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The article reviews the book, "Unions and Economic Competitiveness," edited by Lawrence Mishel and Paula B. Voos.

The article reviews the book, "Robust Unionism. Innovations In The Labor Movement," by Arthur B. Shostak.

The article reviews the book, "Work Family Conflicts: Private Lives ― Public Responses," by Bradley K. Googins.

This social history of coal mining in Nova Scotia's Pictou County offers a unique portrait of a long-established working-class community.There are detailed accounts of the changing work-life of miners told in the words of the miners themselves. Family and social life, union agitation, relations with the company and strikes are all described. There are several accounts of major disasters in the mines. The book concludes with a discussion of the revival of coal mining in recent years with the Westray Mine, and an account of the 1992 disaster. Extensively illustrated with historical photographs, Coal in our Blood is a valuable contribution to Nova Scotia's social and labour history. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "For Democracy, Workers, and God: Labor Song-Poems and Labor Protest, 1865-1895," by Clark D. Halker.

The article reviews the book, "Artisans into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth Century America," by Bruce Laurie.

The article reviews the book, "Order Against Chaos: Business Culture and Labor Ideology in America, 1880-1915," by Sarah Lyons Watts.

The article reviews the book, "The Butte Irish: Class and Ethnicity in an American Mining Town, 1875-1925," by David M. Emmons.

The article reviews the book, "Education for Struggle: The American Labor Colleges of the 1920 and 1930s," by Richard J. Altenbaugh.

The article reviews the book, "Femmes de parole: L'histoire des Cerles de fermières du Québec 1915-1990," by Yolande Cohen.

The article reviews the book, "Joint Training Programs: A Union-Management Approach to Preparing Workers for the Future," edited by Louis A. Ferman, Michele Hoyman, Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld and Ernest J. Savoie.

The article reviews the book, "Understanding Employee Ownership," edited by Corey Rosen and Karen M. Young.

Recent developments in the new technology debate suggest that the effects of technological change may be more complex and ambiguous than managerialist and labor process writers have argued. The process of technological change in an employing organization involves a number of distinct stages. A recent study challenged the position that technological change brings about the deskilling of workers. It is demonstrated that the independent influence of technology is a necessary compliment to an examination of the way outcomes of change are chosen and negotiated. The study used a set of survey data based on 435 unionized employing organizations in Atlantic Canada.

The article reviews the book, "Managing Innovation: A Study of British and Japanese Factories," by D. H. Whittaker.

The successful implementation of information technology in a teachers federation in a Canadian province is examined. At least 3 key factors seem to account for successful implementation: 1. the presence of an influential and energetic technology advocate, 2. the involvement of users in the implementation, and 3. a general ethos in the organization that encourages excellence in the services provided by staff but within a collegial framework. It is clear that the federation was successful in harmonizing the interests of employees and members. The appointment of an executive assistant was crucial in focusing attention on the technology issue. Building on the mission given to him by the elected officials, the executive assistant played a key role in gaining organizational commitment to new technology. Also important to success was the attention the federation paid to getting input from professional and non-professional staff about decisions concerning information technology.

Discusses industrial studies (the equivalent of labour studies) provision for trade unionists in Great Britain with implications for Canada. Provides a historical overview of workers' education since WWI that saw increasing consolidation under the Trade Union Congress, which strongly emphasized work place skills training rather than a broad understanding of labour history and the social and political economy. The Labour government's 1975 Employment Protection Act provided financial support to this instrumentalization that in turn led to further compromise by the TUC under the succeeding Conservative government. Concludes that the professionalization of the TUC curriculum has resulted in a narrowing of its scope, and that it should not be emulated in Canada, where there has been support for broader studies of the labour movement both through universities and labour-supported institutions.

The article reviews the book, "The Permanent Revolution? Conservative Law and the Trade Unions," by John McIlroy.

Homer Stevens spent half a century in the BC fishing industry, both as a working fisherman and as a leader of the United Fishermen and Allied Workers' Union. His story, an oral autobiography, was recorded and compiled by Rolf Knight. Stevens grew up in Port Guichon, a polyglot fishing community on the Fraser River delta. He was one of an extended family of working people who argued constantly about the issues of the day. In 1936, when he was thirteen years old, Homer started fishing on his own in a leaky gillnetter called the Tar Box. Six years later, his uncle John said, "One of these days I'm going to have to take you down to a meeting of the United Fishermen's Union in Vancouver. It's run by a bunch of Reds but they're pretty good people." By 1946, Homer was a full-time organizer for the United Fishermen and Allied Workers' Union, going around "float to float, man to man" to sign up new members. Included here are Steven's ominous description of the Cold War years, and an evocative log of travelling the central BC coast during the 1950s, with its bustling fishermen's ports and canneries. There are accounts of the 1967 strike in Prince Rupert, Homer's year in jail for contempt of court and his drive to organize Nova Scotia fishermen, and there is a moving personal description of relearning how to fish in a modern and very different salmon industry. "All and all," he says, "if someone were to ask me, 'Would you do it again?' I'd say, 'Yeah, I'd do it again. I'd try to do it better if I could, but I'd be willing to tackle it.'" --Publisher's description

Accounts of the 1959 International Woodworkers of America strike in Newfoundland have portrayed the Newfoundland Lumbermen's Association, the local union which held jurisdiction over many of the island's loggers, as a "company union" and its president, Joseph Thompson, as a co-opted unionist. This essay examines the NLA'S origins during the 1930s and shows that Thompson built an autonomous union to improve logger's lives. The paper also brings to the fore the loggers' own experience of the Great Depression to show they did not passively accept economic hardship and exploitation and took an active role in the making of their union. At times, the loggers' militancy dictated the NLA's bargaining positions and prompted some social change in the woods. The paper concludes that while Thompson and the NLA did not view class and class conflict in explicitly political terms, it does not diminish their importance in the loggers' working lives during the 1930s.

Unions have the ability to affect exit behavior through a distinctive collective voice which provides a mechanism for expressing preferences and resolving grievances. It has been demonstrated that workers with a voice institution for the resolution of problems should resort to the exit option less frequently and maintain longer attachments with their companies. A study was conducted based on the 1986-1987 Labour Market Activity Survey (LMAS) longitudinal data from Statistics Canada. Evidence is presented of the effect of unionism on job tenure and job separation rates derived from regressions which control for the effects of wages, pension rights, firm size and other factors. The results show that unionism is associated with significantly lower probabilities of job separation and significantly longer spells of tenure.