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The article reviews the book, "What Do We Need a Union For? The TWUA in the South, 1945-1955," by Timothy J. Minchin.

The article reviews the book, "Major Douglas and Alberta Social Credit," by Bob Hesketh.

In this paper I challenge the prevailing theoretical framework [of study in industrial relations] that marginalizes women by examining how unpaid work on and off the job is and is not analyzed in the literature and by demonstrating its importance to issues as central to the discipline as wages, job allocation, and industrial conflict. In the section entitled, "Unpaid Work on the Job," I argue that the concept of the "effort bargain"— how unpaid work is currently studied in industrial relations — obscures pay discrimination against women because it is more likely to implicitly recognize as work the tasks associated with jobs traditionally performed by men than many of the tasks associated with jobs performed by women. Under the heading, "Unpaid Work in the Household," I argue that unpaid work in the home determines, in part, how paid work is allocated and, in particular, how the social construction of women as non-workers/wives and mothers by researchers naturalizes women's place in the secondary labour market and reifies men's access to "breadwinner jobs." Finally, I conclude by arguing that incorporating unpaid work into the study of industrial relations is necessary to move women from the margins to the centre of discourse. --From author's introduction

The article reviews the book, "Working Stiffs, Union Maids, Reds, and Riffraff: An Organized Guide to Films about Labor," by Tom Zaniello.

Workplace change in 2 subsidiaries of a multinational pharmaceutical corporation is examined. One affiliate is located in the UK, the other in South Africa. It is shown how variations in subsidiary relations with corporate headquarters reflect differences in the strategic power and resources of subsidiaries, as well as differences of a local nature. These differences are reflected in variations in the scope, pace, and content of workplace change.

Interrogates the currents of scholarly inquiry into the Italian emigration of the 19th and 20th centuries. Argues for a woman-centred, gendered, and proletarian history of this diaspora, and suggests new areas of investigation.

The article reviews the book, "Management de la flexibilité," by Christophe Everaere.

The article reviews the book, "Angels of the Workplace: Women and the Construction of Gender Relations in the Canadian Clothing Industry, 1890-1940," by Mercedes Steedman.

The article reviews the book, "Just Another Car Factory ? Lean Production and its Discontents," by James Rinehart, Christopher Huxley and David Roberts.

The article reviews the book, "After Marxism," by Ronald Aronson.

The article reviews the book, "'We Are All Leaders': The Alternative Unionism of the Early 1930's," edited by Staughton Lynd.

This paper adopts a critical sociological approach to analyze how labor law shaped a 23-day strike at a western Canadian university in the fall of 1995. A chronology of the strike is provided, followed by a brief analysis of how both economic and sociological models contribute to understanding the rationale of the strike. The implications of specific labor laws for this rationale are discussed, with an extension of the critical legal studies tradition by an establishment of how legal biases against unions shape strike activity.

The article reviews the book, "Hard Bargain: Transforming Public Sector Labour-Management Relations," by Peter Warrian.

Analyzes the 1997 film, "Good Will Hunting," as a romantic comedy that foregrounds character-in-spiritual-at the expense of any serious consideration of class or the individual's position within the social. The author also discusses the film's reception, including by her students.

The article reviews the book, "San'ya Blues: Laboring Life in Contemporary Tokyo," by Edward Fowler.

Facing industrial unrest in each of its Canadian petroleum refineries, the Imperial Oil Company embarked on a wide-ranging industrial-relations initiative in 1919. Patterned after Mackenzie King's "Rockefeller Plan," the logic was clear: joint worker-management councils would alleviate shop-floor discontent; a package of welfare benefits would reduce absenteeism and turnover; and a share-purchase plan would enhance worker loyalty to the Company. Where similar attempts at corporate welfarism in Canada generally failed, Imperial Oil enjoyed a union-free status until 1946, and freedom from work stoppages until the early 1950s. What made it unique in this regard was its willingness and capacity to buy labour harmony; and in an era hostile to organized labour, its workers succeeded in extracting important monetary concessions as the price of their loyalty. Imperial Oil thus offers a cogent example of the conditions necessary for King's variant of welfare capitalism to flourish.

The application of merit pay in Canadian universities is examined. Designed to motivate and reward greater productivity, the effectiveness of merit pay depends upon the relative importance of competitive versus cooperative behavior in the academic workplace, the capacity to evaluate individual performance, and the ability to design clear financial signals appropriate to the objectives of the institution. Differences among universities can be expected to produce differences in compensation methods. A logit analysis is conducted that suggests that an institution's likelihood of having a merit pay scheme varies according to region; that it increases with the emphasis placed on graduate training and research; and that it declines in the presence of a unionized faculty association. This suggests that the adoption of performance-based pay is apt to meet stronger resistance in undergraduate and unionized institutions.

The article reviews the book, "The New Left and Labor in the 1960s," by Peter B. Levy.

The pressures for the harmonization of labor laws and policies under trade liberalization are outlined, with particular attention to inter-jurisdictional competition for investment and jobs. This is followed by an analysis of the linkages that are necessary for there to be downward harmonization, with some discussion of the empirical evidence (and lack of evidence) on those linkages. Opposing pressures towards divergence and away from convergence and harmonization are also discussed. The paper concludes with some observations on the advantages and disadvantages of harmonization and the appropriate policy responses.

The recent accession to power of a conservative government in Australia would seem to mark a major change in Australian industrial relations. However, a more subtle reading of events suggests that key ingredients of the new government's reform package were actually foreshadowed, even partially implemented, by the former Australian Labor Party government. The latter was well known for its enthusiastic implementation of orthodox economic policies, albeit in a context of corporatism. This suggests a degree of continuity between the policies of the ALP and Liberal/National Coalition governments. At the same time, there are ingredients of significant change, some of them on the face of it minor, but which, over time, are likely to erode the power of unions and sharpen the divide between the union and non-union sectors.