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In the early twentieth century, the Canadian Lakehead was known as a breeding ground for revolution, a place where harsh conditions in dockyards, lumber mills, and railway yards drove immigrants into radical labour politics. This intensely engaging history reasserts Northwestern Ontario's rightful reputation as a birthplace of leftism in Canada by exposing the conditions that gave rise to an array of left-wing organizations, including the Communist Party, the One Big Union, and the Industrial Workers of the World. Yet, as Michel Beaulieu shows, the circumstances and actions of Lakehead labour, especially those related to ideology, ethnicity, and personality were complex; they simultaneously empowered and fettered workers in their struggles against the shackles of capitalism. Cultural ties helped bring left-wing ideas to Canada but, as each group developed a distinctive vocabulary of socialism, Anglo-Celtic workers defended their privileges against Finns, Ukrainians, and Italians. At the Lakehead, ethnic difference often outweighed class solidarity - at the cost of a stronger labour movement for Canada. --Publisher's description.  Contents: Part 1. The Roots of Revolution?: 1. Early socialist organizations at the Lakehead, 1900-14; 2. Repression, revitalization, and revolutions, 1914-18 -- Part 2. From Winnipeg to the Workers' Unity League: 3. "The Hog Only Harms Himself if He Topples His Trough": The one big union, 1919-22; 4. "Into the Masses!": The Communist Party of Canada at the Lakehead, 1922-25; 5. Bolshevization and the reorganization of the Lakehead Left, 1925-27; 6. Turning to the left, 1928-30 -- Part 3. The Great Depression and the Third Period: 7. "Class against Class": socialist activities, 1930-32; 8. Wobbly relations: The Communist Party of Canada, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Lakehead, 1932-35.

During the last two days of December in 1911 the Finnish Labour Temple in Port Arthur, Ontario, was the scene of one of the most significant events in both Canadian and regional political history before the First World War. Chosen for its geographic position, the temple hosted a pan-national gathering of socialists who, in an attempt to unite the Canadian left, established Canada’s first social democratic party, the Social Democratic Party of Canada (SDPC). The goal of the SDPC was to educate the workers of Canada to consciousness of their class position in society, their economic servitude to the owners of capital, and to organize them into a political party to seize the reins of government and transform all capitalist property into the collective property of the working class. Its activity during the next decade would have a profound influence on both the various manifestations of socialism regionally and nationally over the next century and on mainstream Canadian social politics. However, the hundredth anniversary of its establishment has gone unnoticed by political and labour historians. Part of the reason rests with the simply fact that, although many works mention and even briefly discuss the SDPC, no full-length study has yet been written. In an attempt to rectify this situation, this paper provides an overview of its actions and activities at the Lakehead,between 1911 and 1918. --Introduction

The contemporary movement for sex workers' rights organizes around a range of international, national, and localized grievances. They are unified in their efforts to promote and protect sex workers' human and labour rights through the decriminalization and destigmatization of sex industry work. Within the context of social movement theory, literature on the sex worker rights movement has focused mainly on its failure to mobilize due to inadequate resources, small membership base, lack of sex worker leadership and absence of influential allies. In 2007, sex workers in Toronto, Ontario and in Vancouver, British Columbia, launched constitutional challenges to their respective Provincial Superior Courts to strike down Criminal Code of Canada provisions related to adult prostitution. The two court challenges are contrary to what would be predicted based on the extant literature on the sex worker rights movement. That literature supports a conclusion that due to marginalization, ambivalence toward their work, and feelings of inadequacy as political actors, sex workers lack the material and organizational strength to impact state regulation and alter social perceptions of sex work. This dissertation was based on a multi-site ethnographic study examining the processes by which constitutional challenges were initiated, the role of sex workers, and how the cases were perceived by the larger movement of sex worker rights activists in Canada. Drawing on primary and secondary data sources, including interviews with 26 movement activists, I examined constitutional litigation from the perspective of social movement theory, specifically considering the political opportunities, alliances, and resources necessary for these challenges to take place. This research demonstrates some tangible successes for the sex worker rights movement in Canada, despite ongoing social movement obstacles. The history of sex worker rights activism in Canada has produced sex worker-run organizations and political coalitions. These have garnered support from other organizations, researchers, cause lawyers and their teams, making it possible for sex workers, as individuals and via organizations, to mobilize legally against federal prostitution laws.

