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The article reviews the book, "A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth Century Cuba," by Alejandro de la Fuente.

The article reviews the book "Not Automatic: Women and the Left in the Forging of the Auto Workers' Union," by Sol Dollinger and Genora Johnson Dollinger.

Reviews the book "Strategy, Organization and the Changing Nature of Work," edited by Jordi Gual and Joan E. Ricart.

The article reviews the book, "We Are the Poors: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa," by Ashwin Desai.

Analyzes how, in the late 1980s, industrial unions such as the Canadian Auto Workers adapted successfully to the growth of the service sector and the changing composition of the workforce. Concludes that problems of internal union structure and identity, as well as jurisdictional disputes between unions, are still not resolved.

Describes the varying patterns of union governance and membership since 1945 in the five primarily English-speaking countries of Australia, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, and the US. Discusses union efforts at renewal in the 1990s as a result of declining membership and waning political influence.

The economic boom of the 1990s created huge wealth for the bosses, but benefited workers hardly at all. At the same time, the bosses were able to take the political initiative and even the moral high ground, while workers were often divided against each other. This new book by leading labor analyst Michael D. Yates seeks to explain how this happened, and what can be done about it. Essential to both tasks is "naming the system"-the system that ensures that those who do the work do not benefit from the wealth they produce. Yates draws on recent data to show that the growing inequality-globally, and within the United States-is a necessary consequence of capitalism, and not an unfortunate side-effect that can be remedied by technical measures. To defend working people against ongoing attacks-on their working conditions, their living standards, and their future and that of their children-and to challenge inequality, it is necessary to understand capitalism as a system and for labor to challenge the political dominance of capitalist interests. Naming the System examines contemporary trends in employment and unemployment, in hours of work, and in the nature of jobs. It shows how working life is being reconfigured today, and how the effects of this are masked by mainstream economic theories. It uses numerous concrete examples to relate larger theoretical issues to everyday experience of the present-day economy. And it sets out the strategic options for organized labor in the current political context, in which the U.S.-led war on terrorism threatens to eclipse the anti-globalization movement. --Publisher's description.

The article reviews the book "Pacific Press: The Unauthorized Story of Vancouver's Newspaper Monopoly," by Marc Edge.

The article reviews the book "Labor Geographies: Workers and the Landscape of Capitalism," by Andrew Herod.

The article reviews the book, "The Making of the Chinese Industrial Workplace: State, Revolution & Labour Management," by Mark Frazier.

Who was that impassioned woman at the heart of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike? And why did her memory become lost to time? Filmmaker Paula Kelly set out to bring Helen Armstrong back from the margins of history. --Editorial introduction

Like immigrants, aboriginal populations' economic success may be enhanced by the acquisition of skills and traits appropriate to the “majority” culture in which they reside. Using 1991 Canadian Census data, we show that Aboriginal labour market success is greater for Aboriginals whose ancestors intermarried with non-Aboriginals, for those who live off Indian reserves, and for those who live outside the Yukon and Northwest Territories. While these three “facts” could also be explained by a combination of other processes, such as discrimination, physical remoteness, and selection, only the skill/trait acquisition, or “assimilation” hypothesis is consistent with all three.

...In this lecture, I shall forge an alternative approach.... My aim is to rethink feminization and this requires critiquing dominant interpretations of feminization that emphasize women’s high labour force participation and employment rates to the exclusion of other labour market trends through an analytical framework attentive to developments on both supply- and demand-sides of the labour market (i.e., production and social reproduction). I will argue that by focusing attention on the movement of women into the labour market, these approaches risk obscuring the gendered rise of precarious employment. This restrictive emphasis welds feminization to a narrow set of trends and glosses over key continuities, such as persisting occupational and industrial2 segregation, and discontinuities, such as the convergence towards precariousness, in the contemporary labour market. --From introduction

English/French abstracts of articles in the current issue.

English/French abstracts of the articles in the Spring 2002 volume.

Biennial index produced by the Canadian Periodical Index.

Decentralization has been an important international development in large organizations, including those in the public sector, in recent years. The introduction of self-governing trusts in the U.K. National Health Service in the early 1990s serves as a paradigm case of public sector decentralization, managerialism and marketization. Local managers were able to develop their own employment arrangements in order to improve the recruitment, retention and deployment of labour. This article finds that pay initiatives were subverted by environmental constraints but change proceeded in the organization of working time. The findings have implications beyond the U.K. and health service context, notably the conceptual relevance of the "firm-in-sector" framework and the policy limits and potential of decentralization.

The article reviews and comments on the books, "Revolutionary Women in Russia" by Anna Hillyar and Jane McDermid; "In the Shadow of Revolution," edited by Sheila Fitzpatrick and Yuri Slezkine; and "The Politics of Gender After Socialism: A Comparative Historical Essay" by Susan Gal and Gail Kligman.

An exploration of the vital role played by Mexican seasonal workers in Canadian agriculture and how they have become a structural necessity in some sectors. Based on interviews with Leamington greenhouse growers and migrant Mexican workers, Tanya Basok offers a timely analysis of why the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program is needed. She argues that while Mexican workers do not necessarily constitute cheap labour for Canadian growers, they are vital for the survival of some agricultural sectors because they are always available for work, even on holidays and weekends, or when exhausted, sick, or injured. Basok exposes the mechanisms that make Mexican seasonal workers unfree and shows that the workers' virtual inability to refuse the employer's demand for their labour is related not only to economic need but to the rigid control exercised by the Mexican Ministry of Labour and Social Planning and Canadian growers over workers' participation in the Canadian guest worker program, as well as the paternalistic relationship between the Mexican harvesters and their Canadian employers. --Publisher's description