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The article reviews the book, "Autonomous State: The Struggle for a Canadian Car Industry from OPEC to Free Trade," by Dimitry Anastakis.

Since the mid-1980s, the nonprofit social services sector has been promoted as an option for cheaper and more flexible delivery of services. In order to comply with government standards and funding requirements, the sector has been subject to ongoing waves of restructuring and the introduction of new private market-like, outcomes-based management models, such as New Public Management. This article explores ways in which nonprofit social services sector workers experience their work as highly fragmented. Drawing on case studies completed as part of a larger project addressing restructuring in the nonprofit social services sector in Scotland, New Zealand, Australia and Canada, we examine three key aspects shaping work in the nonprofit social services sector: 1) workers’ experience of managerialism; 2) gendered strategies drawn on by workers in the agencies studied; and 3) union strategies in the nonprofit social services sector, as well as within individual workplaces. Conclusions focus on contributions to understanding managerialism as a strong but fragmented project in which even weak union presence and the willingness of the predominantly female workforce to sacrifice to provide care for others ensure that some level of social solidarity endures.

This paper examines the impact of precarity on the nonprofit service providing sector (NPSS). Using in depth qualitative interviews, recent empirically-based surveys of the Ontario nonprofit sector and key academic and grey literature, we explore the deeper meaning of precarity in this sector. We contend that the NPSS is a unique, and in many respects, an ideal location in which to explore the workings and impact of precarity. Looking at the nonprofit sector reveals that precarity operates at various levels, the: 1) nonprofit labour force; 2) organization structure and operation of nonprofit agencies; and, 3) clients and communities serviced by these nonprofit organizations. By observing the workings of precarity in this sector, precarity is revealed to be far more than an employment based phenomenon but also a force that negatively impacts organizational structures as well as vulnerable communities.

In this study, we examine the effect of licensing requirements on the occupational mobility of highly skilled new immigrants in Canada using longitudinal data. We find that immigrants who worked in regulated professions in their home country, but unregulated fields in Canada, experienced significantly greater occupational downgrading than those who worked in unregulated professions prior to migration. Immigrants who worked in regulated fields in their home country who were able to find work in regulated fields in Canada did not experience any occupational downgrading after migration. Policy implications of these findings are discussed.

The article explores Canadian press coverage of the Paris Commune movement in France in 1871. Emphasis is given to the moral aspects of the insurrection in relation to Canadian nationhood and the political development of Canadian Confederation. The author examines newspaper accounts on topics such as the separation of church and state, the appropriation of church property, and the social behavior of women. Other topics include the differences between Anglophone and Francophone newspapers, the popularization of socialism, and moral condemnation.

Considering a series of oil-driven economic booms, the use of inter-provincial and international migrant labour has become an important part of labour market policy in the Canadian province of Alberta. The increased use of temporary foreign workers is controversial. Narrative analysis of legislators’ statements in the legislature and the press between 2000 and 2011 reveals the government using three narratives to justify policies encouraging greater use of foreign migrant workers: (1) labour shortages require migrant workers, (2) migrants do not threaten Canadian jobs and (3) migrants are not being exploited. Close scrutiny of each narrative demonstrates them to be largely invalid. This suggests a significant disconnect between the real and espoused reasons for the significant changes to labour market policy, changes that advantage employers and disadvantage both Canadian and foreign workers. The findings are relevant to understand the political dynamics of economically related migration.

The article reviews the book, "Les avocates, les avocats et la conciliation travail-famille," by Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay and Elena Masocva.

This article reviews the book, "A Small Price to Pay: Consumer Culture on the Canadian Home Front, 1939-45," by Graham Broad.

This article examines the determinants of public attitudes towards labour policy. Using public opinion data on labour standards and essential services legislation from a 2011 Saskatchewan survey, it finds that both self-interest factors (employment in the public sector, and union membership) and symbolic political factors (feelings towards the labour movement and partisanship) structure attitudes toward labour policy in Saskatchewan. Interestingly, the evidence indicates that self-interest may actually trump solidarity within the labour movement, as unionized private sector workers are no more likely than the general public to oppose essential services legislation. The results suggest that researchers should pay attention to both self-interest and symbolic political factors when attempting to understand the relationship between public policy and public opinion.

A small area procedure for a two-way table of proportions is developed, where the estimated proportions are from a complex survey. Estimation is difficult because the observed proportions do not have multinomial distributions, the observed proportions are correlated with estimated variances, benchmarking is required, and mean models are nonlinear. A predictor based on a nonlinear mixed model is specified for the proportions. No transformation of the observations is involved, and the estimation procedure gives predictions that are in the parameter space. A bootstrap estimator of the mean squared error of a benchmarked predictor is suggested and performed well in simulations. The procedure is applied to the proportions in the two-way table defined by occupations crossed with Canadian provinces. The direct estimators are from the Canadian Labour Force Survey (LFS), and the corresponding two-way table from the previous Canadian Census of Population provides auxiliary information. The application of the prediction procedure to the LFS data leads to gains in estimated mean squared errors relative to the direct estimators between approximately 30 percent and 80 percent. A comparison of the predictors to the Census 2006 proportions further supports the suggested procedures.

Working-time practices across the developed world have exploded with diversity during the past few decades. The once standard 8-hour day and 40-hour workweek that emerged and reigned throughout much of the 20th century have given way to an increasing variety of working-time arrangements. Flexible schedules, in which hours can vary daily or weekly, and nonstandard work arrangements, such as fixed term, on-call, temporary, or part-time, are widely used at the workplace. In addition, we have witnessed the growth of zero-hour contracts that make no guarantee to provide workers with weekly working hours or a reliable income, while requiring employees to work on very short notice with very unpredictable schedules; annualized hours contracts that allow for work hours to vary over a year; and working-time accounts that allow employees to bank hours worked over a set weekly standard and to then draw on these accounts for paid time off.