[This book] traces Canada's transformation into a modern consumer nation back to an era when Eaton’s, Simpson's, and the Hudson’s Bay Company fostered and came to rule the country’s shopping scene. Between 1890 and 1940, department stores revolutionized selling and shopping by parlaying cheap raw materials, business-friendly government policies, and growing demand for low-priced goods into retail empires that promised to meet citizens' needs and strengthen the nation. Some Canadians found happiness and fulfillment in their aisles; others experienced nothing more than a cold shoulder and a closed door. The stores' advertising and public relations campaigns often disguised a darker, more complicated reality that included strikes, union drives, customer complaints, government inquiries, and public criticism. This vivid account of Canadian department stores in their heyday showcases them as powerful agents of nationalism and modernization. But the nation that their catalogues and shopping experience helped to define - white, consumerist, middle-class - was more limited than nostalgic portraits of the early department store suggest. --Publisher's description. Contents: Rise of mass retail -- Creating modern Canada -- Fathers of mass merchandising -- Crafting the consumer workforce -- Shopping, pleasure, and power -- Working at the heart of consumption -- Criticizing the big stores. Includes bibliographical references (p. 274-292) and index.

The article reviews the book, "Êtes-vous qualifi é pour servir?," by Sylvie Monchatre.

La puissance et le pouvoir sont des notions fondamentales pour l'étude de la négociation collective. Bien qu'ayant été au coeur des travaux fondateurs des relations industrielles de part et d'autre de l'Atlantique, leur traitement demeure pourtant insatisfaisant. Il convient donc de proposer une conceptualisation spécifi que et nuancée de celles-ci, permettant le cumul des acquis de connaissance afi n, notamment, de mieux comprendre les aff rontements entre employeurs et syndicats ainsi que l'équilibre au sein des régimes de rapports collectifs du travail. Pour ce faire, l'auteur propose une synthèse des travaux antérieurs intégrant certaines contributions majeures du champ de la sociologie politique. La puissance et le pouvoir, notions correspondant à une capacité et son actualisation, y sont envisagés du point de vue de la dépendance qu'entretiennent les parties à la négociation collective ainsi que des ressources et de la capacité stratégique de ces dernières.

Universities across Canada are increasingly using contingent, or temporary instructors to teach undergraduate courses (Rajagopal 2002, Muzzin 2008, Lin 2006). Scholars have examined the marginalization of contingent academic faculty members in Canadian universities (Rajagopal 2002, Muzzin 2008). They have also critiqued the ways in which universities use contingent faculty to create surplus value and surplus labour (Rajagopal 2002, Bauder 2006), and support a “primary segment” (Bauder 2006) of the tenured and tenure-track professoriate. In this thesis, I examine the key issues faced by contingent academic faculty members, and how these issues impact on their professional identity. I also investigate into how the use of contingent faculty impacts on teaching practices in higher education. Through the analysis of Labour Force Survey data, I ascertain to what extent contingent academic labour has increased from 1998 to 2008, suggesting that full-time temporary labour is on the rise. I then analyze data gathered from twelve interviews with contingent academic faculty members at Quebec universities to explore how their working conditions and experiences have impacted on their professional identity and perceived quality of instruction. I suggest that professional identity among contingent faculty members is not as static as suggested by Rajagopal (2002) or Gappa and Leslie (1993) Using David Harvey’s (2005) concept of neoliberalism and Ulrich Beck’s (1992) concept of the flexibilization of labour under risk society, I situate the flexibilization of academic labour within the neoliberalization of the university, and also point to linkages between contingent academic labour and the commodification of higher education.

The article reviews the book, "Seated by the Sea: The Maritime History of Portland, Maine, and Its Irish Longshoremen," by Michael C. Connolly.

The article reviews the book, "Live Wire: Women and Brotherhood in the Electrical Industry," by Francine A. Moccio.

[This report] draws on 2006 Census data to compare work and income trends among racialized and non-racialized Canadians. It’s among the more comprehensive post-Census studies on this issue to date. This joint report from the Wellesley Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reveals that despite an increasingly diverse population, Canada’s racialized income gap shows a colour code is still at work in Canada’s labour market. --Publisher's information

Drawing on a collection of interviews with Canadian feminists, this thesis explores the emergence of a ‘second wave’ of feminist organizing in Canada from 1965 to 1975. Using insights from poststructural feminism and critical race theory, I deconstruct the notion of ‘hegemonic feminism’ and examine how certain women came to inhabit a position of hegemony during the movement’s early years. I focus on key events in feminist organizing during the 1960s-1970s: The Royal Commission on the Status of Women and the founding of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. Drawing on oral history interviews and a close reading of the report on the RCSW, I suggest that more nuanced approaches are needed to move beyond the binary thinking that inflects accounts of Canadian feminist history. I conclude with a series of feminist narratives which aim to complicate linear histories and offer an alternative reading of this movement.

On September 29, 1931, almost 400 striking coal miners clashed with local police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in the streets of Estevan, Saskatchewan. The battle lasted less than an hour but left three men dead and twenty-three seriously injured. It was Canada's worst day of labor-related violence since "Bloody Saturday" in Winnipeg (June 21, 1919), and before long Estevan's day of infamy became known simply as "Black Tuesday."

