Your search

Montreal-born Moishe Wolofsky was a nineteen year-old unemployed university drop-out in 1930 when he and his friend Dick Steele took a job aboard an ocean vessel, beginning a journey that would change his life forever. Out of money, they stumbled into Russia and took jobs in a tractor factory. There, they became dedicated communists. Dragged back to Canada by his father, the well-known Jewish publisher, Herschel Wolofsky, he soon began a career as an organizer for the Communist Party of Canada. By then Moishe Wolofsky had become Bill Walsh. Still a very young man, he led the drive to organize the rubber workers in Kitchener and subsequently the auto workers in Windsor. Jailed and interned along with several hundred other Communists, upon his release Walsh fought overseas in Holland and Belgium. After the war he took a staff position with the United Electrical Workers in Hamilton, a job he retained for over two decades. After years of conflict with UE President C.S. Jackson, Walsh was forced to quit his job and subsequently the Communist Party. In the late 60s, he began a new career in labour arbitration. This is the story of how a young idealist became a Red and helped build industrial unionism in Canada. But it is also a story of romance and adventure. Walsh actively participated in many of the 20th century's historic events. Everything he did was touched with an intensity. He was a brilliant strategist and an extraordinary teacher. Because he never held high office either in politics, in uniform, or in any of the unions he was associated with, his contributions have gone unheralded. This book provides an inside, bottom-up look at some of the most important episodes in our trade union history as well as an insight into the functioning of a venerable communist-led union. --Publisher's description

[D]escribes the experiences of daily life for predominantly white, working class women and men during the period of "economic restructuring" begun in the 1980s. Luxton and Corman show how the shift from a pattern where women were full-time housewives and men were income earners, to one where women are increasingly income earners as well, is altering the experience of everyday life Based on a case study conducted from 1980 to 1996, of households where one person was employed at Stelco's manufacturing plant in Hamilton, Ontario, the book examines how working class families make a living by combining paid employment and unpaid domestic labour. During this period of government cutbacks the loss of secure employment for men (as the steel plant cut its labour force by about two-thirds), combined with women's increasing participation in the labour force, resulted in lower standards of living, reduced income, and the imposition of more unpaid work on family households. [The book] examines how growing insecurities undermined class politics while increasing gender, racial, and ethnic tensions. By focusing on the daily coping strategies of white working class women and men, the book shows the human face of changing gender, race, and class politics in Canada. --Publisher's description.

[This book] tells the story of one of the most important industrial disputes in Canadian labour history. This strike united the Canadian labour movement around the demand for collective bargaining legislation, which it won in 1944 and which remains central to our industrial relations system. The book provides a comprehensive analysis of all the factors in this dramatic dispute. At the community level, a social history approach examines the local living and working conditions of the miners and their families, the role of the women in the dispute, and the ethnic makeup of the workforce. -- Publisher's description

J.L. Cohen, one of the first specialists in labour law and an architect of the Canadian industrial relations system, was a formidable advocate in the 1930s and 1940s on behalf of working people. A 'radical lawyer' in the tradition of the great American counsel Clarence Darrow or contemporary advocate Thomas Berger who represent the less powerful and seek to reform society and to protect civil liberties, Cohen was also a 'labour intellectual' in Canada, similar to those supporting Roosevelt's New Deal in the United States. He wrote Collective Bargaining in Canada, served on the National War Labour Board, and advised the Ontario government about policy issues such as mothers' allowances, unemployment insurance legislation, and labour law..

This study concerns one department of Canadian government - Employment and Immigration Canada (EIC) - and one policy field - labour market policy - from 1976 to 1991. McElligott unearths resistance in workplaces where 'cutting edge' neoconservative managers have been trying to reshape government services, and inserts front-line workers into state theories, policy debates, and progressive political strategies. He argues that the neglect of these workers makes key state theories incomplete and separates policy-making theory - and practice - from actual state outputs. One consequence is that progressive thinkers and activists have forgone many promising strategic opportunities." "Beyond Service challenges current trends in administrative theory and policy-making, and will be of interest to academics, policy research bodies, union researchers, educators, and, most important, front-line government workers themselves. --Publisher's description

