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Compilation of recent English/French publications on Canadian labour history that emphasize the period 1800-1975. Materials pertaining to the post-1975 period may also be included, although more selectively. [See the database, Canadian Labour History, 1976-2009, published at Memorial University of Newfoundland.]

Trade Union Activists, East and West: Comparisons in Multinational Companies, by Guglielmo Meardi, is reviewed.

Edward Thompson developed a distinct view of the transition from capitalism to socialism. Rejecting the concept of a catastrophic change in which the vanguard party would serve as the institutional nucleus of a new society, Thompson argued that capitalism had been “warrened” from within by a network of local, self-governing, working-class institutions that prefigured a socialist world. In the mid-1960s, however, Thompson turned to other matters and failed to resolve the longstanding debate on the Left about the role of trade unions in a transition to socialism. Recent events in Seattle, Qué bec City, and Genoa suggest that workers and students acting through new institutions improvised for the occasion must work together in actually bringing about revolutionary change. The same pattern shows itself in highpoints of working-class activity in the 20th century, as in Russia in 1905 or Hungary in 1956.

The legal approach in Canada towards the regulation of trade union democracy has sought to balance individual member's rights with respect for the autonomy of unions. While the United States and England have heavily legislated the areas of internal trade union affairs, Canada has enacted relatively few laws in this area. Rather, unions in Canada have enjoyed considerable legal freedom to develop their own democratic practices and culture. The irony of this approach is that it is the Canadian courts, rather than the more experienced and liberal labour relations boards, that are the final legal arbiters over most internal union matters. However, this is slowly changing. Several provinces have recently enacted modest changes that direct their labour boards to hear complaints from union members respecting the fairness of internal hearings. In the absence of extensive statutory regulation, union constitutions and the democratic traditions behind them become significant legal documents

Somewhere in the toxis mess that is the Sydney tar ponds is the sweat of my grandfather and my wife's grandfather. Both of them gave more than 40 years of their lives to the steel plant, located in the centre of Cape Breton's largest city. The Sydney tar ponds are the size of three city blocks. The steel plant's 80 year reliance on coke-ovens technology is the culprit. In the process of turning coal into coke, benzene, kerosene, napthalene, lead, and arsenic, a dog's breakfast of hundreds of thousands of tons of chemical waste, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), were dumped into a local estuary, Muggah Creek. The creek, which leads to Sydney Harbour, received, and continues to receive, millions of litres of raw sewage each day. That this is an environmental disaster is obvious; that it is simultaneously a class issue is not. --Author's introduction

The article reviews the book, "The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions," edited by Anthony Carew, Michel Dreyfus, Geert Van Goethem, Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick, and Marcel Van Der Linden.

This photo-essay explores the significance of April 2001’s Summit of the Americas for labour and other groups within the counter-globalization movement. Through text and images, the first section presents the Summit demonstrations as an instance of creative and symbolic protest, in which participants and observers were educated, empowered, and radicalized. It is argued that direct action protest, through the creation of immediate affective bonds and collective identities, can be a powerful force for generating solidarity between diverse movement groups. The second section examines the role of labour in Québec City, and in related counter-globalization protests. The tension between conservatism and radicalism within the trade union movement and between workers and other movement groups is explored, and it is argued that direct action protest provides means through which these tensions can be productively resolved. The final section asks what lessons Québec City can teach labour and other movement groups, and what role mass protest might play in achieving the goals of counter-globalization.

The article reviews the book, "Perspectives of Equality: Work, Women, and Family in the Nordic Countries and EU," edited by Laura Kalliomaa-Puha.

In 1932, when Communist Party of Canada (CPC) general secretary Tim Buck, six other CPC leaders and one unfortunate rank-and-filer began lengthy sentences in Kingston penitentiary, the Party seemed to have reached its nadir. In fact, martyrdom proved to be a springboard for sustained political revival and was a particular boon to Buck, helping him consolidate a stirring performance in the dock at the Party trial a few months earlier. Until then, he had been considered something of a mediocrity, his status dependent almost entirely upon Moscow's grace and favour. During his three years in Kingston prison, the underground Party successfully reinvented him as the "dauntless leader of the Canadian working class": shortly after his release in November 1934, his five month-long coast-to-coast tour attracted (by the RCMP's almost certainly conservative estimate) a total audience of over 100,000. Buck proceeded to dominate the Party for the remainder of the decade — the Popular Front years — a period fondly recalled in his posthumous memoirs. Buck presented the Popular Front strategy as his — as much as "Moscow's" — invention and quietly attributed the Party's rise in fortunes (membership almost tripled) in large part to his bold and independent political leadership. The Popular Front was certainly good news for Buck, but whether it was good news for "Tim Buck's Party" is more open to question. This paper questions Buck's self-evaluation and suggests that the exposure of the cynical character of the Popular Front project in 1939 "may have planted the seeds of [the] Party's long postwar decline."

