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This paper provides evidence of the impact of three important and general policies shaping the degree of labor market rigidity on the labor share: welfare expenditures, government ex- penditures on active labor market programs, and passive labor market measures. It analyses the impact of regulation, such as the intensity of employment protection, and evaluates whether trade unions and minimum wage institutions play a role in the relationship between all measures and the labor share. The labor income share has experienced a declining trend since the mid- 1970s in most advanced economies, and the existing literature found little if no correlation of this decline to general labor market characteristics. However, the present paper finds that some in- stitutions are correlated to the downward trend, depending on the welfare system adopted, and that welfare and employment protection counteract the decline. Moreover, many countries saw an upsurge in their labor share after the burst of the financial crisis. Evidence of whether the effect of the policies weakened or reinforced the labor share after 2007 is reported.

This article examines the efforts of feminist unions to organize childcare workers in 1970s Vancouver, British Columbia, and highlights the entrenched opposition to union organizing by women considered to be “just babysitters.” These workers’ efforts challenged the “love-versus-money” divide that hampered women’s organizing efforts in the care sector. Vancouver childcare workers, working in alliance with parents, insisted on the public importance of their traditionally private work. In doing so, they connected their fight for better working conditions with the fight for universal childcare. They linked women’s struggles in the workplace to calls for the redistribution of society’s caregiving responsibilities away from families and the market and toward the state. Government intransigence prevented meaningful childcare policy reform, but workers’ efforts highlighted a key moment in Vancouver’s feminist and labor history when the fair treatment of care workers was linked to the liberation of all women.

This article reviews "Labor’s Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Working-Class Family in America," by Andrew J. Cherlin, "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis," by J.D. Vance, "Fighting for Total Person Unionism: Harold Gibbons, Ernest Calloway, and Working-Class Citizenship," by Robert Bussel, "Conservative Counterrevolution: Challenging Liberalism in 1950s Milwaukee," by Tula A. Connell, and "Reframing Randolph: Labor, Black Freedom, and the Legacies of A. Philip Randolph," edited by Andrew E. Kersten and Clarence Lang.

This article reviews the book, "Health and Safety in Canadian Workplaces," by Jason Foster and Bob Barnetson.

This article reviews the book, "Dialogue social, relations du travail et syndicalisme : perspectives historiques et internationales," edited by Paul-André Lapointe,

Thiis article reviews the book, "Quand travailler enferme dans la pauvreté et la précarité : travailleuses et travailleurs pauvres au Québec et dans le monde," by Carole Yerochewski.

Taverns and inns were centres of neighbourhood life, places for travellers seeking meals, drink, and accommodation and commercial and domestic spaces where keepers and their families earned a living and that they called home. Women figured largely in public houses as patrons, servants, family members, and publicans in their own right. The article focuses on a sample of 90 female publicans who held tavern licences from 1840 to 1860, arguing that keeping these establishments afforded them distinct levels of economic independence and power. It considers broadly those characteristics that constituted ideal female keepers in mid-nineteenth-century Montreal and how they maintained a respectable status precisely at a moment when alcohol consumption and associated licensed and unlicensed commercial sites were coming increasing under scrutiny by temperance advocates, authorities of the criminal justice system, and elites. To retain their licences, female keepers had to negotiate the landmines of respectability by following licensing regulations, maintaining a reputable demeanour, and regulating the public house’s culture and clientele.

This article reviews the book, "In Love and Struggle: The Revolutionary Lives of James and Grace Lee Boggs," by Stephen M. Ward.

