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Isolation is part of the psyche of this sparsely populated prairie province, and this abundance of great open space has uniquely shaped the people, their politics, their economy and their relationship with the rest of North America. Using the broad, interdisciplinary social science approach of political economy analysis, Warnock traces Saskatchewan's past in an attempt to understand the present and glimpse some of its future. Along the way, he tells the story of Saskatchewan, from inception to centennial. --Publisher's description

Changing Canada examines political transformations, welfare state restructuring, international boundaries and contexts, the new urban experience, and creative resistance. The authors question dominant ways of thinking and promote alternative ways of understanding and explaining Canadian society and politics that encourage progressive social change. They examine how the evolution of capitalism is producing new types of transformations and new forms of resistance, and show that aspects of the state and the wider society are being contested. They also discuss the often paradoxical or contradictory effects of various social forces, such as the liberating but also constraining features of new communications technologies, new employment norms, and new household forms. --Publisher's description

In February, 1948, a group of fish and blueberry processors formed the exclusively female, Ladies' Cold Storage Workers Union at Job Brothers fish plant in St. John's, Newfoundland. Unusual for the time, this organization was founded in the context of structural and social change in the Newfoundland fishery that altered the social relations of paid and unpaid work for women fish plant labourers. Cullum carefully explores this specific labour process and provides an open reading of the workers' narratives; a study of how the women of Job Brothers recounted stories of their work and domestic lives, and thus fashioned shifting identities as gendered, classed, and racialized subjects. --Publisher's description

This comprehensive survey of continuity and change in trade unions looks at five primarily English-speaking countries: the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. The authors consider the recent re-examination by trade union movements of the basis of union organization and activity in the face of a harsher economic and political climate. One of the impetuses for this re-examination has been the recent history of unions in the USA. American models of renewal have inspired Australia, New Zealand and the UK, while Canada has undergone a cautious examination of the US model with an attempt to develop a distinctive approach. This book aims to provide a thorough grounding for informed discussion and debate about the position and place of trade unions in modern economies. --Publisher's description. Contents: Unions in crisis, unions in renewal / Peter Fairbrother, Charlotte A.B. Yates -- The American labour movement and the resurgence in union organizing / Kate Bronfenbrenner -- You just can't do it automatically: the transition to social movement unionism in the United States / Kim Voss, Rachel Sherman -- Trade union innovation, adaptation and renewal in Australia: still searching for the holy membership grail / Gerard Griffin, Rai Small, Stuart Svensen -- A near death experience: one union fights for life / Belinda Probert, Peter Ewer -- From organizational breadth to depth: New Zealand's trade unions under the Employment Contracts Act / Pat Walsh, Aaron Crawford -- A story of crisis and change: the service and food workers union of Aotearoa / Sarah Oxenbridge -- The dilemmas of social partnership and union organization: questions for British trade unions / Peter Fairbrother, Paul Stewart -- Rhetoric and reality: the adoption of the organizing model in manufacturing, science and finance / Bob Carter -- Strategic dilemma: the state of union renewal in Canada / Pradeep Kumar, Gregor Murray -- The revival of industrial unions in Canada: the extension and adaptation of industrial union practices to the new economy / Charlotte A.B. Yates -- Social movement unionism: beyond the organizing model / Christopher Schenk -- Globalization, trade union organization and workers' rights / Huw Beynon.

This classic, first-of-its-kind study of merchant shipping illuminates the manner in which the rapid development of shipbuilding in Prince Edward Island played a significant role in Canada's early history. James Yeo, Sr., once a village labourer in his native Cornwall, came to the colony and quickly amassed a fortune from both shipbuilding and trade. His rough-and-ready business deals spawned his mercurial rise to prominence in the colony. First published in 1967, this book originated from an idea by Ann Giffard and was jointly executed with her husband, Basil Greenhill. It connects the burgeoning expansion of shipbuilding in the colonies with the settlers' hometown in Devon, and explains why, when Britain was cut off from supplies of wood in Europe, shipbuilding suddenly took hold in Canada. It is an unique study that shows that local history is an important window into the interconnected world of economic development. --Publisher's description

