer en relations et de gérer les incertitudes sans réifier ni contrôler ces relations.

The article reviews the book, "Sociologies du travail : quarante ans après," edited by Amélie Pouchet.

In most communities the relationship between trade unions and social activist organizations is usually underdeveloped and uneven. Likewise trade unions usually have no organic connections to unorganized workers and contribute little to the task of representing these workers in their struggles against employers and government agencies. The Workers Organizing and Resource Centre (WORC), a collective administered by trade unionists and social activists, is an attempt to bridge this solitude. Since it was established in 1998, WORC has been the home to numerous working class advocacy organizations and a hub of progressive activity in Winnipeg. Its mandate is to facilitate the development of community organizations, provide advocacy work for non union workers, and to assist in organizing the unorganized. This paper describes the function that WORC plays in the Winnipeg progressive community and discusses the relationship to its sole source of funding, the national office of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

The article reviews the book, "Initiation à la négociation collective by Jean Sexton.

“The west wants in” was the rallying cry of the Reform Party launched in 1987. What the West wanted, how its aspirations could be fulfilled within Confederation, and how fulfilling them might change Canada itself came to dominate the party’s agenda over the next decade or so. The West’s relationship to the rest of the country has also been a major theme in Canadian labour history, of ten with respect to notions of “western radicalism” or “western exceptionalism.” Reviewing Labour / Le Travail’s coverage of Canadian labour over the past quarter-century, this article reviews the extent to which western workers have been represented, the varying ways in which their identity has been characterized, and the degree to which traditional perceptions of a “radical” West have been either reinforced or revised as a result.

Des jeunes salariés québécois reprochent à leurs syndicats de ne pas tenir suffisamment compte de leurs intérêts dans la négociation de leurs conditions de travail. Ils ont ainsi fondé leurs propres associations en réaction à la façon dont le syndicat exerce son monopole de représentation. Ce nouveau phénomène traduit une insatisfaction certaine face à la façon dont s’exerce la démocratie syndicale dans certains milieux de travail. L’émergence de ces associations parallèles devrait inciter les leaders syndicaux à faire montre de plus d’ouverture, à engager le dialogue et à entreprendre une réflexion devenue nécessaire sur leur conception de la démocratie — et la notion d’égalité qui y est sous-jacente — à l’ère des droits fondamentaux de la personne.

This article attempts to explain the similarities and parallels between Labour/ Le Travail and its Australian equivalent, Labour History; as well as analysing Labour/Le Travail's distinctive interests and concerns, which reflect the peculiarities of the Canadian. It suggests, in particular, that the timing of Labour/Le Travail's appearance was propitious and that it was well positioned for various reasons to take advantage of the Thompsonian moment in labour historiography. Further, by responding to the rise of the new social movements, it was able to enrich further the study of labour history through attention to forms of oppression other than class. With class nonetheless remaining its central focus, a degree of political pessimism is understandably evident from the mid-1980s onwards, with the downturn in labour movement activity and allegations about the death of class. By the same token, signs of working-class remobilization in the late 1990s have encouraged a renewed sense of political purpose in the journal. It is argued that this situation also offers opportunities for new forms of dialogue between academics and activists challenging corporate globalization, enabling the journal and those associated with it to continue to reach out to audiences beyond the academy, to place their knowledge of labour's past at the service of movements contesting the current circumstances of the working class.

The article reviews the book, "Where was the working class? Revolution in Eastern Germany," by Linda Fuller.

The article reviews the book, "Victor Serge: The Course is Set on Hope," by Susan Weissman.

The article reviews the books, "My Name’s Not George: The Story of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in Canada," by Stanley G. Grizzle, "Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality," by Eric Arnesen, and "Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925-1945," by Beth Tompkins Bates.

Trade unions in nearly all developed countries are facing major difficulties in maintaining membership levels and political influence. The US labor movement has been increasingly attracted to an organizing model of trade unionism and, in turn, this response has caught the imagination of some sections of other Anglo-Saxon movements, most notably in Australia, New Zealand and Britain. There is not single definitive account of what constitutes the organizing model but its advocates envisage the transformation of unions into dynamic organizations, where members would become active participants rather than passive consumers. Despite similarities in the problems that national union movements face, however, the histories and current experiences of trade unions in the various countries show marked differences. A comparative study of an Australian and a British union, based on extensive fieldwork in Britain and Australia, attempts to assess the importance of national contexts in the adoption of the organizing model.

The article reviews the book, "Hamlet and the Baker's Son: My Life in Theatre and Politics," by Augusto Boal.

The article reviews the book, "The rise of agrarian democracy: The United Farmers and Farm Women of Alberta, 1909-1921," by Bradford James Rennie.

John Godard's article, "New Dawn or Bad Moon Rising? Large Scale Government Administered Workplace Surveys and the Future of Canadian IR Research" (2001), is discussed. Godard has challenged researchers to consider the advantages and disadvantages of using data sets in industrial relations research. This comment agrees with Godard that the Workplace and Employment Survey (WES), as with other large scale government administered surveys, has a number of significant advantages, including: excellent response rates, comprehensiveness, the ability to link employees with their employers and to follow them over (limited) periods of time, and a tendency to use more standardized measures. These represent substantial advantages relative to other sources of micro-level data.

La présente étude, réalisée auprès de 252 entreprises québécoises, a permis de mettre en évidence que les politiques de rémunération sont davantage influencées par les stratégies internes de l’organisation que par leurs stratégies externes. Plus spécifiquement, les entreprises qui préconisent les équipes autonomes de travail, la qualité totale et la gestion participative optent davantage pour des politiques de rémunération orientées vers la performance individuelle et collective, tendent à accorder un pourcentage de bonis plus élevé et à favoriser une plus grande transparence dans leurs mécanismes de gestion. Les résultats montrent également que la présence syndicale joue un rôle déterminant dans le choix des politiques de rémunération.

This article reviews the contribution that Labour/Le Travail has made to the study of gender history in Canada over the past 25 years. It identifies the several ways in which industrialization led to gendering of class, and in particular analyzes the contribution of the patriarchy/capitalism debate, the family strategies approach, and the new literature on masculinity. It suggests the need for more broadly contextualized studies that incorporate both gender conflict and interdependence, and argues for a hermeneutic separation of gender and class identities from conceptualizations of class politics and collective protest.

As a contribution to the history of the Cold War, and particularly of anti-Communist activities at the local level, discusses the controversial policies adopted by the Toronto District School Board during 1948-51 and the anti-Communist activities of Harold Menzies, one of the board's trustees. In spite of the presence on the board of elected trustees who were Communists and the opposition of the director of education, a majority of the trustees were successful in adopting policies that violated the civil liberties of Canadians and were contemptuous of the will of the voters. Anti-Communist activities touched on teacher loyalty, selection of textbooks, and access to school facilities. Menzies and his allies saw communism as a threat to the school system and worked hard to create and maintain an anti-Communist consensus.