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This article reviews the book, "Building Global Labor Solidarity in a Time of Accelerating Globalization," by Kim Scipes.

The article reviews the book, "Sports and Labor in the United States," by Michael Schiavone.

This paper examines the tension between macro level regulation and the rule breaking and rule following that happens at the workplace level. Using a comparative study of Canada, Norway, and Germany, the paper documents how long-term residential care work is regulated and organized differently depending on country, regional, and organizational contexts. We ask where each jurisdiction’s staffing regulations fall on a prescription-interpretation continuum; we define prescription as a regulatory tendency to identify what to do and when and how to do it, and interpretation as a tendency to delineate what to do but not when and how to do it. In examining frontline care workers’ strategies for accomplishing everyday social, health, and dining care tasks we explore how a policy-level prescriptive or interpretive regulatory approach affects the potential for promising practices to emerge on the frontlines of care work. Overall, we note the following associations: prescriptive regulatory environments tend to be accompanied by a lower ratio of professional to non-professional staff, a higher concentration of for-profit providers, a lower ratio of staff to residents and a sharper division of labour. Interpretive regulatory environments tend to have higher numbers of professionals relative to non-professionals, more limited for-profit provision, a higher ratio of staff to residents, and a more relational division of labour that enables the work to be more fluid and responsive. The implication of a prescriptive environment, such as is found in Ontario, Canada, is that frontline care workers possess less autonomy to be creative in meeting residents’ needs, a tendency towards more task-oriented care and less job autonomy. The paper reveals that what matters is the type of regulation as well as the regulatory tendency towards controlling frontline care workers decision-making and decision-latitude.

The article reviews the book, "The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850–1894," by Sam Mitrani.

Cet article a pour objectif d’analyser l’influence de la culture organisationnelle sur les problèmes d’épuisement professionnel dans la main-d’œuvre. Ceci est important pour explorer des pistes d’intervention qui vont au-delà des employés eux-mêmes et des conditions de travail ainsi qu’afin de mieux comprendre comment les éléments du contexte organisationnel peuvent influencer le développement de l’épuisement professionnel dans les organisations. En intégrant à la fois la culture organisationnelle et les conditions de l’organisation du travail, il est possible d’examiner comment la culture influence les différentes composantes des conditions de l’organisation du travail et comment celles-ci peuvent, ensuite, donner lieu au développement ou à l’aggravation des différentes dimensions de l’épuisement professionnel. Cette étude s’appuie sur le courant fonctionnaliste, selon lequel la culture existe dans l’organisation par ses manifestations et artefacts — qui expriment les valeurs et les croyances partagées —, et sur lesquels la haute direction peut avoir une emprise. Des analyses de régression multiples de type multi-niveaux ont été conduites à partir de données recueillies dans 60 établissements privés canadiens auprès de 1824 individus lors de l’étude SALVEO (2009-2012). Les résultats montrent que les cultures groupales, rationnelles et développementales s’associent aux différentes dimensions de l’épuisement professionnel. Ainsi, les cultures organisationnelles groupales et développementales, qui sont caractérisées par la flexibilité, s’associent indirectement à un niveau plus faible d’épuisement émotionnel et de cynisme et à un niveau plus élevé d’efficacité professionnelle. La culture rationnelle, qui est caractérisée par la performance, s’associe indirectement à un niveau plus élevé d’épuisement émotionnel et de cynisme. La culture hiérarchique, quant à elle, ne s’associe pas avec l’épuisement professionnel. Les résultats obtenus démontrent l’importance d’intégrer des variables reliées au contexte organisationnel dans les études portant sur l’épuisement professionnel.

The article reviews the book, "Only One Thing Can Save Us: Why America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement," by Thomas Geoghegan.

The main response (Mantsios 2015) to neoliberalism and the marginalization of labor studies in higher education has been the call for a “new” labor college—one that integrates “workforce development” and liberal arts, yet separates worker education from its working-class roots. This article interrogates the state of worker education and the impact of neoliberalism on various civic engagement efforts at colleges and universities. The authors argue for a critical reevaluation of workers’ education and labor studies programs, calling for organized workers to retake control of such projects to avoid the deradicalization of class politics now ascendant in neoliberal institutions.

The article reviews the book, "Empire of Cotton: A Global History," by Sven Beckert.

This article reviews the book, "Reflexive Labour Law in the World Society," by Ralf Rogowski.

This article reviews the book, "Responsabilité sociale des entreprises: mirage ou réalité ?," by Mustapha Bettache.

Au Canada, le 19e siècle constitue une période de transformations profondes. Parmi celles-ci etaient la transition au capitalisme qui simula l’économie coloniale et produisit une richesse nationale alors même que son mouvement engendra d’importantes inégalités sociales. Cette transition se loge au cœur de plusieurs questions qui occupent la sociologie historique sur les façons dont le capitalisme transforma les relations sociales en Occident et au Canada. Nombreuses de ces questions ont déjà été éclairées alors que d’autres demandent toujours à sortir de l’obscurité. Cet article a pour objectif de dresser un portrait des familles ouvrières et de leurs différentes stratégies de reproduction. À l’aide des données recueillies sur la population de la ville de Québec, nous souhaitons comparer différentes pratiques sociales en mettant l’accent sur les caractéristiques d’un nouveau régime temporel et mesurer son influence sur les ouvriers et ouvrières.

