Your search

This thesis is focused on examining the extent of union-nonunion wage inequality in Canada from 1997 to 2004, using data from the Canada Labour Force Survey collected by Statistics Canada. The research is either directly or indirectly guided by two main measures of union-nonunion wage inequality. The first measure is the wage differential , which examines the difference between the union and nonunion wage after controlling for other relevant factors in a regression model; and the second measure is an account of wage dispersion or wage spread, which effectively explains how internally equitable the union-nonunion wage distribution is in relation to the average wage, after controlling for other relevant factors in a regression model. Each chapter tackles a different hypothesis or subject relating to Canadian union-nonunion wage inequality as investigated from the Canada Labour Force Survey Dataset, and is guided by an effort to explore issues or patterns not previously addressed in the extant literature. The initial analyses found that the union-nonunion wage differential across Canada was normally eleven to sixteen percent from 1997 to 2004. The research also examined three advanced topics in Canadian union-nonunion wage inequality. Analyses of the industry, occupational, and demographic trends in Canada over the past eight years showed that there is some evidence to suggest that demographic changes in union density does affect union-nonunion wage inequality, but this relationship is not conclusive. This research also addressed the unusual finding of higher hourly wages among parttime females. This difference was not present after conducting a more rigorous regression analysis within both sectors. However, it was found that the marginal male wage premium could largely be explained by the combined effects of establishment size among males in the union sector, as well as educational attainment among males in the union sector. Further investigation of some unexpected interaction effects of union status and establishment size and union status and job tenure in relation to the wage, revealed that these combined effects still generated comparative over the nonunion group, but only up to a certain level of tenure or establishment size. Finally, an analysis of whether union density has mattered at all in Canada for promoting higher wages, reveals that the general effects of union density on the wage are relevant only within a certain wage range and within certain industries.

This thesis investigates several issues related to the provisions afforded by aspects of the Canadian welfare state to protect the rights of migrant labour participating in the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program. In the introduction and literature review, I provide the background of the program and present the nature of the issues that surround it. I also outline the problems that migrant agricultural workers face while participating in the program. These are mainly due to the few provisions that are extended to this secondary sector labour group, a group of workers that is barely visible to Canadian society. In the main part of the thesis, I analyze the two instruments that allow the entry of these workers into Canada and the different pieces of Canadian legislation that are relevant to protecting legitimate rights of any person who works in this country. More importantly, I also present findings derived from interviews with migrant agricultural workers and key informants from advocacy groups and the labour movement regarding those provisions. Based on their in Sights and on the dual market theory, I scrutinize the position of the Canadian welfare state concerning the legitimate provisions migrant workers should be entitled to and how the globalization context influences that position. I conclude with a series of ideas that, in my opinion, could positively affect this labour group's welfare status.

This research investigates the formation and maintenance of power relations within the organization and everyday practices of work and transnational living, and the social and economic impacts among Mexican migrants and their families participating in the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). Through the analysis of the qualitative data collected through ethnographic case studies in Mexico, 350 hours of participant observation, and semi-structured interviews with 25 migrant workers, 5 farmers and 5 representatives from other state and non-state intermediaries, findings have emerged pertaining to three research themes: power, racialization and transnationalism. This research finds that Mexican migrant workers are consistently located in subordinate power positions in the organization and the everyday practices of the SAWP; and governments, employers, and other intermediaries have significant control over migrants' daily lives and their migration parameters. Racialization processes in both the institutional and everyday practices of the SAWP produce, maintain, and legitimize a system of temporary migration characterized by imbalanced power relations and the unequal allocation of resources and rights through the differentiation of the "Mexican migrant worker" with reference to race and ethnicity. Migrant workers and their families actively participate in transnational practices that are integral to seasonal migration, including the family networks that facilitate entry into the program, the "migration work" performed by women, and the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). This essential "migration work" involves preparing the family for migration and sustaining the transnational family through managing and/or working within family farms and small businesses, receiving and managing international remittance transfers and telephone calling, managing and utilizing remittances for daily living and development, and performing carework. These findings support the "transnationalization of culture" hypothesis, and indicate that a gendered culture of migration is emerging within the SAWP. It is argued that the SAWP is an exemplar of "time-space compression" in action which leads to the exploitation and subordination of "Mexican migrant workers." Temporary migration systems like the SAWP are seen as recursively related to globalization, where foreign labour dependence and remittance economies are created and perpetuated through globalization and a "migration industry" powered by new information and communication technologies.

