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This thesis examines the reaction of organized labour to Quebec separatist nationalism for the period between 1960, the year of the creation of the Rassemblement pour l'independance nationale and the beginning of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, and 1980, the year of the first referendum on Quebec's constitutional status. The thesis investigates four labour organizations: the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), the Federation des travailleurs et travailleuses du Quebec (FTQ), the Confederation des syndicats nationaux (CSN), and the Centrale de l'enseignement du Quebec (CEQ). It shows in which ways the positions of the four centrals have been informed by their members' national identifications and the emotional and cognitive mechanisms that resulted from these identifications.

Over the past two decades there has emerged a generalized critique of the quality of the labour supply in industrialized countries in relation to concerns about corporate profitability and national competitiveness. Frequently, the critique has focused, in whole or in part, on the so-called 'literacy' or 'basic skills' competencies of workers. This thesis examines the problematizing of workers' literacy competencies at a time when general educational attainments in Western countries have reached unprecedentedly high levels. Both broad-based and historically informed, the study focuses on the United States, Canada and England over the period of the mid-1980s through the early 1990s. The motives of the agencies and interests which have proclaimed a worker 'basic skills crisis', as well as the processes through which their claims have been disseminated, are analyzed. The ideological and material contexts in which these claims have resonated are described. The thesis concludes that the workforce basic skills 'crisis' is a socially constructed one which has little or no basis in fact. It is an issue which has had utility for a number of interests (including business, labour, educationalists and the state sector), however, and this, it is argued, accounts for the role they have taken in its social construction. The evidence presented here establishes that the workforce literacy issue has had real consequences for workers. It has operated to scapegoat sections of the working class and to further marginalize less formally qualified workers in their workplaces and in the labour market. This-the industrial relations context in which the putative workforce 'basic skills crisis' has operated-forms the principal focus of the thesis. The impacts on workers of actions stemming from the acceptance of the idea of a basic skills crisis-including increasing scrutiny of literacy and language competencies of workers and the promotion and establishment of 'basic skills' programmes of questionable value in workplaces-ought to give cause for many who have endorsed claims of a 'crisis' and embraced workplace literacy to re-evaluate their position.

The phenomenon of offshore migrant labour in Canada poses an interesting challenge to the literature dealing with unfree labour relations in capitalist societies. This thesis uses in-depth interviews with Jamaican migrant labourers in Ontario, along with supporting statistical data to further our understanding of the subjective domain of labour relations in agriculture. According to the literature The Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program constitutes a system of unfree labour, and many employers in the Ontario agricultural sector benefit from this system. Jamaican migrant workers do not necessarily share this view of unfreedom. While recognising the definite restrictions as defined in the contract, these migrants accept the conditions of employment as a trade off for the opportunity of material advancement not available to them in Jamaica. This discrepancy over the definition of unfree labour reflects the disparities between the North and the South, and needs to be addressed.

Labour relations in Montreal during the years 1830 to 1845 were characterized by flux. The encroachment of expanding industrialization brought with it new social phenomena and pressures, new technology, and a fundamental restructuring of employment relationships. Master-servant relations still contained elements of the deeply stratified and paternalistic labour relationships ingrained in the cultural and social fabric of earlier eras, but increasingly began to exhibit the rudiments of purely contractual relationships which would come to define the modern industrial era. Courts came to play an increasingly important role in resolving labour disputes between parties. While historically the law favored the strict contractual and socio-economic interests of masters, courts began to enforce the reciprocal duties owed by masters to their servants. Servants were accorded greater access to the courts to protect their interests, with the knowledge that they had recourse to extra-judicial means of protest if the law was not sufficiently responsive.

