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The article reviews the book, "State of the Union: A Century of American Labor," by Nelson Lichtenstein.

The book, "Industrial Relations: Critical Perspectives on Business and Management," edited by John Kelly, is reviewed.

The Gender & Work Database (GWD) is an online research tool designed for both researchers and students with varying levels of expertise. The database is informed by a feminist political economy approach and provides resources that facilitate research on gender and work. The GWD can be used as an interactive classroom tool, to obtain basic information on a topic, or as a research tool to examine complex social relations. ...[Following the introduction to the database,] there are six integrated and interactive modules that represent entry points into the study of gender and work, namely precarious employment, health care, unions, migration, unpaid work, and technology. --Website description

The purpose of this article is to examine the effects of working conditions in part-time and casual work on worker stress and the consequences for their workplaces. Data were collected through interviews with occupational health and safety representatives, and focus groups and interviews with workers in retail trade. Results show that job insecurity, short- and split-shifts, unpredictability of hours, low wages and benefits in part-time and casual jobs in retail sector, and the need to juggle multiple jobs to earn a living wage contribute to stress and workplace problems of absenteeism, high turnover and workplace conflicts. Gendered work environments and work-personal life conflicts also contribute to stress affecting the workplace. Equitable treatment of part-time and casual workers, treating workers with respect and dignity, and creating a gender-neutral, safe and healthy work environment can help decrease stress, and in turn, can lead to positive workplace outcomes for retail workers.

Professor Jill Rubery was commissioned by the ILO to write this Working Paper, as an input for the preparation of the 2003 Global Report on the elimination of discrimination in the world of work. The establishment of a floor to the wage structure is of paramount importance to groups of workers discriminated on grounds such as sex, ethnicity, national origin, age and disability, as these groups are disproportionately represented at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy. By identifying the role that minimum wages can play in reducing gender discrimination in pay, Jill Rubery’s paper contributes to our understanding of the forms of labour market processes compatible with the promotion of non-discrimination, equality and decent work.

Using data from the 1996 Public Use Microdata File (PUMF) on individuals, this paper examines labour force activity of women in Canada, focussing on the effects of familial status and household structure to determine whether these factors have similar elasticities among Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal women. We found that labour force activity varied greatly by Aboriginal Status. In general, Registered Indians were less likely to be employed but more likely to be unemployed than Other Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals. While lower educational attainment, presence of minor children and lone parenthood were found to be associated with a lower likelihood of being employed, significant differences by Aboriginal Status were found. The effect of educational attainment on employment was found to be higher among Registered Indians. (English)

Two men died in the 1935 Regina Riot. But the offical toll was one. Some people thought it should stay that way. ...[Niklas (Nick) Schaak] was working in a relief camp near Saskatoon when he joined the trekkers and took part in the Dominion Day melee. He was attacked by an RCMP constable and suffered head injuries, but cause of death was attributed to pneumonia. --Introduction

Brief review of: "Bienfait" by Stephen Endicott.

This assessment was prepared for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union. It examines the conditions of work at the Don Jail. I was asked by the union whether under-staffing and the resulting levels of overtime represented a health risk and to offer recommendations, if any, arising out of my assessment. The assessment provides evidence in support of the union's claim that long hours of work represent a potential health risk to the staff of the Don Jail.

French/English abstracts for v. 51, (Spring 2003).

Produced by the Canadian Periodical Index.

This article presents recent publications on industrial relations. Some of the publications include "Evolution of the Model of Industrial Relations in Bulgaria 1989-2002," by Teodor Detchev, "Labor Contract Negotiations in the Airline Industry," by Andrew von Nordenflycht and Thomas A. Kochan, "Collective Bargaining and Staff Salaries in American Colleges and Universities," by Daniel B. Klaff and Ronald G. Ehrenberg, and "Final-Offer Arbitration: A New Zealand Variation," by Ian McAndrew.

The article reviews the book "The Global Construction of Gender: Home-Based Work in the Political Economy of the 20th Century," by Elisabeth Prügl.

The article reviews the book, "Women's Legal Strategies in Canada," edited by Radha Jhappan.

The article reviews the book "Judging Bertha Wilson: Law As Large As Life," by Ellen Anderson.

Reviews the book "Santé et sécurité et transformation du travail: réflexions et recherches sur le risque professionnel," by Denis Harrisson and Camille Legendre.

For more than ten years, much published material has argued that human resource management (HRM) can play a major role in improving organizational performance. Several researchers claim that to exert a significant impact on organizational performance, HR practices need to be integrated or complementary with each other. However, the concept of complementarity suffers from a lack of operational clarity and has been essentially approached from a statistical standpoint that has limited our understanding of the architecture of the overall system of HR practices. On the other hand, several authors assert that the complementarity of HR practices cannot be studied outside its organizational context, especially in the industrial sector. They argue that differences in the nature of activity between service organizations and manufacturing companies are likely to have implications on which practices are adopted and how these practices impact the human and corporate performance of the organizations in question. In its first phase, this study proposes an operational definition of the concept of complementarity that can be used to select which practices to include in an organization's HRM system. This complementarity has been defined as "the set of practices originating from various areas of HRM activity whose combined application can be rationally justified and empirically demonstrated to have a synergistic effect on organizational performance in a given sector." Thus, on the basis of this definition, the authors developed a number of "complex items," incorporating HRM practices from four major operational areas : staffing, remuneration, training and performance assessment. Each of these combinations embodies a link of complementarity between practices, and the additional impact of each combination is our way of measuring its complementarity. This study has the dual purpose of first verifying the hypothesis that "the more practices from different areas of HRM are complementary, the more they will improve organizational performance" (H. 1) and, second, that "it is likely that the impact of complementary practices will vary depending on whether the organizations concerned belong to the manufacturing or service sector" (H. 2). The items to measure organizational performance come from a previous study. These data were derived from questionnaires completed by 177 Canadian firms and the internal reliability varies from .77 to .90. To measure the degree of complementarity between HRM practices, 22 items were developed with an internal reliability of .84. The data were obtained from 238 manufacturing companies and 325 service organizations. The results corroborated Hypothesis 1, indicating that the complementarity of HR practices was responsible for a significant increase in productivity/ efficiency, competitive positioning and client acquisition/growth. The results also corroborated Hypothesis 2, showing that, when the two different economic sectors are compared in terms of dependant variables, a higher degree of complementarity is particularly associated in service companies with increased productivity and efficiency, better competitive positioning and a greater number of clients and increased market share. In the case of manufacturing companies, the results indicate that the higher degree of complementarity has particular impact on the first two factors. The results are discussed in the light of current research and the limitations of the research are presented.

The article reviews the book, Dignity at Work," by Randy Hodson.

The small explosion of interest in the history of Canadian consumption [over the past decade] has generated important insights into the material, cultural, and political histories of North America. It also illustrates that a vast potential for more research into Canadian consumption exists. Arguing that a rigorous theorization of the field of Canadian consumer history would now be timely and beneficial, this essay highlights themes emerging in Canadian and international consumer historiography and suggests areas of further inquiry. Its comments are not meant to be definitive, but are rather intended to spark discussion on consumer history's past, present, and future. --From authors' introduction