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[Excerpt] In this chapter we seek to answer the following questions: Why has it been so difficult for unions to turn the organizing efforts and initiatives of the last six years into any significant gains in union density? Why have a small number of unions been able to make major gains through organizing? And most importantly, which organizing strategies will be most effective in reversing the tide of the labor movement's organizing decline? What our findings will show is that while the political, legal, and economic climate for organizing continues to deteriorate, and private sector employers continue to mount aggressive opposition to organizing efforts, some unions are winning. Our findings also show that the unions that are most successful at organizing run fundamentally different campaigns, in both quality and intensity, than those that are less successful, and that those differences hold true across a wide range of organizing environments, company characteristics, bargaining unit demographics, and employer campaign variables.

This is a study of horizontal and vertical solidarity within a national labour movement, based on a nationwide survey of members of affiliated unions of the Congress of South African Trade Unions. On the one hand, the survey reveals relatively high levels of vertical and horizontal solidarity, despite the persistence of some cleavages on gender and racial lines. On the other hand, the maintenance and deepening of existing horizontal and vertical linkages in a rapidly changing socio-economic context, represents one of many challenges facing organized labour in an industrializing economy. COSATU's strength is contingent not only on an effective organizational capacity, and a supportive network linking key actors and interest groupings, but also on the ability to meet the concerns of existing constituencies and those assigned to highly marginalized categories of labour.

Canada experienced its worst economic crisis during the Great Depression of the 1930s with unprecedented numbers of Canadians suffering extreme economic and social hardship. Survival and struggle to change those conditions became as much a mark of the times as the economic circumstances themselves. The Communist Party of Canada (CPC) was one organization that played a significant role in this national upsurge of struggle. The Party believed that the worsening material conditions would engender class consciousness of Canadian workers, leading to the overthrow of the capitalist system to achieve a worker-farmer socialist state. The Party was instrumental in organizing workers, farmers, the unorganized and the unemployed, however, it was not successful in raising Canadian working class consciousness to a revolutionary level. The factors that will be analyzed as being the main contributing factors to the Party's limitations are the CPC1srelationship with the Comintern, repression by the Canadian state, and dominant ideology that prevailed in Canada during the Depression. From its inception in 1921 the CPC worked assiduously to meet the needs of Canadian workers in a rapidly changing economy in the 1920s and one that was also collapsing in the Depression. In many ways it recognized Canadian workers' needs in these times and was at the head of the labour movement fighting for workers' needs and defending them. However, the CPC was somewhat hamstrung by its very close relationship with the Comintern allowing this international communist body to dictate almost every move it made whether or not it was the best for Canadian workers. State repression of the CPC and labour movement, also had a curbing effect on the advancement of the CPC in its work with Canadian workers, forcing the Party underground, decimating its leadership and intimidating Party activists, unions and workers. Finally, dominant ideology during the Depression, in spite of serious threats by alternate sets of ideas, particularly those promulgated by the CPC, largely stood its ground as defender of the present capitalist system that relied on the exploitation of Canadian workers for its survival.

The article reviews the book, "At Odds: Gambling and Canadians, 1919-1969," by Suzanne Morton.

The article reviews the book, "Neither Lady nor Slave: Working Women of the Old South," edited by Susanna Delfino and Michele Gillespie.

Reviewed: Between History and Tomorrow: Making and Breaking Everyday Life in Rural Newfoundland. Sider, Gerald M.

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.