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Every day millions of Canadians go out to work. They labour in factories, offices, restaurants, and retail stores, on ships, and deep in mines. And every day millions of other Canadians, mostly women, begin work in their homes, performing the many tasks that ensure the well-being of their families and ultimately, the reproduction of the paid labour force. Yet, for all its undoubted importance, there has been remarkably little systematic research into the past and present dynamics of the world of work in Canada. The essays in this volume enhance our understanding of Canadians on the job. Focusing on specific industries and kinds of work, from logging and longshoring to restaurant work and the needle trades, the contributors consider such issues as job skill, mass production, and the transformation of resource industries. They raise questions about how particular jobs are structured and changed over time, the role of workers' resistance and trade unions in shaping the lives of workers, and the impact of technology. Together these essays clarify a fundamental characteristic shared by all labour processes: they are shaped and conditioned by the social, economic, and political struggles of labour and capital both inside and outside the workplace. They argue that technological change, as well as all the transformations in the workplace, must become a social process that we all control. --Publisher's description. Contents: On the job in Canada / Craig Heron and Robert Storey (pages 3-46) -- Dimensions of paternalism: Discipline and culture in Canadian railway operations in the 1850s / Paul Craven and Tom Traves (pages 47-74) -- Work control, the labour process, and nineteen-century Canadian printers / Gregory S. Kealey (pages 75-101) -- Contested terrain: workers' control in the Cape Breton coal mines in the 1920s / David Frank (pages 102-123) -- Keeping house in God's country: Canadian women at work in the home  / Veronica Strong-Boag (pages 124-151) -- Skill and gender in the Canadian clothing industry, 1890-1940 / Mercedes Steedman (pages 152-176) -- Mechanization, feminization, and managerial control in the early twentieth-century Canadian office / Graham S. Lowe (pages 177-209) -- Work and struggle in the Canadian steel industry, 1900-1950 / Craig Heron and Robert Storey (pages 210-244) -- Logging pulpwood in Northern Ontario / Ian Radforth (pages 245-280) -- On the waterfront: longshoring in Canada / John Bellamy Foster (pages 281-308) -- Life in a fast-food factory / Ester Reiter (pages 309-326) -- Autoworkers on the firing line / Don Wells (pages 327-352).

The essays are gathered around two themes: the relationship of sociology and social history, and the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and region with class. Unlike most Canadian essay collections, the contributors and their subjects cover Canada from British Columbia to Newfoundland, with forays into Cape Breton and central Canada. The volume contains articles by Ian McKay, Gordon Darroch, James R. Conley, Alicja Muszynski, Gillian Creese, and Jim Overton. An interesting collection of some of the new work being done in Canada by historians and sociologists, Class, Gender, and Region reflects Charles Tilly’s suggestion that “there should be no disciplinary division of labour: simply both doing social history.” --Publisher's description (Athabasca University Press) Contents: Introduction / Gregory S. Kealey -- The crisis of dependent development: class conflict in the Nova Scotia coalfields, 1872-1876 / Ian McKay --Class in nineteenth-century, central Ontario: a reassessment of the crisis and demise of small producers during early industrialization, 1861-1871 /Gordon Darroch -- “More theory, less fact?” Social reproduction and class conflict in a sociological approach to working-class history / James R. Conley -- Race and gender: structural determinants in the formation of British Columbia’s salmon cannery labour force / Alicja Muszynski -- The politics of dependence: women, work, and unemployment in the Vancouver labour movement before World War II / Gillian Creese -- Public relief and social unrest in Newfoundland in the 1930s: an evaluation of the ideas of Piven and Cloward / James Overton.