Plant shutdowns in Canada and the United States from 1969 to 1984 led to an ongoing and ravaging industrial decline of the Great Lakes Region. This book offers a comparative regional analysis of the economic and cultural devastation caused by the shutdowns, and provides an insightful examination of how mill and factory workers on both sides of the border made sense of their own displacement. The history of deindustrialization rendered in cultural terms reveals the importance of community and national identifications in how North Americans responded to the problem. Based on the plant shutdown stories told by over 130 industrial workers, and drawing on extensive archival and published sources, and songs and poetry from the time period covered, Steve High explores the central issues in the history and contemporary politics of plant closings. In so doing, this study poses new questions about group identification and solidarity in the face of often dramatic industrial transformation. --Publisher's description

The town of Ladysmith was one of the most important coal-mining communities on Vancouver Island during the early twentieth century. The Ladysmith miners had a reputation for radicalism and militancy and engaged in bitter struggles for union recognition and economic justice, most notably the Great Strike of 1912-14. This strike, one of the longest and most violent labour disputes in Canadian history, marked a watershed in the history of the town and the coal industry. --Publisher's description

Examines the "coercive assault" (i.e., legislative overrides) on trade union rights in Canada by both federal and provincial governments from the 1970s to the early 2000s. Also discusses labour-related decisions of the Supreme Court, and strategies for union renewal. Includes tables of union membership, strikes and lockouts, back-to-work measures, use of designations, and complaints of violations of union rights filed with the International Labor Organization.

In the period since the Second World War there has been both a massive influx of women into the Canadian job market and substantive changes to the welfare state as early expansion gave way, by the 1970s, to a prolonged period of retrenchment and restructuring. Through a detailed historical account of the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program from 1945 to 1997, Ann Porter demonstrates how gender was central both to the construction of the post-war welfare state, as well as to its subsequent crisis and restructuring. Drawing on a wide range of sources (including archival material, UI administrative tribunal decisions, and documents from the government, labour and women's groups) she examines the implications of restructuring for women's equality, as well as how women's groups, labour and the state interacted in efforts to shape the policy agenda. Porter argues that, while the post-war welfare state model was based on a family with a single male breadwinner, the new model is one that assumes multiple family earners and encourages employability for both men and women. The result has been greater formal equality for women, but at the same time the restructuring and reduction of benefits have undermined these gains and made women's lives increasingly difficult. Using concepts from political economy, feminism, and public policy, this study will be of interest across a range of disciplines. --Publisher's description

Rabagliati's strip "Paul: Apprentice Typographer" was one of the highlights of 1999's Drawn & Quarterly anthology, and his first comic book Paul in the Country won the 2000 Harvey award for Best New Talent. This, his first graphic novel, is eagerly anticipated by comix connoisseurs who enjoy a sweet, unsentimental story about being a teenager and Rabagliati's crisp retro-modern 1950s drawing style. This book continues the story of Paul, a Quebecois teenager in the 1970s, as he experiences the first conflicts of responsibility with his desire to be free. Paul is outraged that he is forced to stop his high school art training. But he's been asked to put art aside because his other grades are so terribly low. Defiant, he quits school and anticipates a summer of leisure. But instead Paul follows the path of so many Quebecois teenagers: he lands a job as a counselor at one of the many summer camps in the mountains outside the city. There he finds himself guiding a motley band of kids, misfits and troublemakers, much like himself. After quitting school and trying his luck in the "real world," average teenager Paul gets a job as a counselor at a summer camp run for underprivileged children in 1970s Quebec. --Publisher's description

The election of neo-conservative governments in Alberta and Ontario in the early 1990s brought dramatic changes to provincial public policy; both the Ralph Klein Revolution and Mike Harris' Common Sense Revolution emphasized fundamental changes in the role of government, balanced budgets, and the elimination of provincial debts. While public sector unions were forced to react, the response of the Alberta and Ontario unions differed significantly. The reasons, outcome, and long-term impact of the difference is the focus of Yonatan Reshef and Sandra Rastin's careful and revealing analysis. The authors' argument concentrates on union responses to the neo-conservative transformation in the two affected provinces, but the scope of the discussion expands to cover such issues as the differences between the two regimes, the damage to the Ontario labour movement dealt by the labour-oriented NDP government, the limits of inter-union cooperation, and the role of modern unions in politics. Lively and timely, Unions in the Time of Revolution places Canada's unions in the full context of the neo-conservative trend in provincial politics, and demonstrates the importance of individual union responses in times of such significant change. --Publisher's description. Contents: Alberta and Ontario: Industrial relations and their contexts -- Revolutions, Canada style -- Collective action conceptual framework -- Revolutionizing the Civil Service: OPSEU and AUPE -- Teachers: Protecting the profession, defending the union organization -- Sins of commission and sins of omissions: The Ontario days of action and missed opportunities in Alberta -- Sleeping with the devil: Strategic voting in the 1999 Ontario Election -- Revisiting the collective action model -- Additional thoughts on collective action.