The Tyranny of Work examines the institution of work from the perspective of alienated labour, a perspective that many conventional approaches to the subject have ignored or misrepresented. Completely updated to reflect current trends in the labour force and research in the field of labour studies, The Tyranny of Work begins with a thorough discussion of work as a social problem and the sources of alienation. The book then examines the development of industrial capitalism in Canada, the white-collar and blue-collar worlds, and, finally, solutions to the problem of alienated labour. All statistics and data have been updated to reflect the most current research. Information from the 2001 Census has been integrated throughout the text. The Tyranny of Work examines the institution of work from the perspective of alienated labour, a perspective that many conventional approaches to the subject have ignored or misrepresented. --Publisher's description, 5th edition (2005).Contents: 1. Work as a social problem -- 2. Alienation and its sources -- 3. Alienation and the development of industrial capitalism in Canada -- 4. Post-industrial society and white-collar worlds -- 5. Blue-collar crime -- 6. Restructuring organizations and work -- 7. Solutions to alienated labour. Includes bibliographical references (pages 218-245) and index;

The 1990s in Canada will probably go down as the most stressful decade for public-sector industrial relations since the inception, 25 years earlier, of collective bargaining in the public service. Government debt and defecits became the rationale for downsizing, outsourcing, privatization, layoffs, buyouts, and early retirement packages at both the federal and provincial levels. When workers' bargaining units did not bend to government demands at the negotating table, and when leaders did not blink at the threat of restrictive legislation, then governments of both the right and the left at times found it convenient to legislate rule changes to suit their fiscal or ideological purposes. The contributors to Public-Sector Labour Relations examine in depth the events of recent years in the public service of six jurisdictions―Nova Scotia, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, British Columbia, and the federal government. Trends in the other five Canadian provinces are also considered. Only in BC has there been an essentially co-operative labour relations environment, although even in this province, public service employment has dropped considerably. Overall, from 1991 to 1997, provincial civil service employment fell by 15 per cent, while the federal employment reduction was 14 per cent. (From the employment peak in 1993-4, the overall provincial reduction was over 22 per cent.) Although collective bargaining is still alive, a major conclusion of this study is that collective bargaining in the Canadian public sector is not well. The cases reported here demonstrate that governments have adopted the attitude and policy that they may engage in bargaining or suspend it whenever they find that course of action to be convenient. Viewed from a broader international context, as discussed in the concluding chapter, the casual suspension of bargaining by Canadian governments cannot be justified by the norms and agreements that Canada has shared with the international community. -- Publisher's description. Contents: Public-sector labour relations in an era of restraint and restructuring: an overview / Gene Swimmer -- Provincial government restructuring in Nova Scotia: the freezing and thawing of labour relations / Terry H. Wagar -- From softball to hardball: the transition in labour-management relations in the Ontario public service / Joseph B. Rose -- Fiscal restraint, legislated concessions, and labour relations in the Manitoba civil service, 1988-1997 / Paul Phillips and Carolina Stecher -- The logic of union quiescence: the Alberta case / Yonatan Reshef -- Labour relations in the BC public service: blowing in the political wind / Mark Thompson -- Restructuring federal public-sector human resources / Gene Swimmer and Sandra Bach -- Public-employee relations: Canadian developments in perspective / Roy J. Adams.

Over 100,000 Canadian workers participate annually in educational programs conducted by their union or the broader labour organizations to which their union belongs. Union-based education is the most significant nonvocational education available to working people. This activity has been going on for decades, and Jeffery Taylor's Union Learning: Canadian Labour Education in the Twentieth Century is the first comprehensive history of it. Union Learning chronicles the rise and decline of the Workers' Educational Association, the development of internal union educational programs, the consolidation of the Canadian Labour Congress's educational system after 1956, the origin and growth of the Labour College of Canada, and the patchy history of university and college involvement in labour education. Taylor argues that a new emphasis on broad-based and activist education today promises to rekindle the sense of an educational movement that was present in the labour movement in the 1930s and 1940s. The book includes a number of illustrative sidebars and photographs. The author has developed a website containing images, video and other materials related to the history of labour education in Canada: http://unionlearning.athabascau.ca. --Publisher's description