The essays are gathered around two themes: the relationship of sociology and social history, and the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and region with class. Unlike most Canadian essay collections, the contributors and their subjects cover Canada from British Columbia to Newfoundland, with forays into Cape Breton and central Canada. The volume contains articles by Ian McKay, Gordon Darroch, James R. Conley, Alicja Muszynski, Gillian Creese, and Jim Overton. An interesting collection of some of the new work being done in Canada by historians and sociologists, Class, Gender, and Region reflects Charles Tilly's suggestion that "there should be no disciplinary division of labour: simply both doing social history." --Publisher's description

Stacey MacAindra burns – to burst through the shadows of her existence to a richer life, to recover some of the passion she can only dimly remember from her past. The Fire-Dwellers is an extraordinary novel about a woman who has four children, a hard-working but uncommunicative husband, a spinster sister, and an abiding conviction that life has more to offer her than the tedious routine of her days. Margaret Laurence has given us another unforgettable heroine – human, compelling, full of poetry, irony and humour. In the telling of her life, Stacey rediscovers for us all the richness of the commonplace, the pain and beauty in being alive, and the secret music that dances in everyone’s soul. --Publisher's description

Part 1 is a revised version of From Consent to Coercion, and Part 2 represents a study of new developments since 1984, including the Supreme Court's crucial ruling that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not protect the right to strike. Contents: Preface to second edition -- 1. Introduction: From consent to coercion -- 2. The era of free collective bargaining -- 3. The turn to coercion: permanent exceptionalism -- 4. The right to strike: freedom of association and the Charter -- 5. The Mulroney record: consolidating the era of coercion -- 6. The consolidation of coercion in the provinces -- 7. The labour movement in the new era -- 8. The social contract: labour, the NDP and beyond -- Appendix I. Legislation and orders suspending the right to strike 1950-1993 -- Appendix II. Legislation amending trade union rights 1982-1993.

Ce livre ne représente qu'un aspect d'une vaste recherche sur les différences entre les femmes et les hommes dans des structures politiques: partis provinciaux, municipaux et central`es syndicales. En effect, ne son présentés ici que les résultats de la recherche portant sur le militantisme dans deux centrales syndicales du Québec soit: la Centrale des syndicats nationaux (C.S.N.) et la Centrale de l'éducation du Québec (C.E.Q.). --From Introduction

This volume is a reprint of a special edition of the Canadian Journal of Sociology.The essays are gathered around two themes: the relationship of sociology and social history, and the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and region with class. Unlike most Canadian essay collections, the contributors and their subjects cover Canada from British Columbia to Newfoundland, with forays into Cape Breton and central Canada. The volume contains articles by Ian McKay, Gordon Darroch, James R. Conley, Alicja Muszynski, Gillian Creese, and Jim Overton. An interesting collection of some of the new work being done in Canada by historians and sociologists, Class, Gender, and Region reflects Charles Tilly's suggestion that "there should be no disciplinary division of labour: simply both doing social history." --Publisher's description

This collection of essays offers a comprehensive examination of the working class experience in British Columbia and contains essential background knowledge for an understanding of contemporary relations between government, labour, and employees. It treats workers' relationship to the province's resource base, the economic role of the state, the structure of capitalism, the labour market and the influence of ethnicity and race on class relations. --Publisher's description

Contents: Section 1. The era of industrialization. Ethnicity and class, transitions over a decade: Ontario, 1861-1871 / A. Gordon Darroch and Michael Ornstein -- Women and wage labour in a period of transition: Montreal, 1861-1881 / Bettina Bradbury -- The 1907 Bell Telephone strike: Organizing women workers / Joan Sangster -- Industry and the good life around Idaho Peak / Cole Harris -- Through the prism of the strike: Industrial conflict in Southern Ontario, 1901-14 / Craig Heron and Brian D. Palmer. Section 2. World War I and its aftermath. Munitions and labour militancy: The 1916 Hamilton Machinists' Strike / Myer Siemiatycki -- Company town/labour town: Local government in the Cape Breton Coal Towns, 1917-1926 / David Frank. Section 3. The rise of modern unionism. Strike in the single enterprise community: Flin Flon, Manitoba, 1914 / Robert S. Robson -- The 1943 steel strike against wartime wage controls / Laurel Sefton MacDowell. Section 4: Overviews. Unionization versus corporate welfare: The "Dofasco Way" / Robert Storey -- Labour and working class history in Canada: Prospects in the 1980s / Gregory S. Kealey -- Through the looking glass of culture: An essay on the new labour history and working class culture in historical writing / David J. Bercuson -- Further reading.

