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This article reviews the book, "Wrestling with Democracy: Voting Systems as Politics in the Twentieth-Century West," by Dennis Pilon.

The article reviews the book, "Progressive Education: Revisioning and Reframing Ontario's Public Schools, 1919-1942," by Theodore Michael Christou.

This article reviews the book, "Writing Unemployment: Worklessness, Mobility, and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Canadian Literatures," by Jody Mason.

Licenciements, restructurations et fermetures d’usines demeurent, dans le présent contexte de crise économique, au coeur de l’actualité. Cet environnement turbulent a des conséquences sur l’emploi local. C’est dans ce récent contexte de crise, menaçant l’emploi et les entreprises, que certaines organisations se sont emparées d’un dispositif de gestion des ressources humaines innovant : la mise à disposition de salariés (MAD). Ce dispositif vise à sauvegarder l’emploi local ainsi qu’à accroître le panel de compétences des salariés en bénéficiant. Il implique diverses organisations ayant pour but principal d’éviter les licenciements et de favoriser l’acquisition de nouvelles compétences pour les salariés y participant. Le prêt de main-d’oeuvre suppose que l’entreprise prêteuse ne facture à l’entreprise utilisatrice que la stricte valeur des salaires versés au salarié pendant la mise à disposition, des charges sociales afférentes, ainsi que, s’il y a lieu, des frais professionnels remboursés à l’intéressé au titre de la mise à disposition. Il s’agit d’un dispositif d’entraide à but non lucratif, généralement privilégié lorsque les entreprises ont des relations de proximité : géographique, dès lors que les acteurs sont localisés sur un même espace, mais aussi socio-économique, dès lors que les acteurs développent des relations. Trois pôles de compétitivité Rhône-Alpin ont été étudiés, dans lesquels l’utilisation de prêt de main-d’oeuvre entre organisations privées et centre de recherche public a été mise à profit. La grille de lecture utilisée correspond à la démarche analytique de l’économie de la proximité (Bouba-Olga et Grossetti, 2008). Nous nous attachons à répondre à la problématique suivante : dans quelles conditions la proximité permet-elle de construire des formules innovantes de GRH inter-organisationnelles, telles que le prêt de main-d’oeuvre ? Les résultats montrent que la proximité, qu’elle soit géographique ou socio-économique, permet de construire des dispositifs de GRH inter-organisationnelle innovants tels que la mise à disposition de salariés.

The article reviews and comments on the books, "Raising the Workers’ Flag: The Workers’ Unity League of Canada, 1930–1936," by Stephen Endicott; "Labour Goes to War: The CIO and the Construction of a New Social Order, 1939–1945," by Wendy Cuthbertson; "Our Union: UAW/CAW Local 27 from 1950 to 1990," by Jason Russell; and "Union Power: Solidarity and Struggle in Niagara," by Carmela Patrias and Larry Savage.

This paper describes a case study of a particular form of knowledge worker, lawyers and their efforts to achieve collective bargaining. Within self-regulated professions like law, the professional regulatory body controls much of the labour process and defines the body of professional knowledge. Apprenticeships, such as clinical locums in medicine and articles in law, play an important role in the transfer of labour process norms. However, more and more professionals seek employment in large organizations where the autonomy historically enjoyed by the self-employed worker and crafted in the confines of mentorships is increasingly subject to bureaucratic and administrative controls. In large employment settings rules and policies may interfere with workers' exercise of professional discretion and full utilization of their knowledge. The result of the erosion of traditional labour process power under bureaucratic forms of organization leads professionals to seek alternate forms of control. Many turn to collective bargaining as a means to wrest back control over the application of discretionary judgment from large, often public sector, employers.

We study public-sector bargaining and contract outcomes using Canadian data from 1978 to 2008. We have a number of interesting results, but our principal findings are from our analysis of wage settlements. We find that the essential services designation, which only allows non-essential members of a bargain unit to strike, is associated with decreases in wages. Our estimates also suggest that there is an arbitration wage premium and that making adjustments to the ability to pay criterion used by arbitrators to determine awards does not affect this premium. We also discuss the implications of our estimates.

We examine the effects of collective bargaining legislation, such as (among others) bans on replacement workers and reinstatement rights, on private sector strike activity and wage settlements using Canadian data from 1978 to 2008. Our estimates indicate that this legislation does not have a statistically significant effect on the incidence of strikes. However, we do find that some of the policy variables have a statistically significant effect on strike duration and wage settlements.