In the early 1990s, the northern cod populations off the coast of Newfoundland had become so depleted that the federal government placed a moratorium on commercial fishing. The impact was devastating, both for Newfoundland's economy and for local fishing communities. Today, although this natural resource exploited commercially for over 500 years appears to be returning in diminished numbers, many fisheries scientists and fishers question whether the cod will ever return to its former abundance. In A Fishery for Modern Times, Miriam Wright argues that the recent troubles in the fishery can be more fully understood by examining the rise of the industrial fishery in the mid-twentieth century. The introduction of new harvesting technologies and the emergence of 'quick freezing', in the late 1930s, eventually supplanted household production by Newfoundland's fishing families. While the new technologies increased the amount of fish caught in the northwest Atlantic, Wright argues that the state played a critical role in fostering and financing the industrial frozen fish sector. Many bureaucrats and politicians, including Newfoundland's premier, Joseph Smallwood, believed that making the Newfoundland fishery 'modern', with centralization, technology, and expertise, would transform rural society, solving deep-seated economic and social problems. A Fishery for Modern Times examines the ways in which the state, ideologies of development, and political, economic, and social factors, along with political actors and fishing company owners, contributed to the expansion of the industrial fishery from the 1930s through the 1960s. While the promised prosperity never fully materialized, the continuing reliance on approaches favouring high-tech, big capital solutions put increasing pressure on cod populations in the years that followed. As Wright concludes, 'We can no longer afford to view the fisheries resources as 'property' of the state and industry, to do with it as they choose. That path had led only to devastation of the resource, economic instability, and great social upheaval." --Publisher's description

Founded in 1914, the United Farmers of Ontario (UFO) became a significant force in the province, winning the most seats in the 1919 provincial election and forming a governing coalition with the Independent Labour Party. The UFO and its companion organizations, the United Farmers Cooperative Company (UFCC) and the United Farm Women of Ontario (UFWO), flourished, achieving much of its success by challenging those who controlled the economic, political, and social structures in Ontario and advancing an alternative vision of democracy that sought to maximize citizen participation in the decision-making process. By the mid-1920s the UFO had gone into a period of decline from which it never recovered. The promise of equality hoped for by UFWO members never materialized and the UFCC, once a key component in the development of an alternative vision, began to focus more on profits than on politics. In Ringing in the Common Love of Good Kerry Badgley explores both the rise and the fall of the UFO, focusing on the Ontario counties of Lambton, Simcoe, and Lanark. He challenges the liberal-capitalist interpretation that the movement was nothing more than a group of impatient Liberals, as well as the Marxist view that the UFO consisted of self-interested independent commodity producers. Badgley argues that as the UFO broke free from hegemonic forces it developed alternative economic, political, and social visions, but that it was these same forces, combined with internal struggles and a conservative leadership, that ultimately resulted in the decline of the movement as a vehicle for democratic change in Ontario. --Publisher's description

The authors' careful analyses of labour and working-class organizations in Brandon are aimed at reconstructing and disclosing aspects of the history of class and class relations. While other western Canadian cities, Winnipeg, for example, have received much deserved attention by historians, studies of other cities, such as Brandon, in the early 20th century help to provide a more well-rounded understanding of working-class life in Canada during this period. In the tradition of the new labour history Black and Mitchell pay close attention to the unique development of class relations in the community of Brandon, while placing that community in a broader, national context. This work includes a careful consideration of the working class in Brandon, the particular obstacles and challenges workers there faced, and makes an important contribution to our understanding of class relations in Canada. --Website description

Emigrants sent by the Petworth Emigration Committee were part of a wave of rural workers in the 1830s whose immigration to Upper Canada was sponsored by English parishes and landlords. Their letters written or dictated to family and friends, leave us a rare first-hand view of the immigrant experience from a working-class perspective. Collected from published, archival, and private sources, these letters place the Petworth immigrants in the context of their times and challenge the image of English immigrants to 1830s Upper Canada as officers and gentlewomen. Wendy Cameron, Sheila Haines, and Mary McDougall Maude have carefully annotated the letters to sketch the stories of individual writers, link letters by the same author or members of the same family, and explore the connections between writers. What eventually happened to some of the writers is also revealed in this engaging collection. English Immigrant Voices provides a valuable insight into the rural poor and their experiences in emigrating to a new land. --Publisher's description

