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The article reviews and comments on the books, "Disability Histories," edited by Susan Burch and Michael Rembis, and "Civil Disabilities: Citizenship, Membership, and Belonging," edited by Nancy J. Hirschmann and Beth Linker.

When it comes to negotiating over a collective dismissals plan, the French national legal framework explicitly encourages social partners to favour outplacement services over significant indemnity payments. However, significant above-mandatory redundancy payments are commonly granted to laid-off workers. Based on these factual observations, this article aims to identify the antecedent conditions, or, more precisely, the combinations of conditions, that lead to the granting of a large severance pay. We conducted a qualitative comparative analysis (Crisp set QCA) methodology applied to 20 monographs on downsizing operations that took place in France during the 2000s. The results show that above-mandatory severance payments are closely related to two major dimensions characterizing the economic and social context in which restructuring processes are carried out. The first one is about the balance of power prevailing between the company decisionmakers and the employees. This balance of power dimension is subsumed by two distinct conditions: the availability of financial resources and the presence of active unions. The second dimension relates to the moral and economic damages inflicted upon laid-off workers. This dimension is intrinsically connected to two downsizing process features, i.e. the perceived degree of legitimacy associated with the downsizing process and the degree of employability associated with the laid-off workers. Most notably, it appears that none of the identified conditions is sufficient by itself to induce the payment of a significant above-mandatory indemnity. However, some causal conditions may induce the outcome variable when they are combined with some specific other antecedent conditions. Thus, our research shows that the financial resource condition leads to the granting of an above-mandatory indemnity either in conjunction with a low degree of worker’s employability or in conjunction with both a weak perceived legitimacy of the restructuring process and the presence of active unions.

The article reviews the book, "Charivari et justice populaire au Québec," by René Hardy.

The article reviews the book, "Santé et travail à la mine, XIXe-XXIe siècle," edited by Judith Rainhorn.

Generally, Canada has been ignored in the literature on the colonial origins of divergence with most of the attention going to the United States. Late nineteenth century estimates of income per capita show that Canada was relatively poorer than the United States and that within Canada, the French and Catholic population of Quebec was considerably poorer. Was this gap long standing? Some evidence has been advanced for earlier periods, but it is quite limited and not well-suited for comparison with other societies. This thesis aims to contribute both to Canadian economic history and to comparative work on inequality across nations during the early modern period. With the use of novel prices and wages from Quebec—which was then the largest settlement in Canada and under French rule—a price index, a series of real wages and a measurement of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are constructed. They are used to shed light both on the course of economic development until the French were defeated by the British in 1760 and on standards of living in that colony relative to the mother country, France, as well as the American colonies. The work is divided into three components. The first component relates to the construction of a price index. The absence of such an index has been a thorn in the side of Canadian historians as it has limited the ability of historians to obtain real values of wages, output and living standards. This index shows that prices did not follow any trend and remained at a stable level. However, there were episodes of wide swings—mostly due to wars and the monetary experiment of playing card money. The creation of this index lays the foundation of the next component. The second component constructs a standardized real wage series in the form of welfare ratios (a consumption basket divided by nominal wage rate multiplied by length of work year) to compare Canada with France, England and Colonial America. Two measures are derived. The first relies on a “bare bones” definition of consumption with a large share of land-intensive goods. This measure indicates that Canada was poorer than England and Colonial America and not appreciably richer than France. However, this measure overestimates the relative position of Canada to the Old World because of the strong presence of land-intensive goods. A second measure is created using a “respectable” definition of consumption in which the basket includes a larger share of manufactured goods and capital-intensive goods. This second basket better reflects differences in living standards since the abundance of land in Canada (and Colonial America) made it easy to achieve bare subsistence, but the scarcity of capital and skilled labor made the consumption of luxuries and manufactured goods (clothing, lighting, imported goods) highly expensive. With this measure, the advantage of New France over France evaporates and turns slightly negative. In comparison with Britain and Colonial America, the gap widens appreciably. This element is the most important for future research. By showing a reversal because of a shift to a different type of basket, it shows that Old World and New World comparisons are very sensitive to how we measure the cost of living. Furthermore, there are no sustained improvements in living standards over the period regardless of the measure used. Gaps in living standards observed later in the nineteenth century existed as far back as the seventeenth century. In a wider American perspective that includes the Spanish colonies, Canada fares better. The third component computes a new series for Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is to avoid problems associated with using real wages in the form of welfare ratios which assume a constant labor supply. This assumption is hard to defend in the case of Colonial Canada as there were many signs of increasing industriousness during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The GDP series suggest no long-run trend in living standards (from 1688 to circa 1765). The long peace era of 1713 to 1740 was marked by modest economic growth which offset a steady decline that had started in 1688, but by 1760 (as a result of constant warfare) living standards had sunk below their 1688 levels. These developments are accompanied by observations that suggest that other indicators of living standard declined. The flat-lining of incomes is accompanied by substantial increases in the amount of time worked, rising mortality and rising infant mortality. In addition, comparisons of incomes with the American colonies confirm the results obtained with wages— Canada was considerably poorer. At the end, a long conclusion is provides an exploratory discussion of why Canada would have diverged early on. In structural terms, it is argued that the French colony was plagued by the problem of a small population which prohibited the existence of scale effects. In combination with the fact that it was dispersed throughout the territory, the small population of New France limited the scope for specialization and economies of scale. However, this problem was in part created, and in part aggravated, by institutional factors like seigneurial tenure. The colonial origins of French America’s divergence from the rest of North America are thus partly institutional.

