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This article reviews the book, "Working through the Past: Labor and Authoritarian Legacies in Comparative Perspective," edited by Teri L. Caraway, Maria Lorena Cook and Stephen Crowley.

The Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) has become the dominant approach in comparative political economy and enjoys wide application and attention in disciplines outside of political science and sociology. Indeed the VoC approach has enjoyed much attention in comparative industrial/employment relations (IR). This article undertakes a critical evaluation of the importation of the VoC paradigm into comparative IR. Inter alia, it is argued that the VoC approach, as it is presently configured, may have little to teach IR scholars because its basic theoretical concepts and methodological priors militate against accounting for change. This article begins with a summary of the routine problems researchers in comparative political economy and comparative IR have encountered when attempting to account for change within the constraints of the VoC paradigm. Here the focus is on the limitations imposed when privileging the national scale and the problems engendered by a heavy reliance on comparative statics methodology infused with the concepts of equilibrium and exogenous shocks. The article then goes beyond these routinely recognized limitations and argues that the importation of terminology from neoclassical economic theory, of which the original VoC statement makes foundational reference, further serves to constrain and add confusion to the comparative enterprise; namely, comparative advantage, Oliver Williamson’s neoclassical theory of the firm, the use of the distinction made between (im)perfect market competition in neoclassical economics and the fuzzy distinction made between firms, markets and networks. In the concluding section we argue that the VoC’s narrow focus on the firm and its coordination problems serve to legitimate IRs traditional narrow focus on labour management relations and the pride of place that HRM now enjoys in the remaining IR departments. Ultimately, however, the embrace of the VoC paradigm by comparative IR is a net negative normative move.

The article reviews the book, "Techniciens de l’organisation sociale. La réorganisation de l’assistance catholique privée à Montréal (1930-1974)," by Amélie Bourbeau.

Fondé en 1967, le Jazz libre se démarque dans le paysage culturel du Québec par sa quête d’une praxis révolutionnaire dont la visée est de promouvoir la démocratie culturelle dans les milieux ouvriers. Durant ses huit années d’existence, ce groupe d’improvisateurs tisse des liens non négligeables avec le Conseil central des syndicats nationaux de Montréal, le Front de libération du Québec et le Front de libération des femmes. Les membres de ce collectif s’approprient le free jazz – une musique rattachée au nationalisme noir – afin de situer leur projet d’un Québec socialiste et indépendant dans un processus historique marqué par la décolonisation. Cette appropriation exprime un désir de concrétiser un rapprochement entre l’individu québécois colonisé – celui que Pierre Vallières qualifie de « nègre blanc d’Amérique » – et son homologue afro-américain. Elle repose sur la conviction que l’improvisation en musique est un vecteur de communication, d’organisation et de participation. La présente étude interroge le discours politico-culturel sur lequel la « musique-action » du Jazz libre repose. Elle propose une analyse élargie de la place occupée par le free jazz dans les mouvements de résistance au pouvoir tout en mettant en relief le volet culturel du militantisme politique déployé au Québec durant les années 1960 et 1970.

The article reviews the book, "Free Labor: The Civil War and the Making of an American Working Class," by Mark A. Lause.

The article reviews the book, "L’intervention en santé et en sécurité du travail. Pour agir en prévention dans les milieux de travail," edited Sylvie Montreuil, Pierre-Sébastien Fournier and Geneviève Baril-Gingras.

The 2005 first-contract strike at Lakeside Packers in Brooks, Alberta was one of the largest private sector labour victories in that province in over twenty years. At the time, the strike made national headlines for violence and animosity on the picket line. The strike is also noteworthy because African and Asian immigrant and refugee workers played a central role in the dispute. The union involved, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 401, adopted a series of innovative tactics which also contributed to the outcome. This article examines the events of the 2005 strike and explores the role played by immigrant activism in catalyzing and anchoring the struggle. It also analyzes which strategies employed by the union were most effective in organizing this group of workers. The article concludes by contemplating possible lessons for the labour movement today for organizing immigrant workers.

When Professor Murray Young was teaching his pioneering courses on New Brunswick history up to what was then the recent past of the 1960s, colleagues would ask him what text he was using for the contemporary period. His answer was the Byrne Report. Students in that class learned how to read tables of data and lists of recommendations, and they came to appreciate the Report of the Royal Commission on Finance and Municipal Taxation as one of the most significant documents in the historical evolution of the province. --Introduction

The article reviews the books, "Sensing Chicago: Noisemakers, Strikebreakers, and Muckrakers," by Adam Mack, "Urban Green: Nature, Recreation, and the Working Class in Industrial Chicago," by Colin Fisher, "The People and the Bay: A Social and Environmental History of Hamilton Harbour," by Nancy B. Bouchier and Ken Cruikshank, and "Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town," by Ellen Griffith Spears.