In 1980...[the author] was approached by Nanaimo's Coal Tyee Society to write a book based on 105 interviews of Vancouver Island coal miners and their families. Nanaimo coal mines had closed 30 years before and the city had been home to some of the most important coal mines in the world, along with the one of largest explosions in history, the 1887 Nanaimo mine explosion. The miners wanted their oral histories preserved. Bowen compiled those oral histories in her first book, Boss Whistle, and later book, Three Dollar Dreams. --From Wikipedia article on Lynne Bowen

1983's powerful Solidarity movement, which for a time seemed capable of deflecting the Social Credit government of British Columbia from its neo-conservative course - or even toppling it - instead died with a whimper. In Solidarity: The Rise and Fall of an Opposition in British Columbia, the first book-length account of this pivotal point in the province's history, Bryan Palmer concludes that it was not Social Credit tactics, but the nature of Solidarity's leadership which foreordained the defeat. --Publisher's description

History of Fort Chipewyan, the first European settlement in Alberta, an important fur-trading centre, and a vital base for the exploration of the continent's hinterland. Traces the development of the Fort Chipewyan fur trade from 1778, when Peter Pond entered the region, until 1835, when the rivalry between the North West and Hudson's Bay companies was no longer a factor, and a monopoly in the fur trade had been restored. Provides a vivid portrayal of life in a remote fur trade outpost during this crucial period in Canadian history. --WorldCat summary/Publisher's description

The lumberjack – freewheeling, transient, independent – is the stuff of countless Canadian tales and legends. He is also something of a dinosaur, a creature of the past, replaced by a unionized worker in a highly mechanized and closely managed industry. In this far-ranging study of the logging industry in twentieth-century Ontario, Ian Radforth charters the course of its transition and the response of its workers to the changes. Among the factors he considers are technological development, changes in demography and the labour market, an emerging labour movement, new managerial strategies, the growth of a consumer society, and rising standards of living. Radforth has drawn on an impressive array of sources, including interviews and forestry student reports as well as a vast body of published sources such as The Labour Gazette, The Pulp and Paper Magazine of Canada, and The Canada Lumberman, to shed new light on trade union organization and on the role of ethnic groups in the woods work force. The result is a richly detailed analysis of life on the job for logging workers during a period that saw the modernization not only of the work but of relations between the workers and the bosses. --Publisher's description

Bob White, president of the Canadian Auto Workers, is without a doubt the single most influential figure in the Canadian labour movement. Respected by workers and business leaders alike. White has become a major voice in national; affairs. All his life he has bargained hard, and more often that not, won.

Research studies for the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Developments Prospects for Canada. Contents: The role of law in labour relations / Joseph M. Weiler -- The use of legislation to control labour relations: the Quebec experience / Fernand Morin and Claudine Leclerc -- Urban law and policy development in Canada: the myth and reality / S.M. Makuch.

Working people seldom make it into the history books, and when they do the picture is seldom flattering. Too often, ordinary Newfoundlanders have been cast as a race of cap-doffers and forelock-tuggers. In this book Bill Gillespie confrnts the myth. He tells the story of that most important of working class institutions - the trade union. And as the story unfolds, a new cast of characters is introduced to our written history. They are the men and women who struggled within an economic system they did not control to improve the lives of their families and their class. Gillespie records their losses and their victories, their weaknesses as well as their strengths. Ultimately he records their success. It is the story of how Newfoundlanders surprised even themselves and turned their tiny country into the most unionized corner of North America. --Publisher's description

These essays introduce readers to the changing and complex character of class struggle in Canada. Individual essays focus on specific features of Canadian class struggle: regional differences, the role of gender, the character of trade union leadership to the specific nature of conflict in particular industries; and the general features of national periods of upheaval such as the year 1919 and the World War II period. [Of the eight essays, two are original to the volume, while the others are abridged or revised versions of articles that previously appeared in publications such as Labour/Le Travail and New Left Review.] --Publisher's description