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For most Canadians today, Labour Day is the last gasp of summer fun: the final long weekend before returning to the everyday routine of work or school. But over its century-long history, there was much more to the September holiday than just having a day off. In The Workers' Festival, Craig Heron and Steve Penfold examine the complicated history of Labour Day from its origins as a spectacle of skilled workers in the 1880s through its declaration as a national statutory holiday in 1894 to its reinvention through the twentieth century. The holiday's inventors hoped to blend labour solidarity, community celebration, and increased leisure time by organizing parades, picnics, speeches, and other forms of respectable leisure. As the holiday has evolved, so too have the rituals, with trade unionists embracing new forms of parading, negotiating, and bargaining, and other social groups re-shaping it and making it their own. Heron and Penfold also examine how Labour Day's monopoly as the workers' holiday has been challenged since its founding, with alternative festivals arising such as May Day and International Women's Day. The Workers' Festival ranges widely into many key themes of labour history - union politics and rivalries, radical movements, religion (Catholic and Protestant), race and gender, and consumerism/leisure - as well as cultural history - public celebration/urban procession, urban space and communication, and popular culture. From St. John's to Victoria, the authors follow the century-long development of the holiday in all its varied forms. --Publisher's description

"[B]rings together some of the papers presented at the conference, "Madeleine Parent, ses lutes et ses engagements /Madeleine Parent and her struggles," held in March 2001 at McGill University under the auspices of the Quebec Studies Programme and the McGill Centre for Research and Teaching on Women." -- Editor. Translation of: Madeleine Parent, militante (2003). Contents: Portfolio of photographs -- Introduction: setting the stage; Student life at McGill, 1936-1940 / Andrée Lévesque -- Textile strikes in Quebec: 1946, 1947, 1952 / Denyse Baillargeon -- Carrying on the struggle in Ontario, 1952-1973 / John Lang -- The Atlantic connection / John St-Amand -- The women's movement in Canada: setting the agenda / Lynn Kaye & Lynn Mcdonald  -- The importance of being Madeline: how an inactivist won the heart of Quebec's immigrant and minority women -- A tribute to a valiant lady / Françoise David -- Madeleine Parent: an unfailing ally of native women / Michèle Rouleau -- An iron will and a string of pearls / Rick Salutin -- A friend, a role model / Monique Simard.

In Global Game, Local Arena, geographer Glen Norcliffe explores how powerful forces of global economic integration have played out in Corner Brook and interprets the town's creation as a company town in the colonial era, its slow transformation into a public municipality, and the phase of vigorous restructuring launched in 1984 to raise the paper mill's performance in response to increased global competition. Restructuring introduced lean production, and in turn this impacted on workers' families, and on the larger community. Through extensive interviews with former and present mill workers and their families, and by examining written records — newspaper accounts, legislative acts, earlier published sources — the author sheds valuable light on how the process of globalization has played out in one small but typical local arena. Since 1984 Corner Brook has experienced large-scale out-migration of younger adults, and a rapid aging of the population. Community resistance to this process has been mostly subtle, taking the form of a reconnection to the population's local roots in outports and the woods. --Publisher's description

Pendant quinze ans, Jean-Claude Parrot a occupé le poste de président du Syndicat des travailleurs et travailleuses des postes, et pendant plus de dix-huit ans, il en a été le négociateur en chef. Au cours de toutes ces années, le leadership de Jean-Claude Parrot a fait de ce syndicat un des plus militants et des plus démocratiques au Canada. Quand Pierre Elliott Trudeau a décidé de transformer le service postal en société de la Couronne, c’est Parrot qui était à la barre. C’est lui également qui a supervisé la fusion des divers syndicats des postiers en un seul grand syndicat. Jean-Claude Parrot raconte ici son histoire, mais en même temps celle de la formation d’une grande union syndicale. Il raconte également comment la démocratie syndicale s’est construite – comment les membres de la base ont pu s’imposer dans tout le mécanisme de prise de décisions. Ce livre nous permet de suivre la carrière de l’un des plus grands dirigeants syndicaux du Canada, de le voir engagé dans son combat pour donner une voix aux travailleurs. Dans ce combat, Parrot a souvent placé son engagement syndical avant sa vie privée, et il a préféré faire de la prison plutôt que de sacrifier ses principes. À travers le récit de Jean-Claude Parrot, nous voyons la démocratie en marche, nous voyons le combat d’un homme pour défendre la cause des travailleurs et des syndicats. Traduit de l'anglais (Canada) par Claire Laberge --Description de l'éditeur