This thesis examines the Paid Education Leave (PEL) program of the Canadian Autoworkers Union (CAW), fomerly the Canadian Region of the United Autoworkers Union (UAW). This four-week program takes place at the CAW Family Education Centre in Port Elgin, Ontario and potentiatly provides 90% of the CAW's members with class-based, union-centred, labour education. Interviews conducted with key CAW sources uncover PEL's histoncal roots. A chronicle of the stniggle to establish PEL is detailed in relation to the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 140 on Paid Educational Leave. Thematic oral-history interviews were conducted with six CAW Local 222 members, al1 former participants of PEL. Interviews are used to illustrate a detailed description of the program's pedagogy and curriculum. Interview respondents were Generai Motors (GM) of Canada workers located in Oshawa, Ontario. Several policy and programmatic suggestions are made, including increased understanding of, and elevated respect for, informal learning.

This thesis examines the history of female immigrant domestic labour in Canada from a socialist feminist perspective. Over the past hundred years, Canadian immigration policy with respect to domestic workers became increasingly regressive with the shift in the racial composition of foreign female domestics. The women's movement contributed to this change as gains in Canadian women's public rights did not effectively challenge the dominant social paradigm of women's roles, and so left intact the public-private divide and the sexual division of labour to which were allied biases of race and class. The women's movement thus became an unwitting participant in the formulation of regressive immigration policies which rebounded on the women's movement itself, reinforcing its internal divisions.

The 1920s is generally seen as a period of defeat for Canadian labour. With the rise of monopoly capital, strike activity and union membership steadily declined in the face of wage cuts, new technologies and corporate welfare schemes. The continental alliance of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada (TLC) that, for the most part, provided labour's leadership during this crisis, proved ineffective. By 1927 a secessionist movement challenged the legitimacy of the AFL/TLC alliance. In March of that year, the Canadian Brotherhood of Railroad Employees (CBRE), gathered with the One Big Union (OBU), the Canadian Federation of Labour (CFL), and communist-influenced unions, including the Mine Workers' Union of Canada and the Lumber Workers' Industrial Union, to form the All-Canadian Congress of Labour (ACCL). It is the focus of this thesis to bring the Congress front and centre and to provide an alternative interpretation of its effort to build a national labour movement in the 1920s--one that was neither opportunistic, anti-communist, nor right-wing. Instead, this thesis supports the contention that the ACCL was a counter-hegemonic, working-class initiative that aimed to improve the political representation and material conditions of the Canadian worker.

In 1924, the General Hospital at Kingston, Ontario, began a process of rationalisation, following Taylorist principles of scientific management. In concurrence with the restructuring of other N orth American hospitals, and with the advice given in professional literature, the Governors of K.G.H. secured the services of R.F. Armstrong, a civil engineer. His mandate was to facilitate the transformation of K.G.H. into an efficient, economical modem health institution which would attract not just indigent patients, but also upper-class, paying clients. Part I of this paper analyses the process by wrhich rationalisation was wreaked upon student nurses in the K.G.H. Nurse Training School, considering these women not primarily as students but as an unpaid labour force. I argue that administrators employed a combination of paternalism and scientific management in an attempt to conform student-wrorkers into an 'ideal nurse labourer', as defined by historically specific discourses of gender, class, and Canadian nation/race which converged in the image of the Nurse. Balancing this 'top-down' approach, Part II of the paper attempts to reconstruct student-workers' experiences of and responses to nursing training. Using nurses' cultural productions and oral interview's, I explore the concept of 'everyday resistance' in the contexts of the Nurses' Home and the hospital workshop, arguing that the continual supervision and surveillance endured by student-workers did not preclude successful attempts to wrrite their own script for their experience of nursing. To the contrary, nurses-in-training developed a culture of mutuality which provided them with the resources to resist and ameliorate the most repressive and totalising aspects of hospital labour and residence life. The result of this reconsideration of nursing training is an increased understanding of student nurse labourers as individuals with hopes and expectations of their own, rather than simply dutiful, obedient daughters in the hospital 'family' who accepted their subordination to the 'ethic of service'.

