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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.

Privatization has eliminated 30 years of pay equity gains and has put BC at the bottom of the barrel nationally when it comes to wages and benefits for women working in health support occupations. This is the central finding of a study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. It documents the dramatic reversal of pay equity resulting from the provincial government's push to contract out hospital support services (cleaners, care aids and laundry, food service and clerical workers). "Bill 29 has turned the clock back thirty years on fair wages for women in health support occupations," says co-author Marjorie Griffin Cohen, a CCPA research associate and Chair of SFU's Women's Studies Department. -- CCPA news release, April 21, 2004

This paper examines the relationship between employee involvement programs and workplace dispute resolution using data from the Workplace and Employee Survey (WES) conducted by Statistics Canada. The results provide support for a link between employee involvement and lower grievance rates in unionized workplaces. This link existed for establishments in both the goods and service sectors, but the practices involved differed between industrial sectors. By contrast, in nonunion workplaces, results of the analysis provided support for a link between the adoption of employee involvement programs and formal grievance procedures, but not between employee involvement and lower grievance rates.

Master and servant has a paradoxical history in Canada. There was a great deal of penal legislation. ...Indeed, new legislation to punish workers for disobedience and desertion was enacted after 1875, the year of final repeal in Britain, and even after the Canadian Parliament's own Breaches of Contract Act two years later. But compared with Britain and the other white dominions, let alone other parts of the empire, enforcement was sporadic, convictions relatively few, and punishments rarely harsh. It is easy enough to construct an explanation for inconsiderable enforcement out of the structure of the economy and the characteristics of the labour force, but these at the same time cannot account for the variety and persistence of penal legislation. The answer seems to lie as much in the symbolic as the instrumental uses of employment law in this part of the empire. --Introduction

The article reviews the book, "Globalisation and Labour: the new 'Great Transformation'," by Ronaldo Munck.

The article reviews the book, "It's about Time: Couples and Careers," edited by Phyllis Moen, Phyllis.

Le présent article vise à décrire et à expliquer la diversité des situations couvertes par la catégorie juridique de travailleur indépendant (travailleur autonome sans employé). Utilisant les méthodologies de l’analyse factorielle de correspondances multiples et de la classification ascendante hiérarchique, il analyse l’hétérogénéité au sein d’un échantillon de 293 travailleurs indépendants, autour de cinq dimensions : les caractéristiques du producteur, la nature de sa clientèle, le type de produit, l’organisation du travail (incluant la rémunération) et la protection contre les risques sociaux et professionnels. Ce faisant, il contribue à dégager six profils de travailleurs indépendants : les non-professionnels indépendants, les petits producteurs dépendants, les professionnels libéraux, les conseillers et consultants, les autres indépendants et ceux cumulant travail indépendant et salariat atypique et, finalement, les professionnels bénéficiant d’ententes collectives de travail. Il illustre par ailleurs qu’une partie de cette hétérogénéité est attribuable au brouillage des frontières entre les modèles « purs » de salariat et d’indépendance.

The article reviews the book, "The Human Cost of Food: Farmworkers' Lives, Labor, and Advocacy," edited by Charles D. Thompson, Jr., and Melinda F. Wiggins.

The article reviews the book, "From Revolutionaries to Citizens: Antimilitarism in France, 1870-1914," by Paul B. Miller.

The article reviews the book, "Crises et renouveau du capitalisme. Le 20e siècle en perspective," edited by Gérard Duménil et Dominique Lévy,