Jean-Claude Parrot was National President of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers for fifteen years and its chief negotiator for eighteen. During that time he provided the leadership which built what became Canada’s most militant and democratic union. When Pierre Trudeau decided to make the post office a crown corporation Parrot was there to guide the transition. He was also there to oversee the merger of the various postal unions into “one union for all.” As well as Jean-Claude Parrot’s story, this is also the story of the formation of a union. It is a story of how union democracy was built–of how the grassroots union membership became an integral part of decision making in the union. In the pages of this book you will follow the life of one of Canada’s greatest union leaders as he fought to give the workers a voice. In the course of the struggle Parrot often put his union work and commitments before his own personal life and spent time in prison rather than sacrifice his principles and the cause of the workers in the union. Through Parrot’s recounting of these years we learn about how the struggle was waged, how democracy was built and how a union leadership worked tirelessly in the service of the union membership. --Publisher's description

Newfoundland fisheries have been transformed from an industry once dominated by petty commodity production and merchant-fisher relations to one dominated by private enterprise and corporate capitalism. State efforts to enclose the fisheries through boat quotas and to limit participation through a core classification system demonstrate a shift in values. Science-based regulation, in which the estimates of fisheries scientists were overly optimistic, led to the collapse of the cod fishery. The recent turn to a fishery based on classical economics, emphasizing professionalization, has left inshore fishers caught between two value systems. The traditional view valorizes hard work and local knowledge about the fishing environment; the modern view embraces technology, rationalization and professionalization. In [this book] Nicole Power examines, through a feminist lens, how this tension between two views — between a way of life and a way to make a living — and how these changes have affected men (and women) in the Bonavista and Trinity Bays inshore fishery. Has a "crisis of fish" and the loss or diminution of livelihood led to a "crisis of masculinity"? Through extensive interviews with fishers and fish-plant workers, the author discovers that men have responded to restructuring in complex ways that are mediated, enabled and constrained by their class and gender positions, and by maritime cultural values and practices. --Publisher's description

[E]xamines the institution of work from the perspective of alienated labour, a perspective that many conventional approaches to the subject have ignored or misrepresented. Completely updated to reflect current trends in the labour force and research in the field of labour studies, The Tyranny of Work begins with a thorough discussion of work as a social problem and the sources of alienation. The book then examines the development of industrial capitalism in Canada, the white-collar and blue-collar worlds, and, finally, solutions to the problem of alienated labour. All statistics and data have been updated to reflect the most current research. Information from the 2001 Census has been integrated throughout the text. The Tyranny of Work examines the institution of work from the perspective of alienated labour, a perspective that many conventional approaches to the subject have ignored or misrepresented. --Publisher's description

Medical laboratory technology is currently the third largest health profession in Canada but those who work in it remain largely invisible, both to the public and in the literature. In Labour in the Laboratory Peter Twohig examines the origins of the laboratory workforce in the Maritime provinces and rethinks the broader history of the twentieth-century Canadian hospital. --Publisher's description.

A comprehensive history of working people in Saskatchewan, from the mid-1800s to the present, in a handsome coffee-table format, including numerous historical photos of the personalities and events that bring it to life. This book is created for the working people that it celebrates. In a plain-spoken and engaging narrative style, it captures the events and the personalities that shaped the working people of Saskatchewan, and the life of the province that those workers built. Jim Warren tells the fascinating tale of jobs, working conditions, and the attempts to effect meaningful changes in the condition of workers' lives. Starting with the Fur Trade period, and moving through the arrival of the railroad brotherhoods, the emergence of the craft unions, two world wars, modernization, and into the present age, Working in Saskatchewan shows the evolution of the work force, and the relationship between that work force and both private and public sector employers. The book wraps up with a short chapter on the imagined future of labour in the province, in the voices of a series of speakers ranging from former Premier Allan Blakeney to ordinary workers on the floor of a recent SFL convention. Working in Saskatchewan also includes a number of features that will make it even more useful for private study or school work. Two comprehensive indexes detail the chief characters who played a role in the development of the labour movement, and a list of events and important topics. A series of informational appendices present statistical information relating to the Saskatchewan labour force - size of the organized and unorganized labour force, number of women in the work force, etc. There will also be a helpful glossary of the acronyms and abbreviations that characterize written or oral discussions about labour, and a "genealogy of labour" which charts the rise and growth of certain unions and their transformation into, or absorption by, others. --Publisher's description

