Search

The article reviews the book, "Forces of Labor: Workers' Movements and Globalization since 1870," by Beverly J. Silver.

In order to conduct better class analysis, we need class theory that rises to the challenge of understanding class as a structured social process and relationship taking place in historical time and specific cultural contexts. The study of working classes as historical formations requires the replacement of underdeveloped concepts with theory adequate to the task. This theory should incorporate the knowledge that class never exists outside of other social relations such as gender and race, but is always mediated by those relations, and vice versa. Marx, Gramsci, Thompson and autonomist Marxism, enriched with the appreciation of the multidimensional nature of social being produced by feminism and other perspectives arising from struggles against oppression, provide important resources for the development of such a theory.

The book, " Unions in the Time of Revolution: Government Restructuring in Alberta and Ontario," by Yonatan Reshef and Sandra Rastin, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "The Small Details of Life: 20 Diaries by Women in Canada, 1830-1996," edited by Kathryn Carter.

The article reviews the book, "Booze: A Distilled History," by Craig Heron.

Produced by the Canadian Periodical Index.

The article reviews the book, "Organizing Rural Women: The Federated Women's Institutes of Ontario, 1897-1910," by Margaret C. Kechnie.

The article reviews the book, "Sociologie de la négociation," by Reynald Bourque and Christian Thuderoz.

The article reviews the book, "People and Place: Historical Influences on Legal Culture," edited by Jonathan Swainger and Constance Backhouse.

The article reviews the book, "Le travail en chantier," by Marcelle Duc.

Reviewed: Minding the Public Purse: The Fiscal Crisis, Political Trade-Offs, and Canada's Future. MacKinnon, Janice.

Pension fund capitalism is a new, albeit evolving, stage of Anglo-American capital market development. It is marked by the ability of pension funds to aggregate the widely disbursed ownership of beneficiaries and therefore act as single entities with a unified voice. Pension funds within their investment portfolios are increasingly using this voice to engage companies. Such corporate engagement in its broadest definition is the use of one's ownership position to influence company management decision making. Corporate engagement brings together four distinct underlying currents: first, the increased use of passive index funds; second, the corporate governance movement; third, the growing impact of socially responsible investing; and, finally, the impact of new global standards. At its best corporate engagement offers a long-term view of value that both promotes higher corporate, social and environmental standards and adds share value, thus providing long-term benefits to future pension beneficiaries.

The article reviews the book, "Toward the Charter: Canadians and the Demand for a National Bill of Rights, 1929-1960," by Christopher MacLennan.

Comparative studies of welfare states are in the process of changing how they examine the relationships between class, gender and generations. Earlier accounts have focused on ideal types of regimes connecting social policy and labour markets. More recent accounts invoke families as key sites of investigation. The argument introduced here advocates for the combined connection between the intersections triad of social policy, labour markets and households as they reveal the relations embodied in class, gender and generation. Most of the illustrations locate households within the triad since they have received the least attention.

Privatization has eliminated 30 years of pay equity gains and has put BC at the bottom of the barrel nationally when it comes to wages and benefits for women working in health support occupations. This is the central finding of a study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. It documents the dramatic reversal of pay equity resulting from the provincial government's push to contract out hospital support services (cleaners, care aids and laundry, food service and clerical workers). "Bill 29 has turned the clock back thirty years on fair wages for women in health support occupations," says co-author Marjorie Griffin Cohen, a CCPA research associate and Chair of SFU's Women's Studies Department. -- CCPA news release, 21 April 2014

This paper examines the relationship between employee involvement programs and workplace dispute resolution using data from the Workplace and Employee Survey (WES) conducted by Statistics Canada. The results provide support for a link between employee involvement and lower grievance rates in unionized workplaces. This link existed for establishments in both the goods and service sectors, but the practices involved differed between industrial sectors. By contrast, in nonunion workplaces, results of the analysis provided support for a link between the adoption of employee involvement programs and formal grievance procedures, but not between employee involvement and lower grievance rates.

Master and servant has a paradoxical history in Canada. There was a great deal of penal legislation. ...Indeed, new legislation to punish workers for disobedience and desertion was enacted after 1875, the year of final repeal in Britain, and even after the Canadian Parliament's own Breaches of Contract Act two years later. But compared with Britain and the other white dominions, let alone other parts of the empire, enforcement was sporadic, convictions relatively few, and punishments rarely harsh. It is easy enough to construct an explanation for inconsiderable enforcement out of the structure of the economy and the characteristics of the labour force, but these at the same time cannot account for the variety and persistence of penal legislation. The answer seems to lie as much in the symbolic as the instrumental uses of employment law in this part of the empire. --Introduction

The article reviews the book, "Globalisation and Labour: the new 'Great Transformation'," by Ronaldo Munck.

The article reviews the book, "It's about Time: Couples and Careers," edited by Phyllis Moen, Phyllis.

Le présent article vise à décrire et à expliquer la diversité des situations couvertes par la catégorie juridique de travailleur indépendant (travailleur autonome sans employé). Utilisant les méthodologies de l’analyse factorielle de correspondances multiples et de la classification ascendante hiérarchique, il analyse l’hétérogénéité au sein d’un échantillon de 293 travailleurs indépendants, autour de cinq dimensions : les caractéristiques du producteur, la nature de sa clientèle, le type de produit, l’organisation du travail (incluant la rémunération) et la protection contre les risques sociaux et professionnels. Ce faisant, il contribue à dégager six profils de travailleurs indépendants : les non-professionnels indépendants, les petits producteurs dépendants, les professionnels libéraux, les conseillers et consultants, les autres indépendants et ceux cumulant travail indépendant et salariat atypique et, finalement, les professionnels bénéficiant d’ententes collectives de travail. Il illustre par ailleurs qu’une partie de cette hétérogénéité est attribuable au brouillage des frontières entre les modèles « purs » de salariat et d’indépendance.