This paper examines the Amalgamated Transit Union’s (ATU) discussion of environmental issues since the mid 1980s. We explore the trialectic relationship between capital, labour and nature in Canada’s public transit unions, primarily through the lens of labour geography. In a review of union documents and Canadian newspapers we find the state uses the environment as a wedge issue in its ‘war or position’ with unions, representing workers’ strike actions as harmful to the environment and the community. The state’s positioning of ATU members as crucial to both the functioning of communities and environmental sustainability lends itself to counter-hegemonic campaign strategies. We examine a recent campaign by Toronto’s ATU Local 113 entitled “Protecting What Matters” as a local union’s community and environmental strategies during a period of austerity. The paper concludes with lessons learned from a labour geography perspective and calls for a more community based approach to resistance.

The article discusses the relation of comic books and graphic novels to academic research and political activism. Topics include educational theorist Paulo Freire's notion of conscientization, "The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book," written and illustrated by Gord Hill, and "Shift in Progress: A Not-So-Comic Book," by J. D. Gysbers and M. von Gaza. The comic book "A People's History of American Empire," by Howard Zinn with Paul Buhle and Mike Konopacki is noted.

This case study explores some of the strategies, challenges, and paradoxes of producing and mobilizing alternative knowledge in the prosecution of a “war of position" against neoliberal hegemony. Since its founding in 1980, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) has become the key labour-supported “think tank” of the left in Canada, contributing to the process of social democratization by acting as a collective organic intellectual for a wide range of oppositional groups and networks that, we suggest, make up a social democratic community of practice. The CCPA has developed a number of strategies aimed at democratizing knowledge production, perhaps unique in the context of Canadian policy groups. Nonetheless, it faces a number of challenges in following through with these strategies and potential paradoxes in simultaneously engaging both the mainstream (general public and policymakers) and the various counterpublics that make up its community of practice.

This paper examines a relative rarity in recent Canadian labour-state relations: the successful resistance by public sector workers and their allies to government-driven employment precarity. At stake was Toronto mayor Rob Ford's determination to contract out a thousand jobs held by city cleaners. In response, the cleaners and the city's labour movement launched a Justice and Dignity for Cleaners campaign to preserve these jobs as living wage employment. Effective coalition building behind a morally compelling campaign, together with some fortuitous political alignments, has forestalled city efforts to privatize a significant yet undervalued segment of the workforce. Our examination of the Justice and Dignity for Cleaners campaign reveals that resistance to precarity is not futile, notwithstanding some attendant ambiguity of what constitutes a labour victory.

For the purpose of trade union renewal, it is suggested that trade unions need to convert themselves from being institutions centred on employer-employee relations to open source ones engaged with broader social justice issues. In this article, we offer two elements to the debate on trade union revival: first, we focus on two rapidly emerging economies with a corporatist and state-centered union structure (i.e., Brazil and India); second, in the context of these two countries, we challenge the idea that informal workers are a burden for trade union organizations. We consider the possible contributions that informal workers could make towards the renewal of trade unions in these two countries. We argue that trade unions could take advantage of these contributions if they overcome the employee horizon, which originated in Western countries and excludes millions of workers from its purview in Brazil and India. We propose the concept of "homo faber" as a new horizon for trade union organization, which is inclusive of both formal as well as informal workers.

This article reviews the book, "Weavers of Dreams, Unite! Actors' Unionism in Early Twentieth-Century America," by Sean P. Holmes.

Argues that academic historians should accept some of the responsibility for the cuts to heritage institutions under the Harper government. Urges historians to make changes to their teaching and publishing, including the reward system for publication, as well as to the curriculum design for history in the public school system.

Équité en emploi - Équité salariale, by Marie-Josée Legault, is reviewed.

This article reviews the book, "The Broken Table: The Detroit Newspaper Strike and the State of American Labor," by Chris Rhomberg.

During the Spring of 2012, Québec experienced one of the most important social movements of its contemporary history. The Maple Spring started as a student protest against tuition fee hikes but ended up as a much broader social upheaval against austerity and the authoritarianism of the provincial government. This article investigates the role and position of the labor movement during the Maple Spring. It argues that the events of the Maple Spring demonstrate how the Québec labor movement was put under pressure by the politics of austerity and revealed its internal contradictions. More broadly, this article makes the case for a dialectical approach to understanding the labor movement that takes into consideration its internal diversity and tensions.

We assessed the degree of alignment of organizational strategies with telework using Statistics Canada's 2005 Workplace and Employee Survey data. We consider telework to be 'employee-oriented' when an employee works at home to address his and her family-related or personal wants or needs, and 'employer-oriented' otherwise. We found that employers focusing on innovation were significantly more likely to use both types of telework, with greater emphasis on employee-oriented telework, whereas employers favouring an involvement strategy were somewhat less likely to use either type of telework. We did not find a statistical relationship between a cost containment strategy and telework. Overall, the results suggested that employers are not universally aligning the implementation of the two types of telework with their organizational strategies.

The article reviews the book, "Wildlife, Conservation, and Conflict In Quebec: 1840-1914," by Darcy Ingram.