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The article reviews the book, "The Woman Worker, 1926-1929," edited by Mararet Hobbs and Joan Sangster.

The paper examines the impact of lean production on indicators of the quality of life at work in the automotive industry and finds that it varies across companies and to a lesser extent between countries. The paper explains this by arguing that lean production seeks to impose new employment standards. This is a contested process where management's capacity to shift to new standards and labour's ability to protect its interests vary across workplaces.

The article reviews the book, "Colonizing Bodies: Aboriginal Health and Healing in British Columbia, 1900-50," by Mary-Ellen Kelm.

The article reviews and comments on Constance Backhouse's "Colour-Coded Law: A Legal History of Racism in Canada 1900-1950," Sidney L. Harring's "The White Man's Law: Native People in Nineteenth-Century Canadian Jurisprudence,", and James W. St. G. Walker's "'Race,' Rights and the Law in the Supreme Court of Canada."

The article provides background and publishes a selection of Daniel Spencer Gilman's letters to family members written from the mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts to family members in the Eastern Townships of Lower Canada between 1840 and 1849. The letters provide insight into the meaning of class and gender in Lowell, where the workforce was mostly female. They also indicate that the migration from Lower Canada to the New England mills began earlier than previously suggested.

One of the real litmus tests for the state of our democracy is to examine how we treat the most marginalized. An increasingly demonized and marginalized group in Canadian society is poor single mothers. This article will study the changes to Ontario welfare policy since the election of Premier Mike Harris and the Progressive Conservatives in 1995.

Cet article présente les résultats d’un sondage conduit auprès de préventionnistes représentant l’employeur (n = 111) et de préventionnistes représentant les travailleurs (n = 134) afin de mieux comprendre leurs rôles et leurs fonctions respectives au sein des entreprises. Après une revue de littérature faisant le point sur les dernières connaissances concernant le métier de préventionniste, nous élaborons un cadre théorique permettant deconceptualiser le travail de ces derniers. Les analyses du sondage permettent de faire état des principales caractéristiques du contexte de travail des préventionnistes. Nous décrivons ensuite leurs différents profils permettant de catégoriser leur travail en fonction de trois dimensions (organisationnelle, humaine et technique) et de deux niveaux d’intervention (stratégique et opérationnel).

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.

The article reviews the book, "Islands of Truth: The Imperial Fashioning of Vancouver Island," by Daniel W. Clayton.

In a sample of 427 employees in a large, unionized public utility company, the incentive effects of a final-earnings pension plan on employees' commitment to the organization are examined. Two types of organizational commitment, affective and continuance commitment were measured using scales described by Meyer and Allen (1997). Evidence is found that higher accruals under the pension plan increased continuance commitment but reduced affective commitment. Organizational commitment was also found to vary by job satisfaction, specific training, seniority, wage premia, and the perceived effectiveness of alternative dispute resolution methods. Implications for pension theory, research, and policy are discussed.

Studies of the diffusion of new workplace technologies and management practice often fail to account for differences in state labor regulation. This article examines the role of the state in seeking to regulate the introduction of an American system of computerized work monitoring in the Australian grocery warehouse industry. While the establishment of a government inquiry into the technology offered the potential for significant constraints upon management control, over time the state's role shifted to a more accommodating stance that endorsed management's right to use the new technology. The reasons underlying the state's ultimate support for the technology are explored, as are the broader implications for national variations in the global diffusion of new workplace technologies.

There is a widespread claim that the women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s was middle-class and that its politics of reforming the state reflected the concerns of middle-class women. This paper challenges that claim, arguing instead that the development of the women's movement created an environment in which a union-based, working-class feminism became an important political factor. Working-class and socialist-feminist activists developed a strong feminist presence in the labour movement and a significant working-class orientation in the women's movement that both continue to influence the current women's movement.

The article reviews the book, "Creating Historical Memory: English-Canadian Women and the Work of History," edited by Beverly Boutilier and Alison Prentice.

Cet article rapporte les résultats d’une étude de perceptions des interventions en santé au travail dans le contexte des petites entreprises, une réalité qui a jusqu’ici été peu étudiée malgré l’importance de ce type d’entreprise au plans économique et de la santé publique. La méthode a consisté à interroger les travailleurs et les employeurs d’un échantillon raisonné de huit entreprises québécoises de moins de 50 employés, ainsi que les professionnels de la santé chargés d’intervenir dans ces milieux. L’analyse des données permet d’identifier plusieurs aspects problématiques du processus actuel d’intervention en santé au travail dans le contexte de cette catégorie d’entreprise. La portée pratique des résultats est développée en une série de propositions qui visent à renouveler le modèle actuel d’intervention en santé au travail.

The importance of religion to social and labour radicalism in English Canada has been identified by several scholars, but few labour historians have built on these insights. Some scholars who study labour or socialist leaders at least briefly assess the impact of their subject’s religious background or their relationship to social gospel, while a few historians of working-class ethnic communities explore religion as a facet of their subjects’ lives. Discussion of religion, however, is usually a small part of a larger project. On this theme, Lynne Marks replies to Bryan Palmer’s critique of her book, "Revivals and Roller Rinks: Religion, Leisure and Identity in Late Nineteenth-Century Small-Town Ontario."

New Corporation, Technology and the Workplace: Global Strategies, Local Change, by Timothy Marjoribanks, is reviewed.

This paper analyzes the evolution of Jim Crow employment patterns in the Canadian railway industry from the 1880s to World War I. It presents race as a central organizing principle in employers' decision to hire black railwaymen for their sleeping and dining car departments. Canadian railway managers actively sought out African American, West Indian, and African Canadian labour, believing that they constituted an easily manipulated group of workers. White railroaders fought the introduction of black employees, arguing that they undermined white manhood and railway unionism. Trade union leaders demanded and won a racialized division of the workforce, locking black workers into low-waged service position when they had initially enjoyed a broader range of employment options. In effect, white railway trade unionists and their employers embraced segregation as a rational model for peaceful working conditions. Black railroaders, on the other hand, resisted the encroachment of segregationist policies by forming their own union, the Order of Sleeping Car Porters. They pressured for change by exposing the scope of Jim Crow practices in the railway industry and trade unionism.

The article reviews the book, "Labour before the Law: The Regulation of Workers' Collective Action in Canada, 1900-1948," by Judy Fudge and Eric Tucker.

Cooperative forms of enterprise are often held up as a progressive, moderate alternative to the privations of the capitalist market economy. This paper considers the Prince Rupert Fishermen's Co-op and its relations with organized labour in the north of British Columbia. The paper describes a contradiction within the co-op based on the possibilities of social ownership within a market economy. Through a discussion of the escalating labour conflicts between the co-op and its non-member employees the weaknesses of co-operative enterprises are revealed.