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The article reviews the book, "Boom, Bust and Crisis: Labour Corporate Power and Politics in Canada," edited by John Peters.

[The article shows] how management in the post-war period – in this case [Hobbs Hardware in] the mid-1970s – orchestrated effective campaigns to keep low-wage workers out of unions. This is especially true for those workers who toiled in seemingly inconsequential workplaces that were part of the growing service sector, and where unionization was largely prevented. The fact that unionization did not expand into the service sector would have lasting consequences for workers in service industries, for class relations across sectors, and for the Canadian labour movement. [The] analysis utilizes archival documents, but also relies on the memories of three former Hobbs workers.... --From author's introduction

The article reviews the book, "Uneasy Allies: Working for Labor Reform in Nineteenth Century Boston," by David A. Zonderman.

Since the 1960s, if not before, oral history and working-class history have been a dynamic duo, complimenting and overlapping, but also challenging and questioning each other. Both lay and professional historians have been in the forefront of efforts to recuperate, interpret, and preserve the oral histories of working-class individuals and communities across the globe. They created written histories, archival collections, museum exhibits, and community projects that gave workers, their families, and their communities -- those who were less likely to leave archival and written sources for posterity -- a new voice, and a new place in history. Working-class oral history has also encompassed far more than recovery and preservation. Labour historians have enriched the field of oral history by addressing questions about method, theory, and approach, by offering critical reflections on our assumptions and expectations about oral history practice. Oral history has similarly enriched the field of working-class history, posing new questions, challenging existing interpretations, and encouraging the diversification of the themes and subjects we study. In recognition of this dynamic relationship, and the ongoing, mutually beneficial conversation between oral and working-class history, Oral History Forum commissioned this special issue. --Introduction

The article reviews the book, "Ours to Master and to Own: Workers' Control from the Commune to the Present," edited by Dario Azzellini and Immanuel Ness.

This article examines the social integration of migrant and native employees in German industrial workplaces and the impact of workplace industrial relations on it. Drawing on data from interviews with management, works councils and employees, employee surveys and company statistics from three manufacturing companies, it analyzes the positioning of employees of different origin within the companies' social structure, explores their social interaction and asks what role works councils play in fostering social integration of a heterogeneous workforce. Findings show that workplaces are not free from discrimination but, rather, "pragmatic cooperation" and collegiality prevail. It is argued that the legal framework of German co-determination and workplace actors' orientation towards universalistic rule application ("internal universalism") encourages individuals to constitute themselves as employees with common interests and foster social integration.

The article reviews the book, "Canada and the Second World War: Essays in Honour of Terry Copp," edited by Geoffrey Hayes, Mike Bechtold, and Matt Symes.

The article reviews the book, "In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism From Harlem to London 1917-1939," by Minkah Makalani.

Travel is one of many extra-legal barriers that restrict access to abortion services. Paradoxically, women travel at the international, domestic, and local levels to circumvent legal and/or extra-legal barriers to access. Through an examination of four specific Canadian responses to inequality of access to abortion services relative to shifts in the legal terrain from the 1960s onwards, the authors demonstrate that travel signifies an interruption to reproductive choice. Women went to Britain and the United States for an abortion when these countries relaxed their abortion legislation. Within Canada, women sought out the services offered by the Morgentaler Clinic in Montreal in order to avoid the abortion bureaucracy that limited their right to choose. In New Brunswick, the pro-life movement successfully lobbied hospitals to restrict abortion services, and the provincial government to deny funding for abortions performed in freestanding clinics, forcing women to travel to access abortion services. Pro-choice activists in southeastern British Columbia launched a successful campaign to protect hospital abortions, ensuring that rural women had access to abortion services within their home communities. Today, 25 years after the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the abortion law, abortion services are uneven at best and unattainable at worst in different regions of the country.