Precarious employment is on the rise in Canada, increasing by nearly 50% in the last two decades. However, little is known about the mechanisms by which it can impact upon geographical mobility. Employment-related geographical mobility refers to mobility to, from and between workplaces, as well as mobility as part of work. We report on a qualitative study conducted among 27 immigrant men and women in Toronto that investigates the relationship between precarious employment and daily commutes while exploring the ways in which gender, class and migration structure this relationship.Interview data reveal that participants were largely unable to work where they lived or live where they worked. Their precarious jobs were characterized by conditions that resulted in long, complex, unfamiliar, unsafe and expensive commutes. These commuting difficulties, in turn, resulted in participants having to refuse or quit jobs, including desirable jobs, or being unable to engage in labour market strategies that could improve their employment conditions (e.g. taking courses, volunteering, etc.). Participants’ commuting difficulties were amplified by the delays, infrequency, unavailability and high cost of public transportation. These dynamics disproportionately and/or differentially impacted certain groups of workers. Precarious work has led to workers having to absorb an ever-growing share of the costs associated with their employment, underscored in our study as time, effort and money spent travelling to and from work. We discuss the forces that underlie the spatial patterning of work and workers in Toronto, namely the growing income gap and the increased polarization among neighbourhoods that has resulted in low-income immigrants increasingly moving from the centre to the edges of the city. We propose policy recommendations for public transportation, employment, housing and child care that can help alleviate some of the difficulties described.

Objective. We sought to document pathways between under/unemployment and health among racialized immigrant women in Toronto while exploring the ways in which gender, class, migration and racialization, as interlocking systems of social relations, structure these relationships. Design. We conducted 30 interviews with racialized immigrant women who were struggling to get stable employment that matched their education and/or experience. Participants were recruited through flyers, partner agencies and peer researcher networks. Most interviews (21) were conducted in a language other than English. Interviews were transcribed, translated as appropriate and analyzed using NVivo software. The project followed a community-based participatory action research model. Results. Under/unemployment negatively impacted the physical and mental health of participants and their families. It did so directly, for example through social isolation, as well as indirectly through representation in poor quality jobs. Under/unemployment additionally led to the intensification of job search strategies and of the household/caregiving workload which also negatively impacted health. Health problems, in turn, contributed to pushing participants into long-term substandard employment trajectories. Participants’ experiences were heavily structured by their social location as low income racialized immigrant women. Conclusions. Our study provides needed qualitative evidence on the gendered and racialized dimensions of under/unemployment, and adverse health impacts resulting from this. Drawing on intersectional analysis, we unpack the role that social location plays in creating highly uneven patterns of under/unemployment and negative health pathways for racialized immigrant women. We discuss equity informed strategies to help racialized immigrant women overcome barriers to stable work that match their education and/or experience.

In this study, we examine the predictors of unmet demand for unions in non-union workplaces, using the Australian Worker Representation and Participation Survey (AWRPS). Unmet demand is defined here, as those employees in non-union workplaces who would be likely to join a union if one were available. We argue that this is the first study in Australia to examine the predictors of unmet demand in non-union workplaces, and, that this is an important line of inquiry given a rise in non-union workplaces and never members in Australia, alongside declining union density and membership numbers. Drawing on three strands of existing literature, namely the individual propensity to unionize, the rise and characteristics of non-union workplaces and alternative forms of representation, and, managerial responsiveness to employees and unions, we develop and test four hypotheses.Our results show, controlling for a range of personal, job and workplace characteristics, that there are two significant predictors of the willingness to join a union in non-union workplaces: perceived union instrumentality (Hypothesis 2) and perceived managerial responsiveness to employees (Hypothesis 4), whereby employees who perceive that managers lack responsiveness are more likely to want to join a union if one were available.These results show that unions must try to enhance their instrumentality in workplaces and could be more effective in recruiting if they targeted never members. The results also show that unions need to have some gauge (measure) of how responsive managers are to employees, and that they can leverage poor responsiveness of managers for membership gain and the extension of organizing. In the final analysis, an understanding of the predictors of unmet demand for unions in non-union workplaces has implications for Australian unions’ servicing and organizing strategies, and for their future growth prospects.

The article reviews the book, "Worker Voice: Employee Representation in the Workplace in Australia, Canada, Germany, the UK and the US, 1914–1939," by Greg Patmore.

This article reviews the book, "From Left to Right: Maternalism and Women's Political Activism in Postwar Canada," by Brian Thorn.

The article reviews the book, "Drawn to Change: Graphic Histories of Working-Class Struggle," edited by the Graphic History Collective .

