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I) Objective: The study aimed to explore the health effects of precarious employment relationships in Ontario, and understand how various forms of support shape health. II) Methods: Three measures make up our "Employment Strain" model: employment relationship uncertainty; employment relationship effort; and, employment relationship support. This new framework was used to measure the characteristics of precarious employment and their effect on health using data from a structured, self-administered, population-based survey completed by 3,244 workers, and 82 semi-structured interviews using a stratified sampling technique to select participants. III) Results: Precarious employment has negative health consequences for many workers. However, the relationship between precarious employment and health is complex, whereby the characteristics of the employment relationship and levels of support determine health outcomes. Using the "Employment Strain" framework, we found that workers exposed to High Employment Strain - workers with high levels of employment relationship uncertainty and high levels of employment relationship effort - have poorer health. Importantly, support does shapes health and can help to buffer the health risks associated with precarious employment.

The emergence of internationalized production in the context of weakening state regulation of labour rights and of increasing employer dominance in industrial relations systems raises significant questions about the nature and future of worker representation. A crucial issue is the transferability of company-specific models of worker voice across national boundaries. This issue is the focus of this case study of Magna International, a leading member of a small group of transnational automotive parts manufacturing firms that are central to the contemporary restructuring of the international automotive industry. The paper compares the transformation of worker representation at Magna in Canada and Mexico. In crossing international borders, the Magna industrial relations model has taken on national and local features of the host country. However, the underlying industrial relations structure is one which has elicited a successful reconfiguration and containment of much, although by no means all, of the adversarialism inherent in labour-management relations. This reconfiguration has aligned worker representation to an essentially unitarist project oriented to management's productivity goals. More than merely suppressing independent unions, Magna has constructed a coherent, management--dominated model of worker representation in both Canada and Mexico. The paper concludes with an assessment of the implications of this model for independent unionism.

Deindustrialization is not simply an economic process; it is also a social and cultural phenomenon. The rusting detritus of our industrial past — the wrecked halls of factories, abandoned machinery too large to remove, and now useless infrastructures — has for decades been a part of the North American landscape. Through a unique blend of oral history, photographs, and interpretive essays, [this book] investigates this fascinating terrain and the phenomenon of its loss and rediscovery. --Publisher's description. Includes bibliographical references (p. [157]-163) and index. "Oral history interviews cited": p. 164. Contents: Industrial demolition and the meaning of economic change in North America -- "Take only pictures and leave only footprints": urban exploration and the aesthetics of deindustrialization -- From cradle to grave: the politics of memory in Youngstown, Ohio -- Out of place: the plant shutdown stories of Sturgeon Falls (Ontario) paperworkers -- Gabriel's Detroit -- Deindustrial fragments -- King coal : the coal counties of West Virginia -- A vanishing landmark: Allied Paper in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

The article reviews the book, "Not This Time: Canadians, Public Policy and the Marijuana Question 1961-1975," by Marcel Martel.

The article presents information on the Just Society Movement (JSM) of Canada which consists of mothers with the aim of empowering the poor. A non-hierarchical structure that encourages different people to take leadership positions within the organization was advocated by the group. Advocacy and disruptive protest were believed to be the key to JSM success.

Compilation of recent English/French publications on Canadian labour history that emphasize the period 1800-1975. Materials pertaining to the post-1975 period may also be included, although more selectively. [See the database, Canadian Labour History, 1976-2009, published at Memorial University of Newfoundland.]

The article reviews the book ,"The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space," by Don Mitchell.

For the last 40 years, migrant farm workers from the Caribbean and Mexico have been recruited to work temporarily on Canadian farms under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). In 2002, the pilot Foreign Worker Program (FWP) for low skilled migrant workers was initiated in the province of Quebec and under this program began the recruitment of Guatemalan migrant farm workers. Since the program's start, the number of Guatemalan migrants has nearly tripled and there seems to be a decline in the number of workers hired under the SAWP in Quebec. This paper examines the FWP's development, set-up, consequences and operation alongside the SAWP and shows how the Canadian state is expanding the number and flexibility of temporary worker programs. This paper draws attention to the neo-liberal context of migrant farm labour in Canada, pointing to the ways in which Canada's federal policies governing seasonal agricultural migrants and the agricultural labour market are exploitative and racist.

The article reviews the book, "Bora Laskin: Bringing Law to Life," by Philip Girard.

The article reviews the book, "The Workforce Scorecard: Managing Human Capital to Execute Strategy," by Mark A. Huselid, Brian E. Becker and Richard W. Beatty.

The article reviews the book, "The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America," by James N. Gregory.

The article reviews the book, "Woman of the World: Mary McGeachy and International Cooperation," by Mary Kinnear.