Cape Breton, the site of major strikes during the 1920s, remained a hotbed of political radicalism and trade union militancy for many years. In the 1930s the Communist Party had considerable influence, and most of the coal miners joined the Amalgamated Mine Workers of Nova Scotia, a CP-led breakaway from the United Mine Workers of America. Ideological opposition to the columnists was spearheaded by the Catholic-inspired Antigonish Co-operative Movement, but this did not prevent the communist leader, J. B. McLachlan, from getting substantial votes in elections. The change of communist policy to the "united front" weakened the party's influence, although communists and the officers of the re-united miners' union were able to help the Sydney steelworkers finally establish a union, and to successfully press the provincial government to pass the 1937 Trade Union Act. Left and right in Cape Breton were also able to work together during the 1937 provincial election. The unity line of the communists, along with the impact of the Antigonish movement on Catholic voters, prepared the way for the UMW affiliation to the CCF in 1938, and during the CCFers won the local seats in both the federal and provincial legislatures. However, the CCF could never win elections elsewhere in the Maritimes, and the move of CCF policies to the right in the post-war years only served to gradually undermine its support in Cape Breton. In the UMW the dissatisfaction of the miners with their bureaucratic officers brought about the 1941 slowdown, one of the most costly wartime industrial disputes, and productivity fell. The union policies advocated by the CCF (and the CP during the war), helped end opposition to the mechanization of the mines. Following defeat in the 1947 strike, the miners had to accept modernization on the company's terms, although this meant the loss of jobs. The steelworkers' union won a national strike in 1946, but thereafter was unable to hold wage rates for Sydney at a level equal to those paid in Ontario steel plants. The militancy and radicalism of the miners and steelworkers of earlier years had almost completely disappeared by 1950. Dramatic anti-communist episodes in both the steelworkers' and miners' unions in the 1949-50 period marked the triumph of union bureaucrats and Cold War politicians over radicalism in Cape Breton.

This thesis explains why in the 1940s, Winnipeg meat packing workers secured sustainable industrial unionism. By tracing the development of the Winnipeg meat packing industry and investigating previously unsuccessful organizational drives, it is suggested that success in the 1940s corresponded to three broad contributing factors. The most significant factor was changing local conditions. With the gradual introduction of mass production techniques to the Winnipeg meat packing industry beginning in the early 1920s, the reorganization of Winnipeg packinghouse work occurred. The large scale introduction of semi-skilled workers changed the face of meat packing, as packinghouse work became deskilled without any significant degree of automation. During this period, craft unionism in the meat packing industry failed on a national pattern. This failure coincided with the 1930s experiment in industrial unionisn by Winnipeg workers'at Western Packers workers. Western Packing's workers' introduction to industrial unionism also provided the successful 1940s drive with links to the Communist Party. An overall strengthening in North America of the labour movement beginning in the 1930s provided the second broad contributing factor to success in the 1940s. With the birth of the CIO in the United States and Canada, Winnipeg meat packing workers gained at the very minimum inspiration. The impact of Wor1d War II accounted for the final contributing factor for success in the 1940s. With a wartime demand creating full employment and the governmentts desire to maintain production, organized labour found itself in a position of unparalleled power. In combination, a spirit of militancy arose among Canada's labour movement. From these conditions, meat packing workers in Winnipeg chose and pursued industrial unionism with great success. By the end of World war II, workers in Winnipeg possessed an effective union organization and had won union shops and wage increases. Ultimately however, the union's national success created a centralized, bureaucratic union movement which consequently provided a loss of local autonomy.

Transition houses are small feminist organizations, providing emergency shelter to women and children who have been abused. They also are workplaces whose social organization divides women as managers and workers. This research, an institutional ethnographic case-study of nine transition houses in one Canadian province, examines how relations between the state and transition house have led to greater institutional power and control over transition house work, by women who are paid managers. This results in a reconstituted struggle for equality between women inside these settings. Mangerialism in the Canadian transition house movement has not been theorized.The argument advanced here is that conflict between workers and managers in transition houses is an inevitable outcome of the on-going struggle to develop feminist praxis within contradictory relations, shaped and influenced by transition house/state relations, dominant managerial discourses, and the exigencies of transition house work. In an attempt to resist and to limit managerial power and control over the labour process and over feminist praxis, transition house workers look for ways to develop their own collective power. Unionization as a vehicle for collective action is an obvious choice and it is one that transition house workers are pursuing.

