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The article reviews the book, "Health care practitioners: An Ontario case study in policy making," by Patricia O'Reilly.

The article reviews the book, "Renegade Lawyer: The Life of J. L. Cohen. MacDowell," by Laurel Sefton.

Filing lawsuits in US federal and state courts for workers' rights violations suffered by workers employed by American corporations abroad is one of several strategies for promoting labour rights. To succeed, such suits must first overcome the strong presumption against extraterritorial effect of US law. Other jurisdictional hurdles like "inconvenient forum" also require caution in bringing suits. With the right strategic choices, labour rights litigation can be an effective means of advancing workers' rights in the global economy.

The article reviews the book, "Discrimination et obligation d’accommodement en milieu de travail syndiqué," by Christian Brunelle.

The article reviews the book, "Immigrants and the labour force: Policy, regulation and impact," by Ravi Pendakur.

The article reviews the book, "Reyita: The Life of a Black Cuban Woman in the Twentieth Century, as told to her daughter Daisy Rubiera Castillo," by María de los Reyes Castillo Bueno.

The article reviews the book, "The Jacobin clubs in the French Revolution, 1793-1795," by Michael L. Kennedy.

À partir d’une liste exhaustive des lois spéciales de retour au travail adoptées au Québec entre 1964 et 2001 inclusivement, les auteurs en présentent, sous la forme d’un tableau détaillé, certaines caractéristiques : un sommaire de leur contenu, la durée approximative du conflit auquel chacune des lois entendait mettre fin, le caractère légal ou illégal de l’arrêt de travail, sa durée ainsi que des commentaires de nature factuelle. Cet exercice permet de dégager quelques observations sur la fréquence d’utilisation de ce moyen exceptionnel et il conduit à identifier les domaines d’activité les plus souvent touchés par de telles interventions. Il montre aussi que le législateur prend souvent en compte, pour justifier l’usage de cet outil extraordinaire de règlement d’un différend, non seulement les critères relatifs au maintien de la santé et de la sécurité publiques, mais parfois aussi les inconvénients majeurs pouvant résulter du conflit. C’est qu’en pareille matière, l’adoption d’une loi se situe toujours aux frontières du droit et de la politique.

The article reviews the book, "State and society in transition: The politics of institutional reform in the eastern townships, 1838-1852," by J.I. Little.

The paper argues that Walter Reuther was affiliated with the US Communist Party in the mid to late 1930s. At the time, Reuther was a vice president of the United Automobile, Aircraft, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America; he went on to become UAW president from 1946 till his death in 1970. The author discusses a previously unknown archival document that summarized the February 1939 Detroit meeting attended by Communist state, national and trade union leaders, including Reuther. The author calls for a reassessment of the scholarly literature on the historical UAW and Reuther.

This report compares work organization and workload at three [Ontario] developmental service agencies in order to identify factors that precipitate and contribute to injuries, stress and health problems in the social services. The restructuring of services in this sector has resulted in reduced funding and therefore workloads and health risks associated with overwork and burnout appear to have increased dramatically in all three sites studied. Restructuring has also exposed workers and clients to higher levels of stress and violence. This study also uncovered serious incidents of workplace bullying and traumatic work cultures. While workplace bullying certainly predates restructuring, some studies show that it is a phenomena that has seen rapid growth within the context of restructured public sector and non profit workplaces. Given the serious under funding of this sector it may appear that there is little that can be done to improve health and safety in the short term. However, this report recommends several measures including an immediate increase in government funding, the incorporation of worker’s knowledge into how work is to be organized and planned, guarantees to part-time workers of enough hours of work to support themselves, an end to the use of split shifts, a cap on overtime and subsequent hiring additional fulltime staff in order to ensure workplace stability and the introduction of immediate, assertive, transparent measures to improve workplace morale and eradicate traumatic workplace cultures. --Executive Summary

The article reviews the book, "Montreal of yesterday: Jewish life in Montreal 1900-1920," by Israel Medres; translated from Yiddish by Vivian Felsen.