Current policy debates about Canada's retirement income system have failed to consider "gender risk" - i.e. the risk that Canadian women will bear a disproportionate share of welfare loss in old age. This paper argues that the continuing gender disparity in retirement income reflects Canada's heavy reli- ance on private pension instruments generated and shaped by labour markets. The author begins by looking at the relationship between gender and Canada's three-pillar retirement income system, noting that while public pensions distrib- ute benefits based on explicit policy goals, private pensions distribute them based on the "hidden hand" of market principles. She then considers the differential impact of employment-based pension plans on men and women as a function of the distinct patterns of male and female engagement in the labour market. Noting the close relationship between pension design choices and gender outcomes, she goes on to discuss the pension reforms introduced by Canadian governments in the 1960s and 1980s, in which those governments saw gender inequality as an issue to be addressed primarily by mandatory public plans rather than by voluntary private plans. Ultimately, the author contends, the gendered impact of Canada's pension system flows from the complex interaction between women's paid employment and their reproductive and caregiving work. A gender-equal pension system would recognize the unequal burden borne by women in labour markets and in families, and would pool and share the welfare risks which that inequality entails. Voluntary employment-based pension plans shaped by market imperatives at the enterprise level will not address these issues, in the author's view, nor will the type of individualized pension contemplated by the federal government's recent PRPP legislation providing for pooled savings vehicles to which employers do not contribute. What is needed, she argues, is a broad- based collective risk-sharing vehicle such as the CPP/QPP.

The article reviews the book, "Last Nightshift in Savar: The Story of the Spectrum Sweater Factory Collapse," by Doug Miller.

The article reviews the book, "Moving Beyond Borders: A History of British Canadian and Caribbean Women in the Diaspora," by Karen Flynn.

This article examines the approaches that historians, beginning in the mid 20th century and into the early 21st century, used to write about the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. It focuses on five major works: "The Winnipeg General Strike" by D.C. Masters; "Confrontation at Winnipeg: by David J. Bercuson; "The Workers' Revolt in Canada, 1917-1925" edited by Craig Heron; and "When the State Trembled: How A.J. Andrews and the Citizens' Committee Broke the Winnipeg General Strike" by Tom Mitchell and Reinhold Kramer. It identifies where the monographs depart from one another in interpretation; as well as where they remain the same. Given the layers of complexity, the interpretation of the event becomes especially salient in the 21st century as its 100th anniversary steadfastly approaches and the question of how should it be publicly presented in 2019 requires an answer soon (which the paper also addresses).

Employee Rights and Employer Wrongs: How to Identify Employee Abuse and How to Stand Up for Yourself, by Suzanne Kleinberg and Michael Kreimeh, is reviewed.

L’article s’interroge, dans la perspective de l’institutionnalisme économique de Commons, sur la relation unissant les dispositifs de participation financière au climat social, appréhendé par le biais de la perception qu’en ont les dirigeants et les salariés, d’une part, et par des indicateurs de dysfonctionnements sociaux, tels que l’absentéisme et les conflits sociaux, d’autre part. La question des caractéristiques de ces pratiques (modalités de négociation présidant à leur mise en oeuvre, types de dispositifs, mode de calcul) est également posée. L’étude empirique est fondée sur l’exploitation de l’enquête REPONSE qui représente un échantillon de 3 000 établissements français et de 8 000 salariés. Au-delà des différences de perception entre dirigeants et salariés, les résultats, obtenus à l’aide de modèles de régressions logistiques, mettent tout d’abord en évidence que plus que le montant versé, c’est l’existence même d’un dispositif de participation financière qui influence le climat social. Par ailleurs plus les dispositifs apparaissent comme désintéressés de la part de l’entreprise et meilleur est le climat social du point de vue des salariés. Les modalités de conclusion de l’accord de participation financière, notamment l’intervention des syndicats, ont également une influence sur le climat social. Compte tenu des différences de résultats pouvant exister selon que l’on s’intéresse à la perception des dirigeants, à celle des salariés ou aux indicateurs de dysfonctionnements sociaux, l’article met également en lumière l’importance pour les recherches sur le climat social de prendre en compte à la fois les dimensions objectives du climat social et la perception qu’en ont les acteurs.

