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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

This article introduces a methodology for measuring differences in the labor standards between the US and Canada, taking into account variations by state and province. This methodology is then used to analyze differences in the 2 countries on 10 labor standards. The results indicate that 6 standards are higher in Canada than in the US: 1. paid time off, 2. unemployment/employment insurance, 3. workers' compensations, 4. collective bargaining, 5. unjust discharge, and 6. advance notice of plant closings/large scale layoffs. Standards covering minimum wages, overtime and occupational safety and health are higher in the US than in Canada. There is no difference in the 2 countries in standards covering employment discrimination/employment equity. The results suggest that overall, although there are exceptions, labor standards are higher in Canada than the US.

The article reviews the book, "Les relations du travail au Québec," 2e édition, by Michel Leclerc and Michel Quimper.

While it has been generally understood that domestic service was an institution of particular importance to working-class women and to middle-class householders in North America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we still know little about the interwar years, a period during which the occupation declined in overall importance, but still defined many women's working lives. In the 1920s and 1930s, a vast majority of women who grew up in Newfoundland's coastal communities, where household production and the family fishery remained the mainstay of the economy, spent part of their lives performing domestic tasks for pay. To begin to understand the historical and cultural significance of domestic service to women's lives in Newfoundland, this dissenation uses a case-study approach. It focuses on the pulp and paper mill town of Grand Falls, where there was a steady demand for domestics by mill workers and their families, the town's elite, and hotels and boarding houses during the 1920s and 1930s. One of a number of single-resource towns supported by Newfoundland's economic diversification policies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Grand Falls was built in the interior of the island by the Harmsworth brothers of Britain in 1905. By tracing domestics' lives and experiences from countryside to company town, into the household = as workplace - and then into their married lives, the study explores themes relating to the gendered nature of uneven development. For instance, many Grand Falls employers shared much in common with the women they hired, in terms of religion, ethnicity and social origin., which raises interesting questions about the gender and class dimensions of an employer/employee relationship that has traditionally been characterized as one of domination and subordination. It also considers that relations of gender and class within the company town were formed in conjunction with factors such as migration patterns, pre-existing concepts of the gender division of labour within household production, company paternalism and social stratification within the workplace, the household and the town. The ways in which these factors overlapped and shaped the lives of domestics forms the backdrop of this study.

The article reviews the book, "Les gouvernances de l'emploi: relations professionnelles et marché du travail en France et en Allemagne," by Michel Lallement.

The article reviews the book, "La Représentation syndicale. visage juridique actuel et futur," by Gregor Murray and Pierre Verge.

The article reviews the book, "Unwilling Idlers: The Urban Unemployed and Their Families in Late Victorian Canada," by Peter Baskerville and Eric W. Sager.

This study assesses the effectiveness of goal setting, goal setting plus training in self-instruction, and being urged to do one's best on the performance of unionized employees (n = 32). The ability of managers, peers and self to observe changes in employee performance was also assessed. Appraisals were made prior to and 10 weeks following three interventions. ANCOVA indicated that employees who set specific, difficult goals had significantly higher performance than those in the doing one's best and those doing goal setting plus self-instruction. Moreover, self-efficacy correlated positively with subsequent performance. Employee satisfaction with the performance appraisal process was high across the three conditions. Peers provided better data for assessing the effect of an intervention than self or managers.

The article reviews the book, "Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America," by Saidiya V. Hartman.

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

The article reviews the book, "Radical Roots: The Shaping of British Columbia," by Harold Griffin.

Rethinking the Labor Process, edited by Mark Wardell, Thomas L. Steiger and Peter Meiksins, is reviewed.

This essay provides a selective overview of the Canadian historiography on family. The roots of family history not only extend backwards much further than the "new social history" born of the tumultuous 1960s, they are buried deep in several other disciplines, most notably sociology, anthropology, and demography, whose practitioners were concerned as much with the historical process of family change as with the state of families contemporary to their times. I consider how pioneering social scientists, by grappling with the family's relationship to structural change, historicized early 20th century family studies and offered up many of the questions, concepts, théories, and methods that continue to inform historical scholarship on families. Turning to the body of historical publications that followed in the wake of, and were often inspired by, the "new social history," I highlight the monograph studies that served as signposts in the field's development, especially for what they have revealed about the critical nexus of family, work, and class. The historiography mirrors the family 's history: "family" consists of so many intricately plaited strands that separating them out is frustrating and often futile. I have attempted to classify this material both topically and chronologically within broad categories, but the boundaries blur so that most of these works could fit as comfortably in several others. Many of them, in fact, will be recognized as important contributions to fields such as labour, ethnic, women's, or gender history rather than as works of family history per se.

