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The article reviews the book, "The Business of Power: Hydroelectricity in Southeastern British Columbia 1897-1997," by Jeremy Mouat.

In the debates about the relationship between labor flexibility and employment security, the actual strategies managers employ under different policy regimes tends to be overlooked. The nature of deployment strategies that managers employ for their retained labor force in production plants in Canada and Sweden in 3 industrial sectors - steel, pulp and paper and telecommunications - is examined. While Canadian managers have greater access to external markets and make greater use of layoff-recall strategies and overtime than their Swedish counterparts, deployment strategies within plants tend to require more formal negotiations, especially within unionized plants. Swedish managers can carry out changes in labor deployment in a more informal manner, particularly with respect to job responsibilities and new skills training. Swedish managers face more difficulties than their Canadian counterparts in altering quantities of labor.

The drafting of Canada's industrial standards legislation and its consequences in the clothing industry are examined. In particular, it is argued that the legislation formalized the subordination of specific sectors of workers in the clothing shops. Although the traditional unions made some efforts to organize women, the presence of women in the union bureaucracy was limited. Because of this, the move away from shop-floor unionism towards industry-wide collective bargaining ensured that women had, at best, a peripheral position in union decision making. When the men in the industry sat down to negotiate the legal framework for their trade, most of the political maneuvering went on in a domain exclusive of women. In the negotiations for the legislation in Ontario and Quebec's clothing industry, men reaffirmed the gendered nature of the work in the trade through legal language enshrined in the industrial standards schedules set for the industry.

The article reviews the book, "Ready-to-Wear and Ready-to-Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York," by Nancy L. Green.

The article reviews the book, "The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945-1968," by Kevin Boyle.

This article explores mid-19th century masculinity, through examination of the writings and lived experience of New Brunswick tannery worker Martin Butler. What being a man meant, in this historical context, was rooted in the contingencies and determinants of the North American sole leather tanning industry, and can be located as well in the discourses Martin Butler constructed about his and other men's experiences. Rural, working-class men, it is argued, were, in part, the shapers of their own class-specific and rurally-contingent male identifies, although the processes by which these identities were formulated and negotiated are neither easily catalogued nor tidily analyzed.

The article reviews the book, "The Conundrum of Class: Public Discourse on the Social Order in America," by Martin J. Burke.

The article reviews and comments on Rick Halpern's "Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago's Packinghouses, 1904-54" (1997) and "Unionizing the Jungles: Labor and Community in the Twentieth-Century Meatpacking Industry" (1997) edited by Shelton Stromquist and Marvin Bergman.

Provides an excerpt from a talk given by Cicih Sukaesih to the Alberta Federation of Labour. A former employee and union activist at the Nike shoe factory in Jakarta, Sukaesih describes her experiences as an organizer and what the "swoosh" Niki trademark signifies to employees at the factory

the article reviews and comments on two books: Edith L. Burley's "Servants of the Honourable Company: Work, Discipline and Conflict in the Hudson's Bay Company, 1770-1879" and Richard Somerset Mackie's "Trading Beyond the Mountains: The British Fur Trade on the Pacific, 1793-1843."

The article reviews the book, "Culture et gestion en Algérie," by Daniel Mercure, Baya Harricane, Smaïl Seghir et André Steenhaut.

The article reviews the book, "Femmes, Santé et Professions: Histoire des diététistes et des physiothérapeutes au Québec et en Ontario, 1930-1980: L'affirmation d'un statut professionnel," by Nadia Fahmy-Eid et al.

The article reviews the book, "Modern Manors: Welfare Capitalism Since the New Deal," by Sanford M. Jacoby.

To identify penalty standards in use for sexual harassment in unionized workforces, 54 arbitrations of grievances against penalties assigned for sexual harassment in Canada between 1985-1995 were examined. The standard penalty for sexual harassment involving sexual assault or language and touching is termination. The standard penalty for sexual harassment involving touching (without language) and language (without touching) is suspension. Standard penalties are varied under a number of conditions. Management can use these standards as guidelines for assigning penalties. Unions will find the standards useful for judging the fairness of the penalty assigned.

The article reviews the book, "Development and Social Change, A Global Perspective," by Philip McMichael.

Using data collected from a survey of union organizers, employer behavior during certification campaigns in Canada is examined. The extent and impact of opposition practices used by Quebec and Ontario employers during the late 1980s and early 1990s is investigated. It is found that prevalence of opposition tactics is not pronounced in either Quebec or Ontario. Nevertheless, these tactics are effective in reducing the level of union support in certification campaigns, if not the probability of certification. Most tactics examined appear to decrease the proportion of employees supporting the union, while captive audience speeches have a consistent negative and significant effect on certification probability.

In most African countries, structural adjustment programs constituted the context of industrial relations conflicts during the 1980s because they had a negative effect on social and working conditions. A study discusses African labor's responses to its deteriorating conditions, and to states' attempts to limit labor's demands. It concludes that structural adjustment programs were implemented in all African countries despite labor's resistance. The degree of implementation depended on governments' repressive capabilities, workers' traditions of striving for independent organizations, and on unions' perceptions of the issue and their responsibilities under prolonged economic crises.

The article reviews "Travail, espaces et professions," published in Cahiers du GEDISST, no. 19.

La mondialisation de l'économie pose une menace nouvelle sur le droit du travail. Cette menace se manifeste tant à l'endroit des mécanismes juridiques dont l'effectivité est conditionnée par les limites territoriales nationales qu'à l'égard de l'équilibre des pouvoirs qui est recherché entre les acteurs sociaux dans l'élaboration des règles juridiques. Analysant l'évolution des institutions canadiennes et québécoises de droit du travail et puisant dans l'expérience européenne et française, cet article démontre que le droit du travail n'est pas sans moyen pour réagir et s'adapter à un environnement plus mondialisé. Cette adaptation, tant sur le plan juridique, national, qu'international, est toutefois tributaire d'une volonté politique de la favoriser et de la capacité de l'acteur syndical de l'induire et de la soutenir. C'est là que la mondialisation de l'économie risque de produire ses effets les plus pervers.

The article reviews the book, "Safety First: Technology, Labor, and Business in the Building of American Work Safety, 1870-1939," by Mark Aldrich.