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A comprehensive overview of women's place in the work force. A Female Economy analyses a hundred years of women's work in Manitoba from the province's entry into Confederation in 1870 to the publication of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in 1970. Mary Kinnear shows that, whether women were working in the household or on a farm for no direct monetary reward or working for wages in the industrial, service, and professional sectors, their work was undervalued. Kinnear details how ordinary women - including early pioneers, East European immigrants, Native women, and professional women - lived and what they thought of the world of work, often telling their stories in their own words. She highlights the cultural and economic expectations for women and juxtaposes the activities society deemed suitable for women with what they actually did. Kinnear argues that a host of factors, such as class and ethnicity, differentiated their choices but that these women shared many common experiences. While women's own views furnish the main theme, A Female Economy contributes to a developing debate in feminist economics. By focusing on women's experiences in the sexually segregated economy of a Canadian province at the geographic centre of Canada, Kinnear furnishes a paradigm for women's economic activity in most western industrializing societies at the time. --Publisher's description

Patrick Lenihan displayed rare courage and unwavering commitment to social justice, from his childhood in revolutionary Ireland through his leading role in the Communist Party of Canada to the formation of the first national union of public employees. Patrick Lenihan: From Irish Rebel to Founder of Canadian Public Sector Unionism chronicles a lifetime of rebellion, protest, and organizing, aganist the backdrop of the major economic, social, and political struggles of this century. Lenihan was constantly watched, repeatedly arrested, and often imprisoned, but he emerged time and again as a leader in the cause of the downtrodden, the working poor, and the unemployed. The On-to-Ottawa Trek, the work camps of the 1930's, the radicalism of the western mine towns, the Cold War -- Pat Lenihan was involved in it all, front and center. Drawn from interviews conducted by Gilbert Levine and written in an unadorned, engaging style, Patrick Lenihan is far more than the story of Canada's most infuential and colorful figures. It makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of western radicalism, Canadian communism, state repression union organizing, and the daily struggles which have shaped 20th-century Canada. --Publisher's description

In [this book], experts on foreign domestic workers and workers-turned-activists document how the Canadian system has institutionalized unequal treatment of citizen and non-citizen workers. Since the 1940s, rights of citizenship for immigrant domestic workers in Canada have declined while the number of women recruited from Third World countries to work in Canadian homes has dramatically increased. The analysis...is both theoretical and practical, framing ideologies of privacy, maternalism, familialism, and rights, as well as examining government policy, labour organizing, and strategies to resist exploitation. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction / Abigail B. Bakan and Daiva Stasiulis -- Foreign domestic worker policy in Canada and the social boundaries of modern citizenship / Abigail B. Bakan and Daiva Stasiulis -- From mothers of the nation to migrant workers / Sedef Arat-Koc -- An affair between nations: international relations and the movement of household service workers / Patricia M. Daenzer -- Little victories and big defeats : the rise and fall of collective bargaining rights for domestic workers in Ontario / Judy Fudge -- The work at home is not recognized: organizing domestic workers in Montreal / Miriam Elvir -- We can still fight back: organizing domestic workers in Toronto / Pura M. Velasco.

Chronicles the 26 collective agreements signed by unions with the International Nickel Company (Inco) in Sudbury from 1944 to 1997. Describes the strikes and production shutdowns of 1958, 1966, 1969, 1975, 1978 , 1982, and 1997. Also includes a list of mining fatalities from 1890 to 1997.

[This book] offers a progressive approach to the sociology of work and labour. Each chapter tackles an essential contemporary labour issue and includes original research from top scholars across Canada. The first of four parts is devoted to the contemporary turmoil of working Canadians caused by the upheaval in the manufacturing and service industries. Part Two discusses the tremendous impact of technology on the labour force. Specific case studies raise universal questions. ...Part Three examines issues specific to women in the new and changing workplace. The intrinsic conflict of work and family is established as the context for examining the division of labour inside and outside the family. ...Chapters in the final part examine the loss of manufacturing jobs, and the new realities of unemployment, underemployment, and under-qualification. --Publisher's description (abridged)

A recounting of the lives of the leaders and organisers who were arrested and charged at the climax of the Winnipeg General Strike and how their efforts helped give birth to an active, organised Prairie labour movement that spread across the nation. --Publisher's description

