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The article reviews the book, "Organizing to Win: New Research on Union Strategies," edited by Kate Bronfenbrenner, Sheldon Friedman, Richard W. Hurd, Rudolph A. Oswald and Ronald L. Seeber.

Since the early 1980s, the worldwide expansion of product and capital markets has been cited as one of the singlemost significant factors driving the transformation of economic and social relations, both in industrialized countries as well as in the developing countries. Much of this process of economic transformation has been generated as a result of the conjunction of a set of changes in several mutually reinforcing, yet endogenous, factors. Policy makers could once meaningfully refer to an industrial relations system as being defined primarily at the level of a national or sub-national government jurisdiction. While researchers and policy makers still refer to the notion of an industrial relations system, the process of internationalization has clearly begun to erode the relevance of this concept at least in the sense of its traditional meaning.

The article reviews the book, "After Lean Production: Evolving Employment Practices in the World Auto Industry," edited by Thomas A. Kochran, Russell D. Lansbury and John Paul MacDuffie.

The following excerpt is taken from a public lecture given by Marjorie Griffen Cohen, Professor of Economics and Chair of Women's Studies at Simon Fraser University (SFU), entitled "Economic Fundamentalism and its Threat to Democracy."The address, part of the 1998 President's Lecture series at SFU, examined the ascendency of neoliberalism — "economic fundamentalism"— in the post-World War II period and its impact on the political, economic, and social institutions that "supported the ideas of equality and democracy in industrialized countries." In this passage, Cohen sketches a "political approach" to countering the erosion of the welfare state and what she calls the "marketization" of social and economic life. --Editor's introduction

By the early 20th century, the changes taking place in western industrial capitalist nations prompted an adaptive shift in the socioeconomic delineation of human bodies, and in scientific theories about how they worked and how they could be put to work. Just as the rising social sciences borrowed from medicine to convey images of social malaise, medicine increasingly appropriated an industrial vocabulary to conceptualize bodily health. Depicted variously as a machine, a motor, a factory in itself, the human body absorbed industrial symbolism. Modem industry demanded an intensification of labour that made bodily efficiency paramount. The corresponding definition of health also shifted, from emphasis on physical endurance, which could be secured by simple replacement of outworn workers, to optimum labour efficiency, which had to be actively instilled in all workers, present and future. Scientific management programs were easily integrated with regulatory medical notions concerning the human body and human nature, as science, medicine and technology combined forces to promote a machine ethic that equated modernity, progress, efficiency, and national health. This paper considers the relationship between changing conceptualizations of the human body, developing medical influence and state regulation of health, and attempts to "Taylorize" the labour process in early 20th century Canada.

The article reviews the book, "Forging Business-Labour Partnerships : The Emergence of Sector Councils in Canada," edited by Morley Gunderson and Andrew Sharpe.

The article reviews the book, "Formations of Class & Gender," by Beverley Skeggs.

The article reviews the book, "Unions and Workplace Reorganization," edited by Bruce Nissen.

The article reviews the book, "Un métier et une vocation. Le travail des religieuses au Québec de 1901 à 1971," by Danielle Juteau and Nicole Laurin.

The article reviews the book, "The Fruits of Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945," by Cindy Hahamovitch.

Until the 1960s, racism was a fairly blatant aspect of Canadian society. Racism played an obvious role in shaping individual attitudes, state policies and institutional arrangements in the economy, the political system and civil society. But to what extent does racism continue to inform and structure how our institutions operate today, what is the social meaning of race in contemporary Canadian society, and what is the most effective way to combat racism in all its forms? The chapters in this book seek answers to these important questions. They analyze, in different ways, the conditions that give rise to racism in various forms, the extent to which racism permeates the way certain social institutions operate, how groups of people have organized against racism, and the ways that racism is linked to class, gender and ethnicity. They also try to provide readers with some conceptual tools and empirical evidence as a basis for discussion and debate about the meaning of race, racism, racialization and social inequality in contemporary Canada. This book may disappoint those looking for simple answers and those who are looking for the final word on whether Canada is indeed a racist society. The contributors do not fully agree on the significance of race and racism in contemporary Canada. Some see race and racism as a fundamental organizing principle of our society and of certain institutional spheres; others see racism as more situational, subtle and muted in its forms and consequences; others point to the racialization of certain aspects of Canadian society but do not necessarily see this as being equivalent to racism; and still others argue that allegations of racism in certain institutional spheres tend to be overplayed at the expense of class and gender differences. --Publisher's description

The individual decision making of the Energy and Chemical Workers' Union rank and file members in their choice to support or oppose a 3-way merger with the Paperworkers' Union and the Communications and Electrical Workers' Union is examined. Two theories, one economic and one behavioral, are used to explain member voting preferences. Results demonstrate that both instrumental and image considerations need to be taken into account when predicting the outcome of a union merger vote.