The article reviews the book, "Watching Women’s Liberation 1970: Feminism’s Pivotal Year on the Network News," by Bonnie J. Dow.

Analyzes various forms of discrimination experienced by women journalists at Canadian Press from the mid-1960s to 2000. A feminist, interdisciplinary approach is used to examine masculine newsroom norms and how they affected women's careers. Problems of mentoring are also explored. The study is based on over 30 oral interviews including with women who worked at different times as journalists and editors at CP.

Depuis les années 1980, les syndicats locaux doivent souvent gérer les compressions demandées par la partie patronale lors des rondes de négociation. Disposant de très peu de marge de manoeuvre dans sa négociation, le syndicat se voit contraint de choisir entre une précarité généralisée et une précarité réservée à un groupe de travailleurs. Il en arrive à faire des compromis qui l’amènent à devenir un vecteur d’inégalités économiques et sociales, plutôt qu’un moteur d’amélioration des conditions des travailleurs. Les diverses clauses de disparité de traitement confèrent des droits et des avantages différents à certaines catégories de salariés travaillant pour un même employeur, que ce soit en raison de leur statut d’emploi (Bernier, 2011), de leur affiliation syndicale ou de leur date d’embauche (Côté, 2008).L'objectif principal de cette étude est de traiter des conséquences qu'ont eu la présence de ces clauses « orphelins », ainsi que leur contestation, sur les deux syndicats locaux étudiés. Également, nous souhaitons fournir des pistes de réflexion quant à ses impacts sur le collectif syndical. En effet, nous avons observé, chez les deux syndicats étudiés, que l'on refuse de considérer la double échelle salariale comme étant de la discrimination, et ce, pour deux principales raisons. D'abord, les exécutifs locaux sont peu familiers avec la notion de discrimination. Leurs connaissances se limitent souvent à la discrimination directe, alors que les plaignants allèguent une discrimination indirecte désavantageant les salariés les plus récemment embauchés, et donc plus jeunes. Secundo, les syndicats ne se reconnaissent aucune part de responsabilité dans l'entente intervenue en raison du contexte économique et juridique de la négociation et des fortes pressions exercées par l'employeur. En conclusion, nous aborderons les différents effets de la négociation de clauses « orphelins », soit la persistance des inégalités et la difficulté de mettre en oeuvre la norme d'égalité en milieu syndiqué. // Title in English: When the Union Becomes a Vector of Inequalities: The Effects of Orphan Clauses on Union Association. Since the 1980s, unions have often been under pressure to accept wage compressions during collective bargaining. Faced with little bargaining power, their only choice sometimes ends up being between accepting eroded conditions for all or only some of their members. In this context, unions go from being a partner in the fight against inequalities to being a vector of inequalities. Based on two case studies where unions agreed to introduce orphan clauses to existing collective agreements, this paper aims to document the consequences unions have to deal with when some of their members decide to challenge such clauses because they find them to be discriminatory.We observed that in both unions, there was a refusal to consider the dual salary scale as being discriminatory for two main reasons: first, local officers are unfamiliar with the notion of discrimination, often limited to direct discrimination, while the orphan clauses create indirect discrimination that impacts the newlyhired employees, and consequently those employees that are younger; second, Unions do not recognize any responsibility on their part as the labour agreement was reached in a specific legal and economic context and under pressure from the employer.In conclusion, we find that various effects of the negotiation of orphan clauses include the persistence of inequalities and the difficulty to implement equality rules within the unionized sector.

Cet article fait la lumière sur le militantisme et la vie politique d’Alphonse-Télesphore Lépine (1855–1943), premier député ouvrier élu à la Chambre des communes du Canada (1888–1896). Dans le cadre de cette analyse, nous explorons la manière dont ce membre influent de l’Ordre des Chevaliers du travail de Montréal met en place sa campagne électorale et nous tentons de comprendre les liens, parfois tumultueux, que celui-ci entretient avec les militants de l’Ordre. Centrant notre analyse sur la personne d’Alphonse-Télesphore Lépine comme objet historique – dont les choix, les relations professionnelles, les idées et les valeurs sont au centre de la chose publique –, nous cherchons à rendre compte des réseaux partisans, et plus largement, de la culture politique des ouvriers.

The article reviews and comments on the books, "Disability Histories," edited by Susan Burch and Michael Rembis, and "Civil Disabilities: Citizenship, Membership, and Belonging," edited by Nancy J. Hirschmann and Beth Linker.