Editorial introduction to the themes examined in the issue.

Does Canada have a working-class movement? Though most of us think of ourselves as middle class, most of us are, in fact, part of the working class: we work for wages and are not managers. Although many of us are members of unions - the most significant organizations of the working-class movement in Canada - most people do not understand themselves to be part of this movement. Is the working-class movement a relic of the twentieth-century factory worker, no longer relevant to workers in the twenty-first century? David Camfield argues that, despite its real deficiencies, the movement is as important today as it was a hundred years ago. Drawing on the ideas of union and community activists as well as academic research, David Camfield offers an analysis of the contemporary Canadian working-class movement and how it came to be in its current state. he argues that re-energizing the movement in its current form is not enough - it needs to be reinvented to face the challenges of contemporary capitalism. Considering potential ways forward, Camfield asserts that reforming unions from below and building new workers' organizations offer the best possibilities for effecting real change within the movement. --Publisher's description

The global economic crisis and its effects have changed the context for public sector unions in Canada. There is evidence that an intensified offensive against public sector unions is beginning. Few public sector unions are prepared to respond adequately to such an offensive, as the important 2009 strike by Toronto municipal workers illustrates. In this more difficult context, change within public sector unions is increasingly urgent. The most promising direction for union renewal lies in the praxis of social movement unionism. However, there are very few signs of moves to promote this approach within Canadian public sector unions.

We utilize two representative cross-national data sets to shed light on what has been a vexing problem in the industrial relations literature; namely, the existence and persistence of the representation gap documented more than a decade ago by Freeman and Rogers (1999). Specifically, we estimate the determinants of employee desire for a range of collective voice mechanisms, including unionization. We do this separately for the US and Canada and then, using an application of the Oaxaca decomposition technique, we decompose the differences in those desires between the two countries into a component due to differences in the characteristics of respondents and another due to differences in preferences for collective voice mechanisms. Our results indicate that: (1) roughly half of workers in both countries expressed a desire for a range of collective voice mechanisms to deal with workplace issues; (2) that desire for collective voice was stronger in the US than in Canada; and (3) that virtually all of the stronger desire for collective workplace voice in the US, as compared to Canada, was due to stronger employee preferences for collective solutions as opposed to differences in the characteristics of workers. We offer plausible explanations for our findings and discuss the implications for labour law reform.

This paper draws on research on the emergence of the Chinese Medical Doctor Association (CMDA) in recent years, by examining interview and documentary evidence from this organization and two case study hospitals in China. With reference to mobilization theory, the research investigates whether the CMDA has developed sufficient power to effectively represent and defend members' interests. The paper reviews the increasing presence of the CMDA in doctors' professional training and education, self-discipline and ethical issues. The findings show that at present the CMDA has not become an independent Dunlop-type union organization or a new industrial relations actor. Nevertheless, the CMDA may be able to help doctors to develop their social capital and group identity, and in the future the CMDA may become more powerful in representing Chinese doctors.

The article reviews the book, "When the Other Is Me: Native Resistance Discourse, 1850-1990," by Emma LaRocque.

Les résultats d’une étude menée auprès de 390 employés, obtenus à l’aide de la méthode des équations structurelles, mettent en lumière une influence positive de l’habilitation du supérieur sur la performance adaptative des subordonnés. Les résultats montrent également que la perception d’un soutien de la direction favorise la réussite de l’habilitation du supérieur, en agissant comme une ressource émotionnelle valorisée par les employés dans leur stratégie d’adaptation.Si les recherches antérieures ont généralement focalisé leur attention sur les antécédents individuels de la performance adaptative, l’étude de l’influence des pratiques managériales sur ce type de performance est en revanche délaissée. Dans cette perspective, l’objectif de cet article est d’explorer l’effet de l’habilitation du supérieur (managerial empowerment) sur la performance adaptative au travail, processus visant à accroître l’étendue du pouvoir des individus et leurs capacités à contrôler leur travail. Les cas d’échec des pratiques d’habilitation nous conduisent également à étudier les conditions sous lesquelles ces pratiques peuvent faciliter le développement de la performance adaptative.Face à la complexification des situations de travail, la capacité des employés à apprendre de nouvelles compétences, à interagir avec divers acteurs et à s’adapter à de nouveaux contextes est devenue essentielle pour la compétitivité des entreprises. Ces comportements au travail, regroupés sous le nom de performance adaptative, sont désormais considérés comme un facteur crucial pour permettre aux organisations d’atteindre leurs objectifs dans un environnement marqué par le changement continu, la complexité et l’incertitude. Ce construit est encore peu étudié.

The article reviews the book, "Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World," by Robyn Magalit Rodriguez.