[The author] continues her study into why British Columbians – and many Canadians from outside the province – were historically so opposed to Asian immigration. Drawing on contemporary press and government reports and individual correspondence and memoirs, Roy shows how British Columbians consolidated a “white man’s province” from 1914 to 1941 by securing a virtual end to Asian immigration and placing stringent legal restrictions on Asian competition in the major industries of lumber and fishing. While its emphasis is on political action and politicians, the book also examines the popular pressure for such practices and gives some attention to the reactions of those most affected: the province’s Chinese and Japanese residents. --Publisher's description

Alan Sears examines education reform in relation to a broad process of cultural and economic change. His book makes the case that education reform is one aspect of a broad-ranging neo-liberal agenda that aims to push the market deeper into every aspect of our lives by eliminating or shrinking non-market alternatives. The author begins by showing that advocates of education reform have had to make the case that the current system is not working. This sets the ground for an examination of the so-called 'Common Sense Revolution,' a claim that drastic change was required to redesign government policies to fit a changing world. Lean production methods are a crucial component of this changing world, and broader social and cultural change is now required to consolidate the emerging order built on the spread of these methods. Education reform is designed to recast the relations of citizenship, contributing to the cultural and social change promoted through the social policy of the lean state. --Publisher's description

Recasting labor studies in a long-term and global framework, the book draws on a major new database on world labor unrest to show how local labor movements have been related to world-scale political, economic, and social processes since the late nineteenth century. Through an in-depth empirical analysis of select global industries, the book demonstrates how the main locations of labor unrest have shifted from country to country together with shifts in the geographical location of production. It shows how the main sites of labor unrest have shifted over time together with the rise or decline of new leading sectors of capitalist development and demonstrates that labor movements have been deeply embedded (as both cause and effect) in world political dynamics. Over the history of the modern labor movement, the book isolates what is truly novel about the contemporary global crisis of labor movements. Arguing against the view that this is a terminal crisis, the book concludes by exploring the likely forms that emergent labor movements will take in the twenty-first century. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction -- Labor movements and capital mobility -- Labor movements and product cycles -- Labor movements and world politics -- Contemporary dynamics in world-historical perspective -- Appendix A: The World Labor Group Database: conceptualization, measurement, and data collection procedures -- Appendix B: Instructions for recording data from indexes -- Appendix C: Country classifications.

Hi-tech tactics during a strike at a dockside factory in Montreal. A workplace cancer tragedy in Sarnia, Ontario. Immigrant workers sticking with their union at the chocolate factory. A struggle for pay equity in the courts and on the streets. A campaign to create jobs by cutting hours of work in B.C. An organizing drive 350 kilometres out into the frigid Atlantic. These are some of the fascinating stories told by Jamie Swift in his chronicle of the first ten eventful years of one of the most dynamic labour unions in North America. --Publisher's description

In early June 1935, one thousand relief-camp strikers clambered aboard freight trains to take their grievances to Ottawa. Their trek would end in bloodshed on the streets of Regina on 1 July 1935, later known as "The bloodiest day of the Depression." In All Hell Can't Stop Us, noted historian Bill Waiser examines the social and political background of the On-to-Ottawa Trek and Regina Riot, and provides an in-depth account of the strikers, their supporters, and their powerful adversaries. This gripping history includes many unpublished sketches and photographs. --Publisher's description

