Search

The Ontario Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and Recreation has provided funds for research, documentation, and publication of Ontario workplace heritage. In 1994, grants were disbursed for four projects, including a video production on the thirtieth anniversary of the postal workers' strike, a video and booklet focused on preserving workers' heritage in Ottawa, a video tour guide (entitled Mapping the Workers' City) on Hamilton, and a audio documentary on the history of the Northern Ontario labour movement. Takes note of a forthcoming labour conference at the University of Oregon.

Announces that records of the Laurentian University Faculty Association's 1989 strike have been deposited at the university's archives. Also announces a 60-page bibliography of British Columbia's labour history is available that was compiled by graduate students at Simon Fraser University. Briefly reported are recent conferences of the Pacific Northwest Labor History Association on labour and the environment (University of Oregon) and at the University of Northern British Columbia on new directions in BC history.

Labour bureaucracy has long been a subject of interest to sociologists and industrial relations specialists, but it has rarely been examined by labour historians. In Red Flags and Red Tape Mark Leier aims to understand how and why bureaucracy came to dominate an organization that was established to promote greater democracy for the working class. The formative years of the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council, from 1889 to 1910, provide the basis for his study of the interplay between bureaucracy, class, and ideology. Leier sets himself three tasks: he examines the theoretical debates on the labour bureaucracy; he investigates the early history of the VTLC to show how and why bureaucratic structures evolve over time; and he looks at the ideology and personnel of the labour council to try to understand the complex relationship between bureaucrats on the left and right of the political spectrum. He describes the ideology of the bureaucrats (including their attitudes towards gender and race) and how it compares to that of the council's members, and observes that bureaucrats are defined by their power over a movement rather than by their ideology. Finally, since the VTLC was, at different times, dominated by labourists and socialists, Leier explores why different leaders held variant or antagonistic views. Leier concludes that the pressure of trade unionism and the class position of labour officials led to increased bureaucracy and conservatism, even among the socialists of the labour council, and as the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council matured, increased red tape isolated the officials from the membership. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Breaking from Taylorism: Changing Forms of Work in the Automobile Industry," by Ulrich Jurgens, Thomas Malsch and Knuth Dohse.

One tenet of labour process theory is the contention that, when confronted by degraded work, people will resist through militant behaviour or in other ways. However, that "resistance hypothesis" has been tested rarely. Canadian postal workers have manifested some considerable militancy, for instance through legal and wildcat strikes and through frequent recourse to the grievance mechanism. Too, their work has been subjected to technological change often pointed to as a prime example ofjob degradation. But not all aspects of postal work have been subjected to technological change. Thus, postal workers constitute a test ofthe "resistance hypothesis:" if degraded work provokes militancy, then ceteris paribus postal workers involved in automated work will be more militant than those who are not. In this study, a group of postal workers employed in "Cancity" in 1985-6 (N=152) were surveyed regarding their attitudes and experiences. Factor analytic techniques were used to construct a scale of attitudinal militancy, and hierarchical set analysis - summarised using dummy variable path coefficients - was used to examine the causal links between this outcome and logically prior factors, including job degradation, employment history, and achieved and ascribed statuses including sex. The results indicate that job degradation does have an impact on attitudinal militancy, but that this impact is modest at best, and weakens as other influences are taken into account.

The article reviews the book, "Trade Unions and Community: The German Working Class in New York City, 1870-1900," by Dorothee Schneider.

The article reviews the book, "Contested Countryside: Rural Workers and Modern Society in Atlantic Canada, 1800-1950," edited by Daniel Samson.