Describes the forthcoming biographical dictionary of US French-speaking radicals that was intended to contribute to sociobiographical studies. [Editor's note (2021): There was no record that the book was published.]

The article reviews the book, "Unlikely Partners: Philanthropic Foundations and the Labor Movement," by Richard Magat.

Les clauses dites « orphelins » ont été introduites au Québec vers le milieu des années 80. Récemment, un débat très vif a eu cours au sujet de la validité de ces clauses. La question du caractère discriminatoire ou non des clauses « orphelins », par rapport à la Charte des droits et libertés de la personne, a occupé fréquemment le devant de la scène au Québec pour aboutir à l'adoption, par l'Assemblée nationale, du projet de loi n" 67 modifiant la Loi sur les normes du travail. Cet article présente d'abord le concept de discrimination et ses possibilités d'application au phénomène des clauses « orphelins », étudie la portée des exceptions au principe de discrimination dans l'emploi qui pourraient faire écran à d'éventuelles plaintes en ce domaine, pour examiner enfin la juridiction respective de la Commission des normes du travail et de la Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse.

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

Contracting Masculinity: Gender, Class and Race in a White-Collar Union, 1944-1994, by Gillian Creese, is reviewed.

Cette thèse traite de l'évolution du mouvement ouvrier montréalais de 1918 à 1929. Nous examinons les diverses organisations ouvrières, tant leur structure et leur composition, que les différentes idéologies qui coexistent dans les groupes ouvriers de la région montréalaise. Après avoir retracé les origines de ces organisations, leur évolution au cours de la Première Guerre mondiale, nous analysons leur développement au cours de la décennie qui suit la fin guerre. Nous cherchons, au delà des présupposés et des généralités, à comprendre le processus d'évolution du mouvement ouvrier montréalais. L'analyse de l'évolution des syndicats et des organisations politiques permet de saisir toute la complexité de rapports sociaux et les difficultés pour les travailleurs d'occuper une place significative. Notre analyse décrit aussi la place des diverses composantes nationales présentes dans le mouvement ouvrier montréalais. Nous insistons sur la place des travailleurs francophones et sur le rôle des travailleurs juifs jusqu'ici méconnu. Nous subdivisons cette tranche historique en trois périodes qui recoupent des conjonctures spécifiques. Les années de l'immédiat après-guerre sont marquées par une très forte agitation ouvrière alors que de très nombreux ouvriers et ouvrières se dotent de syndicats et revendiquent de meilleures conditions de vie et de travail. Le syndicalisme international de métier voit sa prédominance contestée par le syndicalisme canadien et le syndicalisme révolutionnaire. À droite de l'échiquier syndical, le syndicalisme catholique s'installe définitivement au Québec et constitue une des caractéristiques majeures du mouvement ouvrier québécois. L'effervescence ouvrière ne débouche pas sur des organisations politiques fortes malgré l'existence d'un parti ouvrier qui obtient quelques gains électoraux alors que les organisations de gauche doivent se réorganiser, victimes notamment de la répression gouvernementale et patronale. La crise, qui s'enclenche dès le milieu de 1920, affecte considérablement des organisations ouvrières lorsque le capitalisme tient à revenir aux situations qui prévalaient avant la guerre. Les organisations syndicales cherchent à résister à cette stratégie mais le nombre de syndicats décroît. Toutefois, cette baisse du membership syndical ne ramène pas le nombre de syndiqués au niveau de 1913 parce que, parmi les syndicats apparus dans la foulée de la révolte ouvrière, de nombreux syndicats résistent efficacement, dont des syndicats canadiens et des syndicats catholiques. La gauche se réorganise autour du Parti communiste canadien, creusant un fossé entre eux et le reste des militants ouvriers. Le Parti ouvrier du Canada entreprend sa lente marginalisation. Au milieu de la décennie, profitant d'une reprise économique, le mouvement ouvrier se relève. Les syndicats se réorganisent, leur membership augmente et leurs revendications deviennent plus offensives montrant ainsi un regain de militantisme. Mais les divisions s'accentuent dans les rangs syndicaux alors que les syndicats canadiens et catholiques contestent de plus en plus le leadership occupé par les syndicats internationaux de métier. Au plan politique, le Parti communiste occupe pratiquement toute la place, les socio-démocrates se voyant relégués à quelques bastions.