Canadian communism did not spring out of the ground suddenly at the end of World War I, and it was not smuggled into the country by Russian agents. The men and women who built the new movement were long-time socialist and labour militants in Canada. Inspired by the Russian Revolution and by their own experiences as leaders of the post-war labour revolt in Canada, they set about to create a new kind of party, one that could lead the fight for workers' power. The new Communist Party, formed between 1919 and 1921, quickly became the largest party on the left, with strong roots and influence in the unions and basic industry. Its members led heroic strikes. They fought for labor unity, and engaged in united electoral activity with other currents in the workers movement. They were in the forefront of the struggle for democratic rights. Ten years later, the party was destroyed. Most of its founding leaders were expelled, and three quarters of its membership dropped out. The Communist Party abandoned the program it had adopted in its early years, and turned its back on its principles. The organization still called itself Communist, but it was now "Tim Buck's Party." It had been transformed from a revolutionary party into an agent of the new ruling caste in Moscow. In Canadian Bolsheviks, Ian Angus describes and explains the first attempt to build a Leninist party on Canadian soil, showing why it succeeded so well at first, and why it ultimately failed. The second edition of a book that has been widely hailed as a pathbreaking work, "the best yet to appear" on the origins of Canadian communism. --Publisher's description

When first published in 1972, Survival was considered the most startling book ever written about Canadian literature. Since then, it has continued to be read and taught, and it continues to shape the way Canadians look at themselves. Distinguished, provocative, and written in effervescent, compulsively readable prose, Survival is simultaneously a book of criticism, a manifesto, and a collection of personal and subversive remarks. Margaret Atwood begins by asking: "What have been the central preoccupations of our poetry and fiction?" Her answer is "survival and victims." Atwood applies this thesis in twelve brilliant, witty, and impassioned chapters; from Moodie to MacLennan to Blais, from Pratt to Purdy to Gibson, she lights up familiar books in wholly new perspectives. This new edition features a foreword by the author. --Publisher's description.

In Common and Contested Ground, Theodore Binnema provides a sweeping and innovative interpretation of the history of the northwestern plains and its peoples from prehistoric times to the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The real history of the northwestern plains between a.d. 200 and 1806 was far more complex, nuanced, and paradoxical than often imagined. Drawn by vast herds of buffalo and abundant resources, bands of Indians, fur traders, and settlers moved across the northwestern plains establishing intricate patterns of trade, diplomacy, and warfare. In the process, the northwestern plains became a common and contested ground. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Binnema examines the impact of technology on the peoples of the northern plains, beginning with the bow-and-arrow and continuing through the arrival of the horse, European weapons, Old World diseases, and Euroamerican traders. --Publisher's description

This innovative book is concerned with the power relations, complexities, and contradictions in the paid workplace. Workplace learning is not value-free or politically neutral, and cannot be studied independently of the political economy of work. [This book] is part of a growing body of work that offers an alternative to mainstream approaches to workplace learning, recognizing that power relations, politics and conflicts of interest all shape learning. The authors emphasize the lived experiences of working people, avoiding prescriptive accounts and uncritical Human Resource Development views. --Publisher's description. Contents: 1. Introduction -- 2. Management strategies and workplace learning -- 3. Groups, teams and workplace learning -- 4. Organizational learning and learning organizations -- 5. Unions and workplace learning -- 6. Adult education, learning and work -- 7. Toward the future of workplace learning. Includes bibliographical references (p. [181]-194) and index.

Why have Americans, who by a clear majority approve of unions, been joining them in smaller numbers than ever before? This book answers that question by comparing the American experience with that of Canada, where approval for unions is significantly lower than in the United States, but where since the mid-1960s workers have joined organized labor to a much greater extent. Given that the two countries are outwardly so similar, what explains this paradox? This book provides a detailed comparative analysis of both countries using, among other things, a detailed survey conducted in the United States and Canada by the Ipsos-Reid polling group. The authors explain that the relative reluctance of employees in the United States to join unions, compared with those in Canada, is rooted less in their attitudes toward unions than in the former country's deep-seated tradition of individualism and laissez-faire economic values. Canada has a more statist, social democratic tradition, which is in turn attributable to its Tory and European conservative lineage. Canadian values are therefore more supportive of unionism, making unions more powerful and thus, paradoxically, lowering public approval of unions. Public approval is higher in the United States, where unions exert less of an influence over politics and the economy. --Publisher's description