An examination of the impact of the fast food industry on work and family life. Ester Reiter worked full-time at a Burger King outlet for ten months gathering information for this study. In Making Fast Food she shares her experiences and analyses the profound effect the fast food industry has had on women's work, youth employment, the labour movement, the family, and the community. Family life, for example, has changed dramatically in the last forty years as many activities that were traditionally part of the home have been replaced by services available in the marketplace. The second edition includes an epilogue that brings the study up to date. Reiter examines the way the fast food model is being adopted in other areas, such as health, and explores unionization in fast food businesses. --Publisher's description. Artwork by Richard Slye. Contents: The market moves into the family and the family moves into the market -- The restaurant industry in Canada -- The fast food invasion -- Burger King: a case study -- Working in a Burger King outlet -- Modern times in the hamburger business -- Martialling workers' loyalty -- Is this the work situation of the future?

C.S. Jackson was the labour leader that the establishment loved to hate. Tough, intelligent, courageous, and incorruptible, he was one of the founders of industrial unionism in Canada in the 1930's. He served as the head of the Canadian division of the United Electrical Workers for 43 years. During that time he battled with some of the world's largest corporations, with powerful politicians who had him interned, and with most of the leadership of the Candian labour movement. Long-associated with the Communist Party, Jackson and the UE were victimized by the Cold War, expelled from the Canadian Congress of Labour, and subjected to red-baiting raids conducted by unions under more moderate political leadership. But in the Cold War, which disfigured both Canadian society and the Candian labour movement, he gave as good as he got. This biography demonstrates that Jackson thrived on conflict and challange and rarely shrank from a confrontation - in either his public or private life. Making extensive use of interviews conducted with Jackson and his associates, it provides an intimate portrayal of one of the most controversial and successful radical labour leaders in Canadian history. --Publisher's description

In this study of the clothing industry in Canada, historian Mercedes Steedman examines how the intricate weaving together of the meanings of class, gender, ethnicity, family, and workplace served, often unconsciously, to create a job ghetto for women. Although 'girls', as working women were labelled, comprised a significant majority of garment workers - 80 percent in 1881, at the very beginnings of industrialization; 68 percent in 1941, when the percentage of women in all industrial sectors in Canada was only just over 15 percent - their roles were circumscribed both in the workplace and in the trade union bureaucracy. When strikes occurred, women were at the front of picket lines, gaining sympathy and favourable media coverage for the workers' cause. But when negotiations among union leaders, management, and government officials took place, women were conspicuous by their absence, and the subsequent agreements and job classifications invariably left them with lower wages and marginal status - in an industry where they were numerically dominant and often valued as the better workers. In "Angels of the Workplace," Professor Steedman presents a history of both the garment industry and the role of women in it. The rise of left-wing unionism held out some hope for a more equitable work environment, but by the 1930s a 'new unionism' that focused on labour-management co-operation - and on maintaining male hegemony on the shop floor and at the bargaining table - had formalized gender discrimination in the needle trades for the rest of the century. -- Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction: Across the Great Divide -- The Industrial Fields of Activity: Send Forth Your Daughters -- Worlds Apart: Women and Unions in the Needle Trades, 1890-1920 -- From Shop-Floor Action to New Unionism: The War Years and After -- Taking a Stand: Civil War in the Needle Trades -- 'A Real Man's Fight': Clothing Battles in the Depression Years -- When the Boys Get Together: Orchestrating Consent -- After the Acts: Setting the Standards, Putting on the Pressure -- Conclusion: 'This Group of Girls and Men .... '

Based on in-depth oral interviews with local residents, and rich archival sources, We Lived A Life and Then Some relates the common person’s struggle to overcome harsh working conditions and government neglect. The unique culture of the hardrock mining town of Cobalt is exposed through the eyes of retired miners, young welfare mothers, and grade-school children. Angus and Griffin reveal why, in spite of great adversity, Cobalt remains a distinctive and cohesive working-class community. --Publisher's description

