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n the Skin of a Lion is a love story and an irresistible mystery set in the turbulent, muscular new world of Toronto in the 20s and 30s. Michael Ondaatje entwines adventure, romance and history, real and invented, enmeshing us in the lives of the immigrants who built the city and those who dreamed it into being: the politically powerful, the anarchists, bridge builders and tunnellers, a vanished millionaire and his mistress, a rescued nun and a thief who leads a charmed life. This is a haunting tale of passion, privilege and biting physical labour, of men and women moved by compassion and driven by the power of dreams—sometimes even to murder. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Un État réduit? A Down-Sized State?," edited by Robert Bernier and James Iain Gow.

The article reviews the book, "Forging American Communism: The Life of William Z. Foster," by Edward P. Johanningsmeier.

This speculative essay presents a preliminary statement on the paradoxical character of 19th-century class formation in the two white settler dominions of Canada and Australia. Outposts of empire, these social formations were early regarded with disdain, the one a classic mercantilist harvester of fish, fur, and wood, the other a dumping ground for convicts. By the mid-to-late 19th-century, however, Canada and Australia were the richest of colonies. Within their distinctive cultures and political economies, both supposedly dominated by staples, emerged working classes that were simultaneously combatative and accommodated. By the 1880s impressive organizational gains had been registered by labour in both countries, but the achievements of class were conditioned by particular relations of fragmentation, including those of 'race' and gender.

The article reviews the book "Separate Spheres: Women's Worlds in the 19th-Century Maritimes," by Janet Guildford and Suzanne Morton.

The article reviews the book "Radicals of the Worst Sort: Laboring Women in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1860-1912," by Ardis Cameron.

The article reviews the book, "La judiciarisation de l'arbitrage de grief," by Rodrigue Blouin.

The article reviews the book, "100 Public Sector Collective Bargaining in Canada: Beginning of the End or End of the Beginning," by Gene Swimmer and Mark Thompson.

The article reviews the book, "Human Resource Management: A Critical Text," edited by John Storey.

The article reviews the book "By the Sweat of the Brow: Literature and Labor in Antebellum America," by Nicholas K. Bromell.

The article reviews the book "Organized Labor in the Asia Pacific Region: A Comparative Study of Trade Unionism in Nine Countries," edited by Stephen Frenkel.

The article reviews the book, "Union-Management Relations in Canada," 3rd edition, by Morley Gunderson and Allen Ponak.

One of the prevailing concerns about compulsory interest arbitration is its possible effect on genuine collective bargaining. Numerous studies report overall settlement rates (i.e., the proportion of settlements achieve prior to the final impasse procedure) are lower in arbitration systems than in strike-based systems. A study attempts to provide a broader assessment of the effect of compulsory arbitration by calculating settlements rates for different settlement stages. Based on over 28,000 collective agreements negotiated in Ontario between 1982 and 1990, the results show that settlement rates were generally lower under arbitration. At the same time, settlement behavior varied considerably across arbitration systems. These differences are associated with specific institutional and organizational aspects in bargaining.

[This book] is a collection of essays that surveys the burgeoning field of gender history in a Canadian context. Spanning a period from seventeenth century to the 1960s, and covering the regions of Canada, the selections focus on different historical representations and pratices of feminity and masculinity. Historians in the field examine neglected dimensions, and challenge previous interpretations of Canada's past, highlighting the importance of gender relations to our understanding of racism, sexuality, national identity, popular culture, class conflict, government policy, and family in Canadian history. --Publisher's description. As one of the most difficult periods of the twentieth century, the Great Depression left few Canadians untouched. Using more than eighty interviews with women who lived and worked in Toronto in the 1930s, Breadwinning Daughters examines the consequences of these years for women in their homes and workplaces, and in the city's court rooms and dance halls. In this insightful account, Katrina Srigley argues that young women were central to the labour market and family economies of Depression-era Toronto. Oral histories give voice to women from a range of cultural and economic backgrounds, and challenge readers to consider how factors such as race, gender, class, and marital status shaped women's lives and influenced their job options, family arrangements, and leisure activities. Breadwinning Daughters brings to light previously forgotten and unstudied experiences and illustrates how women found various ways to negotiate the burdens and joys of the 1930s. --Summary, Toronto Workers' History Project (email)

The article reviews the book "Learning History America: Schools, Cultures, and Politics," edited by Lloyd Kramer, Donald Reid and William L. Barney.

Les médias font régulièrement référence au taux très élevé de syndicalisation au Québec qui ferait de la province un château fort du syndicalisme en Amérique du Nord. Cette opinion est fondée sur les estimations de la densité syndicale fournie par le ministère du Travail du Québec dans sa publication annuelle Les relations du travail. Une analyse critique des sources et de la méthodologie utilisée par cet organisme montre que ses évaluations depuis le début des années 1980 ont tendance à surestimer fortement la syndicalisation. Les estimés fournis par Statistique Canada (CALURA et enquêtes) permettent une meilleure approximation du taux de syndicalisation qui se situerait à environ 41 % en 1992. Parmi les provinces canadiennes, le Québec est dans le peloton de tête avec la Colombie-Britannique, mais derrière Terre-Neuve. Ce taux relativement élevé le place au dixième rang parmi les pays industrialisés en 1989.

A compassionate look at the effect of industrialization on the individual lives of sailors, Sager argues that sailors were not misfits or outcasts but were divorced from society only by virtue of their occupation. The wooden ships were small communities at sea, fragments of normal society where workers lived, struggled, and often died. With the coming of the age of steam, the sailor became part of a new division of labour and a new social hierarchy at sea. Sager shows that the sailor was as integral to the transition to industrial capitalism as any land worker. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Maynard Keynes: An Economist's Biography," by D. E. Moggridge.

The article reviews the book "Common Labour: Workers and the Digging of North American Canals 1780-1860," Peter Way.

This article discusses various and alternative forms of corporate strategy developed with respect to current industrial restructuring and transition towards flexible production. Corporate strategies are distinguished according the size of firms and their organizational structure. The point is not to establish an exhaustive typology of strategies but to elaborate the concept of variety in flexible organization of production and markets. For each type of corporate strategy four major options are analysed: interfirm networks, internal organization of production, labour market, and innovation. The article concludes that the strategic choices made by firms are influenced more by local socioeconomic factors than by global models which apply to all firms ' sites and operations.