Ce mémoire porte sur le syndicalisme québécois dans les années 1960 et 1970 alors qu’il traverse une phase de bouleversement et qu’il radicalise son idéologie. Nous nous penchons plus particulièrement sur le cas de la CSN qui affermit sa critique du capitalisme avec la publication de textes d’orientation socialiste tels que Il n'y a plus d’avenir pour le Québec dans le système actuel et Ne comptons que sur nos propres moyens. Parmi les instances de la centrale, il y a les conseils centraux régionaux dont celui de Montréal, le plus imposant en terme d’effectifs (près de 60 000 en 1968). Rassemblant la frange la plus militante de la centrale, il a pour rôle l’éducation et l’action politique des membres. Le Conseil central des syndicats nationaux de Montréal (CCSNM) se trouve au centre de la tourmente sociale et nationale au cours de ces deux décennies alors qu’il est dirigé par la figure imposante et colorée de Michel Chartrand, président de 1968 à 1978. Dans l’historiographie, le Conseil central de Montréal est souvent considéré comme un haut lieu de la radicalisation syndicale. En analysant son discours et ses actions, nous démontrons qu’il prend effectivement des positions radicales et qu’il défend des opinions nationalistes. Malgré le fait qu’il tente de passer à l’action politique et milite pour la création d’un parti de travailleurs, le Conseil se caractérise principalement par son discours contestataire et sa critique acerbe du capitalisme. Nous verrons qu’il développe une position nationaliste indépendante au cours de la période, en se dissociant du projet du Parti québécois, qu’il juge bourgeois. Bien que les relations entre la CSN et le Conseil soient tendues, ce dernier a tout de même un impact important sur la CSN, particulièrement au niveau de la protection de la langue française et sur la position adoptée par la centrale au référendum de 1980. Le Conseil constitue donc un acteur important de la radicalisation de la société québécoise des années 1960 et 1970 en influençant la CSN, le mouvement syndical ainsi que les milieux de gauche à Montréal.

The historiography of the British Columbia Cooperative Federation differs from that of other provincial CCF groups for its lack of attention to the participation of religious reformers in shaping the party's early history. Yet the first CCF House Leader in the province, Reverend Robert Connell, was a fervent believer in the social gospel and in the goals of ecumenism. His attempts to bring "Christian principles" into politics resulted in a battle between reformers and radicals in the party, ultimately resulting in his departure from political life. The div ision of the BC CCF in 1936 as a result of what has become known as the "Connell Affair" created a loss of momentum for the party which lost its status as Official Opposition in the 1937 provincial election. This event presents a unique opportunity to study the interaction of a social gospel inspired Christian reformer with firmly irreligious supporters of Marxism.

This dissertation examines Canada's constitutional question through the lens of the labour movements in both English Canada and Quebec. The existence of two distinct labour movements in Canada has meant that political struggles that have typified national politics are also in evidence in labour politics. The sovereignty-association partnership agreement between the Canadian Labour Congress and the Quebec Federation of Labour provides a good example of the pervasiveness of this dynamic and discourse. The dissertation examines this relationship specifically, and the constitutional politics of labour organizations in English Canada and Quebec, more generally, with a view to explaining how Canada's constitutional questions have been reflected in the politics of organized labour.