Au Canada, le nombre de travailleurs étrangers temporaires est en forte hausse et ce, depuis 2003. Les travailleurs étrangers temporaires ne disposent ni de la citoyenneté politique, ni de la résidence permanente; leur mobilité professionnelle est restreinte et leur durée de séjour est limitée et prédéterminée. Sur le plan formel, ces travailleurs bénéficient des protections prévues par le droit du travail nonobstant leur statut migratoire. Toutefois, plusieurs travaux ont démontré que les travailleurs étrangers temporaires occupant des emplois qui requièrent un niveau réduit de formation sont généralement moins enclins à dénoncer la violation de leurs droits au travail. Le droit du travail constitue-t-il un rempart utile pour ces travailleurs? À l’aide d’une méthodologie mixte impliquant notamment une enquête de terrain auprès des acteurs-clé, la présente thèse poursuit deux objectifs distincts. Sur le plan empirique, elle permet de mettre en lumière l’incidence du système d’emploi singulier dans lequel s’insèrent les travailleurs étrangers temporaires sur leur usage des ressources proposées par le droit du travail. Le recours à ces ressources n’est pas contingent et prédéterminé; il est inextricablement lié aux opportunités et aux contraintes avec lesquelles ces travailleurs composent. Cette recherche révèle également que les stratégies échafaudées par différents acteurs qui ne sont pas, sur le plan juridique, des parties au rapport salarial, ont une incidence significative sur l’usage du droit par ses destinataires ; leur impact dépend largement du pouvoir dont ces acteurs disposent dans le système d’emploi. Sur le plan théorique, cette thèse s’inscrit dans le champ plus large des études portant sur l’effectivité du droit; elle propose de distinguer entre l’étude des effets du droit et l’analyse de son usage. Elle présente, à cette fin, un cadre analytique permettant de saisir le rapport qu’entretiennent les destinataires avec le droit.

