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This article examines the proliferation of beauty contests sponsored by the union movement after World War II, as a means of exploring the contradictions of the Fordist accord for women workers, and also feminist scholarship on beauty and the body. Beauty contests were articulations of labor pride and identity; they reflected the popular culture of the post-war period, labor's search for respectability, and labor's attempts to entice women into the movement by appealing to women's culture. A few contests even offered more subversive meanings of beauty by celebrating the `queen of the picket line.' However, most labor beauty contests promoted competitive individualism, consumption, and images of passive femininity that kept women marginalized on the sidelines of the labor movements. Le Bal des Midinettes, sponsored by the ILGWU, was an excellent example of these contradictions, espousing both faith in the Cinderella myth and a sense of French Canadian working-class pride. While theories stressing identity, agency, and subjectivity offer some insights into beauty contests, feminist-materialist analyses of commodification, exploitation, and ideology remain essential to our understanding of their meaning for, and impact on women workers in this period.

Ageing Labour Forces -- Promises and Prospects, edited by Philip Taylor, is reviewed.

Competing Claims in Work and Family Life, edited by Tanja van der Lippe and Pascale Peters, is reviewed.

The article provides information on the municipal elections which were held in Ontario in November 2006. The elections represented a strategic shift in the political priorities of organized labour. The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) held a series of strategy sessions, candidate schools, public speaking and media courses, and political organizer training sessions. The campaign was rolled out in four phases including visioning, training and endorsement, and accountability.

The article reviews the book, "Working Construction: Why White Working-Class Men Put Themselves - and the Labor Movement - in Harm’s Way?," by Kris Paap.

The article reviews the book, "Power and Contestation: India Since 1989," by Nivedita Menon and Aditya Nigam.

The article reviews the book, "The Economics of Happiness: Building Genuine Wealth," by Mark Anielski.

Widespread adoption of mandatory representation votes and express protection of employer speech invite employer anti-union campaigns during union organizing, including employer-held captive audience meetings. Therefore, the problem of whether and how to restrict employers' captive audience communications during union organizing is of renewed relevance in Canada. Captive meetings are a long-standing feature of American labour relations. This article considers how treatment of captive meetings evolved in the U.S., including the notion of employee choice; the "marketplace of ideas" view of expression dominating the American debate; and the central role of the contest between constitutional and statutory rights. It also considers the concept of "forced listening" and the associated Captive Audience doctrine in U.S. constitutional law and considers its possible application to captive audience meetings and the Charter definition of free expression. Finally, it offers suggestions about how Canadian labour law can benefit from lessons learned from the American experience.

The Ontario Labour Relations Act (OLRA) has long dictated the legal relationship between trade unions and employers in the province. Although subject to years of delay, when the provincial government introduced the OLRA in 1950, its official stance on labour relations was a "hands off" program that was designed to leave collective bargaining to the participants. Often defined as industrial pluralism, this new legal regime was supposed to have been crafted in the name of "fairness and balance" in which trade unions abandoned previous militancy for state-sponsored freedoms. Upon closer examination, however, the provincial government's approach to industrial pluralism was much less hands off than has previously been assumed. Rather, the entrenchment of collective bargaining in Ontario was closely aligned with the class interests of Ontario businesses. Through an examination of the politics surrounding OLRA, this article argues that Teslie Frost's Conservative government structured the Act in order to appease employer demands surrounding increased legal regulation of collective bargaining and union organizing, which limited the extension of unionization throughout the province. In making this observation, the article maintains that the Conservative regime of industrial pluralism was both the by-product and the purveyor of ongoing class antagonism throughout the 1950s.

The article reviews the book, "What Workers Say: Employee Voice in the Anglo-American Workplace," edited by Richard B. Freeman, Peter Boxall and Peter Haynes.

The article reviews the book, "Kin: A Collective Biography of a New Zealand Working-Class Family," by Melanie Nolan.

In this article, I draw on institutional theory to propose that a macro-societal market logic is shaping our understanding of the workplace trends of contingent work and overwork. This logic, in combination with specific societal changes, affects how workers experience such trends. Yet paradoxically, the market logic can be used to both support and oppose the trends, resulting in a conceptual stalemate. Research implications are discussed.

The present study investigated the impact of bumping on union member (N = 100) perceptions of job security, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, union commitment and organizational justice. Analysis revealed a negative correlation between bumping experience and organizational commitment and job satisfaction (at the .05 level). There was a similar negative relationship between bumping and both union commitment and organizational justice at the .10 level. MANCOVA found that organizational commitment and job satisfaction levels were higher for union members without bumping experience versus those with either direct or indirect bumping experience. No significant differences were found on any variable between union members who were directly involved in bumping and those who were indirectly involved.

Effective as of December, 2006, an end to mandatory retirement was legislated in Ontario. Prior to this move, some employers and labour organizations were opposed to eliminating mandatory retirement and expressed concern about the negative impact such a move would have on business and on individual workers. This exploratory descriptive study examines HR managers' (N = 415) perceptions of the impact of the elimination of mandatory retirement in Ontario. Compared with HR managers in organizations not practicing mandatory retirement, HR managers in organizations with a mandatory retirement policy reported their organization had significantly fewer HR practices in place tailored to older employees and would be significantly more likely to respond to the elimination of mandatory retirement by implementing new HR practices or by modifying existing HR practices.

The article reviews the book, "Disciplining Statistics: Demography and Vital Statistics in France and England 1830-1885," by Libby Schweber.

Collective Bargaining on Working Time: Recent European Experiences, edited by Maarten Keune, and Bela Galgoczi, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "Unexpected Power: Conflict and Change Among Transnational Activists," by Shareen Hertel.

The article reviews the book, "Caught in the Machinery: Workplace Accidents and Injured Workers in Nineteenth-Century Britain," by Jamie L. Bronstein.

The article focuses on the constitutional right to bargain collectively in Canada. Employers in Canada have adopted labour management policies that including resistance to and avoidance of collective bargaining, shifting from secure employment forms and increasing demand on the workforce. It mentions the Hospital Employees' Union (HEU) which had successfully fought a long battle to achieve pay equity for its largely female membership.