This study examines the critical years in which the Canadian industrial relations system assumed many of its lasting characteristics. Specifically, it explores the actions of management, unions, and the federal state under the exceptional conditions of the wartime "command economy" and later, with the transition back to a peacetime footing. Frustrated with the inadequacy of existing collective bargaining legislation, and sensing that this period signalled a realignment in the labour-capital relationship, Canadian workers took advantage of special wartime conditions to press home their demands for basic workplace rights framed by a more equitable labour code. The result of this campaign was the establishment of a new legal framework which defined the respective roles for all three groups over the next thirty years. Of particular importance is an investigation of the ambivalent legacy achieved by the Canadian labour movement with its pursuit of the essential rights of free association and collective bargaining. Building on the intense workplace struggles of the war years, labour pushed federal authorities to support mandatory collective bargaining, compulsory wage deductions of union dues, finally entrenching these reforms under the Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigation Act (1948).

This thesis using a case study approach examines the migration and employment strategies of illegal migrants in the labour market in Montreal. The migratory flows discussed are permanent in nature. The thesis also examines the role of networks in initiating the migration process and in securing employment in Montreal. It includes an examination of the conditions of employment and the sectors of employment. It argues that illegal migrants work in the secondary labour market, that is on the fringes of the formal economy or in the informal economy. Income disparities between North and South countries ensure that migrants continue to live and work illegally in Montreal. This raises a discussion of the strategies used by migrants to change their status to a legal status. The thesis discusses the experiences of both women and men. It posits the view that women are migrant workers in their own right and not only as dependents of male migrants. This is attributed to the increase in service sector jobs and the increased demand for paid domestic labor in the Canadian economy. It is concluded that immigration policies allow and maintain illegal migration and that there is a demand for this kind of labour in the Montreal economy. Furthermore, illegal migrants fulfill a particular labour market need.

Drawing on the manuscript records of the Department of Crown Lands, its published reports, and case law, this thesis examines the illegal occupation of rural land, known as squatting in the Eastern Townships of Quebec in the period 1838 to 1866. By 1838, demographic pressure in the seigneuries, inflated land prices due to speculation, and inaccessible public land granting practices had made squatting a commonplace strategy for land acquisition. The responses to squatting of the Department of Crown Lands, the Legislature and the judiciary are analysed for what they implied about ideas of property in Lower Canada. While the Department of Crown Lands' policy of pre-emption affirmed that squatters held rights to public land because they laboured to cultivate and improve it, the legislature refused to acknowledge that squatters could acquire such rights on private land; nine out of ten bills intended to ensure ejected squatters a systematically determined remuneration for improvements made by them on the private property of absentees failed to pass into law during the period. Most were rejected by the Legislative Council which defended the interests of landed wealth. Lower Canadian courts, meanwhile, struggled to sort out laws relating to squatting. Ultimately they found that while squatters on private property owned their improvements, they had no right to the land itself. Thus the judiciary applied a bifurcated concept of property to rural land in Lower Canada despite the prevalence of liberal theories of absolute property rights during the nineteenth century.

The thesis addresses the importance of intra-union struggles as a mediating factor in understanding the relationship between changes in union policies and strategies and the larger socio-economic environment. Examination of these intra-union struggles, the thesis argues, is necessary for a fuller understanding of the development of the union and the steel workers' ongoing contestation with the steel company. It examines the significance of intra-union conflict in the establishment of responsible" unionism and "industrial democracy" within the Canadian steel industry and in the context of international, national and local aspects of the union. During the period 1936-1972 the steel workers were organized within Local 1064 of the United Steel Workers of America which, according to the findings of the thesis, was marked by intra-union conflict almost from its inception. Conflict between an establishment-dominated leadership and its supporters and oppositional forces, which took different forms and displayed various degrees of influence within the local over time, was an integral part of the union's political life. Arguments drawn from Marxist theory and from the work of Michels are compared and evaluated in light of the historical record of the steel workers and their attempts to build an effective organization. The thesis demonstrates that oppositional activity within the union was crucial to understanding the development and direction of the union. The establishment and maintenance of "responsible" unionism and "industrial democracy" were mediated by intra-union struggles. The findings of the study offer support for both a Marxist and a Michelsian theory of change within such organizations.

