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CCUPE On Strike offers a profile of the 1502 CUPE strikes since the union's inception in 1963 until 2004. In addition to breakdowns by province and industry, it considers strike incidence over time, duration, size of strikes, contract status, results, and the pattern of lockouts and rotating strikes. Like the overall Canadian strike profile, a majority of strikes are in small workplaces and are settled relatively quickly. Not surprisingly, CUPE strikes are clustered in Public Administration, and Health Care and Social Assistance. This demographic might help to explain the fact that CUPE has been involved in fewer wildcats, lockouts and strikes for first contracts than other unions. Although the overall trend for Canada since the 1990s has been a decrease in strikes, a modest shift in the last five years is evident in the data. For CUPE, this means more workers on strike, longer strikes, and more lockouts, all of which suggest an escalation in employer aggression. The Canadian data which highlight increasing public sector militancy and the feminization of that militancy suggest that CUPE will be a key player in the map of labour militancy in the future. This profile of the strike activities of CUPE, the largest union in Canada, makes visible the experience of strikes from the point of view of workers and their unions. Not only does it contribute to a labour militancy perspective on the quantitative data on work stoppages from Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC), it also demonstrates the potential of the data to enrich our understanding of worker militancies.

Using the micro-data from Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC) on the 23,944 stoppages in Canada between 1960 and 2004, this article introduces a labour militancy perspective on work stoppages, that is, from the point of view of workers. It explores patterns of militancy with a focus on strike duration, strike size and strikes for first contracts, and supports re-interpretations which help make visible the significance of such stoppages for workers, unions and communities. A labour militancy frame presents an alternative to the employer perspective on time lost, the government concern to measure the economic impact of stoppages, and the scholarly emphasis on strike determinants. As part of re-examining the HRSDC work stoppage data from a labour militancy perspective, the paper considers the source of these data. It juxtaposes the statistical data with interviews with the provincial correspondents who collect the information for HRSDC. Examining the data in this light underscores the political nature of data collection (what is seen to be germane and not), data presentation (what is made visible and what is not), and data sources (whose voices are heard).

The article reviews the book, "The Transformation of British Life, 1950-2000," by Andrew Rosen.

The article focuses on farm labor in Ontario. It is said that migrant farm workers are widely employed in Niagara because they return better profit. However, it is claimed that the use of workers from Mexico and the Caribbean serves to depress wages and complicates union formation. It is also noted that these workers are denied with the rights enjoyed by workers with landed-immigrant status.

Book review of: "Capitalism Rebooted: Work, Welfare and the New Economy" by Dave Broad & Wayne Antony (eds.)

The article reviews the book, "Continentalizing Canada: The Politics and Legacy of the Macdonald Royal Commission," by Gregory J. Inwood.

From October 7-23, 2005, the strike by the 38,000-strong British Columbia Teachers' Federation (bCTF) was the "main event" in BC labour relations. Teachers demonstrated enormous solidarity and determination to achieve a fair negotiated settlement that they could put to a vote. The focus of this paper is not the BCTF strike itself but the remarkable sympathy strike action organized in support of BCTF, primarily by the BC division of CUPE. Such worker action is highly unusual. Since the 1940s sympathy strike action has been illegal and extremely rare. This paper sets CUPE-BC's strikes in support of BCTF in the context of the legal framework established over half a century ago and the decline of sympathy strikes that followed. It then summarizes the events of October 2005 and examines the effects and significance of the strikes and what made them possible. It concludes with a reflection on the implications of these events for the labour movement. The analysis here is shaped by the perspective that public sector unions are best able to resist hostile governments when they adopt a militant and highly democratic approach that aims to build a broad social movement, sometimes referred to as social movement unionism.

Challenges from employers and governments and the limited success of public sector union responses suggest the need for renewal in Canadian public sector unions. This article engages with discussions of union renewal by way of theoretically conceptualizing the modes of union praxis relevant to Canadian unions. It then examines the nature of neoliberal public sector reform and assesses the experiences of Canadian public sector unions under neoliberalism. In this difficult context, unions that are able to make progress in the interconnected development of greater democracy and power will be more capable of channelling workers’ concerns into union activity. This, along with international and Canadian evidence, highlights the significance of the praxis of social movement unionism to union renewal in the public sector.

We use data from a unique survey of Ontario physicians to examine the determinants of work and personal stress in physicians with six stress indexes we constructed. We have a number of findings of particular interest. First, we find that males experience significantly less stress than women in a number of our regressions. Second, some of our estimates suggest that physicians who practice in health service organizations, which are paid primarily by capitation rather than fee-for-service, experience less stress. This estimate suggests that alternative payment systems, which are becoming more prevalent, may help to alleviate the stress experienced by physicians. Third, increases in the percentage of billings required to cover overhead expenses are associated with higher levels of stress. Finally, our most consistent empirical finding relates to the number of hours a week the physician works, which had a significant effect on all six of our stress indexes.

The article reviews the book, "If the Workers Took a Notion: The Right to Strike and American Political Development," by Josiah B. Lambert.

The article reviews the book, "Schools of Democracy: A Political History of the American Labor Movement," by Clayton Sinyai.

The article reviews the book, "The Embedded Corporation: Corporate Governance and Employment Relations in Japan and the United States," by Sanford M. Jacoby.

The article reviews the book, "Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta," by Aritha van Herk.

La recherche étudie l’impact des changements apportés dans trois systèmes de GRH sur la variation de l’engagement affectif des employés d’un établissement de santé au Québec entre 1999 et 2002. La problématique de la recherche se base sur la théorie du contrat psychologique de Rousseau (1995), selon laquelle les changements organisationnels modifient les paramètres de la relation d’emploi, lesquels permettent d’améliorer les conditions de travail et le contrat psychologique de l’employé. À l’aide de deux échantillons comparables de 80 répondants, les résultats révèlent que les employés sont plus autonomes et peuvent davantage participer aux processus décisionnels, que les procédures sont plus impartiales et que la perception de plafonnement de carrière est moins élevée dans l’échantillon de 2002 comparativement à celui de 1999. Ces améliorations dans la gestion des ressources humaines sont accompagnées d’une faible augmentation du niveau d’engagement affectif en 2002.

The article reviews the book, "Dirty Politics? New Labour, British Democracy and the Invasion of Iraq," by Steven Kettell.

The article reviews the book, "Jailed for Possession: Illegal Drug Use, Regulation and Power in Canada 1920-1961," by Catherine Carstairs.

The article reviews the book, "Responsabilité sociale et environnementale de l’entreprise," edited by Marie-France B. Turcotte and Anne Salmon.

The article reviews the book, "L’essentiel sur les salaires minimums dans le monde," by François Eyraud and Catherine Saget.

Systems of social protection are being quickly and quietly recast by developments in a surprising policy area. The rapidly expanding infrastructure of national security policy in Canada compromises labour rights and social forms of security. Security clearance programs, under development for port workers, compromise employment security by making workers and their families subject to invasive screenings that violate privacy, allow for job suspension based on 'reasonable suspicion' of terrorist affiliation, and offer no meaningful independent appeals process. New security regulations threaten to institutionalize racial profiling and undermine collective bargaining. Moreover, there are plans to generalize these programs across the transport sector - a large part of the labour force that includes trucking, mass transit, airport, and rail workers. In this paper I look at ongoing struggles over port security in Canada. I suggest that national security policy as backdoor labour policy works to institutionalize 'anti-social' forms of security.