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A response from the authors of the book that was reviewed entitled "Constitutional Labour Rights in Canada: Farm Workers and the Fraser Case" is presented. They all shared a commitment to the goal of promoting labour rights for agricultural workers and a belief that constitutional litigation could be a tool through which that objective was advanced. They want the implication of this formulation to be clear: they do not believe that constitutional rights and constitutional litigation were ever or are now the only or even the best means for advancing the struggle for labour rights for farm workers. However, the reality is that laws actively prescribe and sustain a particular balance of power. Laws actively construct relationships of domination/subordination and constrain the space for particular kinds of collective workplace action.

The article reviews the book, "Constitutional Labour Rights in Canada: Farm Workers and the Fraser Case," by Fay Faraday, Judy Fudge and Eric Tucker.

The article reviews the book, "More of a Man: Diaries of a Scottish Craftsman in Mid-Nineteenth Century North America," edited by Andrew C. Holman and Robert B. Kristofferson.

Argues that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's effort to reshape understandings of history and national identity, such as the $28 million celebration of the War of 1812, is consistent with Conservative government's "illiberal" agenda for the country going forward. Discusses the research strategy of the Canadian Museum of History, which focuses on the world wars and Confederation rather than working people, as well as the government's labour record.

Half a century ago, on the verge of the Information Age, the sociologist Edward Shils took the measure of how matters stood with privacy. He argued that privacy was being systematically engulfed by societal elites - government, journalists, business, and social scientists - even as they sought privacy for themselves. He saw a passive populace, indifferent to the intrusion, and a near- total absence of protective law. This essay reflects on what Shils saw from the perspective of a half-century's experience. It argues that the populace is no longer passive, that the public's concern for privacy as consumers has had a rip- ple effect in a concern for privacy in employment. Nor is the law totally absent; but the legislative approach has been piecemeal, attending only to those per- ceived abuses that most strike the public ire. In terms of the common law, in its address to the large lacunae left by legislation, the legal establishment - repre- sented by the American Law Institute - continues to serve as a handmaiden to those business interests that had and would continue to engulf employee privacy.

This article reviews the book, "Work in Cinema: Labor and the Human Condition," ed. by Ewa Mazierska.

The rapid influx of temporary foreign workers (TFWs) into Canada in the early 2000s posed significant challenges to Canadian unions. Using narrative analysis, this paper examines how union leaders constructed narratives about TFWs in the period 2006 to 2012. It finds three temporally sequential narrative arcs: prioritizing of Canadian workers' interests and portrayal of TFWs as employer pawns; TFWs as vulnerable workers needing union advocacy for their employment and human rights; and post-economic crisis conflicted efforts to integrate Canadian and TFW interests. The narrative arcs are shaped by tensions between internal pressures on union leaders and their external contexts. The analysis reveals that union leaders' responsibility to represent members can clash with their broader values of social justice and equality. By linking the contemporary reaction to TFWs to labour's historical approach to immigration and race, the paper also reveals important continuities and interruptions in labour's relationship with migrants.

This article reviews the book, "Keeping Canada British: The Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Saskatchewan," by James M. Pitsula.

The relevance of subsidiary embeddedness in a macro-institutional environment can in no way overshadow the importance of the micro-political agency of social actors. While some researchers focus on local management's "embedded agency," we focus on a less-developed aspect: workers' "embedded agency." In order to do so, we propose an analytical model that is based on the Varieties of Capitalism model and its subsequent developments, but that also includes the workers as an active agent. This model allows us to observe the institutional resources that workers can actively mobilize. We specifically focus on the characteristics of industrial relations and education institutional sub-systems. We apply the developed analytical model to the case of the Brazilian subsidiaries of a highly global multinational corporation (MNC). More specifically, we discuss three examples of workers' "embedded agency." These bring attention to workers' collective and individual actions as well as intra- and extra-subsidiary mobilization of institutional resources.

For the purpose of trade union renewal, it is suggested that trade unions need to convert themselves from being institutions centred on employer-employee relations to open source ones engaged with broader social justice issues. In this article, we offer two elements to the debate on trade union revival: first, we focus on two rapidly emerging economies with a corporatist and state-centered union structure (i.e., Brazil and India); second, in the context of these two countries, we challenge the idea that informal workers are a burden for trade union organizations. We consider the possible contributions that informal workers could make towards the renewal of trade unions in these two countries. We argue that trade unions could take advantage of these contributions if they overcome the employee horizon, which originated in Western countries and excludes millions of workers from its purview in Brazil and India. We propose the concept of "homo faber" as a new horizon for trade union organization, which is inclusive of both formal as well as informal workers.

This article reviews the book, "Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea," by Mark Blyth.

Drawing on feminist labour law and political economy literature, I argue that it is crucial to interrogate the personal and territorial scope of labour. After discussing the “commodification” of care, global care chains, and body work, I claim that the territorial scope of labour law must be expanded beyond that nation state to include transnational processes. I use the idea of social reproduction both to illustrate and to examine some of the recurring regulatory dilemmas that plague labour markets. I argue that unpaid care and domestic work performed in the household, typically by women, troubles the personal scope of labour law. I use the example of this specific type of personal service relation to illustrate my claim that the jurisdiction of labour law is historical and contingent, rather than conceptual and universal. I conclude by identifying some of the implications of redrawing the territorial and personal scope of labour law in light of feminist understandings of social reproduction.

