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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.

Serving on the executive committee of CUPE 4163 at the University of Victoria and actively participating in the Victoria Communities Solidarity Coalition, I had the opportunity to experience these [public sector] struggles first hand. While I played only a marginal role (i.e., standing on picket lines, organizing discussion forums, and attending public meetings), I hope to contribute my perspective as a participant observer. This is not intended to be a detailed history; rather, I will draw on various interpretations of the struggles in BC to make a broader theoretical intervention in conceptualizing the defeat of the labour movement in the so-called “neoliberal era.” Viewing bureaucracy as an uneven field of struggle, I argue that the [Hospital Employees' Union] strike demonstrates the importance of distinguishing between different elements of BC’s labour leadership in challenging the provincial government’s denial of collective bargaining freedoms to public sector workers. --From introduction

Speaking from the U.S. experience, this paper argues that the exclusion of union speech, boycotts and picketing from constitutional protection has been harmful for labour and for the U.S. Constitution. The author points out that in recent decades the scope of speech that is protected under the First Amendment has expanded significantly, and now includes consumer boycotts, "symbolic speech" that combines con- duct and communication, and even threatening speech. All of these rights of expression are denied to unions, supposedly on the ground that labour rights should be, and are, regulated through a comprehensive administrative scheme. In the author's view, howeve, that scheme has become ossified, and has completely failed to keep up with developments in First Amendment law. As a result, union speech and action is uniquely disfavoured: flag-burning, cross-burning and the St. Patrick's Day parade are constitutionally protected forms of expression, but union picketing is not. Canadians, then, when considering a constitutional right to strike, should be wary, of the argument that the regulation of such a right is better assigned to administrators rather than the courts.

The article reviews the book, "Uprooted: The Shipment of Poor Children to Canada, 1867-1917," by Roy Parker.

The article focuses on the letters wrote by Elgin Neish, a member of the Labor-Progressive Party (LPP), during his seven week trip from Eastern Europe to Beijing, China in 1952. It explains that the letters offered a significant perspective of a radical British Columbia trade unionist during the Cold War as well as important global subjects. It notes that Neish traveled to Beijing to participate in the Asia and Pacific Rim Peace Conference, which reflected on the communist-led peace activism during the Cold War and the relationships between the Canadian and Chinese Communists, from October 2-12.

Dr. Nels Anderson (1889–1986) was among American sociologists a pioneer whose work is only now beginning to win the recognition it deserves, especially in Europe. His ethnographic studies of wandering workmen (The Hobo), frontier sectarians (The Desert Saints), and migrant laborers (Men on the Move) are seen as models of empirical research that provide insights into the lives of groups and classes marginalized by the wider society. [He also was a visiting professor and head of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Memorial University of Newfoundland.] --Introduction

The article reviews the book, "Carnal Crimes: Sexual Assault Law in Canada, 1900-1975," by Constance Backhouse.

The article reviews the book, "Women's Rights," by Geraldine Terry.

We consider the impact of changing Canadian national party finance laws that banned trade union donations on the relationship between the New Democratic party (NDP) and organized labour. Although the changed laws have required a restructuring of the relationship between the two actors, we find evidence of a continued commitment to co-operation. We conclude that accounts that stress the ideological affinity between the NDP and labour explain the preservation of the relationship better than political economy or rational exchange models.

In early February 2007, Hershey´s Chocolate Company announced its global supply-chain transformation plan to cut more than 1500 jobs from its Canadian and United States plants. Smiths Falls, the Chocolate Capital of Canada, lost its Hershey factory together with the closure of the Rideau Regional Centre, an institution for people with developmental disabilities. By the end of 2008, this Eastern Ontario town of roughly 9,000 people shed roughly 1700 jobs, constituting almost 40% of its active labour force (Sutton, 2009). Globalization, despite the confusion generated by the word, must be considered a core factor in the economic and social situation. Smiths Falls confronts these lay-offs from a position of economic and social strain already. The paper examines the broader changes in the world occurring through globalization and how the local society of Smiths Falls has adjusted in tandem. Such an analysis has likely been relevant to Smiths Falls since its inception; as a meeting point of transcontinental trade and a centre of manufacturing within an ever-expanding and more complex supply chain.

The article reviews the book, "Working Girls in the West: Representations of Wage-Earning Women," by Lindsey McMaster.

[S]ummarizes thirty years of effort by equity advocates to realize a feminist-inspired vision of a union movement that is inclusive and democratic, and that seeks to advance the interests of all working people, unionized or not. ...[The author] argues that the union renewal literature has not acknowledged the gendering of the labour movement, or the role that women's organizing has played in transofrming the labour movement and helping it to reposition itself in the face of neo-liberal globalization, thus assuring its future survival. --Editor's introduction

The growth of precarious work since the 1970s has emerged as a core contemporary concern within politics, in the media, and among researchers. Uncertain and unpredictable work contrasts with the relative security that characterized the three decades following World War II. Precarious work constitutes a global challenge that has a wide range of consequences cutting across many areas of concern to sociologists. Hence, it is increasingly important to understand the new workplace arrangements that generate precarious work and worker insecurity. A focus on employment relations forms the foundation of theories of the institutions and structures that generate precarious work and the cultural and individual factors that influence people's responses to uncertainty. Sociologists are well-positioned to explain, offer insight, and provide input into public policy about such changes and the state of contemporary employment relations.

Ivan Rand had a long, varied and remarkable career. He is best known for his Supreme Court of Canada judgments in a series of cases emanating from Quebec in the 1950s and dealing with civil rights, cases which established limits on the government’s ability to persecute unpopular religious minorities. To labour lawyers he is also an icon for his invention of the ‘Rand formula’, one of the defining features of Canadian labour law. Rand was also a member of the United Nations special committee on Palestine in 1947, the founding Dean of the University of Western Ontario law school, and three times a royal commissioner, looking into the problems of the Canadian coal industry, the misconduct of Mr. Justice Leo A. Landreville, and labour disputes in Ontario. In this thoroughly researched and fast-paced book, William Kaplan traces Rand’s life and career in all its richness and controversy – Rand as lawyer, politician, judge, dean, and royal commissioner – through many seminal events of the twentieth century in Canada. The Rand that emerges is variously inspiring, frustrating to understand, sometimes contradictory, always complex. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Bar Codes: Women in the Legal Profession," by Jean McKenzie Leiper.

The article reviews the book, "Crossing Boundaries: Women's Organizing in Europe and the Americas, 1880s-1940s," part 80 of the Uppsala Studies in Economic History series, edited by Pernilla Jonsson, Silke Neunsinger, and Joan Sangster.

The article reviews the book, "For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America Since 1865," by Robert M. Zieger.