The article reviews the book, "Transforming Provincial Politics: The Political Economy of Canada’s Provinces and Territories in the Neoliberal Era," edited by Bryan M. Evans and Charles W. Smith.

Why is there no labor party in the United States? This question has had deep implications for U.S. politics and social policy. Existing explanations use “reflection” models of parties, whereby parties reflect preexisting cleavages or institutional arrangements. But a comparison with Canada, whose political terrain was supposedly more favorable to labor parties, challenges reflection models. Newly compiled electoral data show that underlying social structures and institutions did not affect labor party support as expected: support was similar in both countries prior to the 1930s, then diverged. To explain this, I propose a modified “articulation” model of parties, emphasizing parties’ role in assembling and naturalizing political coalitions within structural constraints. In both cases, ruling party responses to labor and agrarian unrest during the Great Depression determined which among a range of possible political alliances actually emerged. In the United States, FDR used the crisis to mobilize new constituencies. Rhetorical appeals to the “forgotten man” and policy reforms absorbed some farmer and labor groups into the New Deal coalition and divided and excluded others, undermining labor party support. In Canada, mainstream parties excluded farmer and labor constituencies, leaving room for the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) to organize them into a third-party coalition.

The contemporary living wage movement emerged in the United States through the 1990s. It marked a particularly dramatic response at the local and regional level to the erosion in the quality of employment in the American labour market. In many respects it was and is today a rebellion of urban, racialized service sector workers. What is much less discussed are efforts to establish living wage policies in Canada. The Canadian living wage campaigns are much less movements than a strategy of rational policy advocacy. A variety of legal, political and ideological factors make this so. It is not a judgement but an observation meriting some greater interrogation.

The article reviews the book, "Metis and the Medicine Line: Creating a Border and Dividing a People," by Michel Hogue.

Union approaches in relation to the global recalibration of work and employment relations and practices over the last three decades are being worked out in practice. The question for unions is by which means they either have leverage or the potential to exercise power in relation to state and corporate decisions and strategies. Unions thus face challenging questions about the ways they organize, exercise their capacities and attempt to meet their purposes. With reference to the Australian maritime sector, the study examines the ways the main union, the Maritime Union of Australia, developed multi-scalar approaches to localized events. The problem unions face is to defend and advance workers’ interests. The task is to organize, to realize their capacities to defend and advance maritime workers’ interests, increasingly in multi-scalar ways. The argument is that leaderships and activity that ‘bridge’ scalar relationships are an important condition in this process. There appears to be a complex set of cross-connections between the local, the national and the international. While transnational connectivity increasingly defines contemporary forms of trade unionism, these scalar relations are defined in relation to the workplace, the everyday world, and by the ways that transport is a defining characteristic of the global world. These relations constitute contemporary class struggle where work and employment relations are always in a process of change and development. Trade unionism, thus, remains a collective expression of power relations, in an increasingly internationalized world of work and employment. Thus, this research presents important lessons for multi-scalar organization and campaigning by unions to realize their capacities and purpose. Nonetheless, this study is only a beginning. While it indicates the processes of bridging, the next step is to investigate the variety of ways that bridging may take place and with what outcomes for the development of multi-scalar activity. // Les approches syndicales en relation avec le rééquilibrage des relations industrielles et des pratiques en matière d’emploi et de travail durant les trois dernières décennies s’élaborent dans la pratique. La question qui se pose pour les syndicats est de savoir quels sont les moyens qui peuvent leur permettre d’influencer ou qui ont un potentiel pour influer sur les décisions et les stratégies de l’État et des entreprises. Les syndicats sont ainsi confrontés à diverses questions concernant les manières d’organiser et d’exercer leurs capacités ainsi que d’atteindre leurs objectifs. En se basant sur l’expérience du syndicalisme maritime australien, cette étude examine la façon dont le principal syndicat, le Syndicat maritime de l’Australie (Maritime Union of Australia), a su développer des approches à paliers multiples pour aborder les situations locales. Le problème auquel les syndicats doivent faire face est celui de défendre et de faire progresser les intérêts des travailleurs. Leur défi principal est d’organiser et de montrer leurs capacités à défendre et faire progresser les intérêts des travailleurs maritimes, en utilisant davantage l’approche à paliers multiples. Notre argumentation est à l’effet que le leadership et les activités qui permettent de faire le pont entre les paliers multiples constituent une importante condition du processus. Il semble exister un ensemble de connexions complexes entre les paliers local, national et international. Alors que la connectivité transnationale définit de plus en plus les formes contemporaines de syndicalisme, ces relations à paliers multiples sont définies en rapport avec les milieux de travail, le monde du quotidien, et par le fait que le transport s’avère une caractéristique du monde global. Ces relations constituent le lieu de la lutte des classes contemporaine où le travail et les relations industrielles s’insèrent continuellement dans un processus de changement et d’évolution. Ainsi, le syndicalisme demeure une expression collective des relations de pouvoir dans un monde du travail et de l’emploi s’internationalisant de plus en plus. Aussi, la présente recherche offre de tirer d’importantes leçons pour les organisations à paliers multiples et pour les syndicats qui cherchent à mettre en oeuvre leurs ressources et leurs objectifs. Malgré tout, cette étude constitue seulement un début. Bien qu’elle procure des indications sur le processus d’harmonisation des paliers multiples, la prochaine étape sera d’étudier les diverses manières dont cette recherche d’harmonisation peut se dérouler et avec quels résultats pour le développement d’activités à paliers multiples.

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.