The article reviews the book, "A Beauty That Hurts: Life and Death in Guatemala," by W. George Lovell.

The question of the transition to socialism has plagued Marxists since the 19th century. This paper investigates how two prominent British socialists in the 20th century — E.P. Thompson and Perry Anderson — sought to answer the question “What is to be done?” In doing so it provides a revision of conventional histories of the New Left, arguing that there was far more continuity between the “first” and “second” New Left than has conventionally been supposed. And it suggests that this becomes evident in a comparison between the socialist strategy of Thompson and Anderson in the early-to-mid 1960s.

When Australia deregulated its economy in the 1980s, political pressures built up leading in the 1990s to the dismantling of Australia's industry-wide conciliation and arbitration systems. New laws established regimes of collective bargaining at the level of the employing undertaking. This article analyzes the 1993 and 1996 federal bargaining laws and argues that they fail to protect the right of trade unions to bargain on behalf of their members. This is because the laws do not contain a statutory trade union recognition mechanism. The recognition mechanisms in the Common Law countries of the United States, Canada, Britain and New Zealand are examined, and it is argued that Australia should enact trade union recognition mechanisms that are consonant with its industrial relations history and practice.

Labored Relations: Law, Politics and the NLRB, by William B. Gould IV, is reviewed.

New Brunswick Premier Frank McKenna calls them "high quality, highly skilled, high paying, pollution-free jobs." ("Premier Challenged on Job Creation" 1). McKenna was describing the thousands of jobs that have lately been created in New Brunswick by enterprises in the hightech communications, information, and business-service sector setting up shop in the province. McKenna and his government have been particularly successful in persuading national and international companies to set up customer-service centres using toll-free phone numbers. Most of those working in such centres are women. Since 1992, over 4,000 jobs have been created in New Brunswick by more than 30 companies establishing call-centre operations in the province.(1) The largest of them, in terms of job creation, is United Parcel Service (UPS), which has more than 1,000 people working in its customer-service and administrative centres. The smallest, a travel agency's call centre, has created five jobs. Most have located in Moncton, Saint John, or Fredericton, although smaller communities such as Bathurst, Campbellton, and St. Stephen are now also host to call centres. Certainly, there are great differences between the New Brunswick call centres and the Mexican maquiladoras and like industries. Tariffs and duties are not a factor in the communications technology sector in New Brunswick. The maquiladoras are based on light manufacturing, the call centres on communications technology. Such light industries typically require an extreme manual dexterity from workers, while call centres need only competent keyboarders.

The following account should be of interest to students of Communism in Canada, the USA, and other countries where similar historiographical trends prevail. Because of the importance of providing a detailed, properly furnished critique, it is restricted to examination of the first ten years of British Communism. It is divided into four sections. The first provides an overview of existing literature. This is followed by critical examination of the new revisionism's estimation of the literature and a critique of its model of the relationship between the Comintern and the CPGB [Communist Party of Great Britain]. A third section discusses that relationship between 1920 and 1930. A brief conclusion provides an overall assessment. --From authors' introduction

Nous avons analysé le rapport annuel produit en 1999 par l’Institut de recherche Robert-Sauvé en santé et en sécurité du travail du Québec et nous avons constaté que, dans les professions et secteurs concernés par les études financées, le pourcentage moyen de femmes est de 15 % (comparé à 45 % de femmes parmi la population au travail). Douze populations étudiées sont équilibrées ou composées en majorité de femmes, et 76 sont composées d’hommes à plus de deux tiers. Le montant moyen accordé aux études sur une population équilibrée ou majoritairement composée de femmes était de 86 339 $ comparativement à 114 480 $ pour les autres. Nous considérons plusieurs hypothèses d’explication de ces différences. Nous concluons que, peu importe la cause, un effort soutenu de recherche ciblée vers les emplois des femmes est essentiel, en plus d’une analyse différenciée en santé au travail.

The article reviews the book, "Nos temps modernes," by Daniel Cohen.

The article reviews the book, "Unafrican Americans: Nineteenth century black nationalists and the civilizing mission," by Tunde Adeleke.

The article reviews the book, "Coercion. Contract, and Free Labor in the Nineteenth Century," by Robert J. Steinfeld.