Comme son titre l'indique, Le Quatuor d'Asbestos est composé de quatre livres, qui replacent dans son contexte historique la fameuse grève de l'amiante de 1949. De nombreux documents y sont présentés pour la première fois ; tous les points de vue y sont exprimés, car ici l'histoire est racontée par ceux qui l'ont vécue. On constatera, entre autres choses, que l'ouvrage publié en 1956 sous la direction de Pierre Trudeau, La Grève de l'amiante, donne une interprétation très réductrice, voire mensongère des causes et des conséquences de la grève. Tout commence donc en mars 1948 avec la publication dans la revue Relations d'un article retentissant du journaliste franco-américain Burton LeDoux sur les conditions de vie inhumaines des mineurs de Saint-Rémi d'Amherst dans les Laurentides. Cet article se veut la première étape dans une campagne pour l'amélioration de l'hygiène industrielle au Québec. Mais le gouvernement de Maurice Duplessis vient de céder le monopole du développement de l'Ungava aux intérêts financiers qui traitent comme du bétail les mineurs de Saint-Rémi. Avec la complicité de Mgr Joseph Charbonneau, les compagnies et le gouvernement musèlent Relations. Le Devoir prend alors le relais et publie en janvier 1949 un deuxième article de Burton LeDoux, qui révèle l'existence à East Broughton dans la région de l'amiante d'un autre abattoir humain. Un mois plus tard, la grève éclate à Asbestos et à Thetford Mines. La première revendication des mineurs : l'élimination de la poussière. Les travailleurs sont galvanisés, car c'est de leur santé et de leur vie mêmes qu'il s'agit. La grève durera quatre mois et demi, mais sera, surtout sur la question essentielle de l'hygiène industrielle, un échec total. Il faudra attendre 1975 pour qu'on décide enfin de corriger une situation qui aurait pu et dû l'être un quart de siècle plus tôt. Ensuite, il y aura la nationalisation et le déclin de l'industrie. Mais c'est une histoire qui n'a pas de fin et il se publie encore de nos jours des articles qui confirment que Burton LeDoux avait vu clair dès 1948. --Résumé de l'éditeur

The purpose of the thesis is essentially to elaborate, and to a lesser extent to test the relevance of a theoretical framework focussing simultaneously on the spheres of industry, work and community in staple-specific contexts, explicitly in Canadian forestry and mining single-industry towns (SITS). The framework builds two ideal types of these towns by drawing from the main approaches that have addressed the topic in political economy, labour and community studies. The core underlying argument is that a reconsideration of some neglected staple insights constitutes a legitimate endeavour. The framework stresses that forestry SITs have more: of an elite model of power structure, separate work and community social arrangements, individualistic income strategies, as well as lower class consciousness and numerous contradictory class locations; while mining SITs have more: of a class model of power structure, overlapping work and community arrangements, income strategies framed in secondary relations terms, as well as a higher class consciousness and fewer contradictory class locations. After a brief introductory chapter, the second, third and fourth ones extensively review and interpret the literature, gathering empirical material and theoretical considerations useful to the comparative theoretical framework. The latter is detailed and its claim circumscribed in Chapter five; its relevance is tested in the two last chapters by using it as a backdrop to explain staple specific patternings regarding the organization of work in the main resource sector and women's experience in the family.

The article reviews the book, "Giving Birth in Canada: 1900-1950," by Wendy Mitchinson.

Cet article explore l’efficacité de la Déclaration relative aux principes et droits fondamentaux au travail en tant que réponse aux défis posés par une mondialisation considérée essentiellement sur le plan économique. La Déclaration a été adoptée en 1998 par l’Organisation internationale du Travail (OIT) et visait à arrimer le développement économique au progrès social en établissant un corps universel de droits socio-économiques. Au regard des sources traditionnelles du droit international public, la Déclaration soulève pourtant un certain nombre de difficultés. Premièrement, elle s’apparente à un instrument de soft law, c’est-à-dire à un instrument incitatif dénué de force obligatoire. Deuxièmement, la Déclaration ne s’adresse pas directement aux acteurs réels de la mondialisation contemporaine, les entreprises mondialisées, mais aux États. À partir de ces critiques, la conjoncture ayant mené à l’adoption de la Déclaration fera l’objet d’une attention particulière et permettra de mieux mesurer les effets juridiques de cet instrument normatif au sein et à l’extérieur de l’OIT.

The leadership of the Patrons of Husbandry (the Grange) and the Patrons of Industry in late-19th-century Ontario offered ideological visions of class harmony, the promise of united political action through antipartyism, and the assurance of material prosperity to Ontario's farmers. The history of agrarian protest, however, can be viewed as one of broken promises and unfulfilled expectations. The tensions inherent in the differing material circumstances and various representational philosophies of agriculture made it impossible for the Dominion Grange and the Patrons of Industry to sustain harmony and unity for any length of time within a deeply divided agricultural population. As a result, entrenched ideological differences regarding the merits or shortcomings of the cooperative principle in the Dominion Grange and Patrons of Industry highlight the tensions and conflicts intrinsic to the varied approaches of the farmers themselves. Yet the initial success of both agrarian protest movements in Ontario displayed at least a willingness on the part of farmers to bond together for united action. Their cataclysmic collapse into irrelevancy by the turn of the century, however, also revealed the ideological, cultural, social, and economic fissures situated within Ontario's rural populace.