Les programmes de migration temporaire constituent une manifestation de la division internationale du travail qui se concrétise par le déplacement de la main-d’oeuvre. Les travailleurs étrangers temporaires et leurs employeurs s’insèrent dans un système d’emploi qui se caractérise par l’action intervenant à l’occasion de la formation, de l’exécution et de la terminaison du rapport salarial. Or, si l’action intervenant au sein d’un système d’emploi résulte notamment des effets des règles juridiques applicables, elle découle également des schémas d’action mis de l’avant par les acteurs qui y interagissent. Cependant, certains de ces acteurs sont susceptibles d’occuper, de façon singulière, la scène de l’action : la prégnance de leurs schémas d’action est directement proportionnelle à la nature et à la portée du rôle qu’ils assument dans le système d’emploi. Cet article présente les résultats d’une étude de terrain qui a permis de cerner les contours du système d’emploi dans lequel s’insèrent les travailleurs agricoles guatémaltèques embauchés via le « Volet agricole » du Programme des travailleurs étrangers temporaires. Notre recherche révèle de quelle façon s’organise la capacité d’action des acteurs exogènes et endogènes au champ du travail. Elle permet également de comprendre de quelle façon certains acteurs sont contraints par l’effet de frontières géographiques et systémiques. Finalement, l’appréhension empirique du système d’emploi étudié amène aussi à brosser le portrait d’un rapport salarial multipartite tout à fait singulier. // Title in English: Temporary migration programs are a manifestation of the international division of labour that is reflected in the movement of productive agents. Temporary foreign workers and their employers are part of a unique employment system that is characterized by game mechanisms involved during the formation, implementation and termination of the wage relationship. If these games are inextricably linked to the legal rules regulating the wage relationship, they also stem from the practices and strategies deployed by the actors interacting within the employment system. However, some of these actors have the ability to occupy a unique place at the scene of the action, with the significance of their action plans being directly proportional to the nature and scope of the role they play in the employment system. This article presents the results of a field study that identified the contours of the employment system in which Guatemalan agricultural workers were hired through the agricultural stream of the Temporary Foreign Workers Program. This research shows how actors, who can be exogenous or endogenous to the labour field, organize their capacity for action. Hence, if the action of some actors is constrained by the effect of geographic and system boundaries, an empirical understanding of the employment system studied also shows a mismatch between the legal power granted to the employer under labour law and the strategic power that is available to certain actors who are external to the labour field. To conclude, this article provides an overview of the ways in which this multiparty context has consequences for the wage relationship studied.

This dissertation challenges the prevailing periodization of Quebec and Ontario’s economic development in Canadian historiography by contrasting the specificity of capitalist social relations with the non-capitalist forms of social reproduction belonging to French Canadian peasants and Upper Canadian farmers in the colonial period. With a few notable exceptions, existing historical interpretations assume that capitalism was there, at least in embryo, from the colony’s very beginning in the guise of the fur trade, manufacturing, or a local bourgeoisie. By contrast, this thesis brings together, through a comparative perspective, different pieces of the interconnected histories of France, Britain, the United States, Ontario, and Quebec in order to show that capitalism did not arrive on the shores of the St. Lawrence River with the first settlers. The dissertation also brings together pieces of the uneven intra-regional histories of these regions, and provides a general reflection on how to systematically integrate the geopolitical dimension of social change into historical sociology, political economy, and comparative politics. As such, the question with which the thesis is concerned is not exclusively that of the transition to capitalism in Quebec or in Ontario, but more broadly the interrelated questions of state-formation and ‘late development’ in north-eastern North America. One of the main findings of the dissertation is that only with the development of industrial capitalism in the north-eastern United States were the conditions for the emergence of capital-intensive types of agriculture in rural areas of Quebec and Ontario put in place. American breakthroughs toward industrial capitalism irrevocably transformed the system-wide conditions under which subsequent agricultural evolution took place in neighbouring regions, generating a new geopolitical configuration in which customary peasant production continued to persist in Quebec alongside petty-commodity farmers in Upper Canada and the development of industrial capitalism in urban areas such as Montreal. These findings bring to the fore the need to directly address the ‘peasant question’ in order to understand the impact of the continued existence of a large peasantry on state-formation and the long-term economic development of Quebec during the period when industrial capitalism was emerging as a dominant feature of the North American economy.

In this discussion paper, we make the case for a renewed national dialogue on workplace democracy. Though the term may sound better suited to an academic/policy conference from the 1970s, in plain terms workplace democracy actually speaks to an ever-present need: i.e., advancing the fundamental rights of employees to associate freely and to have some say over decisions that affect their lives in the workplace. By expanding employee voice, as a country, we can also generate positive spillovers that enhance job satisfaction, raise productivity and increase civic participation. These benefits improve the lives of workers, increase the bottom lines for firms and enrich society as a whole. These are also ideas, it should be noted, that lie at the heart of industrial relations scholarship going back more than a century and which we draw from in this discussion paper. --Executive Summary

