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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.

Among the recent measures undertaken in Canada to adapt the public sector to the 'new economy' in order to maintain or enhance economic competitiveness on an international level has been the adoption of new technologies and e-government, affecting both labour processes and service delivery. All three levels of government – municipal, provincial, and federal – have adopted 'virtual service techniques'. This paper examines telemediated processes and new work arrangements in the public sector and raises questions regarding the impact on workers and their trade unions, working conditions, service delivery, and social citizenship.

The article reviews the book, "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," by Robert A. Pape.

The Canadian labour movement has undergone several fundamental changes in response to demands for greater inclusion and representation by women, visible and sexual minorities, and people with disabilities. Equity, Diversity, and Canadian Labour explores the specific challenges put to outmoded conceptions of labour, charting the effort made towards establishing a more inclusive vision of labour in Canada. The study concludes that the Canadian labour movement has seen a fair amount of progress in this regard, though it still faces persistent impediments to equity and suffers from an uneven responsiveness within and across diversity issues. This collection of original essays brings together contributors from a variety of backgrounds womens studies, political science, sociology, industrial relations, and the labour movement itself. They provide detailed analyses of significant changes in union policies, practices, and cultures as viewed through different disciplinary lenses. With reference to gender, race, disability, and sexuality, the volume assesses the status of labour diversity in Canada and suggests what still needs to be done to advance the equity project. --Publisher's description. --Publisher's description. Contents: Looking back: A brief history of everything / Julie White -- Bargaining against the past: Fair pay, union practice, and the gender pay gap / Anne Forrest -- Union response to pay equity: A cautionary tale / Judy Haiven -- Labour's collective bargaining records on women's and family issues / Karen Bentham -- We are family: Labour responds to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender workers / Gerald Hunt and Jonathan Eaton -- Broadening the labour movement's disability agenda / David Rayside and Fraser Valentine -- Racism and the labour movement / Tania Das Gupta -- Equity, diversity, and Canadian labour: A comparative perspective / David Rayside. Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-282).

The article reviews the book, "Development NGOs and Labor Unions: Terms of Engagement," edited by Deborah Eade and Alan Leather.

The article reviews the book, "Partisanship, Globalization, and Canadian Labour Market Policy: Four Provinces in Comparative Perspective," by Rodney Haddow and Thomas Klassen.

The article reviews and comments on the book "Labor, Free and Slave: Workingmen and the Anti-Slavery Movement in the United States," by Bernard Mandel, with introduction by Brian Kelly.

The article reviews and comments on several books including "Violent London: 200 Years of Riots, Rebels an Revolts," by Clive Bloom, "Down and Out in 18th-Century London," by Tim Hitchcock, and "The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in 18th-Century England," by Robert Shoemaker.

[D]escribes the labour and employment law governing employees of Parliament, employees of government agencies, members of the RCMP, and most direct employees of the government (excluding members of the Canadian armed forces, judges, and employees of Crown corporations). Specifically, the book deals with the Public Service Labour Relations Act and the Public Service Employment Act. It also provides the leading cases and, where appropriate, a representative sample of decisions to explain or provide examples of particular points. The legal regime of the federal public service has undergone significant change in the past three years, and no other book addresses these significant changes. Part I of this book provides an overview of federal public service labour and employment law. Part II considers the normal labour law topics as they apply to direct employees of the government and employees of government agencies. Essentially, Part II of this book is about Part I of the Public Service Labour Relations Act. Part III concerns the terms and conditions of employment for both unionized and non-unionized employees — essentially, Part II of the Public Service Labour Relations Act. Part IV involves the legal regulation of the employment relationship in the federal public service — namely, the process for appointment to and within the federal public service. Part V of considers Crown servants — specifically RCMP members and parliamentary employees — who are not considered federal public servants for the purposes of the Public Service Labour Relations Act. Part VI considers the legal regulation of superannuation (pensions) for Crown servants and the role that courts play in the regulation of federal public service labour and employment law. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Differences that Matter, Social Policy and the Working Poor in the United States and Canada," by Dan Zuberi.

In academic and activist debates about union renewal, the replacement of business unionism with social unionism is seen as central to the labour movement's short- and long-term survival. Social unionism, generally understood to involve both engagement with social justice struggles beyond the workplace and methods of union activity beyond the collective bargaining process, is claimed to increase the labour movement's organizing capacity, bargaining power, and social and political weight. However, despite its increased importance, social unionism's various meanings, strategies, and implications remain relatively unexamined, and very different approaches are often lumped together. Using concepts from social movement theory, this paper proposes an analytical framework for systematically comparing different concrete manifestations of social unionism. In particular, social unionist initiatives vary according to 1) the ethos or collective action frame used to rationalize union activity; 2) the repertoire or strategic means used to act on that ethos; and 3) the internal organizational practices and power relations which shape who is involved in defining and carrying out union goals and initiatives. I argue that whether social unionist projects are able to reach immediate instrumental goals as well as generate renewed working class / movement capacity is shaped by both the mix of frame, repertoire and organizational practice as well as the relationship between these three. The paper therefore asserts that the category "social unionism" must be more nuanced, and calls for a more explicitly comparative and multi-methodological approach to reveal such complexity.

Addresses the growing trend towards income inequality by focusing on wages and salaries. The authors find that the benefits of economic growth are not reflected in Canadian wages over the past generation.

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

Policing in Vancouver was transformed by the labour unrest of the interwar period, culminating in a campaign carried out by a new civic regime that assumed power in response to a general strike threat. Complicating the process was that police workers were considered unreliable for policing labour disputes, especially since they unionized under the threat of a general strike in 1918. The challenge of “constituting authority” was therefore to render the police a reliable instrument against working class unrest. This study traces the development of policing through the postwar spate of waterfront strikes to the 1930s anticommunist campaign that carried the struggle into the political arena. Even as police power was being consolidated in the municipal police institution, rank and file police were undermined by tactics long used against other workers, namely labour spies and police specials. Like other workers, police resisted, modifying the process of change as a result.