Labour geography has yet to pay full attention to the experiences of public sector workers and their employer (the state). This article addresses this lacuna and provides some insight into the labour geographies of public sector workers through an empirical analysis of the centralization of governance, employment relations, and collective bargaining in Ontario, Canada’s publicly-funded elementary and secondary schools. This case demonstrates how one particular group of public sector workers – teachers – and their unions located and exercised agency in the arenas of politics and collective bargaining through a rescaling of their activities from the local to the provincial level. The paper also argues that the rescaling of politics and collective bargaining is problematic. Questions remain regarding whether or not Ontario’s teachers were able to increase their aggregate bargaining power through centralization or merely transferred agency and authority from one scale to another. Moreover, the paper engages with the fast-developing geographies of education literature, and is consistent with an outward-looking approach that links education to wider political and economic processes. In so doing, it extends the scope of the geographies of education to the employees of publicly-funded schools and their administrative bodies, and suggests value a theoretically- and empirically-informed dialogue between geographers interested in education and those interested in labour.

This article examines the professional practices of a sample of 21 Canadian ergonomists from across Canada, focusing on the manner in which they report negotiating the intersection of safety and productivity in their work. Results indicate that ergonomic practice is directed primarily to safety concerns. A minority of study participants addressed productivity concerns, either as secondary or primary outcomes of ergonomic applications. In either instance, efforts to highlight the contribution of ergonomics to production did not significantly disrupt the dominant safety oriented perception of the field. Financial considerations were major determinants of whether recommendations were implemented. An irony of the dominant understanding of ergonomics as oriented to safety, with little reference to performance aspects, is that this provides the main basis for its growing presence in workplaces but also limits its applications.

Le développement des emplois « atypiques » au Québec donne lieu à la mise en évidence de nouveaux enjeux sociaux et politiques dans un contexte de flexibilité de la main-d’oeuvre. La segmentation du marché du travail qui en découle se caractérise par une précarisation du salariat, définie comme un processus structurel de détérioration des conditions de travail et d’emploi. La sociologie s’intéresse particulièrement aux conséquences de ces mutations sur les conditions de vie à travers l’analyse des perceptions subjectives des acteurs concernés. Ainsi, le rapport au travail incluant les conditions matérielles, l’accomplissement des tâches et la socialisation comporte une dichotomie articulée autour de la satisfaction du salarié, source de valorisation ou de la non-satisfaction, entraînant un mal-être. Les transformations récentes du monde du travail construisent des parcours professionnels morcelés et incertains et nécessitent une réévaluation de leurs impacts sur ce rapport, encore peu documentée. Que signifie occuper un emploi atypique pour ces travailleurs ? La valeur associée au travail est-elle remise en cause ? Les indices contenus dans leurs parcours professionnels constituent-ils une réalité nouvelle ? Basé sur les résultats d’une recherche qualitative menée en 2009 auprès de résidents d’un quartier défavorisé du centre-ville de Montréal, ayant occupé des emplois « atypiques », cet article permet d’entrer au coeur des dynamiques relationnelles des milieux de travail québécois, de comprendre en quoi elles participent à la construction de parcours professionnels spécifiques et d’identifier leurs conséquences sur le rapport au travail et à l’emploi de ces travailleurs. Les différentes expériences étudiées apportent un éclairage sur le phénomène de la précarisation du travail et suggèrent des perspectives tant scientifiques que politiques.

The article reviews the book, "Making It Like a Man: Canadian Masculinities in Practice," edited by Christine Ramsay.

Canadian employers have a common law obligation to give reasonable notice when terminating an employment relationship without cause. In deter- mining the appropriate length of the notice period, trial judges hearing wrongful dismissal claims must consider a range of factors, including what are known as the Bardal factors. In this paper, the author presents and analyzes the results of his empirical study of appeal court decisions reviewing trial court awards of reasonable notice across Canada from 2000 to 2011, and examines the impact of the Bardal factors (as well as several others) on outcomes at the appellate level. The study finds that appeal courts have not treated all of the Bardal factors equally, but appear to have given the most weight to the employee's age and length of tenure. Other factors found to have significant predictive value on the length of reasonable notice awards were the employee's gender and whether a successful claim for Wallace damages was made. The data also indicate that employee appeals have succeeded relatively more often than employer appeals, and that the length of notice ordered by appellate courts seems to have plateaued over time. In light of his conclusion that only a narrow range of considerations significantly affect notice awards, the author argues that the current system of judicial assessment of reasonable notice could well be replaced by a less expen- sive and time-consuming statutory scheme that would incorporate a formula for applying the relevant factors and would be administered by employment standards tribunals rather than by the courts.