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The United Nations declared 1975 International Women's Year for the purpose of promoting equality of men and women.... Canada alloted funds for projects aimed at achieving these objectives and many projects were undertaken across the country. The Central Council of Women's Auxiliaries to the United Fishermen & Allied Workers' Union at its annual convention in 1975 undertook to write a history highlighting women's contribution to the trade union movement in British Columbia. Finally, here is that book. Working people in BC have a proud history: a history that accalims the struggles for a better life, a better job and a better community. In 1975, we set out to record the history of the women of British Columbia who struggled for human rights and women's equality and who helped build our trade unions. We interviewed and recorded a wonderful group of women and men. And we appreciated all their stories. [This book] shares those stories. --Publisher's description

Jacobs has brought together the work of a number of progressive feminist writers, who theorize gender, race, diversity research, the social construction of women and work, ethnicity and class. The essays in this reader are focused on issues relating to gender equality in workspaces in society. The editor has gathered essays from well-known and established social scientists. Among them are Pat and Hugh Armstrong, Himani Bannerji, Christine Bruckert and Tania Das Gupta. The result is a stimulating collection that focuses on health-care workers, teachers, strippers, wage-less workers and women who are hidden from view. The collection explores the construction of gender, the selection of careers and the differential in work conditions and wages. --Publisher's description. Contents: Theorizing women's work: feminist methodology / Pat Armstrong and Hugh Armstrong -- The paradox of diversity: the construction of a multicultural Canada and "women of colour" / Himani Bannerji -- Qualitative research to identify racialist discourse: towards equity in nursing curricula / Rebecca Hagey and Robert W. MacKay -- Teaching against the grain: contradictions and possibilities / Roxana Ng -- Racism in nursing / Tania Das Gupta -- Toward anti-racism in social work in the Canadian context / Usha George -- The world of the professional stripper / Chris Bruckert -- Gender inequality and medical education / Jo-Anne Kirk -- Benevolent patriarchy: the foreign domestic movement, 1980-1990 / Patricia Daenzer -- The new wageless worker: volunteering and market-guided health care reform / Elizabeth Esteves -- "Who else would do it?": female family caregivers in Canada / Kristin Blakely -- Marginal women: examining the barriers of age, race and ethnicity / Robynne Beugebauer -- Creating understanding from research: staff nurses' views on collegiality / Merle Jacobs -- Antiracism advocacy in the climate of corporatization / Rebecca Hagey, Jane Turrittin, Evelyn Brody -- Undertaking advocacy / Merle Jacobs.

The 1940s in Canada are crucial to the understanding of labour history in this country. Following the Depression, and sparked by the need to mobilize the workforce during the Second World War, this decade led to a restructuring of the relationship between labour and the state. In Harnessing Labour Confrontation, Peter S. McInnis examines the reformation of Canadian society and its industrial relations regime from the perspective of labour organizations and their supporters and from that of government and business. What results is a synthesis of labour and political history, which the author uses to analyze in a North American context the role of confrontation and heated debate in the formation of a national postwar compromise and in the birth of a modern welfare state.Among the factors affecting the postwar compromises were, argues McInnis, the divided jurisdiction between federal and provincial governments, the return to gender-biased societal norms, a developing Cold War climate of national insecurity, and a promise of strong consumer purchasing power based on postwar wages and benefits packages. While some of the results of the 1940s compromise and the welfare state remains intact today, many of the political and social structures have deteriorated in the last two decades. --Publisher's description

Before 1950, the greatest number of Newfoundland farmers lived in the St. John's area. They and the townsfolk were interdependent, with the farmers providing meat, poultry, garden and dairy products to the city, while St. John's served as a ready market and a source of cash income. Although many street names serve as reminders of those who once worked the land, and others perpetuate old homesteads, the farmers of St. John's are as unknown today as though they had never been. Cows Don't Know It's Sunday gives a historical overview of farming and its importance to the economy of Newfoundland, and describes in detail, using the words of more than eighty people who grew up on or near farms, what it was like to farm in and around St. John's in the period within living memory. Farmers worked seven days a week throughout the year. This study of both the work life and social life of the farmers of St. John's is a tribute to the farming families who were the mainstay of the city during the first half of the twentieth century. --Publisher's description

This collection of selected excerpts focuses on the Canadian Historical Review's contribution to the study of Canadian history from the journal's founding in 1920 to the present. Using the CHR's own interconnected objectives as a benchmark - the promotion of high standards of historical research and writing in Canada, and the fostering of the study of Canadian history - Marlene Shore analyses the varying degrees of success the journals had in meeting its those goals. Her introductory essay shows how the CHR was shaped not only by its own editorial policies, but by international currents affecting the discipline of history and its practitioners. The excerpts, each accompanied by critical commentary, were chosen as representative of the major trends, crucial studies, and main controversies in Canadian historical writing. Shore has arranged them chronologically and thematically into four sections: Nation and Diversity, 1920-1939; War, Centralization, and Reaction, 1940-1965; The Renewal of Diversity, 1966 to the Present; and Reflections. Among the key themes explored by Shore and the contributing historians, Native-European contact, society and war, the nature of Canadian and Quebec nationalism, class-consciousness, and gender politics are highlighted. Broad in scope and focused in intent, The Contested Past offers an excellent introduction to twentieth century Canadian history and historiography. --Publisher's description

[E]xamines the effects of economic globalization on several manufacturing-dependent rural communities in Canada. In looking at such contemporary corporate strategies as plant closures and downsizing, authors [The authors] consider the impact of capitalist restructuring on the residents of various communities. [They] argue that the new rural economy has caused considerable instability and hardship in the lives of rural residents as they struggle to adapt in the face of economic upheaval."--Publisher's description. Contents: The Global and the Local: Understanding Globalization through Community Research -- Community Sketches, History, and Method -- The New Rural Economy and the Shape of Restructuring -- Skidding into the Contingent Work World -- 'Forget All Your Dreams and Good Luck with Your Life': Lay-Off and the New Reality of Contingent Labour -- Economic Diversity, Sustainability, and Manufacturing Communities. Geographic: Ontario. Ontario. Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-220) and index.