Culture of Misfortune: An Interpretive History of Textile Unionism in the United States, by Clete Daniel, is reviewed.

This article uses time-series data from two aluminium plants from Canada and the U.K. to analyze the social relations of productivity. The eventual turn to teamwork reflected, not hard evidence that productivity change had dried up, but a belief that they were the next step towards further improvement. By considering the structure of social relations over time in each smelter, this paper contributes to ongoing debates on the complex connections between productivity growth and organizational innovation. On the basis of direct observation and interviews, the article also reveals some of the social dynamics generating productivity growth and describes the development of idiosyncratic competencies. It stresses how the development of teamwork was historically in line with the productive ethos that had developed over time under continuous process technology.

Against all odds, the miners of Bienfait, Saskatchewan, attempted, in 1931, to change their miserable situation by organizing a union. Exploring the social consequences of capitalist restructuring during the Great Depression, Stephen Endicott focuses on the miners' tumultuous thirty-day strike. Their bid to gain union recognition with the aid of the Workers' Unity League of Canada ultimately failed, and Endicott's in-depth examination of the key factors and players attempts to explain why this was the case and why a similar union drive a decade later succeeded." "Based on a large number of both oral and written primary resources, Bienfait offers a new interpretation of the role of corporations, governments, courts, and the police in the events surrounding the strike. In the process, Endicott demonstrates how a militant union leadership helped the workers gain the strength and unity of purpose to challenge the powers of wealth and deep-seated prejudice. Bienfait opens a new chapter in the history of Canadian labour relations that reveals much about Canadian and Canadian society during the Depression. --Publisher's description

As global politics realized a fundamental realignment with the end of the Second World War, the Canadian state desired the formation ofa national consensus over its newly developed Cold War policies. It set about this task through the use of anti-communist rhetoric to facilitate a repressive and intolerant atmosphere where dissent of state policies could be identified as subversive and dangerous. In promulgating this Cold War ideology, Ottawa was wary of the illiberal approach that characterized American McCarthyism. Rather, Ottawa adopted a strategy of "privatizing" its anti-communism through the use of extra-state actors. By "farming" out its repressive activities, Ottawa could portray itself as a neutral defender of liberal values, while at the same time facilitating a climate of repression that would further its policy aims. Attendant to this, the extra-state actors used this state facilitated framework in order to advance their own interests and agendas. This strategy was starkly illustrated by the USWA raids against IUMMSW Local 598 in 1962. The interests of the state, the Catholic Church, CLC, and USWA coalesced around the elimination of Mine Mill local 598 as a representative of miners in northern Ontario. The Catholic Church sought the elimination of a progressive secularizing force in the Sudbury community that threatened the Church's institutional reproduction. For Steel, the acquisition of over 17,000 dues-paying members and the elimination ofIUMMSW as a competitor in the membership rich northern Ontario mining communities. While the state prospered from the virulent anti-communist environment and the elimination of a potentially militant union from control over the largest source of nickel in the non-Communist world. Thus the boundaries demarcating the state from civil society are less clear than some would have us believe. The USWA/Mine Mill events illustrate the nuance in the relationship between the state and private actors in the mobilization of ideological hegemony.

By distinguishing between Canadien and Acadien workers, on the one hand, and Canada workers, on the other, this essay examines some of the cognitive implications of L/LT’s epistemological commitment to a Canada-centered interpretation of labour history, particularly with respect to francophone working-class minorities. It argues that this labour history journal is representative of how emphasis on Canada-based workers and labour yields its own definition of class experience, a geopolitical definition that does not necessarily correspond to the ethnically-grounded “national” aspirations and struggles of French-Canadian and Acadian workers.

The paper reviews the book, "1939: L 'Alliance de la dernière chance," by Michael Carley, published in English as "The Alliance That Never War."