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How did an association formed in 1911 for self-help and social purposes become one of the largest and strongest unions in Ontario? [This book] is the story of that transformation: a history of the evolution of government in Canada's largest province, and of the working women and men who built the Ontario Public Services Employees Union. Analysis and anecdotes are woven into a tale of workers coping with a paternalistic employer, repressive laws and internal battles. Their story is an important part of the province's labour and political heritage. --Publisher's description

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is likely to affect labor movement power in Canada and the US. A thorough analysis of NAFTA's impact on labor movement power must examine its impact on the power resources available to labor movements. Four organizational structure variables that affect power resources are: 1. union density, 2. left party legislative strength, 3. organized labor's unity and coherence, and 4. collective bargaining centralization. NAFTA will increase transnational corporate power resources while at the same time reducing all 4 basic types of labor movement organizational power resources in the short to medium run. NAFTA's net impact on labor movement power resources will be positive if it enhances labor movement mobilization capacity sufficiently to offset the negative impacts on movement power.

The article pays homage to the life and work of George Rudé, a member of the historians' group of the Communist Party of Great Britain who taught at Concordia and York universities during the later part of his career.

The article reviews and comments on the books "The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century," by Peter Linebaugh, and "Customs in Common," by E. P. Thompson.

The article reviews the book, "From Uniformity to Diversity : Industrial Relations in Canada and the United States," by Pradeep Kumar.

The article reviews the book, "Clara Zetkin, féministe sans frontières," by Gilbert Badia.

The recent historiography pertaining to women during World War II has tended to focus on women in either the war industries or armed forces. While the first feminist scholars argued that women experienced a type of second emancipation during this period due to changes in societal attitudes, more recently, historians have contended that women were temporarily treated to certain economic and social benefits during the War because the government and industries were in desperate need of workers. This paper attempts to offer an alternative interpretation of women's experiences during this time, through the investigation of female textile workers in Cornwall, Ontario. Using a dual structural analysis, this study illustrates how male union leaders and company owners often collaborated in maintaining a segregated work force. Instead of experiencing a type of liberation from traditional occupational constraints, Cornwall's female textile workers remained subjugated in lower paying and lower skilled "female" jobs in the mills. Within this industry then, continuity rather than change characterized the experiences of female textile workers during World War II.

During the 1980s, the unemployment rate in Canada was several percentage points higher than in the US. Prior to this time, the level and the movements in the unemployment rates in the 2 countries were similar. Reasons for the shifts in the unemployment vacancy (UV) relationship in Canada and the US during the past 2 decades are examined to determine whether these shifts can explain this gap in unemployment between the 2 countries. Changing structural imbalances in the labor markets by themselves cannot explain the shifts in the UV curves or the gap in the unemployment rates in the 2 countries. It is concluded that aggregate economic shocks that create some structural imbalances are required to explain the shifts in the UV curves and the differing unemployment experiences in the 2 economies.

The article reviews and comments on the book "Improper Advances: Rape and Heterosexual Conflict in Ontario, 1880-1929," by Karen Dubinsky.

The article reviews the book, "International and Comparative Industrial Relations : A Study of Industrialised Market Economies," edited by Greg J. Bamber and Russell D. Lansbury.

The article reviews the book, "Education for Motherhood: Advice for Mothers in Twentieth-Century Canada," by Katherine Arnup.

The article reviews the book, "Le Québec en jeu : comprendre les grands défis," edited by Gérard Daigle, with the collaboration of Guy Rocher.

The article reviews the book, "Japanization at Work," by John Bratton.

Introduces and presents a selection of messages posted during the Solidarity Network's "electronic conference" on Canadian labour education that was moderated by Athabasca University from October to December 1992. The 68 registrants included labour educators from across Canada (including some working overseas), two US academics, and a range of union reps with CUPE being in the majority. Topics included the relationship between postsecondary education institutions and trade unions, technology, gender in labour education, pedagogy, and courses/programs taught by unions/colleges/universities. Concludes that this type of computer conference would be an exciting application for distance education.

This history of the Teaching Support Staff Union is timely since, as TSSU's parent, the Association of University and College Employees, has now existed for twenty years. TSSU is the last remaining independent local of AUCE. though several other locals have joined mainstream unions. The three essays included describe three different eras in the history of AUCE and TSSU, but some of the tensions found in the organization have remained the same over time. For twenty years AUCE has represented, at least to the activists involved in it, an intersection between feminism and trade unionism in British Columbia. Because the principle of local control over union decisions rather than joining a larger union hierarchy has been consistently maintained, AUCE and TSSU have frequently operated from a locally-defined idealistic feminist standpoint. The tensions, broadly painted, have been between feminists and traditional trade unionists (most often male).... --Introduction

In this further volume of autobiography, BC labour and human rights lawyer John Stanton returns to his career in the law. After reviewing his childhood, education, and early political experiences in Vancouver during the Depression years, he discusses some of his most important cases. These include: the defence of Fergus McKean, a BC communist leader who was interned during World War II; an exceptional criminal libel suit prosecution in Cold War BC; and an account of his relations with the Mine Mill and Smelter Workers. --Publisher's description

This paper deals with the Needle Trades Industrial Union (NTIU) organization drive in the garment industry of the cities of Montréal, Toronto, and Winnipeg. I argue that the relative success of this branch of the Workers Unity League (WUL) in unionizing the female workforce originates in part from the union's internal representation structure. Women's work was isolated from men's by the sharp gender division of work, which characterized the garment trade. A union structure adopted to overcome this division of work, one based on the place of work (and not on the industrial branch) favoured women's participation to unionism.

This paper centres on the struggles over job ownership between labour and management that have been integral to the shaping and reshaping of the Canadian steel industry over the course of the 20th century. In the first phase of industry development (1900-1940s), management had virtual control over the structuring of jobs. The second phase (1940s-1970s) saw the arrival of industrial unionism and the establishment of seniority and grievance systems which gave workers employment security and, over time, a sense of job ownership. The third phase (1980s) has been a period of crisis in which steel management in Canada has embarked on a restructuring campaign -- a critical feature of which is their determination to recapture job ownership through the introduction of new technologies, job amalgamations, and the implementation of teams. If steel management succeeds in wresting job ownership back from its workers, the paper concludes, then conditions will return to the pre-union period where management created and destroyed jobs as they desired.