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This thesis explores the wide variety of ways in which radical intellectuals and activists in Montreal used and adapted Third World decolonization theory to build a broad movement of solidarity and anti-colonial resistance from 1963-1972. Beginning in the early 1960s, activists and intellectuals in Montreal began drawing upon the language of Third World decolonization to resituate their understandings of themselves, their society, and the world in which they inhabited. Through their engagement with Third World liberation theory – and the closely related language of Black Power – radical intellectuals in Montreal sought to give new meaning to the old conception of humanism, and they worked to drastically expand the geographical frame of reference in which Quebec politics were generally understood. After analyzing the shifting meaning of decolonization in the period leading up to the late 1960s, this thesis explores the ways in which various groups adopted, built upon, challenged, and shaped the conception of Quebec liberation. Montreal’s advocates of women’s liberation, the city’s Black activists, defenders of unilingualism, and labour radicals were all deeply shaped by the intellectual and urban climate of Montreal, and by ideas of Quebec decolonization. They developed their own individual narratives of liberation, yet linked by the flexible language of decolonization, these narratives all greatly overlapped, forming a vast movement which was larger than the sum of its parts. If the concept of decolonization was extremely powerful, however, it was also highly ambiguous and contradictory, and activists only slowly came to an understanding of the multi-layered nature of colonialism in Quebec. By the early 1970s, the idea of decolonization was slowly abandoned by those advocating radical social change in the city. This thesis makes three interrelated arguments. First, it argues that radicalism in Quebec in the 1960s cannot be understood outside of the larger international context in which it emerged. Second, it attempts to rethink the ways in which different groups and movements during the 1960s interacted and fed upon each other’s analyses and learned from each other. And, finally, by looking at the centrality of Third World decolonization to the development of dissent in Montreal, it hopes to add new perspectives to the growing field of international Sixties scholarship, by insisting that history of the ‘West’ was profoundly shaped by its interactions with the Third World.

Several authors have argued that broadening the traditional understandings of union solidarity is necessary for union renewal. Concerns specific to workers from marginalized groups have been shown to challenge traditional understandings of union collectivity. This paper draws on interviews with white and Aboriginal women forest processing workers to argue that interrogating marginalized workers' negative representations of their unions can provide insights that will help to broaden traditional understandings of union solidarity. I use thematic analysis followed by critical discourse analysis to examine women workers' negative talk about unions. I present examples of how women's negative representations of their unions can be understood as different forms of collectivism when examined in the context of their lived experiences of work and unionism. Some white and Aboriginal women's representations of their unions wove individualistic anti-union statements together with their previous experiences of work highlighting the inequality between unionized and non-unionized workers in the community. The talk of other Aboriginal women critiqued the union for not representing them while demonstrating a sense of collectivity with other Aboriginal workers. By exploring linkages between women's negative representations of unions and their work experiences, unions can better understand the negative union sentiment of marginalized workers and use this to create more inclusive forms of solidarity.

This thesis examines the relationship between worker identity and workplace practices from the perspectives of white and Aboriginal women working in a multinational forest company in the northern prairies. Over the course of three manuscripts I demonstrate the salience of ascribed and constructed identities of women to their experiences and representations of forest employment and corporate discourse. Setting the context for the remainder of the thesis, the first manuscript presents an analysis of employment segregation by gender and Aboriginal identity in Canada’s forest sector in 2001 using segregation indices. Results demonstrate that forest employment was vertically segregated by both gender and Aboriginal ancestry in the forest sector in 2001. Men and women of First Nations ancestry were over represented in less-stable and lower paying occupations in woods based forest industries, and both white and First Nations women were over represented in forest services and clerical occupations. To explore women’s perceptions of company practices of diversity management and restructuring, I then analysed interviews with women working in forest processing using critical discourse analysis. In my second manuscript, I demonstrated how women’s representations of diversity management practices were linked to their social identities in terms of Aboriginal identity and class. Yet, as a whole, these representations prompted a questioning of the meaning of difference within diversity management, and of diversity management’s ability to further the interests of marginalised workers. My third manuscript examining representations of restructuring, argues that there is a two way relationship between women’s identities as workers and their representations of restructuring. Whether women reproduced or resisted restructuring was linked to their presented work identities and restructuring and practices in turn were helping to shape women’s worker subjectivities. Results from this thesis demonstrated that how women represent themselves and workplace practices is related to their different experiences in the specific set of social relations of forestry work in the northern prairies.

The article reviews the book, "Suburban Sweatshops: The Fight for Immigrant Rights," by Jennifer Gordon.

From the dock workers of Saint John in 1812 to teenage "crews" at McDonald's today, Canada's trade union movement has a long, exciting history. Working People tells the story of the men and women in the labour movement in Canada and their struggle for security, dignity, and influence in our society. Desmond Morton highlights the great events of labour history - the 1902 meeting that enabled international unions to dominate Canadian unionism for seventy years, the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, and an obscure 1944 order-in-council that became the labour's charter of rights and freedoms. He describes the romantic idealism of the Knights of Labor in the 1880s and looks at "new model" unions that used their members' dues and savings to fight powerful employers. Working People explores the clash between idealists, who fought for socialism, industrial democracy, and equality for women and men, and the realists who wrestled with the human realities of self-interest, prejudice, and fear. Morton tells us about Canadians who deserve to be better known - Phillips Thompson, Helena Gutteridge, Lynn Williams, Huguette Plamondon, Mabel Marlowe, Madeleine Parent, and a hundred others whose struggle to reconcile idealism and reality shaped Canada more than they could ever know. -- Publisher's description. Contents: Working people -- Getting organized -- International ideas -- Political movement -- Labour reformers -- Hinterland labour -- Trades and labour -- Gompers's shadow -- Business, labour, and governments -- Labour radicals -- Labour and the first World War -- Western revolt -- Unroaring twenties -- Surviving the depression -- Industrial unionism -- Fighting Hitler and management -- "People coming into their own" -- No falling back -- Struggle for allegiance -- Merger movement -- Times of frustration -- Prosperity and discontent -- Public Interest, Public Service -- Justice and nationalism -- Quebec and the common front -- Scapegoat for inflation -- Recession and hard times -- Levelling the playing field -- Struggling to the millennium -- Millennial achievements -- Graphs: Changes in the labour movement.