When Winnipeg's Cy Gonick started the magazine Canadian Dimension in 1963 to provide a home for the thinking and analysis of mostly young leftists engaged in Canadian economic, social, cultural, artistic and political issues, he had no grand plan. But Canadian Dimension was welcomed by intellectuals, scholars and students, and it proved enduring. Hundreds of Canada's leading figures of the left have contributed to its pages over the years, writing about every major topic in Canadian public life. This book offers an account of the most important developments in Canadian history from the sixties until today, as seen and interpreted by scholars and writers on the pages of Dimension. Each chapter reviews a major theme, such as Canada's relationship to the U.S., the development of our health care system, the dynamics of Aboriginal-non-Aboriginal relations and the role of Canadian cultural work in shaping Canadian society. Taken together, the book provides a unique and broad perspective on virtually every significant event and development in recent Canadian history. Readers who know the magazine will find this book a compelling summary of how Canada changed in the past five decades, and how the Left saw those changes and challenged them. Readers who discover Canadian Dimension through this book will find a multitude of compelling voices who challenge the dominant neoliberal thinking of mainstream Canadian intellectual life. --Publisher's description.

The article reviews the book, "Prévenir les problèmes de santé mentale au travail : contribution d’une recherche-action en milieu scolaire," by Marie-France Maranda, Simon Viviers et Jean-Simon Deslauriers.

The article reviews the book, "International and Comparative Employment Relations. National regulation, global changes," 6th ed., by Greg J. Bamber, Russell D. Lansbury, Nick Wailes and Chris F. Wright.

This article reviews the book, "The Philosophical Foundations of Management Thought," by Jean-Etienne Joullié and Robert Spillane.

Introduces the memoir of Marko P. Hećimović (1894-1967). Written in 1939, the memoir focuses on Hećimović's role in the establishment of a communist press in Canada in 1931 that was published in the language of South Slavic immigrant workers such as himself (at the time, Hećimović, a Croat, was a miner in Anyox, BC).

This article adopts an in-depth clinical perspective based on the theoretical framework of grief in order to examine individuals’ reactions following psychological contract violation over a period of 12 months. By focusing on emotional intra-psychic phenomena our study provides evidence of the enduring effects of psychological contract violation on individuals and the employment relationship. We conducted a total of 60 interviews among 11 managers of a temporary employment agency that has implemented a series of organizational changes, mainly related to restructuring and downsizing decisions. The 11 managers interviewed have been chosen after having reported in a short survey that they experienced a psychological contract violation at work. Our results indicate that psychological contract violation triggers the subject into a grief process only when violation deprives the individual from a highly invested object at work. In these circumstances, the grief process lasts longer than we originally expected since, over 12 months, we were unable to observe the grief process in its entirety among our participants. We also find that the grief process may be accelerated or stopped according to the capacity of the organization and the individual to offer new objects that satisfy the individual’s needs and thus may help the person mourn the loss experienced as a result of the violation. Finally, our results show that the grief process deeply alters the employment relationship and modifies the amount and intensity of energy that the participants of our study devote to their work. // Cet article adopte une perspective clinique fondée sur le cadre théorique du deuil afin de d’examiner les réactions à la violation du contrat psychologique au cours d’une période de 12 mois. En se centrant sur les phénomènes émotionnels propres à l’individu, notre étude apporte des éléments d’observation des effets durables que peut engendrer la violation du contrat psychologique chez les personnes concernées, et de la manière dont ces effets altèrent leur relation d’emploi avec l’entreprise. Nous avons mené, au total, 60 entretiens auprès de 11 gestionnaires d’une agence de travail temporaire qui a mis en place une série de changements organisationnels importants, portant essentiellement sur des restructurations et coupures de poste. Les 11 gestionnaires interrogés furent sélectionnés après avoir vérifié, au préalable lors d’une enquête brève, qu’ils avaient bien vécu un sentiment de violation du contrat psychologique. Nos résultats montrent que la violation du contrat psychologique ne pousse le sujet à effectuer un travail de deuil que lorsque cette violation prive l’individu d’un objet fortement investi au travail. Dans ces circonstances, le deuil est un processus plus long que nous l’avions anticipé, puisqu’à l’issue de la période de collecte (soit 12 mois), nous n’avons pas été en mesure d’observer l’ensemble du processus chez les participants. Nos résultats indiquent aussi que le processus de deuil peut être accéléré ou ralenti selon la capacité de l’organisation et de l’individu à offrir ou trouver de nouveaux objets qui satisfont les besoins de l’individu et l’aident à accepter la perte vécue lors de la violation. Finalement, nos résultats montrent que le processus de deuil conduit à une modification importante de la relation d’emploi et qu’il change tant le contenu que l’intensité de l’énergie que les participants consacrent à leur travail.