This book offers an original contribution to understanding an often-ignored aspect of our knowledge society and the much-heralded ‘knowledge-based economy.’ It decisively explodes the dual myths that working-class adults have inferior learning capacities and that talented youths naturally leave blue-collar careers. Livingstone and Sawchuk document the genuine learning practices of working-class people in unprecedented detail, using richly textured accounts of prior school experiences; current adult education course participation; and a wide array of learning resources in paid workplaces, households, and community settings. The authors criticize dominant theories of learning and work and develop an alternative explanation of working-class adult learning. Their analysis, grounded in the specific practices of everyday life, pays careful attention to the ways in which differential economic power, labor processes, sectoral contexts, union cultures, and access to organized educational resources shape individual and collective learning activities. The book also provides a reflective discussion of research processes suitable for democratic knowledge production in partnership with workers and their organizations, as well as workers' own practical recommendations for changes in learning and work relations. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction: Dimensions of learning and work in the knowledge society -- Pt. 1. Researching learning and work. Starting with Workers and Researching the "Hard Way" / with D'Arcy Martin -- Beyond cultural capital theories: Hidden dimensions of working-class learning. Pt. 2. Case studies.  Auto workers: Lean manufacturing and rich learning / with Reuben Roth -- Building a workers' learning Culture in the Chemical Industry -- Learning, Restructuring and job segregation at a community college -- Divisions of labour / Divisions of learning in a small parts manufacturer -- Garment workers: learning under disruption / with Clara Morgan. Pt. 3. Comparative perspectives across case studies. Household and community-based learning: Learning cultures and class differences beyond paid work -- Surfacing the hidden dimension of the knowledge society: the struggle for knowledge across differences. Includes bibliographical references (p. [299]-309) and index.

"Racism, Eh?" is the first publication that examines racism within the broad Canadian context. This anthology brings together some of the visionaries who are seeking to illuminate the topics of race and racism in Canada through the analysis of historical and contemporary issues, which address race and racism as both material and psychic phenomena. Fundamentally interdisciplinary in nature, this text will be an invaluable resource for undergraduate and graduate students, academics studying or practicing within the Humanities and the Social Sciences, and anyone seeking information on what has been a little explored and poorly understood Canadian issue."--Publisher's description. Contents: Part 1 Institutional Racism -- 1 Penn and Teller Magic -- 2 Lance Belanger's Tango Lessons -- 3 The Black Occupational Structure in Late-Nineteenth-Century Ontario -- Part 2 Crime and Justice -- 4 Raising Raced and Erased Executions in African-Canadian Literature -- 5 Examining Racism and Criminal Justice -- 6 Criminological Research on "Race" in Canada -- Part 3 First Nations -- Of Land, Law and Power -- 7 Across a Boundary of Lava -- 8 Treaty Federalism -- 9 Navigating Discrimination -- Part 4 Race, Place and Nation -- 10 Adrift in the Diaspora -- 11 Racism Between Jews -- 12 Local Colour -- Part 5 Complexity of Intersectionallity and Performance of Racial Identity -- 13 Speak White! -- 14 Jack Canuck Meets John Chinaman -- 15 Performing Desire -- Part 6 Popular Culture -- 16 Race In-Out of the Classroom -- 17 Other Canadian Voices -- 18 (Re)Visioning Histories -- Part 7 Production and Representation -- 19 Each Sentence Realized or Dreamed Jumps Like a Pulse with History and Takes a Side -- 20 Articulating Spaces of Representation -- 21 The "Hottentot Venus" in Canada -- 22 Racial Recognition Underpinning Critical Art -- Part 8 Multiculturalism -- 23 But Where Are You REALLY From? -- 24 Social Cohesion and the Limits of Multiculturalism in Canada -- 25 Racialising Culture-Culturalising Race -- 26 Re-articulating Multiculturalism.