This thesis examines the dramatic shift from international to national union dominance in Canada. Within this context, this analysis explores breakaway activity, and discusses the broader significance of this phenomenon in relation to the labour movement in Canada. It identifies factors critical to the development of international unions. and factors related to their decline, both in Canada as reflected in breakaways, and in the United States as reflected in the general decline of the labour movement. and concludes that contextual factors and individual responses have been central to this process. Ultimately. this thesis illustrates existing distinctive elements of the Canadian labour movement. and suggests that these became more apparent over time. It identifies changes that occurred in objective and subjective conditions that led to the expression of this distinctiveness in a series of breakaways that contributed to the 'Canadianization'. if not the dramatic differentiation, of the labour movement in Canada.

The article reviews the book, "Tous à l'école. État, communautés rurales et scolarisation au Québec de 1826 à 1859," by Andrée Dufour.

In recent years, there has been a trend in many countries toward a decentralization of collective bargaining structures. Two methods are employed to provide a deeper analysis than previous studies of the forces that determine bargaining structure. First, a framework is built to analyze bargaining structure by integrating previous theoretical and empirical work on the topic. Second, the framework is applied to 4 bargaining unit level case studies in the US' pulp and paper industry. By examining the dissolution of 2 centralized bargaining structures and union attempts to reestablish centralization through ratification voting pools in 2 others, the relative importance of economic, tactical and organizational factors in the continued decentralization of US paper industry bargaining is revealed.

The article reviews and comments on the following two books: Alan H. Jeeves and Jonathan Crush's "White Farms, Black Labor: The State and Agrarian Change in Southern Africa, 1910-1950" and Jonathan Crush and Charles Ambler's "Liquor and Labor in Southern Africa."

This thesis contributes to our understanding of both international unionism and of the labour revolt in Quebec, two neglected areas in Quebec labour history. It examines the industrial conflict of the war years and the post-war revolt in 1919 and 1920, a period of militancy characterized by rapid trade union growth and aggressive strike action by international unions. During the same period workers renewed their interest in independent political action and briefly attained a small measure of success. A major focus of this study is the ethnic, religious, political and gender divisions within the international unions and the labour party in Quebec. The labour revolt was, however, ultimately unsuccessful. While this was because employers were generally stronger than organized workers, especially in the depression of the 1920s, it also faltered on profound divisions within the Quebec working class. The emergence of a Catholic labour movement as a serious rival to secular international unions created one of the most important divisions within the Quebec working class. This thesis constitutes a significant revision to our understanding of the formative years of this confessional movement. While there is a large body of work on Catholic organizations, few studies have examined either their role in the 1919 labour revolt, or the specific nature of the rivalry with the international unions. Inter-union rivalry in the years from 1916 to 1925 is an important theme of this study. Catholic union promoters conducted an experiment in the industrial relations of social harmony which involved attempting to replace class conflict with harmonious relations with employers. While eschewing strike action, Catholic unions and their supporters often helped employers undermine international union strikes in the hope of destroying and supplanting the more aggressive secular organizations. The result was that the Catholic labour movement impeded the growth of the American-based unions and contributed to the defeat of the workers' revolt.

The article reviews the book, "Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South, by Mark M. Smith.

Far more attention has been paid to Walton & McKersie's (1965) distributive and integrative models of bargaining than to their strategies in a mixed bargaining situation; in particular the emphasis has been on developing cooperation in the form of the integrative or mutual gains approaches. A paper reexamines the mixed bargaining model and, drawing on a case study, identifies a number of features of negotiation which enable the parties to overcome the difficulties associated with the strategy. It is suggested that the mixed bargaining model is more appropriate in the industrial relations context than approaches which focus on cooperation.

The article reviews the book, "Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957," by Penny M. Von Eschen.