[This thesis is] a labour history of Russian Mennonites employed in three Mennonite-owned factories in Manitoba: Friesens Corporation of Altona, Loewen Windows of Steinbach, and Palliser Furniture of Winnipeg. Each of these businesses had a primarily Mennonite workforce at their founding, and eventually became the largest employers in the community in which they were established. This comparative microhistory makes a significant contribution to the literature: though approximately one-quarter of North American Mennonites are working-class, few scholarly works have investigated their experiences. The history of immigration of these Mennonites is important in understanding their adaptation to North American capitalism. Immigrants had common experiences of some aspects of settlement, such as language acquisition and finding employment. Immigrants exhibited a variety of responses to government efforts to promote assimilation, and demonstrated different attitudes toward job security and expectations for their children, in part because of their diverse prior experiences of war, religious conservatism, and prejudice in their country of origin. The result was the development of an increasingly urban and heterogeneous Mennonite community in Manitoba, which perhaps contributed to the failure to develop a strong sense of class consciousness among them. The historical development of Mennonite religious thought in the twentieth century is connected to the geographical shift of North American Mennonites from rural to urban environs. This move necessitated a re-assessment of Mennonite religious beliefs, particularly of their understandings of 'Gelassenheit ', to nonresistance, and 'agape' love. The Christian's responsibility to the world came to be stressed at the expense of traditional values such as submission to the community and separation from the world. Religious belief had a role in restraining the behaviour of both workers and owners, encouraging the former to accept work discipline, and limiting the latter in their conspicuous consumption. In a case study, Barthes' semiological approach is used to demythologize an advertising campaign at Loewen Windows as a means of examining the linkages between religion and capitalism. The role of religion differentiated the operation of paternalism at these businesses from their non-Mennonite counterparts. Though Mennonite workers rarely expressed their views in class-conscious ' language', the 'content' of their remarks, particularly with respect to the labour process and their autonomy, points to the existence of a class division in these factories. The nature of their employment as factory workers affected not only their job mobility and security, the speed of their work, their sleeping patterns and social lives, but also their identity. Class differences between Mennonite employers and employees clearly existed; class consciousness on the part of workers is less evident. With the transformation of Friesens Corporation, Loewen Windows, and Palliser Furniture from small family businesses to large corporations, the relationship between Mennonite workers and their employers was reinterpreted. Employers made use of Mennonite religious motifs to craft a common ethos, but increased ethnic diversity in the workforce at Palliser Furniture, together with objective class differences between workers and owners at all three companies, resulted in some splits in the unity of the Mennonite workplace. The interplay of competing interests nonetheless resulted in redefinitions of ownership rights and their meaning for workers with respect to profit sharing and employee share ownership, as well as several unsuccessful attempts to unionize. The tension between Burkholder's emphasis on social responsibility, as exhibited by labour's demands for economic justice, and Hershberger's insistence on avoidance of confrontation was evident in the struggle of Manitoba Mennonites with their response to labour activism in the 1970s. Pacifism often had been dismissed as passivity in the past; now the adherence to the principle of nonviolence could be seen as an excuse for accepting economic exploitation. Mennonite support for cooperatives and credit unions could have translated into support for labour unions, but in late twentieth-century Manitoba, it did not. Though North American Mennonites' attitudes toward unions may have undergone change during this period, they continued to avoid becoming members. The conclusion explores whether Mennonite involvement in industrial capitalism is (or can ever be) in any way distinct from that of secular participants. Are there theological resources within Mennonitism that can mount an effective challenge to the negative results of global capitalism? This work is a modest attempt to contribute to the debate, both within the Mennonite community and without, regarding the possibilities for social and economic transformation. It is also an attempt to argue for the relevance of the consideration of religion in scholarly discourse in general, and historical study in particular.

An analysis of three poor people's movements in twentieth century Canada serves to wrest the ideas and activist tradition of Canada's poor people from historical obscurity. Between 1932 and 1935, the Communist-inspired Vancouver unemployed councils engaged in direct actions to challenge Depression-era social policy, capital and the police. The arrival of the modern post-war welfare state did not end poverty; however. Vancouver antipoverty activists were circumscribed by society's relative affluence and organizational and sectarian debates within labour councils and the antipoverty movement. Finally, since 1989 the Toronto-based Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) has extended antipoverty activism to include the issues of immigrants, First Nations, women and children. Drawing on theorist Antonio Gramsci and the socialist-anarchist tradition, this thesis posits that direct action and a subsidiarity relationship between activists and their community are essential to the success and longevity of poor people's movements.

The thesis examines the role, efficacy and influence of the five national English-language independent film and television production sector unions in the Canadian broadcasting policy network. While labour is typically classified as a civil society organization within policy networks studies, this thesis will examine the blanket applicability of this typology in analysing labour's engagement with issues that involve both their vested economic/industrial interests as well as broader social/cultural goals, using the unions' engagement with the issue of Canadian dramatic programming from 1998 to present as a case study.

