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As public anxiety over access to education increases, public-sector workers are directly able to perceive the extent to which exclusion, rather than public- access, now characterizes post-secondary education in an era of privatization. This paper will address some of the recent experiences of university workers who are members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). Here we shall identify three issues facing workers in the sector including: i) the privatization of universities through government policy shifts, ii) the employer-led reorganization of work, and iii) university workers’ campaigns to resist and transform these conditions. For public sector workers, decreasing access to social programs, under funding and the intensification of work are very clearly linked. As the restructured state brings public services more fully into the market and increasingly under the direct control of a global capitalist class, democratic rights are eroded. Still, this privatization dynamic is not uni-directional. Public sector workers and their community allies have been part of the history of state restructuring through their conscious acts of resistance, collective bargaining strategies, militancy and coalition-building.

Place, Space and the New Labour Internationalisms, edited by Peter Waterman and Jane Wills, is reviewed.

For some 20 years now, it has been common to refer to a crisis of trade unionism. What the future holds for labor movements-or indeed, whether they still have a future-seems increasingly uncertain. For many critics (academic observers as well as trade unionists themselves), unions in most countries appear as victims of external forces outside their control, and often also of their own conservative inertia. In this article, I explore, schematically and with incautious generalizations, the pathways from path to present to future. An important focus is the choices to be made in terms of who unions represent, what interests they emphasize, how they are constituted as organizations, and how they mobilize resources for action.

Les relations industrielles (RI) influencent-elles la performance des organisations ? Des données financières de même que des données traitant d’une douzaine de pratiques RI et du climat RI ont été colligées dans 241 caisses populaires faisant partie du Mouvement Desjardins au Québec afin d’estimer l’effet des RI sur trois dimensions de la performance. Les résultats sont à l’effet que lorsque l’influence des autres déterminants est tenue constante, les pratiques RI et le climat RI ont un impact significatif sur la performance organisationnelle, en particulier sur la productivité et les coûts de main-d’oeuvre.

The article reviews the book, "Cowboys, Gentlemen, and Cattle Thieves: Ranching on the Western Frontier," by Warren M. Elofson.

The article reviews the book, "Race, Class, and Power in the Alabama Coalfields, 1908-21," by Brian Kelly.

The Brave New World of Work by Ulrich Beck is reviewed.

From Tellers to Sellers: Changing Employment Relations in Banks, edited by Marino Regini, Jim Kitay, and Martin Baethge, is reviewed.

On October 26, 2000 approximately 2200 members of Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 3903 went on strike united under the slogan "Strike To Win". Seventy-eight days later CUPE 3903 celebrated a victory with profound implications for the post-secondary educational system and broader labour movement. The significance of the strike victory, however, lies not merely in what was attained in concrete terms, but also in the way the strike was carried out. Drawing upon the principles, practice and strategies of democracy, solidarity, and militancy, we struggled for change in ways which developed and expanded our capacities for self-activity and self-organization. In the process we gained a better understanding not only of the world around us but of our abilities to change that world, expanding the horizons of what we thought was possible.

Drawing on the results of a national survey of labor organizations in Canada, this paper focuses on the changing environment and strategic orientations of unions. It looks at the strategic dilemma facing Canadian unions on the basis of a reading of their organiza tional and bargaining priorities and their relative success in achiev ing them. Key results include the necessity of a strategic mix be tween traditional and new types of objectives as well as the impor tance of policy and the democratic dialogue that underpins that policy in achieving union objectives and pursuing union renewal.

This study examines how certain conditions of work affect human service workers' job stress. A model of organizational-professional conflict is proposed and assessed to determine how professional and bureaucratic conditions of work influence service providers' expectations and in turn their job stress. The model was tested using data from a survey of 514 human service providers in Alberta, Canada. The findings suggest that whether service providers' expectations are met is critical in explaining job stress. Professional conditions of work relating to working relationships and client interactions are key to fulfilling service providers' expectations, whereas bureaucratic conditions of work that reflect role conflict and excessive role demands are particularly stressful. An unexpected finding is that bureaucratization of procedures that may limit service workers' control over their work does not contribute significantly to their job stress.

The article reviews the book, "An Irish Working Class: Explorations in Political Economy and Hegemony, 1800-1950," by Marilyn Silverman.

This paper is concerned with the resilience of socialist workers' movements during the early years of the Cold War in Canada. Our study compares the workers' movements on either side of the BC/Alberta border in the Crowsnest Pass through the Rocky Mountains between 1945 and 1958. These are interesting movements because, although they were equally strong at the end of World War II, in the period in question one movement was very resilient (BC) and one suffered an electoral collapse. We found that the Cold War eroded the Labour Progressive Party's (LPP) electoral base in exactly the same way on the Alberta and BC sides of the Crowsnest Pass. Anti-communism was certainly promoted by extra-local sources of news and analysis such as newspapers, radio and movies, and was based upon international and national events. However, there were important local processes that amplified and concretized the more general forces, such as joint organizing against the LPP by a CCF leader and the Catholic Church in the Alberta Crowsnest, the recruitment of anti-communist miners from Eastern Europe, and the anti-communist stance of a roster of ethnic organizations. The resilience of the socialist workers' movement in the BC Crowsnest between 1945 and 1958 was due to a labour unity strategy which allowed Labour and the Left to deflect Cold War pressures and maintain mass electoral support among workers. It is significant that the strategy was built around a local organization (the Fernie and District Labour Party) which involved all of the unions in the area, and a local politician (Thomas Uphill) who had built up a dense network of personal support during his many years as MLA and mayor. The socialist workers' movement in the Alberta Crowsnest might have proven to be much more resilient in the 1950s had the LPP attempted to duplicate the successful labour unity strategy it had stumbled on in the BC Crowsnest.

The project of re-thinking Canadian labour policy within a human capital policy is best understood as the domestic equivalent of the international effort to reconceive the nature of development as requiring the integration of the economic and the social. Changes in modes of productive relations in the "new economy" require not just a complex reassessment of the best ways to achieve the goals of various labour policies but, more radically, involve a challenge to the conceptual basis of labour law. This both requires and provides the opportunity for a reconceptualization of the appropriate "platform" for delivering labour law and a new paradigm for understanding labour law itself.

Korean Workers: The Culture and Politics of Class Formation by Hagen Koo is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "Getting By in Hard Times: Gendered Labour at Home and on the Job," by Meg Luxton and June Corman.

Presents a brief account of incidents arising out of the celebration of anniversary dates important to the international Communist movement in Canada between World War I and World War II. Such celebrations played an important part in activating the sense of internationalism and unity in a movement whose membership consisted largely of diverse immigrant groups. Recent immigrants, who risked deportation, were particularly vulnerable to government retaliation against Communist propaganda activities, including participation in parades and celebrations.