ln acknowledging and incorporating significant episodes of the past into the present landscape, monuments can provide the inhabitants of a place with an interactive heritage: a heritage based on the fusion of past and present, deepening a sense of place by providing the means to possess a common identity, that is to belong to a fellowship of place. The intent of this practicum was the development of a contextually based monument which relies on an integration of elements and contextual relationships to convey its meaning. With this goal in mind, the evolution of the monument was studied in order to gain a better understanding of it as a theoretical concept and valid functional element. The intent of this study was the development of programmatic guidelines for a contextually based monument. The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 provided the perfect subject for the design of a commemorative monument which would be based on an application of the developed program. Site selection for this specific commemorative monument was based on the applicability to historical criteria and thematic issue derived from a study of the Winnípeg General Strike. ln addressing and defining each of the requirements, the design has achieved its purpose in illustrating the practical application of a theoretical concept, the contextual monument.

One tenet of labour process theory is the contention that, when confronted by degraded work, people will resist through militant behaviour or in other ways. However, that "resistance hypothesis" has been tested rarely. Canadian postal workers have manifested some considerable militancy, for instance through legal and wildcat strikes and through frequent recourse to the grievance mechanism. Too, their work has been subjected to technological change often pointed to as a prime example ofjob degradation. But not all aspects of postal work have been subjected to technological change. Thus, postal workers constitute a test ofthe "resistance hypothesis:" if degraded work provokes militancy, then ceteris paribus postal workers involved in automated work will be more militant than those who are not. In this study, a group of postal workers employed in "Cancity" in 1985-6 (N=152) were surveyed regarding their attitudes and experiences. Factor analytic techniques were used to construct a scale of attitudinal militancy, and hierarchical set analysis - summarised using dummy variable path coefficients - was used to examine the causal links between this outcome and logically prior factors, including job degradation, employment history, and achieved and ascribed statuses including sex. The results indicate that job degradation does have an impact on attitudinal militancy, but that this impact is modest at best, and weakens as other influences are taken into account.

This thesis documents the employment history of Sne-nay-muxw women. The Sne nay-muxw, a Coast Salish peoples, live on the southeast coast ofVancouver Island close to the city ofNanaimo. Nanaimo was established by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1852 as coal mining town. Coal dominated the economy until the early 20th century when forestry related production became important. Today a service economy has eclipsed both the primary and secondary industries. Within these economies a distinct gender, race and class segregation structured Sne-nay-muxw women’s employment opportunities. This study examines the nature of this segregation, the Sne-nay-muxw domestic economy and the gender ideology that promoted both women’s inclusion and exclusion in. wage labour. A central question posed in this thesis is why Sne-nay-muxw women today perceive their traditional roles to be within the home despite their historical participation in the labour force. Feminist anthropology provides the theoretical and methodological approach used for this study. It is accepted that women’s experiences in the labour force are different not only from men but also from other women based upon relational inequalities ofrace and class. Historical data was collected from a variety of sources; published and unpublished government reports, missionary accounts, letters and journals. Nineteen women and eight men were interviewed in the community for both historic and contemporary accounts of employment experiences. History reveals that during the mining economy Sne-nay-muxw women were excluded from working in the mines and limited to employment as domestic servants. The introduction of Chinese labour, decreasing coal demands and increased technology forced many women to migrate with their families to the canneries on the Fraser river and the hop fields in Washington state. In the forestry related production economy, Sne-nay-muxw women’s opportunities were limited despite the expansion of employment for women in the service sector. State policies and inferior education were significant factors in this exclusion. At this time Sne-nay-muxw women continued to migrate with their families to the fish camps on Rivers Inlet and the berry fields in Washington state. In the last two decades the service economy has dominated in Nanaimo. Sne-nay-muxw women have found increasing job opportunities on and off reserve in administration, management and professional service delivery programs. While this employment is part of the wider trend for women in the service economy, Sne-nay-muxw women’s opportunities remain segregated by gender, race and class. Women’s participation in the labour force is shown to be linked to the organization of their domestic economy. Before 1920 this economy incorporated both subsistence production and farming with seasonal wage labour. After this time the Sne-nay-muxw became increasingly dependent upon wage labour. However, extended family and kinship networks have remained important for support and cooperation. This form ofhousehold organization did not constrain women’s participation in the labour force. Today extended families remain the central organizing principle in Sne-nay-muxw lives. Sne-nay-muxw women’s identity and opportunities for education and employment remain linked to their membership in these families. Shifts in women’s participation in the labour force is shown to be accompanied by acceptance of a domestic ideology. During the mining economy when women actively sought wage labour, they acquired domestic skills needed for wage labour but did not accept an ideology that promoted their dependency upon men. Historical evidence indicates that they retained a significant degree of autonomy in their lives. With men’s increased security of employment in the forestry economy, the idealized role ofwomen as housewives was promoted. Families that were able to realize women’s exclusion from the labour force gained status and prestige in the community. Finally, in the service economy, the Sne-nay-muxw gender ideology includes women’s participation in the labour force to occupations linked to their domestic and nurturing roles.