This thesis documents the employment history of Sne-nay-muxw women. The Sne nay-muxw, a Coast Salish peoples, live on the southeast coast ofVancouver Island close to the city ofNanaimo. Nanaimo was established by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1852 as coal mining town. Coal dominated the economy until the early 20th century when forestry related production became important. Today a service economy has eclipsed both the primary and secondary industries. Within these economies a distinct gender, race and class segregation structured Sne-nay-muxw women’s employment opportunities. This study examines the nature of this segregation, the Sne-nay-muxw domestic economy and the gender ideology that promoted both women’s inclusion and exclusion in. wage labour. A central question posed in this thesis is why Sne-nay-muxw women today perceive their traditional roles to be within the home despite their historical participation in the labour force. Feminist anthropology provides the theoretical and methodological approach used for this study. It is accepted that women’s experiences in the labour force are different not only from men but also from other women based upon relational inequalities ofrace and class. Historical data was collected from a variety of sources; published and unpublished government reports, missionary accounts, letters and journals. Nineteen women and eight men were interviewed in the community for both historic and contemporary accounts of employment experiences. History reveals that during the mining economy Sne-nay-muxw women were excluded from working in the mines and limited to employment as domestic servants. The introduction of Chinese labour, decreasing coal demands and increased technology forced many women to migrate with their families to the canneries on the Fraser river and the hop fields in Washington state. In the forestry related production economy, Sne-nay-muxw women’s opportunities were limited despite the expansion of employment for women in the service sector. State policies and inferior education were significant factors in this exclusion. At this time Sne-nay-muxw women continued to migrate with their families to the fish camps on Rivers Inlet and the berry fields in Washington state. In the last two decades the service economy has dominated in Nanaimo. Sne-nay-muxw women have found increasing job opportunities on and off reserve in administration, management and professional service delivery programs. While this employment is part of the wider trend for women in the service economy, Sne-nay-muxw women’s opportunities remain segregated by gender, race and class. Women’s participation in the labour force is shown to be linked to the organization of their domestic economy. Before 1920 this economy incorporated both subsistence production and farming with seasonal wage labour. After this time the Sne-nay-muxw became increasingly dependent upon wage labour. However, extended family and kinship networks have remained important for support and cooperation. This form ofhousehold organization did not constrain women’s participation in the labour force. Today extended families remain the central organizing principle in Sne-nay-muxw lives. Sne-nay-muxw women’s identity and opportunities for education and employment remain linked to their membership in these families. Shifts in women’s participation in the labour force is shown to be accompanied by acceptance of a domestic ideology. During the mining economy when women actively sought wage labour, they acquired domestic skills needed for wage labour but did not accept an ideology that promoted their dependency upon men. Historical evidence indicates that they retained a significant degree of autonomy in their lives. With men’s increased security of employment in the forestry economy, the idealized role ofwomen as housewives was promoted. Families that were able to realize women’s exclusion from the labour force gained status and prestige in the community. Finally, in the service economy, the Sne-nay-muxw gender ideology includes women’s participation in the labour force to occupations linked to their domestic and nurturing roles.

The article reviews and comments on the books "Sweatshop Strife: Class, Ethnicity and Gender in the Jewish Labour Movement of Toronto, 1900-1939," by Ruth A. Frager and "Taking Root: The Origins of the Canadian Jewish Community," by Gerald Tulchinsky.

During the 1930s the Communist Party of Canada organized and promoted the working-class struggle against conditions resulting from the Depression. And while some have argued that the state's intelligence community paid little attention to the efforts of the communists between the wars, the evidence reveals a major operation on the part of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to watch and suppress Communist Party activities. By tracing the involvement of World War I veteran and Communist Party activist, Stewart O'Neil, in four radical movements - the Workers Ex-Servicemen's League, the On-to-Ottawa trek, the workers' theatre movement, and the Spanish Civil War- this paper demonstrates the extent of, and the tactics used by, the RCMP in its surveillance and suppression of these radical movements.

Compilation of recent English/French publications on Canadian labour history that emphasize the period 1800-1975. Materials pertaining to the post-1975 period may also be included, although more selectively. [See the database, Canadian Labour History, 1976-2009, published at Memorial University of Newfoundland.]

A study examines the relationship between stressful working conditions, social support at work, employee distress, and union members' (dis)satisfaction with their union. It might be assumed that under stressful working conditions, unionized workers would turn to their union to seek better working conditions and would have a positive orientation toward their union. However, it is also possible that stressful working conditions and distressed, alienated employees will become dissatisfied not only with their job but also with their union. The data for the study come from a survey of unionized postal workers employed by Canada Post Corporation in Edmonton in 1983.