Saskatchewan's Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) the forerunner of the NDP, is often remembered for its humanitarian platform and its pioneering social programs. But during the twenty years it governed, it wrought a much less scrutinized legacy in the northern regions of the province." "Until the 1940s, churches, fur traders, and other influential newcomers held firm control over Saskatchewan's northern region. Following its rise to power in 1944 the CCF made aggressive efforts to unseat these traditional powers and install a new socialist economy and society in largely Aboriginal communities. The next two decades brought major changes to the region as well-meaning government planners grossly misjudged the challenges that confronted the north and failed to implement programs that would meet its needs. Northerners lacked the voice and political clout to determine policies for their half of the province and the CCF effectively created a colonial apparatus, imposing its own ideas and plans in those communities without consulting residents. While it did ensure that parish priests, bootleggers, and fur sharks no longer dominated the north, it failed to establish a workable alternative." "In written history that documents the colonial relationship between the CCT and northern Saskatchewan, David Quiring draws on extensive archival research and oral history to offer a fresh look at the CCF era. This examination will find an audience among historians of the north. Aboriginal scholars and general readers interested in Canadian history."--Publisher's description. Contents: Pt. 1. At the crossroads -- 1. Another country altogether -- Pt. 2. Building the colonial structure -- 2. From the top -- 3. Ultimate solution -- 4. Deterrent to development -- Pt. 3. Segregated economy -- 5. Never before have we been so poor -- 6. At the point of a gun -- 7. Just one jump out of the stone age -- 8. Pre-industrial way of life -- Pt. 4. Poverty-stricken and disease-ridden -- 9. Scarcely more than palliative -- 10. Dollars are worth more than lives -- Epilogue : we will measure our success -- A. Comments on collection of oral history -- B. Electoral record.

Contrairement à ce qu’on a cru pendant longtemps, l’histoire du syndicalisme au Québec remonte au début du XIXe siècle et évolue sensiblement au même rythme que celle des autres mouvements syndicaux en Amérique du Nord. À ce chapitre, les facteurs économiques et géographiques qui la rattachent au continent pèsent aussi lourd que le caractère distinct de la société québécoise. Voilà un des éléments clés qui ressortent du vaste pano-rama du syndicalisme au Québec que Jacques Rouillard trace ici. À chacune des périodes étudiées, qui renvoient aux grands moments de l’histoire occidentale, l’auteur montre comment les syndicats ont représenté une composante essentielle de la classe ouvrière et l’un des principaux lieux de contestation de l’ordre établi. Ce livre est une nouvelle édition de la première synthèse sur le syndicalisme québécois que Jacques Rouillard faisait paraître au Boréal en 1989. Ce nouveau texte, entièrement refondu, a été augmenté non seulement pour relater les événements qui se sont déroulés de 1985 à 2003, mais également pour tenir compte, aux diverses époques, des fruits de la négociation collective et de l’avancement de la recherche historique dans ce domaine. --Description de l'éditeur

Challenging the Market offers insights from eighteen scholars and activists from around the world. Calling on a tremendous range of experience in different countries, different industries, and with different groups of workers, contributors argue that labour market policy should shift to a more interventionist and compassionate footing. For two decades economic and social policy in most of the world has been guided by the notion that economies function best when they are fully exposed to competitive market forces. In labour market policy, this approach is reflected in the widespread emphasis on "flexibility" - a euphemism for the retrenchment of income support and social security, the relaxation of labour market regulations, and the enhanced power of private actors to determine the terms of the employment relationship. These strategies have had marked effects on labour market outcomes, leading to greater vulnerability and polarization - and not always in ways that enhance worker-centred flexibility. The authors offer a more balanced analysis of the functioning and effects of labour market regulation and deregulation. By questioning the underpinnings of the "flexibility" paradigm, and revealing its often damaging impacts (on different countries, sectors, and constituencies), they challenge the conclusion that unregulated market forces produce optimal labour market outcomes. The authors conclude with several suggestions for how labour policy could be reformulated to promote both efficiency and equity. --Publisher's description

Roger Stonebanks traces the life of charismatic labour leader Ginger Goodwin from his childhood in the Yorkshire Coalfields, through his mining career in Cape Breton and British Columbia, until his untimely and controversial death in the woods of Vancouver Island. Using archival research and contemporary accounts, Stonebanks explores the historical context that surrounded Goodwin's meteoric rise in BC's labour and socialist ranks. His life, from union hall to the soccer pitch, sheds light on working-class culture in resource communities in the early years of the 20th century. Ginger Goodwin was killed while trying to evade conscription during World War I. The Military police officer responsible claimed he shot only in self-defence, but rumors have since persisted that foul play was involved in the death of the prominent socialist and labour activist. Goodwin's own words explain his opposition to conscription and war, while Stonebanks examines the background and attitude of the police officers hunting down draft dodgers. Adrian Brooks provides a legal analysis and review of the case of His Majesty the King v. Daniel Campbell and how the trial might have unfolded — if there had been a trial of Constable Campbell. Written in engaging and accessible prose, the book features several never before published photographs. --Publisher's description