The article reviews the book, "Into the Hurricane: Attacking Socialism and the CCF," by John Boyko.

The garment industry is often held out as the first victim of globalization and the movement of capital and jobs from North to South. But Roxana Ng’s article “Garment Production in Canada: Social and Political Implications” reveals that, contrary to expectation, the Canadian garment industry may in fact be growing, and it is taking increasingly different forms within various Canadian cities. For Ng, the contradictory and unexpected developments within the garment industry raise questions about the forms of capital accumulation and the effects of globalization. Mapping the complex links between the restructuring of the garment industry, and Canadian immigration policy and the North American Free Trade Agreement, Ng considers how the experiences of this industry may provide a grounding for researchers, educators, and policy analysts to engage in more forward-looking and proactive response to capital accumulation. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Rockefeller, Carnegie and Canada: American Philanthropy and the Arts and Letters in Canada," by Jeffrey D. Brison.

Dans cet article, nous présentons une partie des résultats d’une recherche qualitative dont l’un des objectifs était de mettre en évidence le rôle joué par certaines pratiques de gestion mobilisatrices, comme la communication, la participation, la formation, le soutien et la reconnaissance des efforts, dans l’adhésion des employés à l’implantation d’un système d’information (SI). Cependant, ces pratiques peuvent être perçues différemment par chaque employé selon leur crédibilité, adéquation, pertinence ou opportunité et prises en compte dans le processus d’évaluation qui conduit à la formation de son attitude à l’égard du SI. Pour explorer ce phénomène, nous avons réalisé deux études de cas dans deux organismes publics au Québec au cours desquelles nous avons effectué des entrevues semi-structurées en profondeur auprès de vingt employés. Ce texte présente les résultats de l’analyse du contenu de ces entrevues.

L’objet de cet article est d’analyser l’influence des normes socialement responsables édictées par les firmes-pivots dans des accords-cadres internationaux et des codes de conduite sur les modes de gestion de l’emploi de leurs entreprises partenaires. En présentant une critique du concept de responsabilité sociale de l’entreprise, nous verrons que ces dispositifs remettent en cause la pertinence des catégories d’employeurs et de salariés en questionnant les frontières des entreprises. Soulignant l’importance structurante des pressions institutionnelles sur les comportements organisationnels, nous montrerons dans quelle mesure l’instrumentation socialement responsable est susceptible d’enrichir la compréhension des modalités de coordination interfirme où l’analyse comparative institutionnelle inspirée par l’économie des coûts de transaction reste dominante.

The article reviews the book, "The Other Quiet Revolution: National Identities in English Canada, 1945-1971," by José E. Igartua.

The article reviews the book, "Vers une transformation des relations industrielles en Amérique du Nord," by Jean-Claude Bernatchez.

The article reviews the book, "From the Net to the Net: Atlantic Canada in the Global Economy," edited by James Sacouman and Henry Veltmeyer.

The article reviews the book, "Revolution: The 1913 Great Strike in New Zealand," edited by Melanie Nolan.

[This] study shows that the crisis of war reinforced pre-existing social and economic inequality based on racist views and practices. War-induced anxieties intensified suspicion of "foreigners" -- a term which encompassed large numbers of Canadian-born and naturalized people of Japanese, central, eastern, and southern European descent and Jews -- as unpatriotic, disloyal, radical, and incapable of becoming truly Canadian. The war also brought sharply into focus and even intensified racist assumptions that African Canadians, eastern and southern Europeans, and Native people were suitable only for menial jobs; that Jewish, Chinese, and Japanese Canadians were economically aggressive; and that Jews in particular were given to shady practices. Such racist stereotypes in turn legitimized the ongoing marginalization of these minorities in the workforce. The state colluded in racist practices. To be sure not all state officials or all Canadians were racist, but the pragmatism that informed official complicity with employment discrimination underscores the pervasiveness of racism in wartime Canada. State officials -- some of whom held racist ideas -- were willing to accept employers' and workers" racist preferences because they believed that to do otherwise would create social unrest and disrupt war industries. Moreover, officials found that the relegation of minority groups such as Chinese Canadians, Japanese Canadians, and Native people to menial work offered the important benefit of filling jobs that Canadians with wider options avoided.

Confrontation, Struggle and Transformation is the story of working women and men in the St. Catharines area from the mid-1800s to the present. The study explores the labour movement's fight to survive and thrive in the Niagara region. Thanks to extensive quotations from interviews, archival sources and local newspapers, the story unfolds, in part, through the voices of the people themselves: workers who fought for unions, community members who supported them and employers who opposed them. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade," by Carolyn Podruchny.

The article reviews the book, "Beyond Mothering Earth: Ecological Citizenship and the Politics of Care," by Sherilyn MacGregor.

Labour Arbitration in Canada, by Morton Mitchnick and Brian Etherington, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "Household Politics: Montreal Families and Postwar Reconstruction," by Magda Fahrni.