The economic boom of the 1990s created huge wealth for the bosses, but benefited workers hardly at all. At the same time, the bosses were able to take the political initiative and even the moral high ground, while workers were often divided against each other. This new book by leading labor analyst Michael D. Yates seeks to explain how this happened, and what can be done about it. Essential to both tasks is "naming the system"-the system that ensures that those who do the work do not benefit from the wealth they produce. Yates draws on recent data to show that the growing inequality-globally, and within the United States-is a necessary consequence of capitalism, and not an unfortunate side-effect that can be remedied by technical measures. To defend working people against ongoing attacks-on their working conditions, their living standards, and their future and that of their children-and to challenge inequality, it is necessary to understand capitalism as a system and for labor to challenge the political dominance of capitalist interests. Naming the System examines contemporary trends in employment and unemployment, in hours of work, and in the nature of jobs. It shows how working life is being reconfigured today, and how the effects of this are masked by mainstream economic theories. It uses numerous concrete examples to relate larger theoretical issues to everyday experience of the present-day economy. And it sets out the strategic options for organized labor in the current political context, in which the U.S.-led war on terrorism threatens to eclipse the anti-globalization movement. --Publisher's description.

An exploration of the vital role played by Mexican seasonal workers in Canadian agriculture and how they have become a structural necessity in some sectors. Based on interviews with Leamington greenhouse growers and migrant Mexican workers, Tanya Basok offers a timely analysis of why the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program is needed. She argues that while Mexican workers do not necessarily constitute cheap labour for Canadian growers, they are vital for the survival of some agricultural sectors because they are always available for work, even on holidays and weekends, or when exhausted, sick, or injured. Basok exposes the mechanisms that make Mexican seasonal workers unfree and shows that the workers' virtual inability to refuse the employer's demand for their labour is related not only to economic need but to the rigid control exercised by the Mexican Ministry of Labour and Social Planning and Canadian growers over workers' participation in the Canadian guest worker program, as well as the paternalistic relationship between the Mexican harvesters and their Canadian employers. --Publisher's description

An examination of the social, political, and demographic history of British miners and their households on Vancouver Island in the nineteenth century. In the nineteenth century coal-miners imported from Europe, Asia, and eastern North America burrowed beneath the Vancouver Island towns of Nanaimo, Wellington, and Cumberland. No group was as numerous and influential in this enterprise as the hundreds of British immigrants who traveled half-way around the world to take up back-breaking work in the most remote colony in the Empire. What drew the British miners and their families to the north Pacific? Why did they set aside six months to journey to a colony about which they knew little? Once they reached Vancouver Island, what did they make of it and what did they make it into? And how did they re-make themselves in the process? In Colonization and Community John Belshaw takes a new look at British Columbia's first working class, the men, women, and children beneath and beyond the pit-head. Beginning with an exploration of emigrant expectations and ambitions, he investigates working conditions, household wages, racism, industrial organization, gender, schooling, leisure, community building, and the fluid identity of the British mining colony, the archetypal west coast proletariat. By connecting the story of Vancouver Island to the larger story of Victorian industrialization, he delineates what was distinctive and what was common about the lot of the settler society. Belshaw breaks new ground, challenging the easy assumptions of transferred British political traditions, analyzing the colonial at the household level, and revealing the emergent communities of Vancouver Island as the cradle of British Columbian working-class culture. --Publisher's description

For a clear understanding of the legal protections and remedies available to employers and workers in Canada, this convenient survey and analysis is ideal. Although it may be said that there are eleven distinct systems of labour law in Canada - encompassing ten provinces and the Federal government - the authors ensure depth of treatment by focusing on common policy themes and typical legal solutions, with significant departures noted in whatever province or area of law they may arise. However, the relevant law of the three most populous and influential provinces - Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia - is covered in particular detail, as is Federal labour legislation and case law. Among the important areas of Canadian law and practice emphasised are the following: the tension between trade union power and business flexibility; collective "labour law" and individual "employment law"; the effect of the North American Free Trade Agreement; the central place of the legal concept of the employment contract; labour standards legislation; the influence of the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms; court intervention in labour law, both under common law principles and Quebec's civil code; the role of labour relations boards; and judicial review of administrative decisions and arbitration awards. As an accurate and usable guide for lawyers not expert in Canadian law, Labour Law in Canada is without peer. --Publisher's description