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The article reviews the book, "Histoire de l'Abitibi-Témiscamingue," edited by Odette Vincent.

The article reviews the book, "Crewe: Railway Town, Company and People, 1840-1914," by Diane K. Drummond.

The article examines the divergent patterns of labor flexibility in 2 Canadian power transformer plants owned by the same company and producing similar products with identical technologies. The case study results are used to point to 3 over-simplifications in the flexibility debate: 1. the claim that "numerical" and "functional" flexibility are incompatible, 2. the argument that North American management relies more heavily on external flexibility than on flexibility, and 3. the widespread contention that the traditional collective agreement is the chief barrier to achieving a more flexible organization of production in North America.

This thesis examines the reaction of organized labour to Quebec separatist nationalism for the period between 1960, the year of the creation of the Rassemblement pour l'independance nationale and the beginning of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, and 1980, the year of the first referendum on Quebec's constitutional status. The thesis investigates four labour organizations: the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), the Federation des travailleurs et travailleuses du Quebec (FTQ), the Confederation des syndicats nationaux (CSN), and the Centrale de l'enseignement du Quebec (CEQ). It shows in which ways the positions of the four centrals have been informed by their members' national identifications and the emotional and cognitive mechanisms that resulted from these identifications.

La problématique de l'équilibre emploi-famille (ÉEF) est de plus en plus au cœur des préoccupations organisationnelles, à tel point que se développe l'idée qu’il faut gérer cet équilibre, c'est-à-dire plus explicitement qu'il faut implanter ou modifier certaines pratiques de gestion pour aider les employés à surmonter leurs problèmes d'ÉEF. Cette recherche, effectuée auprès de 301 organisations ayant des opérations au Québec, vise à répondre aux questions suivantes : (1) Quel est le degré d'implantation au Québec des diverses pratiques présentées dans la littérature spécialisée ? (2) Sous quelles formes ces pratiques sont-elles implantées ? (3) Quelles sont les organisations qui les ont implantées ? (4) Quels sont leurs effets ? et finalement (5) Existe-t-il à proprement parler des programmes d'aide à l'équilibre emploi-famille dans les organisations québécoises ?

Le malaise professionnel — vu comme un conflit entre les valeurs professionnelles et les exigences organisationnelles — a donné lieu à une abondante littérature au cours des quarante dernières années. Le concept est ici repris dans le but d'élaborer un construit qui s'appuie sur les huit principaux points de tension entre les cadres et les professionnels, soit la nature du travail, l'autonomie, la participation à la prise de décision, le style de gestion du supérieur, les conditions de travail, le développement de carrière, la reconnaissance et l'éthique. Construit à partir de questions mesurant tant les attentes professionnelles que les perceptions de réalisation de 2497 professionnels syndiqués du Québec, le construit de 16 indicateurs se révèle cohérent et valide puisqu'il est significativement corrélé avec les attitudes et comportements généralement associés au malaise par les auteurs.

A study examines the effect of layoff announcements on the market's valuation of firms. The event study methodology is applied to a sample of 214 announcements of layoffs made by major Canadian firms that traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange over the period 1982-1989. The main results are: 1. The market responds to the news of layoffs in a negative fashion, lowering the value of firms that announce layoffs. 2. Almost all of the negative response occurs on the day of the announcement, suggesting that the market is not able to fully anticipate the new information, but that it responds to it very quickly.

A recounting of the lives of the leaders and organisers who were arrested and charged at the climax of the Winnipeg General Strike and how their efforts helped give birth to an active, organised Prairie labour movement that spread across the nation. --Publisher's description

This article refutes the assertion that the Galt, Ontario waterworks was built for public health reasons. The two Galt waterworks campaigns (1888 and 1890) are studied in the context of other contemporaneous local events, the most important of which was a moulders' strike in 1889. Popular resistance to businessmen's wants and public support for the striking moulders prompted the formation of a local board of trade and the threat of an industrial exodus from town. The waterworks authorization of 1890 resulted from the victory by buinessmen in this overt class stuggle. The development of Galt's waterworks reflected economic and political interests far more than public health concerns. The findings refut McLaughlin, and illustrate a novel connection between urban politics, infrastructure development, labour rleations, and industrial capitalism.

Si, au niveau du discours, la gestion des ressources humaines semble avoir développé de nouvelles approches, qu'en est-il réellement dans la pratique ? Par l'entremise d'une analyse de contenu d'annonces de presse, cette étude retrace l'évolution de certaines dimensions de la pratique de la gestion des ressources humaines entre 1975 et 1995. Les résultats indiquent que la pratique a connu une évolution qui requiert de nouvelles exigences professionnelles.

The article reviews the book, "New Deals: Business, Labor and Politics in America, 1920-1935.," by Colin Gordon.

The article reviews the book, "The Economics of the Trade Union," by Alison L. Booth.

The article reviews the book, "Desert Capitalism: Maquiladoras in North America's Western Industrial Corridor," by Kathryn Kopinak.

