Your search

The article reviews the book, "Mobsters, Unions and Feds: The Mafia and the American Labor Movement," by James B. Jacobs.

The article reviews the book, "American Vanguard: The United Auto Workers During the Reuther Years," by John Barnard.

Canadian labour's agitation against Asian immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has received a considerable amount of scholarly attention. Many historians have highlighted labour's concerns about Asian competition in the labour market, while others have explored the pervasiveness of anti-Asian racism in most segments of Canadian, and especially British Columbian, society. But these factors – while important – do not sufficiently explain labour's antipathy to Asians. They particularly fail to account for the unity against Asian immigration between unionists in different regions, the influence of campaigns for exclusion in other countries, and the class content of labour's anti-Asian rhetoric. Another under-explored issue is whether unionists approached Asians in the same way as other immigrants, minorities, and oppressed groups. Drawing on the growing literature on racialization, and focusing primarily on the 1880s, when labour's views on Asian immigration became well established, this article shows how Asians were set apart from any groups with whom labour might have sympathy or common cause. Asians were associated with oppressive forces, particularly of the emerging industrial capitalist system. This association can be seen in many of labour's stereotypes of Asians as industrial slaves, ruthless competitors in the economy, and threats to white women. These stereotypes also set Asians up as polar opposites to the basic class, race, and gender identity that labour leaders sought to foster.

This paper explores the approach of Canada's largest labour central, the Trades and Labor Congress (TLC), to immigration from 1933 to 1939. This was a unique period in Canada's immigration history, as in 1930 the government responded to the onset of the Great Depression by closing the gates to almost all immigration for the first time since Confederation, and by 1933 there was no doubt that the gates would remain closed for some time. Despite this dramatic change, Canadian labour leaders stood by their longstanding views on immigration through to the end of the 1930s. Although the level of concern about immigration predictably declined, TLC leaders generally gained confidence that their established views had widespread support. This confidence encouraged unionists to pose as protectors of immigrants against hardship in Canada. It also assured them that they did not have to devote as much energy as in earlier periods to agitating for the deportation of some immigrants, or to their longtime favourite cause, restricting immigration from Asia and southern and eastern Europe. Altogether, changes in the economy and immigration rates did not necessarily entail changes in labour's attitudes. A number of other factors, including ideological trends within the movement, prevailing attitudes towards race and gender, and the efforts of groups advocating immigration served to entrench labour's views even more deeply in the 1930s.

The article focuses on the underlying conditions contributing to the Winnipeg General Strike in Manitoba in 1919. It serves as a significant expression of the liberal view of the necessary reforms to handle industrial conflict and to provide for a more just economy. It states that the legitimate demands of labor could be accommodated within the existing constitutional framework with the developing economic maturity of Canada in the early 20th century and efficient state management of the economy.

The article reviews the book, "The Politics of Working Life," by Paul Edwards and Judy Wajcman.

Detailed study, including interviews with the participants, of the United Steelworkers' campaign to organize the workers at a call centre in Sudbury, Ontario, in 1999.

The article reviews the book, "Backlash Against Welfare Mothers: Past and Present," by Ellen Reese.

When work is 'boundless' and 'seamless' where and how do workers' lives intersect with the space-time continuum of place-based communities? Who and what are they accountable to? Telemediation is fragmenting work across increasingly complex, transnational networks. Workers in these networks must negotiate through a multitude of temporal, contractual and trans-cultural milieus. This paper traces the trajectory of the work experience using case studies of telemediated work relationships in various points in the global supply chain and analyses the implications of telemediated spaces for the quality of workers' lives. Drawing on an analysis of case studies conducted by the EMERGENCE Canada project, this paper argues that telemediated work represents a shift in the scale at which many aspects of daily life unfold, and that some of the assumptions upon which workers' lives are governed must be reconsidered.

The article reviews the book, "Securing Borders: Detention and Deportation in Canada," by Anna Pratt.

The widespread use of outsourcing in the service industry has major consequences for the employment relationship. In particular, outsourcing diminishes absolute employer control of firm operations. This article focuses on this new relationship through a study of the occupational health and safety requirements established in connection with the outsourcing of public bus transport in Denmark.

The article reviews the book, "Saints, Sinners and Soldiers: Canada's Second World War," by Jeffrey A. Keshen.

The article reviews the book, "Fragile Alliances: Labor and Politics in Evansville, Indiana 1919-1955," by Samuel W. White.

This paper focuses on the experiences of children and youth who were born into the Ukrainian Labour Farmer Temple Association (ULFTA) during the 1920s and 1930s. It examines the priorities of the movement's parents and male leaders and their efforts to implement activities that would serve to politicize and impart a strong sense of Ukrainianness in youngsters. It also considers the ways in which young people themselves contributed to the shape of the movement. Children and youth, because of their particular positions at specific intersections of class, ethnicity, age, and gender, experienced the ULFTA in ways that were distinct from their parents. Because of the ULFTA's emphasis on Ukrainian culture, their childhoods were also significantly different from other socialist children. The movement's emphasis on Marxist-Leninism and the class struggle also divided these children from their non-socialist Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian peers. By applying an intersectional perspective to the interwar Ukrainian left, this paper also seeks to broaden our understanding of the movement's connection with the Communist Party of Canada (CPC). The ULFTA and the CPC enjoyed a consistently difficult relationship through much of this period, particularly where Ukrainian cultural expression was concerned. An examination of youngsters' activities illustrates some of the many ways in which the ULFTA leaders and rank-and-file members (including the young people themselves) resisted the CPC's attempts to control the ULFTA and its resources.

The article focuses on the activism of Jewish leader Noah London against Stalinism in Soviet Union. While working as the labor editor of the Communist Party of the United States' (CPUSA) Yiddish daily newspaper called "Freiheit," London had participated in the socialist-communist civil war within the garment industry which profoundly affect the labor movement in the U.S. He was the founding national secretary of the CPUSA Jewish Workers Federation.

The article looks at the reason for the decline in union densities in Japan and the U.S. Union density is defined as the number of workers who are members of unions. According to the article, the drop in the U.S. started in 1953 while it began in Japan in 1975. The author claims that the reason for this decline is because of business unionism, which is a situation when the union leadership agrees to terms acceptable to business and has no interest in democratic participation in decision-making by the workers.

The article reviews the book, "Artificial Ice: Hockey, Culture and Commerce," edited by David Whitson and Richard Gruneau.

The article reviews the book, "Global Cinderellas: Migrant Domestics and Newly Rich Employers in Taiwan," by Pei-Chia Lan.

Labour Relations and Health Reform: A Comparative Study of Five Jurisdictions, by Kurt Wetzel, is reviewed.

On 23 June 1919, 5000 workers affiliated with Victoria's Metal Trades Council downed tools in sympathy with Winnipeg workers and as a protest against what they called 'Star Chamber' methods of repression against the working- class leadership. While much has been written on the Winnipeg General Strike and 1919 Canadian labour revolt, the Victoria General Strike is revealing as a contested expression of working-class solidarity, an illustration of the unresolved tension between craft and industrial unionism and different labour leaderships in the west-coast city. Much of British Columbia labour had embraced the One Big Union and its socialist leadership by the spring of 1919, but Victoria's organized workers wavered on the question of striking in sympathy with Winnipeg's working class. While the shipyards were a locus of militancy, influential groups of workers, AFL rather than OBU in orientation, opposed a general strike and undermined the mood of solidarity. Local conditions in different economic sectors shaped the working-class response to the Winnipeg General Strike. This tension provides fresh insight into the development of class consciousness and industrial militancy at the end World War I, breaking new ground in the historiography of Canada's postwar labour revolt.