This dissertation focuses on the work-for-pay exchange between aboriginal people and immigrants of European stock--the two most prominent cultural groups in the early history of British Columbia--and follows the patterns of this exchange from its origins through to the 1970s. It examines both the material and the rhetorical construction of the "Indian" as a part of British Columbia's labour force, a process described as racialization, and emphasizes, as well, the transformation of meaning inherent in cross-cultural exchange. It is a province-wide analysis, the core of which is a micro-history of one aboriginal group, the Songhees people, who live in the area now occupied by Victoria, the capital city. This examination challenges the long-standing view that aboriginal people were bystanders in the economic development and industrialization of British Columbia outside, and after, the fur trade. From the establishment of the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1849, through Confederation with Canada in 1871 and to the 1885 completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway, aboriginal people comprised the majority of the population in present-day British Columbia, and the majority of the work force in agriculture, fishing, trapping and the burgeoning primary industries. This dissertation charts the subsequent decline in participation of aboriginal people in the capitalist economy from 1885 to 1970. Using a micro-historical study and close attention to aboriginal voices it offers a set of explanations for the changing proportions of work, both paid and unpaid, and state welfare payments. The micro-history reveals that the Songhees people engaged in two distinct but connected economies and were already familiar with forms of labour subordination prior to the European introduction of a capitalist economy. The Songhees participation in paid labour for Europeans was facilitated by these existing forms of labour organization and depended on the co-existence of their other economies; the Songhees used earnings from capitalist paid labour to expand their non-capitalist economies. After 1885, new state policies repressed the non-capitalist aboriginal economics and therefore diminished the underlying motivation for aboriginal participation in capitalist work. At the same time, an influx of labour-market competition and a variety of racialized laws and practices restricted the Songhees' ability to get work. Increasingly they were left with seasonal, low-skill and low-wage labour, a niche that maintained them so long as it was combined with a subsistence economy and involved the full participation of adult and adolescent family members. In the late 1940s and 1950s this pattern too was remade. Legal restrictions dramatically limited the subsistence economies; technological change curtailed the demand for seasonal labour in the canning, fishing and agricultural sectors, particularly affecting aboriginal women workers; and, compulsory schooling regulations began to reduce labour available to the family economy. At the same historic moment when the combined wage and subsistence economies ceased to be able to support them, the state extended some existing social welfare programs, such as Old Age Pension, to Indians, and expanded other programs, including Family Allowance, to all Canadians. In examining the patterns of aboriginal-non-aboriginal exchange relations over the long-term, this dissertation argues that high rates of unemployment and welfare-dependency among contemporary aboriginal communities are relatively recent historical phenomena, with observable roots and causes.