This dissertation focuses on the work-for-pay exchange between aboriginal people and immigrants of European stock--the two most prominent cultural groups in the early history of British Columbia--and follows the patterns of this exchange from its origins through to the 1970s. It examines both the material and the rhetorical construction of the "Indian" as a part of British Columbia's labour force, a process described as racialization, and emphasizes, as well, the transformation of meaning inherent in cross-cultural exchange. It is a province-wide analysis, the core of which is a micro-history of one aboriginal group, the Songhees people, who live in the area now occupied by Victoria, the capital city. This examination challenges the long-standing view that aboriginal people were bystanders in the economic development and industrialization of British Columbia outside, and after, the fur trade. From the establishment of the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1849, through Confederation with Canada in 1871 and to the 1885 completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway, aboriginal people comprised the majority of the population in present-day British Columbia, and the majority of the work force in agriculture, fishing, trapping and the burgeoning primary industries. This dissertation charts the subsequent decline in participation of aboriginal people in the capitalist economy from 1885 to 1970. Using a micro-historical study and close attention to aboriginal voices it offers a set of explanations for the changing proportions of work, both paid and unpaid, and state welfare payments. The micro-history reveals that the Songhees people engaged in two distinct but connected economies and were already familiar with forms of labour subordination prior to the European introduction of a capitalist economy. The Songhees participation in paid labour for Europeans was facilitated by these existing forms of labour organization and depended on the co-existence of their other economies; the Songhees used earnings from capitalist paid labour to expand their non-capitalist economies. After 1885, new state policies repressed the non-capitalist aboriginal economics and therefore diminished the underlying motivation for aboriginal participation in capitalist work. At the same time, an influx of labour-market competition and a variety of racialized laws and practices restricted the Songhees' ability to get work. Increasingly they were left with seasonal, low-skill and low-wage labour, a niche that maintained them so long as it was combined with a subsistence economy and involved the full participation of adult and adolescent family members. In the late 1940s and 1950s this pattern too was remade. Legal restrictions dramatically limited the subsistence economies; technological change curtailed the demand for seasonal labour in the canning, fishing and agricultural sectors, particularly affecting aboriginal women workers; and, compulsory schooling regulations began to reduce labour available to the family economy. At the same historic moment when the combined wage and subsistence economies ceased to be able to support them, the state extended some existing social welfare programs, such as Old Age Pension, to Indians, and expanded other programs, including Family Allowance, to all Canadians. In examining the patterns of aboriginal-non-aboriginal exchange relations over the long-term, this dissertation argues that high rates of unemployment and welfare-dependency among contemporary aboriginal communities are relatively recent historical phenomena, with observable roots and causes.

The article reviews the book, "Advocate and Activist: Memoirs of an American Communist Lawyer," by John J. Abt.

A study attempts to identify determinants of executive compensation in Canada while comparing how they differ between Canada and the US. Results suggest that firm size, firm performance, and firm ownership structure all determine executive compensation in Canada. However, several differences between the determinants of executive compensation in Canada and the US are identified.

The article reviews the book, "Relations professionnelles, emploi et formation au Québec," published by Critique Régionale, nos. 23-24, 1994, Université Libre de Bruxelles.

Over the past seventeen years, trade union educator D'Arcy Martin has conducted hundreds of courses for Canadian workers. He has learned that there are people-"conscious romantics"-who dream of a more egalitarian world while confronting the obstacles that stand in the way of building it. This book provides a refreshing personal account of union culture and its dynamics. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Reimagining Canada: Language, Culture, Community and the Canadian Constitution," by Jeremy Webber.

Creating Economic Opportunities: The Role of Labour Standards in Industrial Restructuring, edited by Werner Sengenberger and Duncan Campbell, is reviewed.

In March 1919, more than 230 union representatives gathered in Calgary for the Western Labor Conference. There, they initiated plans for a revolutionary industrial organizatin, the One Big Union, which embodied the internationalist principles of Marxist unionism. Within its first year, the One Big Union (OBU) issued over 70,000 membership cards, and was a powerful symbol of working-class demands for the end of class exploitation. However, given its patriarchal inheritance, the OBU was always something more than just a class organization. It was an attempt by working men to organize around a specific sense of gender identity, which I have called Marxist masculinity, in order to reconstitute the social bases of male power. The first chapter outlines the events surrounding the creation of the OBU in 1919 and the wave of general strikes that swept through Canada that summer. In particular, it sketches the relationship between class politics and a masculine structure of feeling, and how this relationship influenced the OBU's ideology. The second chapter discusses three elements around which Marxist masculinity was constructed. To begin, the experiences of women in the OBU are situated in relation to the organization's policies regarding membership in individual unions and the Women's Auxilliary. As well, it examines the personal lives of OBU leaders and the naturalized assumptions about heterosexuality which governed their politics. The final chapter discusses the purge of Tom Cassidy and Catherine Rose, two dedicated activists fired because of rumours of their sexual involvement. The OBU leadership wanted to prevent a public moral panic around issues of "free love" and was thus determined to have the matter kept quiet. In taking this position, OBU leaders regulated the gender and sexual identities of union members through concepts of proper masculine and feminine socialist behaviour.