Although workplace unions have many options when it comes to affiliating with a central labour body, some unions decide to remain independent or to disaffiliate after an experience of affiliation. To our knowledge, the literature has not widely examined the reasons behind the decision of some unions to remain independent. Based on a comparative case study of two university faculty unions in Quebec, this article aims to partly fill this gap in analysis. The results show that the particularities of the work of professors and the types of expertise needed to perform their duties influence their choice for union independence.

Cet article, qui prend appui sur une étude de cas menée dans un collège secondaire privé du Québec, s’intéresse à la représentation non syndicale en se penchant sur le processus de négociation d’une entente en marge du régime général. La présente contribution a pour objet de comprendre les motifs pour lesquels un groupe de travailleurs, de concert avec l’employeur, emprunte cette avenue ayant pour dessein la signature d’une entente de travail. Ce cas de représentation non syndicale, étudié à partir d’une diversité de sources de données, met en évidence que le mode de représentation initié par l’employeur s’inscrit dans la thèse de l’évitement syndical.Ainsi, la reconnaissance d’un regroupement d’enseignants et la négociation volontaire de la part de l’employeur sont directement liées au désir d’éviter la syndicalisation. Du côté des enseignants, le choix de demeurer dans un regroupement non reconnu repose essentiellement sur la qualité des relations avec la direction et sur le désir d’avoir un mode de représentation exempt de conflits. Les enseignants sont, dans une large proportion, satisfaits des termes de l’entente de travail, d’autant plus qu’ils bénéficient de plusieurs avantages négociés par le personnel enseignant syndiqué du Québec. Il ressort des résultats que le regroupement n’est pas sous le joug de l’idéologie managériale, mais son pouvoir d’influencer les décisions est plutôt lacunaire. Cette entente, qui ne repose que sur le contexte particulier, la confiance mutuelle et la crainte de syndicalisation, comporte des limites importantes en termes d’application.

The article reviews the book, "Restoring the Spirit: The Beginnings of Occupational Therapy in Canada, 1890-1930," by Judith Friedland.

This article reviews the book, "Transpacific Antiracism: Afro-Asian Solidarity in 20th-Century Black America, Japan, and Okinawa," by Yuichiro Onishi.

Canada's federal State Immunity Act, 1985 grants to foreign states a pre- sumptive immunity from actions in the Canadian courts, subject to important exceptions. One such exception is set out in section 5 of that Act, which applies when the proceedings relate to "commercial activity." This paper argues that Canadian courts and tribunals in labour and employment cases have been incon- sistent in their interpretation of the scope of the exception for commercial activity, and thus in the extent to which they have been prepared to uphold foreign states' claims to immunity. Advocating for what is termed the "liberal" approach, as enunciated in the leading case of Re Canada Labour Code, the author discusses the case law to demonstrate the varying degrees to which this approach has been followed. His preference for the liberal approach, which focuses on the roles and responsibilities of the employee, is informed by a comparative analysis of American, European, and Australian legislation and jurisprudence. Ultimately, it is argued that state immunity in employment cases should generally be restricted to two situations: individual employee claims where the employee is a high-rank- ing diplomat, civil servant or military official with the foreign state; and col- lective employee claims brought against a foreign state employer in a highly sensitive location such as a military base, embassy or consulate.

Review of: Les collectivités locales au coeur de l’intégration des immigrants : questions identitaires et stratégies régionales edited by Michèle Vatz Laaroussi, Estelle Bernier and Lucille Guilbert.

This paper examines the relationship between precarious employment, legal status, and racialization. We conceptualize legal status to include the intersections of immigration and citizenship. Using the PEPSO survey data we operationalize three categories of legal status: Canadian born, foreign-born citizens, and foreign-born non-citizens. First we examine whether the character of precarious work varies depending on legal status, and find that it does: Citizenship by birth or naturalization reduces employment precarity across most dimensions and indicators. Next, we ask how legal status intersects with racialization to shape precarious employment. We find that employment precarity is disproportionately high for racialized non-citizens. Becoming a citizen mitigates employment precarity. Time in Canada also reduces precarity, but not for non-citizens. Foreign birth and citizenship acquisition intersect with racialization unevenly: Canadian born racialized groups exhibit higher employment precarity than racialized foreign-born citizens. Our analysis underscores the importance of including legal status in intersectional analyses of social inequality.

This paper examines how employees experience flexible workplace practices (FWPs), such as flex-time, in the context of small firms. Data are taken from a Canadian study on small information technology (IT) firms that employed between four and 21 individuals. A multiple case study of 17 firms is conducted using web-surveys, semi-structured interviews, case study reports, field notes, and HR policy documents. Results show variable experiences based on whether firms were flexible for employees and whether the workplace culture supported the use of FWPs. The findings suggest that similar and different processes occur in the small firms compared to the large companies often studied in the literature.