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The article reviews the book, "Art and Work: A Social History of Labour in the Canadian Graphic Arts Industry to the 1940s," by Angela E. Davis.

The article reviews the book, "The Feminist Challenge to the Canadian Left 1900-1918," by Janice Newton.

Based on extensive study of union organizations and activists in Greater Vancouver, this article offers a two-fold critique of the thesis that "new social movements" have supplanted the labour movement as the key collective agents of change in late-modem societies. In the first section we briefly review the claims of new social movement theory and point to some of the analytic difficulties in positing a sharp distinction between "old" unions and "new" social movements. We then present comparative case studies of two pan-union labour organizations active in the Lower Mainland, followed by findings from in-depth interviews with activists in these groups, and comparisons between the political orientations of labour activists and those of activists in new social movements. We find evidence of a labour movement increasingly open to popular struggles outside its own immediate orbit, sensitive to the needs of diverse and marginalized constituencies, tactically prepared if not psychologically predisposed to yield a leading role in any such coalitions, and capable of grasping the connections between social movement activism and everyday life activities. The future of the labour movement very much depends on putting these political sensibilities into practice through a deepening of solidarity with other progressive movements - whose own futures are themselves implicated in labour's prospects.

The article reviews the book, "Women, work and coping: a multidisciplinary approach to workplace stress," edited by Bonita C. Long and Sharon E. Kahn.

Alors que la médiation la plus souvent utilisée survient dans le cadre de la négociation d'une première convention collective ou d'un renouvellement de convention, des programmes de médiation préventive tels celui des relations par objectifs (RPO) se situent en dehors du contexte de la négociation collective. Après avoir séparer les sujets d'ordre distributif des sujets de relations, les seules différences demeurant entre les parties sont celles des questions de fond. Cet article évalue 24 programmes de RPO menés par la Education Relations Commission d'Ontario entre 1981 et 1991. Nous avons utilisé une méthodologie combinée, quantitative et qualitative, pour mesurer l'impact général des RPO sur les conflits en milieu de travail et pour fournir quelques raisons de leurs échecs. L'approche générale des RPO est de réunir des représentants clefs de l'employeur et du syndicat dans un séminaire de deux ou trois jours dirigé par des animateurs qualifiés, en dehors des heures de travail et pendant une année de non-négociation. Les parties tentent alors d'identifier les problèmes qui affectent leurs relations, développant des plans spécifiques d'action, désignant des responsabilités pour leur implantation. Les parties établissent en outre un processus et un échéancier pour mesurer les progrès réalisés dans l'implantation des différents engagements contenus au plan d'action....

The article reviews the book, "La possession ouvirère. Du taudis à la propriété," by Guy Groux and Catherine Levy.

The article reviews the book,"Shifting Time: Policy and the Future of Work," by Armine Yalnizyan, T. Ran Ide and Arthur J. Cordell.

The article reviews the book, "Alternatives to Lean Production: Work Organization in the Swedish Auto Industry," by Christian Berggren.

The article reviews the book, "Le droit de cuis-sage. France, 1860-1930," by Marie-Victoire Louis.

The article reviews the book, "Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State; Britain and France, 1914-1945," by Susan Pedersen.

For twenty years, labour and working-class history has emphasized the struggle for workplace control between skilled craftsmen and factory owners in Ontario's major industrial cities. This preoccupation not only has left the great majority of the province's working people in the shadows of history, but has isolated labour history from such other 'new histories' as women's history, ethnic history, and the history of mobility. This collaborative volume argues for a more nuanced account of the diversity of working people's experience in the nineteenth century. It presents detailed studies of a broad range of occupations and institutions that figured prominently in workers' lives. These include the more common jobs - farm labour, housework, lumbering - and the more pervasive institutions - the church, the law, the family - as well as new accounts of industrial labour in small-town factories and on the railways. The themes explored include class formation, the nature and meaning of work, labour relations, and the character of economic and social change in nineteenth-century Ontario. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction / Paul Craven (pages 3-12) -- Rural labour / Terry Crowley (pages 13-104) -- Labour and the law / Jeremy Webber (pages 105-203) -- The Shantymen / Ian Radforth (pages 204-277) -- Religion, leisure, and working-class identity / Lynne Marks (pages 278-334) -- Labour and management on the Great Western Railway / Paul Craven (pages 335-411) -- The home as workplace / Bettina Bradbury (pages 412-478) -- Factory workers (pages 479-589) - Picture credits (page 595) -- Index (pages 597-622).