The triumphs and failures of four Canadian Marxists who advocated organization and education rather than armed struggle in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the creation of socialism. Literature on Marxist socialists in Canada has usually been written by those within the social democratic or Marxist-Leninist traditions and has generally failed to break free of the political biases of the defenders of these traditions. Canadian Marxists and the Search for a Third Way steps outside these approaches to appraise early Canadian Marxists on their own terms. Peter Campbell argues that their Marxism was a changing and evolving product of their intellectual development and day-to-day interaction with the Canadian working class. It was a dynamic, theoretical system that provided a "third way" to look at Marxism, a revolutionary socialism that rejected violence in favour of the broadest organization and education of the working-class majority. Focusing on four individuals, Canadian Marxists and the Search for a Third Way describes the lives and ideas of Ernest Winch, Bill Pritchard, Bob Russell, and Arthur Mould and examines their efforts to put their ideas into practice. Campbell begins by looking at their childhoods in Great Britain, particularly their religious upbringing. He considers their family life, their attitudes toward women and ethnic minorities, what they were reading, and what effect that reading had on their theory and practice. He describes their lives as labor leaders and advocates of socialism, revealing how tenaciously, in an increasingly hierarchical, bureaucratized, and state-driven capitalist society, they held to the idea that socialism must be created by the working class itself. This is a unique look at four Canadian Marxists and their struggle to create an educated, disciplined, democratic, mass-based movement for revolutionary change. --Publisher's description

Farmer Brown has a problem. His cows like to type. All day long he hears Click, clack, MOO. Click, clack, MOO. Clickety, clack, MOO. But Farmer Brown's problems REALLY begin when his cows start leaving him notes.... Doreen Cronin's understated text and Betsy Lewin's expressive illustrations make the most of this hilarious situation. Come join the fun as a bunch of literate cows turn Farmer Brown's farm upside down. --Publisher's description

The hotly debated report from the frontlines of mounting backlash against multinational corporations. A national bestseller, No Logo took Canadians by storm when it was published last year in hardcover. Equal parts cultural analysis, political manifesto, mall-rat memoir, and journalistic exposé, it is the first book to uncover a betrayal of the central promises of the information age: choice, interactivity, and increased freedom. No Logo takes apart our packaged and branded world and puts the pieces into clear pop-historical and economic perspective. Naomi Klein tracks the resistance and self-determination mounting in the face of our new branded world and explains why some of the most revered brands in the world are finding themselves on the wrong end of a bottle of spray paint, a computer hack, or an international anti-corporate campaign. --Publisher's description, Vintage edition

Les auteurs décrivent les aspects historiques, légaux et sociaux du Québec et les comparent avec ceux qui prévalent ailleurs. Ils brossent un tableau de la législation du travail, de la vie syndicale, de la négociation collective, de la gestion de la convention collective et de l'avenir des relations du travail. --Publisher's description

As a park warden in the national parks of Canada's Rocky Mountains, Sid Marty came to know that beautiful and treacherous landscape as few men or women do. He was a mountain climber, rescue team member, firefighter, wildlife custodian, and adviser to tourists, adventurers, and people passing through. At all times, he was an acute observer of human and animal behaviour. In these pages he records with wry wit and bitter insight true stories of heroism and folly drawn from life in the high country. Marty writes vividly about a land and a way of life that are increasingly endangered. The visceral energy of his prose compels attention. This is a compulsive, alarming, and often hilarious read. --Publisher's description

A controversial and chilling examination of child labour in Canadian coal mines, Boys in the Pit shows that beginning early in the nineteenth century, thousands of boys, some as young as eight, laboured underground - driving pit ponies, manipulating ventilation doors, and helping miners cut and load the coal that fuelled the industrial revolution. Boys died in the mines in explosions and accidents but they also organized strikes for better working conditions. Robert McIntosh recasts these wage-earning children as more than victims, illustrating that they responded intelligently and resourcefully to their circumstances. Boys in the Pits is particularly timely as, despite the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, accepted by the General assembly in 1989, child labour still occurs throughout the world and continues to generate controversy. McIntosh provides an important new perspective from which to consider these debates, reorienting our approach to child labour, explaining rather than condemning the practice. Within the broader social context of the period, where the place of children was being redefined as - and limited to - the home, school, and playground, he examines the role of changing technologies, alternative sources of unskilled labour, new divisions of labour, changes in the family economy, and legislation to explore the changing extent of child labour in the mines. --Publisher's description

When W.O. Mitchell died in 1998 he was described as “Canada's best-loved writer.” Every commentator agreed that his best – and his best-loved – book was Who Has Seen the Wind. Since it was first published in 1947, this book has sold almost a million copies in Canada. As we enter the world of four-year-old Brian O’Connal, his father the druggist, his Uncle Sean, his mother, and his formidable Scotch grandmother (“she belshes…a lot”), it soon becomes clear that this is no ordinary book. As we watch Brian grow up, the prairie and its surprising inhabitants like the Ben and Saint Sammy – and the rich variety of small-town characters – become unforgettable. This book will be a delightful surprise for all those who are aware of it, but have never quite got around to reading it, till now. --Publisher's description