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This dissertation examines Canada's constitutional question through the lens of the labour movements in both English Canada and Quebec. The existence of two distinct labour movements in Canada has meant that political struggles that have typified national politics are also in evidence in labour politics. The sovereignty-association partnership agreement between the Canadian Labour Congress and the Quebec Federation of Labour provides a good example of the pervasiveness of this dynamic and discourse. The dissertation examines this relationship specifically, and the constitutional politics of labour organizations in English Canada and Quebec, more generally, with a view to explaining how Canada's constitutional questions have been reflected in the politics of organized labour.

Case study of workers in a large Toronto-based hotel and their campaign first to attain just working conditions, and then to retain them in the face of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) crisis of 2003 that disrupted the Toronto hospitality industry.

An extensive review of recent academic and union literature, highlighting the varying experience and approaches to union renewal in differing institutional and environmental context and its general lessons for Canada. [The authors] discuss the meaning and concepts of union renewal, its rational and major thesis, key renewal strategies, comparative experience, obstacles to change and facilitating factors and the challenges of union renewal in the Canadian setting. --Editors' introduction

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

Home Economics is an urgent and much-needed reminder that society must pay careful attention to how nationalist ideologies construct ‘homelands’ that essentially leave the vast majority of the world's migrant peoples homeless. A massive shift has taken place in Canadian immigration policy since the 1970s: the majority of migrants no longer enter as permanent residents but as temporary migrant workers. In Home Economics, Nandita Sharma shows how Canadian policies on citizenship and immigration contribute to the entrenchment of a system of apartheid where those categorized as migrant workers live, work, pay taxes and sometimes die in Canada but are subordinated to a legal regime that renders them as perennial outsiders to nationalized Canadian society. In calling for a no borders policy in Canada, Sharma argues that it is the acceptance of nationalist formulations of home informed by racialized and gendered relations that contribute to the neo-liberal restructuring of the labour market in Canada. She exposes the ideological character of Canadian border control policies which, rather than preventing people from getting in, actually work to restrict their rights once within Canada. Home Economics is an urgent and much-needed reminder that in today's world of growing displacement and unprecedented levels of international migration, society must pay careful attention to how nationalist ideologies construct homelands that essentially leave the vast majority of the world's migrant peoples homeless. --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.

During its long first century (1670-1782), the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) developed personnel practices not on the basis of abstract policy but by patching together experiments and expedients. Its initial vulnerability increased the value of loyal and experienced servants, and frequent shortfalls in wartime recruitment allowed old hands to demand and receive higher wages and gratuities. Peace after the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 allowed the Company to prune its payroll and to resume the carefully optimistic expansion that French attacks had interrupted in 1686. This required a larger labour force, but recruitment processes remained relatively unchanged from previous years (although Orkneymen became increasingly prominent). Expanding operations in the mid-eighteenth century imposed greater regularity on existing ad hoc methods of recruiting and retaining personnel, but labour needs did not expand rapidly enough to unduly strain those methods. Increasing inland travel and trade after 1743 placed new demands on servants by requiring that ‘extraordinary’ labour become ‘ordinary’. The Committee discovered that this could only be done with ‘encouragement’, the slow pace of which hampered inland ventures into the 1780s. Inland operations changed the nature of HBC service and influenced the way master, factor, and servant interacted; they also illuminated the practices and assumptions which had been prevalent since Utrecht and probably before. The HBC drew its labour force from the competitive labour ‘market’ of early modern Britain: the movement of men to and from the Bay was an aspect of domestic labour mobility. The relationship between the Committee and their employees was that of master and servants, heavily influenced by the circumstances of trading in Hudson Bay. Labour relations within HBC posts were framed by the dominant social construct of early modern Britain, the patriarchal household-family, made up of a master (the patriarch) and a family of kin, apprentices, and servants. Men at all levels of the Company hierarchy could try to shape the reality of their HBC experiences, but did so in terms of commonly accepted ideals. Deferential behaviours and strong vertical ties existed alongside tension and negotiation: the Committee and their servants all understood the nature of ideal master-servant relationships, but they also had experience of the realities of life in various kinds of households. The Company’s servants internalized and practised the expected values of deference and submission, but did so without abandoning or deferring their own self-interest; indeed, they could use their mastery of the language to advance their own interests. The household-factory was the fundamental social unit of HBC establishments. Although membership changed, the institution maintained continuity over time. Furthermore, each household-factory was internally held together, and bound to other household-factories and to the London Committee by ties of patronage, brokerage, and friendship, that mediated the network of horizontal and vertical relationships.