Single transient homeless men are one of the archetypal figures of the chaotic decade known as the Great Depression. They are also a misunderstood group, commonly associated with a degraded and hopeless existence. This thesis focuses on homeless men, both on the road and in Vancouver, in the period from the fall of 1929, with the collapse of North American stock markets, until the spring of 1932, with the breakdown of the provincial government's relief camp scheme. It argues that those involved in the relationships of charity provision, whether homeless recipient or government bureaucrat, characterized the world of relief with the same terms they used to understand the normalized world of the capitalist economy. Homeless transients flocked to Vancouver by the thousands. Many became the rank-and-file backbone of Communist-led protest movements. Consistently, these movements demanded relief at union rates, challenged the gendered, racial and national categories that divided the unemployed, and rejected outright the oppressive relief measures accorded transients. In response, the municipal government sought to introduce Fordist methods of business management, rationalizing the processes of relief provision with an eye to efficient administration and surveillance. Relief was not a one-sided transaction-a gift from one party to another-but an exchange. When offering the poor food, shelter, fuel and clothing, public and private charities became involved in commercial relationships with the city's service industries. Businesses across Vancouver clamoured to get their share of relief money, hoping to translate some of the money spent on the unemployed into profit. With state-run relief camps, governments created one of the sharpest contradictions of the 1930s, unemployed workers who worked for a living, but for substandard rates of relief. Officials seized upon the crisis to initiate a program designed to develop British Columbia's economic infrastructure. The work of the jobless would thus pay dividends by enabling an increased rate of economic growth once the crisis had passed. In these ways, relief became an industry. The hundreds of people who wrote about tramps during the 1930s twinned the objectification and the commodification of transiency. Whether espousing a humanitarian or a hateful view of hoboes, these authors almost unanimously agreed that the tramping life had to be destroyed. Hoboes would vanish from the Canadian landscape because their lives were without value. For their part, the hoboes who put words on paper ranged across a host of subjects pertaining to life on the road and life in the city. While some cried out against what they saw as the oppressions of transient life and envisioned a future in which they would be reintegrated into society, others lauded the camaraderie and mutuality amongst tramps. For this group, the hobo life was an end in itself, valued because it enabled them to live free from the exploitation that was the lot of wage workers.

This thesis traces the transformations in state, class, and politics in British North America from 1760-1860, and how these facilitated the emergence of wider economic change. Building on recent studies in political economy, Marxist and economic history, as well as historical sociology, it employs a class power model of historical change to explain how and why colonial Canada's political economy developed. The argument also draws upon comparative political economy to highlight how different class structures and different forms of political institutionalization shaped political economic regimes and long-run forms of economic growth. The case study analysis of British North America within a wider comparative context demonstrates that class interests, institutions, and policy making were critical to state building and changes in state-society relations, above all to state 'autonomy' and class 'embeddedness'. Agrarians and commercial classes struggled over economic benefits and the reins of political power. But how these classes forged coalitions and how their conflicts were institutionalized within the state determined whether or not new productive dynamics emerged. By the mid-19th century, with greater autonomy, colonial governments across the North American colonies designed institutions, laws, and policies to improve taxation, build infrastructures, enhance the rule of law, and extend the contractual equalities necessary to commercialize the economy. With greater class embeddedness, broader class coalitions of agrarians and merchants actively reshaped agrarian property and agricultural labour to conform to the structures of a market economy, and enacted new market law to allow for the expansion of free labour markets, trade, commerce, and small manufacturing. Looked at comparatively, the thesis claims, 19th century colonial British North America emerged as a 'Liberal Settler' society, led by a diverse coalition of agrarians and merchants. Despite its many state and class particularities, this crystallization of settlers, merchants, and Imperial market-directed politics made colonial Canada a variant of Britain's own liberal political economy, and very similar to other growing settler countries such as the United States. Exploring the connections between state, class, and politics, the thesis concludes, can tell us much about why and how these distinct historical patterns emerged, and why 19th century political economies changed in ways that fostered the development of capitalism.