The article reviews the book, "Pathways to Change: Case Studies of Strategic Negotiations," by Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Robert B. McKersie and Richard E. Walton.

Reassesses the 1931 Estevan miners' strike and riot in light of internal RCMP reports recently released under the federal Access to Information Act. Discusses reporting by local police officials at the time, which was more nuanced and sympathetic to the miners than had previously been believed. However, the RCMP was also under heavy pressure from higher authorities and mine owners to crack down. Three miners were killed (one died in hospital) and eight others injured by the police in a violent confrontation on September 29, 1931. A photograph is reproduced of the common grave where the three miners were buried under the epitaph, "Murdered by RCMP."

L'auteur rappelle d'abord les pistes tracées par les travaux néoréalistes en relations industrielles, puis il propose une perspective se situant dans le cadre d'une hétérodoxie institutionnaliste française afin de prolonger cette perspective. Après avoir distingué au sein du rapport salarial les règles organisationnelles et les règles institutionnelles, il porte son attention sur le système de relations professionnelles défini comme l'ensemble des règles institutionnelles. Il développe ensuite une hypothèse d'endogénéité relative des règles de contenu du système de relations professionnelles vis-à-vis des régimes d'accumulation. Puis il élabore une typologie qui met en évidence le type de relations professionnelles qui favorise l'enchaînement macroéconomique propre à chaque régime d'accumulation. Enfin, il considère les différences nationales qui sont mises sur le compte de la capacité exogène des acteurs, dotés d'une rationalité procédurale, à mettre en phase dans le temps les règles du système de relations professionnelles avec la régulation en place, d'où la possibilité de fortes marges d'indétermination. // Three perspectives that have emerged from neorealist studies in industrial relations are explored. An initial analytical contribution of the paper is to hierarchize the various categories of rules, particularly by distinguishing procedural rules from content rules and labor relations rules from human resource management rules. Through the concept of the system of rules, the paper examines the national character of rules located in a single economic space and examines the interaction of these rules with this space. Strategies pursued by collective actors are identified.

Over the past two decades there has emerged a generalized critique of the quality of the labour supply in industrialized countries in relation to concerns about corporate profitability and national competitiveness. Frequently, the critique has focused, in whole or in part, on the so-called 'literacy' or 'basic skills' competencies of workers. This thesis examines the problematizing of workers' literacy competencies at a time when general educational attainments in Western countries have reached unprecedentedly high levels. Both broad-based and historically informed, the study focuses on the United States, Canada and England over the period of the mid-1980s through the early 1990s. The motives of the agencies and interests which have proclaimed a worker 'basic skills crisis', as well as the processes through which their claims have been disseminated, are analyzed. The ideological and material contexts in which these claims have resonated are described. The thesis concludes that the workforce basic skills 'crisis' is a socially constructed one which has little or no basis in fact. It is an issue which has had utility for a number of interests (including business, labour, educationalists and the state sector), however, and this, it is argued, accounts for the role they have taken in its social construction. The evidence presented here establishes that the workforce literacy issue has had real consequences for workers. It has operated to scapegoat sections of the working class and to further marginalize less formally qualified workers in their workplaces and in the labour market. This-the industrial relations context in which the putative workforce 'basic skills crisis' has operated-forms the principal focus of the thesis. The impacts on workers of actions stemming from the acceptance of the idea of a basic skills crisis-including increasing scrutiny of literacy and language competencies of workers and the promotion and establishment of 'basic skills' programmes of questionable value in workplaces-ought to give cause for many who have endorsed claims of a 'crisis' and embraced workplace literacy to re-evaluate their position.

The response of the Canadian labor movement to sexual orientation discrimination has been mixed and uneven. The Canadian Labour Congress, along with several provincial federations and a growing number of unions, have taken a leadership role in promoting equal rights for gays and lesbians, while other labor organizations have done nothing at all. Public sector and Canadian-based unions are much more likely to have been active than have American-based unions, even though there are important exceptions to these trends. These developments are partially explained by regional dynamics, membership demographics, degree of activism, the presence of women's committees, and organizational leadership.

The article reviews the book, "The Fabrication of Labor: Germany and Britain, 1640-1914," by Richard Biernacki.

Cet article offre un cadre pour l'analyse comparative des orientations politiques des syndicats, en distinguant des types idéaux idéologiques et identitaires qui se rapportent, premièrement, à la négociation sur le marché du travail ; deuxièmement, au renforcement de l'intégration des travailleurs dans la société ; troisièmement, à la poursuite conflictuelle d'intérêts de classe. L'argument est qu'en pratique les mouvements syndicaux européens ont généralement épousé une combinaison de ces orientations dans laquelle deux des trois éléments ont été retenus (souvent de façon contradictoire) comme prioritaires. Les cas de la Grande-Bretagne, de l'Italie et de l'Allemagne sont utilisés pour démontrer différentes combinaisons d'idéologies et d'objectifs, et également pour révéler comment les identités héritées ont récemment été mises sous tension.