The thesis addresses the importance of intra-union struggles as a mediating factor in understanding the relationship between changes in union policies and strategies and the larger socio-economic environment. Examination of these intra-union struggles, the thesis argues, is necessary for a fuller understanding of the development of the union and the steel workers' ongoing contestation with the steel company. It examines the significance of intra-union conflict in the establishment of responsible" unionism and "industrial democracy" within the Canadian steel industry and in the context of international, national and local aspects of the union. During the period 1936-1972 the steel workers were organized within Local 1064 of the United Steel Workers of America which, according to the findings of the thesis, was marked by intra-union conflict almost from its inception. Conflict between an establishment-dominated leadership and its supporters and oppositional forces, which took different forms and displayed various degrees of influence within the local over time, was an integral part of the union's political life. Arguments drawn from Marxist theory and from the work of Michels are compared and evaluated in light of the historical record of the steel workers and their attempts to build an effective organization. The thesis demonstrates that oppositional activity within the union was crucial to understanding the development and direction of the union. The establishment and maintenance of "responsible" unionism and "industrial democracy" were mediated by intra-union struggles. The findings of the study offer support for both a Marxist and a Michelsian theory of change within such organizations.

Years before women were allowed to read the news on television, Grace Hartman was on television making the news. In 1954, to help pay the mortgage on her family’s new suburban home, Grace Hartman took a job with the Township of North York. Hartman soon became active in her union, where she dedicated herself to improve the worker’s lot. Twenty-one years later Hartman was still a worker, but no longer a secretary for North York: she was president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the largest union in Canada. Hartman was the first woman to lead a major labour organization anywhere in North America. [This book] is the story of a labour activist who served two months in jail at the age of 62 for defying a court order and asserting her members’ right to strike. It is the story of a visionary feminist who helped found the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, who stood up to Pierre Trudeau over wage and price controls because she saw that her sisters would bear their brunt. It is the story of a lifelong and committed social activist who fought tirelessly, both inside and outside the labour movement, for women’s rights and progressive causes. --Author's description

Strikes: Causes, Conduct and Consequences by Douglas Blackmur is reviewed.

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

Une enquête auprès du personnel enseignant des commissions scolaires du Québec sur les rapports entre l'âge, le travail et le cheminement professionnel révèle que des effets de cohorte font varier sa situation et son cheminement professionnel ; ces changements reflètent les transformations profondes du travail et de l'emploi dans le milieu de l'enseignement au cours des dernières décennies. Par contre, le rapport individuel au travail ne varie pas selon l'âge ni selon le genre sexuel. La façon de le vivre différencie cependant très nettement quatre catégories d'importance à peu près égales parmi le personnel enseignant : les passionnés, les tiraillés, les contentés et tes désabusés. Ces positions existentielles face au travail sont fortement associées aux diverses composantes du rapport individuel au travail. Il apparaît que ce sont les rapports pédagogiques, la gestion de la classe, les facteurs organisationnels et relationnels, et non l'âge du personnel enseignant, qui sont en cause.

A notable addition to the growing body of work that examines art and work as social constructs, Art and Work traces the development of commercial illustration and the graphic arts industry in Canada from the late eighteenth century to the 1940s. Beginning with the origins of the graphic arts industry in Britain, Angela Davis describes the development of technology, commercial organization, and professionalization of artists in Canada. She focuses on the artists involved in the creation and reproduction of a "popular" art form. The evolution of commercial illustration and the graphic arts industry, Davis asserts, had a dramatic impact not only on the popular press and advertising but also on illustrators, engravers, photo-engravers, and lithographers, who still considered themselves to be artists but found that they were now working in an industrial atmosphere similar to that of other workers. Art and Work reveals that the foundations of Canadian art and popular culture rest not only on the European traditions of "fine" art but also on the commercial art produced in the early graphic arts houses. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Memories of Chicano History: The Life and Narrative of Bert Corona," by Mario T. Garcia.

The article reviews the book, "A Muted Fury: Populists, Progressives, and Labor Unions Confront the Courts, 1890-1939," by William G. Ross.

The article reviews the book, "Tell the Driver: A Biography of Elinor F.E Black, M.D.," by Julie Vandervoort.