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Minimum labor standards are legally established standards that apply to most employers and employees and include minimum wages, maximum hours of work, overtime, and paid time off. The regulation of minimum standards in Ontario was consolidated within the Ontario Employment Standards Act in 1968. While the provincial minimum standards of the late 19th and early 20th century have been well documented, the regulation of minimum standards during the postwar period has received little scholarly attention. This article explores the development of minimum standards legislation in Ontario from the immediate postwar years to the enactment of the Employment Standards Act. Social forces both internal and external to the state pressured for the enactment of comprehensive legislation to provide some statutory protection for the most vulnerable workers in the province. However, the ways in which the state negotiated the tensions associated with providing social protection for nonunionized workers, while at the same time minimizing interference in the market, severely compromised the capacity for the legislation to provide protection for the "pockets of exploitation" they were intended for. Further, this approach to minimum standards supported and reproduced patterns of gendered and racialized segmentation within a labor market that was built around the norm of the standard employment relationship and thereby ensured standards of a secondary status for workers with the least bargaining power.

The book, "Waterfront Blues: Labour Strife at the Port of Montreal, 1960-1978," by Alexander C. Pathy, is reviewed.

Toronto’s quest to host the Summer Olympic Games has dominated both contemporary planning discourse and practice. For some, the pursuit of the games embodies Toronto’s transformation into a ‘competitive’ global city. Relatively unexplored in this discourse are the contradictory roles that labour plays in contemporary urban development. I argue that the new labour geography can provide some interesting insights into such processes. Specifically, labour geographers have given workers with divergent interests greater agency in shaping economic landscapes and have noted the multi-scalar organisation of labour. The paper looks at the contradictory and conflicting positions held by different labour unions in Toronto toward the city’s bid to host the 2008 Olympics. The case study suggests that labour is an active agent in processes shaping contemporary Toronto and support the bid for complex reasons ranging from the promise of jobs to potential future organising opportunities.

The article reviews the book, "G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire," by Katherine Frank.

The study examines the incidence of abusive events at work and compares the self-rated health (SRH) assessments of young workers according to whether they have been victims or not. Subjects and materials were extracted from a data set covering the environmental and health conditions of the population of the Ostergotland region in Sweden. The focus was unpeople in paid employment aged 20-34 years. It appears that threats or acts of violence are more common than are bullying or sexual harassment among young working people, in particular among women. Further, when working conditions are relatively precarious, both men and women are comparably exposed to threat and violence but when conditions are more stable, women are proportionally more exposed than men. Furthermore, the study shows that, although less common than threat and violence are, exposure to bullying is associated with several SRH disorders among both men and women in employment.

The article reviews the book, "Le droit de l’emploi au Québec," 2nd edition, by Fernand Morin and Jean-Yves Brière.

The book, "Labour Market and Social Protection Reforms in International Perspective: Parallel or Converging Tracks?," edited by Hedva Sarfati and Giuliano Bonoli, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "Le travail dans l’histoire de la pensée occidentale," edited by Daniel Mercure and Jan Spurk.

The article reviews the book, "The Co-Workplace: Teleworking in the Neighbourhood," by Laura C. Johnson.

The article reviews "James Connolly and the Reconquest of Ireland," published as a Special Issue, Nature, Society and Thought: A Journal of Dialectical and Historical Materialism, by Priscilla Metscher.

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

The article reviews the book, "A Very Dangerous Citizen: Abraham Lincoln Polonsky and the Hollywood Left," by Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner.

The article reviews the book, "Narratives at Work: Women, Men, Unionization, and the Fashioning of Identities, by Linda K. Cullum.

The article reviews the book, "Changing Child Care: Five Decades of Child Care Advocacy and Policy in Canada, edited by Susan Prentice.

Selon les perspectives théoriques de la mobilisation et du choc des cultures, un style de gestion trop directif ne répond pas aux attentes d’autonomie des professionnels, ce qui risque de se traduire par une démobilisation. Pourtant les conclusions d’une étude empirique (échantillon de plus de 2 000 professionnels du secteur public) remettent en cause ces perspectives théoriques en affirmant que les professionnels préfèrent davantage être enrégimentés par leur supérieur que d’être indépendants (ne pas être contrôlés par leur supérieur). Une réanalyse des données conduit à des conclusions plus nuancées. La satisfaction des professionnels envers le style de gestion de leur supérieur augmente au fur et à mesure que les styles de gestion sont plus ouverts. De plus, un modèle d’équations structurelles indique que la dimension humaine du style de gestion (participation) et la satisfaction des professionnels envers cette dimension jouent un rôle important dans la mobilisation des professionnels. Il est donc important de se soucier de son personnel pour le mobiliser.

The article reviews the book, "For Patients of Moderate Means: A Social History of the Voluntary Public General Hospital in Canada, 1890-1950," by David Gagan and Rosemary R. Gagan.

The article reviews the book, "State of the Union: A Century of American Labor," by Nelson Lichtenstein.

The book, "Industrial Relations: Critical Perspectives on Business and Management," edited by John Kelly, is reviewed.

The purpose of this article is to examine the effects of working conditions in part-time and casual work on worker stress and the consequences for their workplaces. Data were collected through interviews with occupational health and safety representatives, and focus groups and interviews with workers in retail trade. Results show that job insecurity, short- and split-shifts, unpredictability of hours, low wages and benefits in part-time and casual jobs in retail sector, and the need to juggle multiple jobs to earn a living wage contribute to stress and workplace problems of absenteeism, high turnover and workplace conflicts. Gendered work environments and work-personal life conflicts also contribute to stress affecting the workplace. Equitable treatment of part-time and casual workers, treating workers with respect and dignity, and creating a gender-neutral, safe and healthy work environment can help decrease stress, and in turn, can lead to positive workplace outcomes for retail workers.

Professor Jill Rubery was commissioned by the ILO to write this Working Paper, as an input for the preparation of the 2003 Global Report on the elimination of discrimination in the world of work. The establishment of a floor to the wage structure is of paramount importance to groups of workers discriminated on grounds such as sex, ethnicity, national origin, age and disability, as these groups are disproportionately represented at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy. By identifying the role that minimum wages can play in reducing gender discrimination in pay, Jill Rubery’s paper contributes to our understanding of the forms of labour market processes compatible with the promotion of non-discrimination, equality and decent work.