Mirrors of Stone delves into the many ethnic cultures that thrived in the mining areas of Northern Ontario from the 1920s to the 1960s. The stormy history of hardrock mining camps has never fit into the comfortable cliches by which Canada “tells its story.” Angus unearths the dark sides of this history–“the wild tales of bootleggers, mobsters, and prostitution rings” and in so doing opens up new ways of seeing Ontario’s history and culture. --Publisher's description

This introductory text examines the vital role of trade unions in Canada. In particular, it emphasizes how the values. objectives and activities of unions are shaped and changed in the context of employer opposition and often hostile governments. --Publisher's description.

Framing Our Past is about women's lived experience. Drawing from diaries, oral history, letters, organizational records, paintings, quilts, dressmaking patterns, milliners' records, and posters, the contributors offer fresh interpretations of this historical material and unique insights into the lives of individual Canadian women who expanded the boundaries of traditional roles. Lavishly illustrated, Framing Our Past looks at women and their social rituals with other women, organized sporting clubs, philanthropic, spiritual and aesthetic activities, study and reading groups. The authors explore women's roles as nurturers and keepers of the hearth and in family management, child care, and health care. They highlight women's work in areas as diverse as domestic labour, nursing, dressmaking, broadcasting, and banking as well as women's contributions to education and their instrumental political role in consumer activism, social work, and peace movements. --Publisher's description

In this study of the relations between workers and the state, Judy Fudge and Eric Tucker examine the legal regulation of workers' collective action from 1900 to 1948. They analyze the strikes, violent confrontations, lockouts, union organizing drives, legislative initiatives, and major judicial decisions that transformed the labour relations regime of liberal voluntarism, which prevailed in the later part of the nineteenth century, into industrial voluntarism, whose centrepiece was Mackenzie King's Industrial Disputes Investigation Act of 1907. This period was marked by coercion and compromise, as workers organized and fought to extend their rights against the profit-oriented owners of capital, while the state struggled to define a labour regime that contained industrial conflict. The authors then trace the conflicts that eventually produced the industrial pluralism that Canadians have known in more recent years." "The book is simultaneously & history of law, aspects of the state, trade unions and labouring people, and their interaction within the broad and shifting terrain of political economy. The authors are attentive to regional differences and sectoral divergences, and they attempt to address the fragmentation of class experience. -- Publisher's description

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

Intellectuel du mouvement ouvrier, Gustave Francq (1871-1952) a suivi une carrière hors de l’ordinaire. Il a occupé une place dans les hautes sphères décisionnelles du mouvement syndical nord-américain pendant plus de quarante ans. Sa contribution à la mise sur pied de la Fédération provinciale du travail du Québec fait de lui un précurseur de la Fédération des travailleurs et des travailleuses du Québec (FTQ). À ce sujet, soulignons qu’il est le fondateur du journal Le Monde ouvrier, aujourd’hui l’organe officiel de la FTQ. --Résumé de l'éditeur

[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;

Voici une fresque émouvante de la vie des gens attachants qui ont fait au fil des siècles l’histoire touchante de cette petite ville dont le site naturel du " Sault de Montmorency ", comme l’avait baptisé Champlain, est connu de tous. Le syndicaliste Fernand Daoust, qui rédige la préface de cet ouvrage, n’hésite pas à affirmer que " Jean-François Simard, par un remarquable travail de recherche minutieuse et parfois inédite, brosse un saisissant tableau d’une petite société qui souffre, qui peine mais qui rêve aussi tout au long de ses inépuisables générations […] ". Ballottés du monde rural au monde industriel puis postindustriel, les gens de Montmorency ont développé une conscience sociale qui a marqué la lutte des travailleurs québécois. En rappelant les péripéties de ces bouleversements, Jean-François Simard nous convie à un devoir de mémoire, d’attachement et de reconnaissance envers un petit coin attachant du Québec dont le labeur et le sens des responsabilités de ses habitants ont contribué à forger l’identité d’un peuple et à perpétuer ses valeurs d’endurance et de solidarité. L’histoire des femmes et des hommes qui ont vécu à Montmorency fait partie de notre patrimoine collectif et appartient à tout le Québec. Cet ouvrage s’intéresse donc à l’essor puis au déclin d’une petite communauté ouvrière, patrie de Fernand Dumont qui s’en est grandement inspiré pour ses travaux. Cette communauté, dans sa relation au double mouvement d’industrialisation et de désindustrialisation qui a rythmé l’avènement du capitalisme au cours du dernier siècle, a marqué de manière indélébile la quête des ouvriers québécois pour une plus grande justice sociale. --Résumé de l'éditeur

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.