This thesis explores the nature and challenges of democracy within unions through an historical examination of the emergence and early years of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). Formed by a merger of two pre-existing unions in 1963, CUPE casts new light on the Marxist, Michelsian and Institutionalist theoretical approaches to union democracy. The thesis calls into question the narrow and ahistorical link made between centralization, oligarchy and effectiveness on the one hand, and decentralization, democracy and ineffectiveness on the other. Instead, the case of CUPE shows that unions are subject to contradictory pressures and that neither centralization nor decentralization is inherently more democratic. Union democracy is part of an historical process of class formation, in which both union purposes and the boundaries of the democratic community (which can make legitimate claims on members' solidarity and self-discipline) are struggled over. As such, it is possible that decentralizing forces can place narrow and sectionalist priorities over the interests of the broader community. Moreover, the thesis argues that the use of merger as a method of forging greater class unity is itself problematic. The merger which created CUPE involved a protracted struggle over which model of union would prevail. The compromise which was reached entrenched a self-reinforcing cycle of autonomy-seeking by union locals which, over the long term, prevented the development of an effective national union capable of carrying out the democratic will of the membership as a whole. As such, through an historical excavation of the roots of contemporary crises in CUPE, the thesis points to the important way in which the outcomes of past decisions come to structure future political possibilities for unions and other social justice organizations.

Many social theorists (Goldthorpe, Lipset, Giddens, Hout, Brooks and Manza) have portrayed members of the Western industrial working-class as accommodative and resistant to a class-based social revolution. They suggest that an affluent proletariat has seen its oppositional class-consciousness subverted and transformed by the 'cash nexus' into various forms of social integration. With reference to Mann's (1973) measures of class-consciousness typologies and Livingstone and Mangan's (1996) study of Hamilton steelworkers, I explore expressions of working-class consciousness among organized workers at one of Canada's largest industrial union locals, the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) Local 222 at General Motors, in Oshawa, Canada. I accomplish this via an examination of the existence and degree of working-class imagery, class identity, and oppositional working-class consciousness among this group of workers on the basis of measured responses to a survey questionnaire (N=102), in-depth interviews, and participant observation. My thesis asserts that Oshawa autoworkers' material advantage is insufficient to transform their proletarian consciousness. I have found that among Oshawa autoworkers there is a shared view of Canadian society as class-based, a clear working-class self-identification and measurable forms of oppositional working-class consciousness.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, racism, in the form of white supremacy, shaped relations between whites and Chinese British Columbians. In resisting and accommodating to white supremacy, the Chinese were active participants, along with the members of the dominant society, in shaping these relations. White supremacy was consequently a dynamic system, one whose many parts were continually in flux, and whose central constructs—notions of "race" and British Columbia as "a White Man's province"—were largely political in nature. The thesis argues that white supremacy, as both ideology and organization, was deeply imbedded in British Columbia society. Exclusion based on "race" was incorporated into government institutions as they were remade at Confederation in an effort to enhance the power of white male property-owners. By the early twentieth century, ideological constructs of "the Chinaman" and "the Oriental" were used as foils in the creation of identities as "whites" and as "Canadians." The official public school curriculum transmitted these notions, while schools themselves organized supremacy in practice by imposing racial segregation on many Chinese students. In reaction, the Chinese created their own institutions and ideologies. While these institutions often had continuities with the culture of South China, the place of origin of most B.C. Chinese, they were primarily adaptations to the conditions of British Columbia, including the realities of racism. Chinese language schools played an especially important role in helping to create a Chinese merchant public separate from the dominant society. This public was at once the consequence of exclusion and the greatest community resource in resisting white supremacy. The study concludes by questioning the workability of contemporary anti-racist strategies which treat racism as a marginal phenomenon, or as merely a set of mistaken ideas. Instead, it suggests that such strategies must recognize that racism is one of the major structures of Canadian society.

Canada experienced its worst economic crisis during the Great Depression of the 1930s with unprecedented numbers of Canadians suffering extreme economic and social hardship. Survival and struggle to change those conditions became as much a mark of the times as the economic circumstances themselves. The Communist Party of Canada (CPC) was one organization that played a significant role in this national upsurge of struggle. The Party believed that the worsening material conditions would engender class consciousness of Canadian workers, leading to the overthrow of the capitalist system to achieve a worker-farmer socialist state. The Party was instrumental in organizing workers, farmers, the unorganized and the unemployed, however, it was not successful in raising Canadian working class consciousness to a revolutionary level. The factors that will be analyzed as being the main contributing factors to the Party's limitations are the CPC1srelationship with the Comintern, repression by the Canadian state, and dominant ideology that prevailed in Canada during the Depression. From its inception in 1921 the CPC worked assiduously to meet the needs of Canadian workers in a rapidly changing economy in the 1920s and one that was also collapsing in the Depression. In many ways it recognized Canadian workers' needs in these times and was at the head of the labour movement fighting for workers' needs and defending them. However, the CPC was somewhat hamstrung by its very close relationship with the Comintern allowing this international communist body to dictate almost every move it made whether or not it was the best for Canadian workers. State repression of the CPC and labour movement, also had a curbing effect on the advancement of the CPC in its work with Canadian workers, forcing the Party underground, decimating its leadership and intimidating Party activists, unions and workers. Finally, dominant ideology during the Depression, in spite of serious threats by alternate sets of ideas, particularly those promulgated by the CPC, largely stood its ground as defender of the present capitalist system that relied on the exploitation of Canadian workers for its survival.