Cet article analyse les effets possibles des dépenses de formation formelle sur la productivité des entreprises canadiennes. Si certains travaux mesurent l’intensité de la formation en entreprise à partir de données longitudinales, les résultats obtenus demeurent partagés. Les différences observées dans les résultats antérieurs peuvent être expliquées notamment par les données disponibles, le type de formation, la mesure de formation et les biais techniques influençant cette relation. Cette recherche s’appuie essentiellement sur la théorie du capital humain.Notre étude s’appuie sur les données de l’Enquête sur les milieux de travail et les employés (EMTE) de Statistique Canada de 1999 à 2005, auprès d’un échantillon de 1621 emplacements où, nous modélisons la relation entre la formation et la productivité à l’aide d’une fonction de production Cobb-Douglas, en intégrant les investissements en capital physique et une variable technologique. Ceci nous permet de montrer que les dépenses de formation contribuent à accroître la performance des établissements, via la productivité, de façon progressive dans le temps. Ces dépenses effectuées au cours d’une année donnée influent significativement sur la productivité jusqu’à trois années plus tard, là où elles atteignent leur maximum d’effet, pour se stabiliser par la suite. Toutefois, ces résultats permettent de soulever un paradoxe : celui de la rentabilité observée des dépenses de formation d’un côté, mais, de l’autre, l’hésitation du monde des affaires à investir en cette matière pour leurs propres employés. Nos résultats suggérent également que les investissements en formation au sein des entreprises devraient être considérés davantage comme un atout, plutôt qu’une simple obligation financière à l’appui d’une stratégie globale de développement des compétences au sein des entreprises.

Repenser la responsabilité sociale de l'entreprise : l'École de Montréal by Corinne Gendron and Bernard Girard is reviewed.

This paper provides a discussion and analysis of the situations in which an employee will be found to stand in the position of a fiduciary vis-a-vis his or her employer, and therefore be under an obligation to act solely in the employ- er's interests, Focusing on the English common law, with comparisons to the Canadian as well as the American and Australian law, the author notes that the employment relationship has not been viewed as inherently fiduciary, even though there is broad acceptance of the principle that an employee owes to the employer duties of trust, confidence and fidelity. However, an employee will be characterized as a fiduciary in two fairly exceptional circumstances: where the employee acts as the employer's agent, or where a fiduciary obligation is implicit in the terms of the employment contract or, alternatively, in the employ- ee's position, powers and responsibilities. With respect to the latter category, some courts have affixed fiduciary responsibility not only where the employee was a de facto director or member of top management, or was otherwise "key" to the enterprise, but also where the employer was said to be "vulnerable" to the employee's misuse of his or her position - an approach which the author criticizes as being too broad in its application to rank-and-file employees. More generally, the author maintains that it is the particular facts underlying an employment relationship, not the existence of the relationship itself that may give rise to fiduciary duties on the part of the employee, and that even high-level or senior employees should be not be considered fiduciaries unless their employ- ment contract or explicitly assigned duties justify such a finding.

The article reviews the book, "Power from the North: Territory, Identity, and the Culture ofHydroelectricityin Quebec," by Caroline Desbiens.

The authors show that the decline in the relative wages of immigrants in Canada is far from homogeneous across the wage distribution. The well-documented decline in the mean wage gap between immigrants and Canadian-born workers hides a much larger decline at the low end of the wage distribution, while the gap hardly changed at the top end of the distribution. Using standard OLS regressions and unconditional quantile regressions, the authors show that both the changes in the mean wage gap and in the gap at different quantiles are well explained by standard factors such as experience, education, and country of origin of immigrants. Interestingly, an important source of change in the wages of immigrants relative to the Canadian born is the aging of the baby boom generation, which has resulted in a relative increase in the labor market experience, and thus in the wages, of Canadian-born workers relative to immigrants.

Review of: Initiation à la négociation collective (2nd edition) by Pierre-Luc Bilodeau et Jean Sexton.

This article examines the period leading up to the establishment of the Schefferville iron mine in subarctic Québec, Canada, with a focus on the years 1937–54. The beginning of iron ore mining at Schefferville was a decisive moment in the growth of the modern Québec state, opening the way for the industrial exploitation of the province’s natural resources – mineral and otherwise – in the hinterland. Relying on oral and written sources, the research emphasizes the roles and actions of Innu individuals during this phase of development conducted by exploration companies and the Iron Ore Company of Canada at the heart of their ancestral homeland. If the early mining experience at Schefferville evolved largely to the detriment of the Indigenous communities inhabiting the region, a decentring approach to ethnohistory in the context of industrial colonialism reveals that the Innu also worked to determine their own engagement with the mining world, adjusting and maintaining their practices on the land while participating in the wage labour economy.

The article reviews the book, "The Wages of Relief: Cities and the Unemployed in Prairie Canada, 1929-39," by Eric Strikwerda.

The article discusses the 1968 United Federation of Teachers (UFT) strike in New York City public schools in relation to the community control movement in New York City schools. Topics include UFT leader Albert Shanker's fears of anti-Semitism among New York City blacks who supported community control, educational innovations by black and Puerto Rican activists, and the impact of teacher professionalization on parent-teacher relations.