L’article, centré sur les orientations de rôle de nouveaux cadres de l’Action Sociale, prolonge et complète le modèle de la proactivité appliquée aux processus de socialisation organisationnelle. Ce modèle reconnaît au sujet la capacité à agir sur son environnement de travail, à en interpréter les prescriptions; l’orientation de rôle est, dans cette perspective, dépendante des rapports des sujets aux exigences de la tâche, de l’organisation et à celles de son propre développement. Les auteurs estiment qu’elle est également placée sous l’influence de visées et d’engagements afférents aux milieux et activités de socialisation en dehors du travail. Ainsi l’étude empirique qualitative met-elle en évidence les variabilités interindividuelles des modes d’accomplissement du rôle managérial. Elle souligne aussi la nécessité d’une prise en compte de la pluralité des ancrages familiaux, personnels et sociaux des sujets pour rendre intelligibles les processus psychologiques à l’oeuvre dans l’orientation de rôle au cours de la transition professionnelle.

As a window into contemporary debates about the concept of experience, this essay examines 1934's Vancouver Through the Eyes of a Hobo, which may have the distinction of being the only extant book about hoboing in Depression-era Canada written by a self-identified transient, Victor Wadham Forster. Forster mapped for his readers a dialectic: Nature -- an antimodern pastoral refuge where hoboes lived in freedom -- stood against the City -- a wholly modern capitalist nightmare, home to economic exploitation and its attendant moral degradations. Yet, the author also articulated his desire to destroy this way of life -- and the foundation of his claims to authority as a writer -- in order to effect his and every hobo's reintegration with society. Casting off his avowed allegiance to tramping, Forster divined for his readers a third social formation, a new kind of capitalism infused with a Christian ethos of brotherhood and cooperation, and propped up by an unbounded white supremacy and a rigidly patriarchal division of labour. Herein lies the tragedy of Vancouver Through the Eves of a Hobo: to save the hobo required the destruction of the hobo way of life.

The article focuses on labor crisis in the U.S. The author claims that the country's main labor problem is not the declining union density but the global economic transformation that have exacerbated various labor issues, including weak and poorly enforced labor laws, aggressively anti-union employers and rivalry among unions. The strategy that U.S. must take to reform its labor is discussed.

Book review of: "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" by Naomi Klein.

The article reviews the book, "My Union, My Life: Jean-Claude Parrot and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers," by Jean-Claude Parrot.

Makes it easier to understand the complex and sometimes controversial field of industrial relations. How? Its unique process-oriented approach gives you a clear road map by illustrating how and why unions are formed, and introduces you to the Canadian industrial relations system and the forces that shape it. --Publisher's description. Ch. 1. An introduction to industrial relations in Canada -- ch. 2. Theories of industrial relations -- ch. 3. History of the Canadian Union movement -- ch. 4. The structure of Canadian unions -- ch. 5. The organizing campaign -- ch. 6. Establishing union recognition -- ch. 7. Defining and commencing collective bargaining -- ch. 8. The collective bargaining process -- ch. 9. Strikes and lockouts -- ch. 10. Third-party intervention during negotiations -- ch. 11. The grievance arbitration process -- ch. 12. Changes to the union or the employer -- ch. 13. Future issues for workers, work arrangements, organizations, and the industrial relations system

An illuminating study of how gender and work intersect among the rural clergy. For rural clergy, the lines between private life and professional life can blur. Their offices are often in their homes, parishioners are also neighbours, and professional duties are intertwined with emotional caregiving and volunteer activity. In a society that defines work as paid, public, and intellectual the ambiguity inherent in the life of the rural clergy poses unique challenges. Muriel Mellow considers how men and women in this occupational group conceptualize "work" in the context of their unique circumstances and shows how their experience raises questions for feminist theories of work. Based on interviews with forty rural Protestant clergy, Mellow argues that male and female clergy challenge gendered definitions of work by focusing on obligation, context, visibility, and time. She also considers how clergy's work is shaped by the rural setting, arguing that we must consider how work is "placed" as well as gendered. --Publisher's description

Since World War II, service work has become the major employment sector in North America. One of the most recognizable forms it takes is in the fast food industry, a multi-billion dollar business with outlets all over the globe. Little has been written about the history of this work, central to the functioning of the global economy and a key part of the move from an industrial economy to a consumer one. This move has changed work by examining BC's White Spot chain, which unlike almost any other has been unionized for over three decades. Drawing on union records an d oral interviews, it analyzes fast food unionism, evaluates organizing in the sector, and draws out workplace dynamics and processes; arguing that labour practices in this sector have been crucial in making work more exploitative.