The purpose of the thesis is essentially to elaborate, and to a lesser extent to test the relevance of a theoretical framework focussing simultaneously on the spheres of industry, work and community in staple-specific contexts, explicitly in Canadian forestry and mining single-industry towns (SITS). The framework builds two ideal types of these towns by drawing from the main approaches that have addressed the topic in political economy, labour and community studies. The core underlying argument is that a reconsideration of some neglected staple insights constitutes a legitimate endeavour. The framework stresses that forestry SITs have more: of an elite model of power structure, separate work and community social arrangements, individualistic income strategies, as well as lower class consciousness and numerous contradictory class locations; while mining SITs have more: of a class model of power structure, overlapping work and community arrangements, income strategies framed in secondary relations terms, as well as a higher class consciousness and fewer contradictory class locations. After a brief introductory chapter, the second, third and fourth ones extensively review and interpret the literature, gathering empirical material and theoretical considerations useful to the comparative theoretical framework. The latter is detailed and its claim circumscribed in Chapter five; its relevance is tested in the two last chapters by using it as a backdrop to explain staple specific patternings regarding the organization of work in the main resource sector and women's experience in the family.

This thesis entails the study of both why and how decentralisation of government authority takes place. Decentralisation in Canada is explored by investigating a federal proposal for the devolution of active labour market policies from federal to provincial governments, and by closely examining the positions taken by both levels of government during the development of two federal-provincial labour market agreements in the mid-1990s. The two bilateral agreements chosen for this examination are, the Canada-Nova Scotia Agreement on a Framework for Strategic Partnerships, and the Canada-Alberta Labour Market Development Agreement. The central focus of this research is to examine the extent to which federal and provincial governments’ positions on the devolution of policy are influenced by ‘political’ and ‘public’ interests. The first argument holds that political imperatives influence governmental priorities, attitudes, and motivations as decisions about devolution are made. The second argument maintains that governmental positions on devolution are founded on the motivation to promote the best outcomes for the public at large. This study employs a research focus that is qualitative in nature, and it draws from interpretive and constructivist approaches to inquiry. Interviews were conducted with civil servants who represent federal and provincial interests in the provinces of Alberta and Nova Scotia. A comparative analysis of the evidence found that both political and public interests influenced federal and provincial positions on devolution. This research illustrates that while political and public interests might be separated analytically, in real cases of policy-making they overlap. Nonetheless, the evidence tips the scales towards a political interest explanation much more clearly and convincingly than a public interest interpretation.

In this dissertation I propose the existence of a distinct and previously unacknowledged sub-genre in the Canadian social-reform writing of the 1890s, namely the industrial novel. I concentrate on several late-Victorian Canadian examples: Agnes Maule Machar's Roland Graeme: Knight: A Novel of Our Time (1892), Robert Barr's The Mutable Many (1896), and Albert Richardson Carman's The Preparation of Ryerson Embury: A Purpose (1900). These novels each reflect the expansion of industrial production in the Victorian period and the concomitant social effects of urban industrialism upon the labouring poor. I undertake an examination of these works that analyses the relationship between the novels' middle-class protagonists and the workers whose rights they are defending, seeing in the narrative patterns, imagery, and intertextual references both the articulation of an alternative kind of social justice and a tension emerging between political dissent and political conservatism. These novels of labour unrest caution against violent revolution and instead preach a doctrine of reconciliation and compromise, rooted in a reorientation of conventional notions of justice, a rejuvenation of social institutions, and the imperative of individual moral responsibility. First I focus on Machar's representation of Christian socialism, and how the language of "brotherhood" acts as an antidote and alternative to the morally degenerative effects of industrialism. Machar parallels the labour reform movement to the Christian belief in an afterlife: both are predicated upon faith and deferral, the commission of good works in the present for the benefit of some future blessing. Next, I examine Barr's novel about two strikes in a London factory, looking in particular at issues of leadership and representation. I propose that his novel works to reveal the complexities inherent in any project in which one man must speak for a crowd of others, as the end of the novel amply demonstrates the failure of communication. Finally, in my examination of Carman's novel, I analyse his refashioning of conventional notions of justice. I argue that Carman's narrative suggests the sterility of intellectual debate in the absence of any commitment to social action. I conclude by connecting the late-Victorian Canadian industrial novel to early twentieth-century literary responses to labour advocacy, urbanism, and industrialism.

