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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

The article reviews the book, "Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses: Debt, Prison, Workfare," by Vijay Prashad.

While there is a strong logic favouring co-operation, it faces a central problem: the "free rider" or "cheat." Collectives find ways of promoting norms of solidarity and seek regulation to prevent free riding. Around two-fifths of Australian employees covered by collective agreements are free-riding non-members. Evidence suggests that the recent growth of free riding reflects institutional changes and not the decline of co-operative values and the ascendancy of individualism. The Canadian solution to the cheating problem, which is the Rand formula, inspired Australian unions to introduce (excessive) "agency fees" into collective agreements. These were eventually stopped by the state. Alternative models include "social obligation fees" - provisions for employees covered by the agreement to make a contribution to a voluntary organization of their choice.

This paper examines the implementation of a model of systematic individualisation of the employment relationship by a large multinational corporation in Australia, operating with the support of a pro-corporate state, and the nature and effects of resistance. Principally through interviews with affected workers, we show how the symbolic and the real effects of employment practices, relational practices and informational practices were all aimed at removing freedom of association and replacing it with uncontested, union-free managerial control. We consider how workers and their families were affected by these strategies and how they and their union responded. // Cet article examine la mise en place d'un modèle systématique d'individualisation de la relation d'emploi par une grande multinationale australienne, cela avec le support d'un gouvernement partialement favorable au patronat. La nature et l'impact de la résistance des travailleurs syndiqués sont également mis à jour. Nous montrons, principalement à l'appui des témoignages des travailleurs en cause, comment les effets réels ou symboliques des pratiques d'emploi, ceux des pratiques relationnelles et informationnelles ont été utilisés de concert pour dénier la liberté d'association et la remplacer par un contrôle gestionnaire incontestable et exempt de présence syndicale. Nous relatons comment les travailleurs et leurs familles ont souffert de ces stratégies patronales et comment leur syndicat a rétorqué.

The article reviews the book, "La face cachée de l’organisation : groupes, cliques et clans," by Luc Brunet and André Savoie.

This thesis traces the transformations in state, class, and politics in British North America from 1760-1860, and how these facilitated the emergence of wider economic change. Building on recent studies in political economy, Marxist and economic history, as well as historical sociology, it employs a class power model of historical change to explain how and why colonial Canada's political economy developed. The argument also draws upon comparative political economy to highlight how different class structures and different forms of political institutionalization shaped political economic regimes and long-run forms of economic growth. The case study analysis of British North America within a wider comparative context demonstrates that class interests, institutions, and policy making were critical to state building and changes in state-society relations, above all to state 'autonomy' and class 'embeddedness'. Agrarians and commercial classes struggled over economic benefits and the reins of political power. But how these classes forged coalitions and how their conflicts were institutionalized within the state determined whether or not new productive dynamics emerged. By the mid-19th century, with greater autonomy, colonial governments across the North American colonies designed institutions, laws, and policies to improve taxation, build infrastructures, enhance the rule of law, and extend the contractual equalities necessary to commercialize the economy. With greater class embeddedness, broader class coalitions of agrarians and merchants actively reshaped agrarian property and agricultural labour to conform to the structures of a market economy, and enacted new market law to allow for the expansion of free labour markets, trade, commerce, and small manufacturing. Looked at comparatively, the thesis claims, 19th century colonial British North America emerged as a 'Liberal Settler' society, led by a diverse coalition of agrarians and merchants. Despite its many state and class particularities, this crystallization of settlers, merchants, and Imperial market-directed politics made colonial Canada a variant of Britain's own liberal political economy, and very similar to other growing settler countries such as the United States. Exploring the connections between state, class, and politics, the thesis concludes, can tell us much about why and how these distinct historical patterns emerged, and why 19th century political economies changed in ways that fostered the development of capitalism.

When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, symbolically ending the Cold War, few imagined that the resulting shockwaves that toppled the Soviet Union would also reach a perpetually dark and quiet microfilm reading room on the third floor of Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. But this is what occurred. The disintegration of the Communist order in Russia loosened rigid Soviet control of state archives and made available to Western researchers material which had been inaccessible for the length of the Cold War. This included tens of thousands of documents pertaining to the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War—foreign volunteers, including roughly 1,600 Canadians, who had been recruited and sent to Spain by the Communist International to fight a fascist rebellion lead by General Francisco Franco. ...In 1993 and 1994, George Bolotenko, an archivist at Library and Archives Canada, visited the Centre for the Preservation and Study of Records of Contemporary History in Moscow, also known as the Comintern Archives, to purchase microfilmed copies of some 10,000 pages of documents on Canadians in the International Brigades. Although the impact of this material on historical scholarship has thus far been light, it has the potential to irrevocably change scholarship on Canadians in the Spanish Civil War. --Author's introduction

Walking the Union Walk: Stories from CEP’s First Ten Years, by Jamie Swift, is reviewed.

While the relationships between intellectual research and political commitment, and indeed political engagement, have been identified amongst social, labour, and Marxist historians, such as the Communist Party of Great Britain’s Historians’ Group, there are few, if any, examinations of the rhetorical and communications process by which such public intellectual activity is made: i.e., the “how” of political interventions. This paper addresses this important area in examining the means by which [Eric] Hobsbawm was able to intervene effectively in public debates, having a direct impact on the Labour Party’s future trajectory. Hobsbawm exercised considerable influence in the highly public political infighting within the Labour Party [i.e., Old Left and New Labour], even though he was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and he was able to effect changes through his contributions to debates which affected both political parties simultaneously. --From author's introduction

The article reviews the book, "The Red Man's on the Warpath: The Image of the "Indian" and the Second World War," by R. Scott Sheffield.

The article reviews the book, "Money in Their Own Name: The Feminist Voice in Poverty Debate in Canada, 1970-1995," by Wendy McKeen.

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

The article reviews the book, "Weapons of Mass Persuasion: Marketing the War against Iraq," by Paul Rutherford.

The article reviews the book, "Culture and Resistance: Conversations with Edward W. Said," by David Barsamian and Edward W. Said.

A Troublemaker's Handbook 2: How To Fight Back Where You Work - And WIN!, by Jane Slaughter, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "Jewish Radicalism in Winnipeg, 1905-1960," edited by Daniel Stone.

The article reviews the book, "From the Lower East Side to Hollywood: Jews in American Popular Culture," by Paul Buhle.

Using union, government, and company records, as well as interviews, this article explores the origins of one of the most notorious industrial disasters in Canadian history - the deaths from industrial disease of some two hundred fluorspar miners on the south coast of Newfoundland. It explores the social, economic, and political forces that shaped the hazards they believed were destroying their health and the response of industry and the state to those efforts. Central to the account is a series of strikes that took place during 1941 and the actions of a government tribunal appointed to settle the dispute. Setting events at St. Lawrence in the context of some of the theoretical and methodological considerations intrinsic to the study of occupational health as a labor relations issue, this article not only adds to the knowledge of the forces that shaped this particular disaster but also represents a contribution to a neglected area of Canadian labor and working-class history.