When it comes to negotiating over a collective dismissals plan, the French national legal framework explicitly encourages social partners to favour outplacement services over significant indemnity payments. However, significant above-mandatory redundancy payments are commonly granted to laid-off workers. Based on these factual observations, this article aims to identify the antecedent conditions, or, more precisely, the combinations of conditions, that lead to the granting of a large severance pay. We conducted a qualitative comparative analysis (Crisp set QCA) methodology applied to 20 monographs on downsizing operations that took place in France during the 2000s. The results show that above-mandatory severance payments are closely related to two major dimensions characterizing the economic and social context in which restructuring processes are carried out. The first one is about the balance of power prevailing between the company decisionmakers and the employees. This balance of power dimension is subsumed by two distinct conditions: the availability of financial resources and the presence of active unions. The second dimension relates to the moral and economic damages inflicted upon laid-off workers. This dimension is intrinsically connected to two downsizing process features, i.e. the perceived degree of legitimacy associated with the downsizing process and the degree of employability associated with the laid-off workers. Most notably, it appears that none of the identified conditions is sufficient by itself to induce the payment of a significant above-mandatory indemnity. However, some causal conditions may induce the outcome variable when they are combined with some specific other antecedent conditions. Thus, our research shows that the financial resource condition leads to the granting of an above-mandatory indemnity either in conjunction with a low degree of worker’s employability or in conjunction with both a weak perceived legitimacy of the restructuring process and the presence of active unions.

The article reviews the book, "Charivari et justice populaire au Québec," by René Hardy.

The article reviews the book, "Santé et travail à la mine, XIXe-XXIe siècle," edited by Judith Rainhorn.

Les programmes de migration temporaire constituent une manifestation de la division internationale du travail qui se concrétise par le déplacement de la main-d’oeuvre. Les travailleurs étrangers temporaires et leurs employeurs s’insèrent dans un système d’emploi qui se caractérise par l’action intervenant à l’occasion de la formation, de l’exécution et de la terminaison du rapport salarial. Or, si l’action intervenant au sein d’un système d’emploi résulte notamment des effets des règles juridiques applicables, elle découle également des schémas d’action mis de l’avant par les acteurs qui y interagissent. Cependant, certains de ces acteurs sont susceptibles d’occuper, de façon singulière, la scène de l’action : la prégnance de leurs schémas d’action est directement proportionnelle à la nature et à la portée du rôle qu’ils assument dans le système d’emploi. Cet article présente les résultats d’une étude de terrain qui a permis de cerner les contours du système d’emploi dans lequel s’insèrent les travailleurs agricoles guatémaltèques embauchés via le « Volet agricole » du Programme des travailleurs étrangers temporaires. Notre recherche révèle de quelle façon s’organise la capacité d’action des acteurs exogènes et endogènes au champ du travail. Elle permet également de comprendre de quelle façon certains acteurs sont contraints par l’effet de frontières géographiques et systémiques. Finalement, l’appréhension empirique du système d’emploi étudié amène aussi à brosser le portrait d’un rapport salarial multipartite tout à fait singulier. // Title in English: Temporary migration programs are a manifestation of the international division of labour that is reflected in the movement of productive agents. Temporary foreign workers and their employers are part of a unique employment system that is characterized by game mechanisms involved during the formation, implementation and termination of the wage relationship. If these games are inextricably linked to the legal rules regulating the wage relationship, they also stem from the practices and strategies deployed by the actors interacting within the employment system. However, some of these actors have the ability to occupy a unique place at the scene of the action, with the significance of their action plans being directly proportional to the nature and scope of the role they play in the employment system. This article presents the results of a field study that identified the contours of the employment system in which Guatemalan agricultural workers were hired through the agricultural stream of the Temporary Foreign Workers Program. This research shows how actors, who can be exogenous or endogenous to the labour field, organize their capacity for action. Hence, if the action of some actors is constrained by the effect of geographic and system boundaries, an empirical understanding of the employment system studied also shows a mismatch between the legal power granted to the employer under labour law and the strategic power that is available to certain actors who are external to the labour field. To conclude, this article provides an overview of the ways in which this multiparty context has consequences for the wage relationship studied.

The article reviews the book, "Prévenir les problèmes de santé mentale au travail : contribution d’une recherche-action en milieu scolaire," by Marie-France Maranda, Simon Viviers et Jean-Simon Deslauriers.

The article reviews the book, "International and Comparative Employment Relations. National regulation, global changes," 6th ed., by Greg J. Bamber, Russell D. Lansbury, Nick Wailes and Chris F. Wright.