There are limitations to conventional occupational health and safety research approaches and practices and numerous barriers to overcome in order to achieve progress. Occupational health and safety is impacted by the broader social-political environment. Corporatism affects the directions, ideas and practice of regulators, educators, the labour movement, scientists, medical professionals, and society as a whole, thus inhibiting workers' power to influence change. The thesis therefore explores both the wider influences and barriers to occupational health and safety advances, focusing particularly on the Canadian situation, through the general research questions: What has influenced occupational health and safety policies and practices, especially in Canada? What are some of the limitations of conventional occupational health and safety research and practices? To what extent can participatory action research and mapping address identified limitations? These questions are explored from the perspective of the population potentially at risk. New theories and approaches to occupational health and safety research are then applied in this thesis in order to explore a more specific multi-part research question: Can mapping within worker-based participatory action research be used to explore occupational health and safety conditions? In particular, can mapping contribute to occupational health and safety improvements at a local level and beyond; establish workers' previous exposures for compensation purposes; support efforts to bring about justice through compensation for workers affected by unsafe working conditions; and raise worker and public awareness of health and safety? These questions are explored through two different case studies, which examine, in depth, occupational health and safety action and possible remedies. Casino gaming workers in Windsor, Ontario, Canada undertook a collaborative study to investigate and improve current health and safety conditions. Former Holmes foundry and asbestos insulation workers in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada undertook a collaborative study to provide evidence of exposures and ensuing health problems to support claims for compensation. The outcomes of the case studies shed light on the bigger Canadian health and safety picture and demonstrate that mapping as a data collection method used within a participatory action research approach can accomplish a broad range of objectives. Mapping can raise workers' awareness, facilitate communication, build solidarity and cohesiveness, foster community support, mobilise workers to take action to reduce hazards or win compensation, in turn influencing employers, the compensation board and government agencies. The case studies accomplished the shared objective of raising worker and public awareness. The casino workers also gained occupational health and safety improvements and the Holmes workers were successful in gaining compensation.

This study examines female self-employment in British Columbia from 1901 to 1971. Entrepreneurial women comprised a small proportion of the total female labour force but they exhibited differences from the rest of the labour force that deserve attention. The study relies on the Census of Canada to gain perspective on trends in female self-employment over a broad time period; qualitative sources are also utilized, including Business and Professional Women’s Club records, to illustrate how individual businesswomen reflected patterns of age, marital status, and family observed at a broad level. The role of gender in women’s decisions to run their own enterprises and in their choice of enterprise is also explored. While the research focus is British Columbia, this study is comparative: self-employed women in the province are compared to their counterparts in the rest of Canada, but also to self-employed men, and to other working women, in both regions. Regionally, women in British Columbia had higher rates of self-employment than women in the rest of the country between 1901 and 1971. Self-employed women in both British Columbia and Canada were, like wage-earning women, limited to a narrow range of occupational types, but they were more likely to work in male-dominated occupations. Self employed women were also older and more likely to be married, widowed or divorced than wage-earning women; in these aspects, they resembled self-employed men. But there were gender differences: whether women worked in female or male-dominated enterprises, they stressed their femininity. The need to take care of their families, particularly if they had lost a spouse through death or desertion, provided additional rationale for women’s presence in the business world. Family, marital status, age, gender and region all played a role in women’s decisions to enter into self-employment between 1901 and 1971.