Search

The article reviews the book, "The Politics of the Past in an Argentine Working-Class Neighborhood," by Lindsay DuBois.

In different ways, Marxist autonomist, regulation school, and neoliberal theories all claim that work in the new economy is increasingly characterised by high levels of creativity, cooperation, and innovation, albeit accompanied by uncertainty and a relentless pace of work, introducing a new form of labour that differs fundamentally from past forms. This paper does not disagree with the proposition that capital is currently in the process of intensifying its search for more efficient value extraction. However, through a case study of lawsuits launched against the video game company Electronic Arts regarding its labour practices, it argues that the change in the nature of knowledge work and immaterial labour has been overstated by the adherents of these three schools and that what we are witnessing is not so much a replacement of traditional Fordist practices by post-Fordist ones as a new fusion of the two forms.

This progressive new reader examines work in a global era. It is an ideal text for sociology of work and labour courses across Canada. This book will also be relevant to a wide range of courses in labour studies and industrial relations programs in Canada." "Divided into eight key parts with a total of 16 essential readings, this volume covers a great deal of ground: Fordist and post-Fordist methods of work organization; labour markets in transition; working in the free-trade zones; migration, transnationalism, and domestic work; neo-liberalism and the dismantling of the welfare state; education, training, and skills in a knowledge-based economy; and the labour movement in transition. All major issues surrounding work in Canada are covered. Book jacket. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Labour After Communism," by David Mandel.

The article reviews the book, "The Spirit of Labor," by Hutchins Hapgood, with introduction and notes by James R. Barrett.

The article reviews the book, "Sex After Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany," by Dogmar Herzog.

The article reviews the book, "The Porto Alegre Experiment: Learning Lessons for Better Democracy," by Marion Gret and Yves Sintomer.

The article reviews the book, "The Empire Reloaded," edited by Leo Panitch and Colin Leys.

La dynamique de transformation de l’organisation du travail dans un contexte de changements technologiques et organisationnels dans une organisation industrielle de haute technologie a conduit à la fragmentation de la communauté technicienne et à la refonte de son identité professionnelle historique. Cette dynamique n’apparaît pas comme le résultat d’un quelconque déterminisme technologique. Les changements technologiques ont été, en dernière instance, un enjeu stratégique autour duquel se sont cristallisés les rapports de force dans l’organisation. Ils ont fait l’objet d’une instrumentalisation sur laquelle se sont appuyées les instances de l’entreprise pour légitimer leurs choix stratégiques en matière d’organisation du travail.

The article reviews the book, "¡Cochabamba! Water War in Bolivia," by Oscar Olivera and Tom Lewis.

[E]valuates the experience of the Winnipeg-based Workers' Organizing And Resource Centre, an initiative of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) and community activists drawn from several communities. --Editors' introduction

Case study of the British Columbia Government and Service Employees Union's strategy for renewal as an ongoing process. A more formal exercise was begun in 1998 to improve union servicing that resulted in the adoption of five objectives as pilot projects; recommendations were adopted in 2000 to improve them. The devastating impact of the provincial government's cutbacks of 2001 is described, as well as subsequent renewal efforts.

The article focuses on the life and works of A.E. Johann, a Winnipeg Communist and a labourer on farms in northern British Columbia. He wrote a total of 18 volumes of both fiction and nonfiction along with numerous articles for newspapers and magazines in Germany. His nonfictional books were commonly anecdotal in form and one volume can plausibly claim to be at least a semi-scholarly study of its subject. It notes that the success of his initial volume in Canada prompted his publisher to finance his travels generously, which he therefore undertook driving an almost new Ford purchased when he arrived in Montreal. Moreover, Johann appears to have been a generally trustworthy chronicler of the Canadian situation.

"[P]rovides a historical analysis of worker participation and occupational health and safety regulation in Ontario from 1970 to 2000 in light of the rise of neoliberal policies. [The authors] describe a shift from systems of mandated partial self-regulation in which workers had to participate, supported by external enforcement of regulations, to more ambiguous models that included the downsizing of government and voluntary compliance by employers." --Editors' introduction. Contents: Acts of God, acts of man: the invisibility of workplace death / Jordan Barab -- Criminal neglect: how dangerous employers stay safe from prosecution / Rory O'Neill -- Regulating risk at work: is expert paternalism the answer to workers irrationality? / Peter Dorman -- Silicosis and the on-going struggle to protect workers's health / Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner -- How safe are U.S. workplaces for Spanish-speaking workers? / Laura H. Rhodes -- Got air? The campaign to improve indoor air quality at the City University of New York / Joan Greenbaum and David Kotelchuck -- State or society? The rise and repeal of OSHA's ergonomics standard / Vernon Mogensen -- The ten-percenters: gender, nationality, and occupational health in Canada / Penney Kome -- All that is solid melts into air: worker participation in Ontario, 1970-2000 / Robert Storey and Eric Tucker -- The sinking of the neoliberal P-36 platform in Brazil / Carlos Eduardo Siqueira and Nadia Haiama-Neurohr -- Health and safety at work in Russia and Hungary: illusion and reality in the transition crisis / Michael Haynes and Rumy Husan.

The article reviews the book, "Civic Capitalism: The State of Childhood," by John O'Neill.

The article reviews the book, "Almost Home: Reforming Home and Community Care in Ontario," by Patricia M. Baranek, Raisa B. Deber and A. Paul Williams.

The diverse conceptual perspectives and practical experiences with non-union employee representation (NER) in the USA and Canada are reviewed. We first propose a six-dimensional descriptive schema to categorise observed NER practices. Dimensions of diversity include (i) form; (ii) function; (iii) subjects; (iv) representational modes; (v) extent of power; (vi) degree of permanence. We then turn to the NER controversy, which is a tangled skein consisting of many different threads of values and prescriptions. To unbundle the controversy, we develop four ‘faces’ of NER—(i) evolutionary voice; (ii) unity of interest; (iii) union avoidance; and (iv) complementary voice—so that future research can more consciously test the validity of competing perspectives with hard data. Generalising about NER is problematic because of these many dimensions of diversity, and because NER is viewed through different ideological and conceptual lenses. We conclude that NER’s future trajectory is uncertain due to conflicting trends but in the short run is most likely to remain a modest-sized phenomenon.