This article reviews the book, "Reverend Addie Wyatt: Faith and the Fight for Labor, Gender, and Racial Equality," by Marcia Walker-McWilliams.

Canada's labour laws do not adequately protect non-union forms of concerted action - a problematic gap in the legislation, given the increase in alternative models of collective organizing. This article proposes the adoption in Canada of broader protections similar to those found in the United States, where section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act extends protection to concerted action by employees regardless of whether they are unionized or even seeking to unionize. Beginning with a comparison of the current legislative schemes in the two countries, the authors argue that because the limitations to concerted action in Canadian labour law are similar to those in the U.S., the proposal is unlikely to disturb settled law beyond its intent. The positive impacts of adopting section 7-like protection in Canada are canvassed, which include encouraging stronger employee "voice," allowing for increased realization of the constitutional guar- antee of freedom of association, and enabling experimentation with non-union forms of collective representation. These changes would help to balance work- place power dynamics, and allow workers more flexibility in choosing how to advocate for themselves.

Quebec has established special "exemption regimes" to govern the labour relations of two groups of precarious workers: home-based care workers and farm workers. Those regimes give the workers in question limited rights of rep- resentation and collective bargaining but otherwise exclude them from the gen- eral scheme of labour relations set out in the Labour Code. This paper reviews the history of efforts to unionize home care and farm workers in Quebec as well as the ensuing constitutional litigation, which in each case forms the immediate background to the creation of the exemption regime. In the case of home-based care workers, the regime gives workers certain associative rights, including the right to conclude "group agreements" with the responsible Minister respecting terms and conditions of employment, while maintaining an irrebuttable pre- sumption that the workers are self-employed. The author notes that although the unions representing various groups of home-based care workers have made some important gains, the constitutionality of individual elements of the scheme (e.g. restrictions on the permissible scope of bargaining) is open to question and is currently the subject of a challenge in the courts. With respect to farm workers in Quebec - mostly migrants - the applicable legislation gives employees' associations only minimal rights to make representations to the employer, and to discuss those representations with the employer in good faith. In the author's view, the scheme is highly unlikely to permit a meaningful process of collective bargaining, and is therefore also vulnerable to Charter challenge, particularly in the face of the Supreme Court of Canada's 2015 labour trilogy. Ultimately, the author argues, the piecemeal proliferation of exemption regimes is no answer to the emergence of precarious work, and a fundamental reconsideration of the principles of collective representation is necessary.

This article reviews the book, "Black Labor, White Sugar: Caribbean Braceros and their Struggle for Power in the Cuban Sugar Industry," by Philip A. Howard.

The article reviews the book, "Too Great a Burden to Bear: The Struggle and Failure of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Texas," by Christopher B. Bean.

Canada is in a liminal space, with renewed struggles for and commitments to indigenous land and food sovereignty on one hand, and growing capital interest in land governance and agriculture on the other. While neoliberal capital increasingly accumulates land-based control, settler-farming communities still manage much of Canada’s arable land. This research draws on studies of settler colonialism, racial hierarchy and othering to connect the ideological with the material forces of settler colonialism and show how material dominance is maintained through colonial logics and racially ordered narratives. Through in-depth interviews, I investigate how white settler farmers perceive and construct two distinctly ‘othered’ groups: Indigenous peoples and migrant farmers and farm workers. Further, I show the disparate role of land and labour in constructing each group, and specifically, the cultural and material benefits of these constructions for land-based settler populations. At the same time, settler colonial structures and logics remain reciprocally coupled to political conditions. For instance, contemporary neoliberalism in Canadian agriculture modifies settler colonial structures to be sure. I argue, however, that political economic analyses of land and food production in Canada (such as corporate concentration, land grabbing and farm consolidation) ought to better integrate the systemic forces of settler colonialism that have conditioned land access in the first place. Of course, determining who is able to access land—and thus, who is able to grow food—continues to be a territorial struggle. Thus, in order to shift these conditions we ought to examine how those with access and control have acquired and maintained it.