Historien reconnu à l'échelle internationale, Stanley Bréhaut Ryerson a été un précurseur par sa réinterpretation de l'histoire des peuples de Canada. Ses ouvrages se tiennent une place tout à fait singulièredans l'historiographie canadienne. Intelluelle d'envergure, il a su allier l'excellence scientifique à la responsibilité sociale ; tout au longue une carrière de plus de soixante années, il a conservé ce profil de militant et d'historien engagé. Sa recherche, toujours inspirée des problèmes de société, a été animée par des valeurs de justice, de solidarité et de liberté. Cet ouvrage auquel participent quatorze collaborateurs qui veut faire connaître le plus important historien Marxiste du Canada. Il vise égalment rétracer la trajectoire militante et le cheminement intellectuel progressiste qui a laissé derrière lui une œuvre fort imposante. --Résumé de l'éditeur

This ground-breaking collection demonstrates the research interests of a new generation of scholars. Stressing such themes as gender, race and class, the book is compelling evidence that Western Canadian history is far more complex and subtle than its depiction in the traditional literature. The contributors emphasize the way society has been made, and the extent to which it was - and is - the product of human agency rather than possessing an intangible existency beyond the interaction of groups of people. --Publisher's description

[E]xamines thoroughly the ecological, economic, political, legal, and social influences that drive public, private, and parapublic sectors into intense and often bitter disputes over employment conditions. --From publisher's description

Recounts the story of labour from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. A masterful overview that encompasses all regions of the country, the book paints a vivid portrait of labour's varied past, covering the birth of craft unionism prior to World War I, the setbacks of the interwar years, and the post-World War II breakthrough that gave unions a permanent, if still constrained, place in the national economy. In its analysis of the more recent past, the book ranges just as widely, discussing everything from the organization of public sector employees in the sixties to the anti-free-trade coalitions of the eighties and the massive layoffs of the nineties. --Publisher's description

Fondée en 1925, la ville d'Arvida est née de la nécessité de fournir de la main-d'oeuvre à l'usine Alcan qui venait de s'implanter sur les rives du Saguenay. L'arrivée de la grande enterprise dans le Québec rural a conduit au téléscopage de deux cultures: la culture industrielle moderne de l'Amérique du Nord Anglophone et la culture rurale traditionelle du Québec francophone. Arvida est un véritable microcosme de la naissance d'une ville industrielle et du développement de l'identité communautaire de sa population. José Igartua s'intéresse tout particulièrement au movement ouvrier local qui a atteint son apogée lors de la célèbre grève sauvage de 1941, démontrant que la lutte pour l'action collective a marqué un tournant dans l'épanouissement de la conscience communautaire. --Résumé de l'éditeur

[P]rovides an historical background to native labour in BC from the Gold Rush to the beginning of the Great Depression. It counters the common misconception that native people responded to European settlement and industrial development by retreating to a reserve existence. Evidence amassed from logging, transport, construction, longshoring, commercial fishing and canning, and a host of other industries shows that native Indians played a significant role in British Columbia's economy from the moment the first European explorers appeared off the coast. --Publisher's description. A massively documented history of Native Indian wage labour in British Columbia from initial European settlement in the mid 19th century to the beginning of the great depression. The first and as yet only historical study of Native Indian workers in Canada, it challenges many of the romantic misconceptions which have developed over the years. An expanded version of a title originally published in 1978. --Author's description

Discusses the origins and history of the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians, a progressive organization founded in 1918 as the Ukrainian Temple Labour Association.

Making Vancouver is about the people of Vancouver, British Columbia. It traces the social transformation of the city and points out how Shaughnessy Heights lumber barons, Mount Pleasant trades people, and East End labourers were part of a complex society whose members exhibited sharp differences in attitudes and behaviour. In Making Vancouver, Robert McDonald depicts a western city that was neither egalitarian nor closed to opportunity. Vancouver up to the crash of 1913 was a dynamic centre. The rapidity of growth, easy access to resources, a narrow industrial base, and the homogeneous nature of its population, the majority of which was of British birth, softened the thrust towards class division inherent in capitalism. Far more powerful in directing social relations was the quest for status, creating a social structure that was no less hierarchical than that predicted by class theory but much more fluid. The social boundary that separated the working class from others is revealed as a division that for much of the pre-war boom period divided Vancouver society more fundamentally than the boundary separating labour from capital. --Publisher's description