The article reviews the book, "Canadian State Trials, Volume IV: Security, Dissent, and the Limits of Toleration in War and Peace, 1914–1939, edited by Barry Wright, Eric Tucker, and Susan Binnie.

Background: Although worker representation in OHS has been widely recognized as contributing to health and safety improvements at work, few studies have examined the role that worker representatives play in this process. Using a large quantitative sample, this paper seeks to confirm findings from an earlier exploratory qualitative study that worker representatives can be differentiated by the knowledge intensive tactics and strategies that they use to achieve changes in their workplace. Methods: Just under 900 worker health and safety representatives in Ontario completed surveys which asked them to report on the amount of time they devoted to different types of representation activities (i.e., technical activities such as inspections and report writing vs. political activities such as mobilizing workers to build support), the kinds of conditions or hazards they tried to address through their representation (e.g., housekeeping vs. modifications in ventilation systems), and their reported success in making positive improvements. A cluster analysis was used to determine whether the worker representatives could be distinguished in terms of the relative time devoted to different activities and the clusters were then compared with reference to types of intervention efforts and outcomes. Results: The cluster analysis identified three distinct groupings of representatives with significant differences in reported types of interventions and in their level of reported impact. Two of the clusters were consistent with the findings in the exploratory study, identified as knowledge activism for greater emphasis on knowledge based political activity and technical-legal representation for greater emphasis on formalized technical oriented procedures and legal regulations. Knowledge activists were more likely to take on challenging interventions and they reported more impact across the full range of interventions. Conclusions This paper provides further support for the concepts of knowledge activism and technical-legal representation when differentiating the strategic orientations and impact of worker health and safety representatives, with important implications for education, political support and recruitment.

In Northern Canada, Indigenous mixed economies persist alongside and in resistance to capital accumulation. The day-to-day sites and processes of colonial struggle, and, in particular, their gendered nature, are too often ignored. This piece takes an anti-colonial materialist approach to the multiple labours of Indigenous women in Canada, arguing that their social-reproductive labour is a primary site of struggle: a site of violent capitalist accumulation and persistent decolonising resistance. In making this argument, this piece draws on social-reproduction feminism, and anti-racist, Indigenous and anti-colonial feminism, asking what it means to take an anti-colonial approach to social-reproduction feminism. It presents an expanded conception of production that encompasses not just the dialectic of capitalist production and reproduction, but also non-capitalist, subsistence production. An anti-colonial approach to social-reproduction feminism challenges one to think through questions of non-capitalist labour and the way different forms of labour persist relationally, reproducing and resisting capitalist modes of production.

The article reviews the book, "Soviet Princeton: Slim Evans and the 1932–33 Miners' Strike by Jon Bartlett and Rika Ruebsaat.

In this report, we begin by setting the context of living and working in Greater Victoria, examining low wages, high cost of living, and employment trends, particularly in relation to work in the retail, food service, and hospitality industries. We characterize retail, food service, and hospitality work as “precarious work,” providing workers with very little in the way of wages, benefits, job security, stability, protection, or basic respect and dignity. Existing employment standards are not adequate to protect workers in retail, food service, and hospitality. The key contribution of this report is its exploration of key areas of concern – low-wages, lack of benefits, unstable scheduling practices, unfair job expectations, disregard for workersʼ health and safety, poor treatment, workplace justice – through the workersʼ own experiences and voices. We would like to thank these workers for sharing their experiences with us. By bringing these various and similar experiences together, we hope this report will help provide a grounding to fight for workplace justice.