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The article reviews the book, "Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation," by Nancy F. Cott.

Modern Irish labour history dates from the mid 1970s, years that saw the foundation of the Irish Labour History Society in 1973 and the launch of its annual journal, Saothar in 1975. While steady progress has since been made, the subject suffers from a popular perception of labour as marginal, a reluctance within the trade union movement to recover its often fractious past, and academic neglect. Ireland was not deeply affected by the “crisis” in labour history in the 1990s. It is likely that the flow of publications will continue. But without full-time practitioners, progress in method and theory will be patchy.

Unions may be viewed as a central institution of capitalist democracies. This paper updates aspects of Porter's work on labour and the labour elite in Canada (1965: Ch. 10-11). Conventional measures indicate that the power of the labour movement in Canada increased after Porter studied it around 1960 but that it has subsequently declined. Support from ideological and state elites seems to have followed a similar rise and decline pattern. Foreign influence has been considerably reduced. The movement remains highly decentralized. In contrast to the situation in 1960, unions are now notably female, white collar and public sector. A partial study of the social characteristics of the labour elite indicates that its ethnic origins have become less British and more French Canadian. The "other ethnic" proportion of the elite has been stable. Virtually no visible minority representation was detected. Given changes in the ethno-racial composition of the population, it would appear that under-representation of the non Charter Group categories has increased significantly over the past four decades. Conversely, female representation in the elite has grown substantially. /// Les syndicats peuvent être considérés comme une institution centrale des démocraties capitalistes. Cet article remet à jour certains aspects des travaux de Porter sur l'élite ouvrière au Canada (1965: chapitres 10-11). Les mesures conventionnelles indiquent que le pouvoir du mouvement ouvrier au Canada s'est accru après les études de Porter aux environs de 1960, mais qu'il a connu un déclin par la suite. Le soutien des élites idéologiques et d'état semble avoir suivi un schéma d'essor et de déclin identique. L'influence de l'étranger s'est considérablement réduite. Le mouvement demeure largement decentralize. En contraste avec la situation de 1960, les syndicats comprennent maintenant une majorité de femmes, de cols blancs et d'employés du secteur public. Une étude partielle des caractéristiques sociales de l'élite ouvrière indique que ses origines ethniques sont devenues moins britanniques et davantage canadiennes-françaises. La proportion d'autres ethnics au sein de l'élite est restée stable. Pratiquernent aucune représentation d'une minorité visible n'a été détectée. Étant donné les changements dans la composition ethno-raciale de la population, il semblerait que la sous-représentation des catégories autres que celles du Groupe de la Charte (c'est-à-dire britannique et français) s'est singulièrement accrue au cours des quatre dernières décennies. Inversement la représentation des femmes au sein de l'élite a augmenté de manière significative.

The article reviews the book, "Democratic equality: What went wrong?," edited by Ed Broadbent.

Welcome to the website of the research network for: The Changing Nature of Work and Lifelong Learning in the New Economy: National and Case Study Perspectives. A grant awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), complementing work begun by the NALL (New Approaches to Lifelong Learning) research network, WALL is a part of the Initiative for the New Economy (INE), which aims to help Canadians understand and benefit from the ways in which the global economy is being transformed. Our network of investigators is composed of researchers from seven universities and more than 10 co-investigators from community groups and professional institutions across Canada. Benefiting from the contributions of international advisors, the WALL research network endeavours to identify gaps in workplace training and education in Canada and bring visibility to current learning and work issues and trends. --Website description

The introduction discusses the 50th anniversary volume of Labour/Le Travail and explains the journal's ongoing efforts to cover the labour studies field.

This paper commences with a suggestion that “the British Marxists” may well be a more diverse group than has generally been recognized. It concerns itself with the formation of the first British New Left in the1950s. The content of the E.P. Thompson and John Saville edited journal, The New Reasoner is examined, with attention paid to the publication’s internationalism, its use of critical social science, the accent placed on culture, and the stress on organization. To the extent that The New Reasoner failed in its in tended aim of building and sustaining a New Left, the paper closes with some suggestions about the implications of this failure, especially as it related to E.P. Thompson’s historiographical contributions, in which the influence of The Making of the English Working Class (London 1963) loomed large.

The article reviews the book, "The Marshall Decision and Native Rights," by Ken Coates.

Australian labour history remains a vigorous area of intellectual activity. Labour History, the journal of the Australian society, is celebrating its 40th anniversary and publishes a considerable number of articles. Other important sources of Australian labour history such as books, national conference proceedings, and branch publications highlight the links between academic labour historians and the broader community. One important contribution of Labour/Le Travail to Australian labour historiography was the Australian/Canadian comparative labour history project, which gave Australians the confidence to organise national conferences and develop the comparative dimension of labour history.

Each action of a decollectivizing employer - be it in the realm of employment practices, information or relational actions - has both real and symbolic dimensions that may be inclusivist, exclusivist or both. While many attempts at decollectivism are crude, Australia has seen the emergence of a coherent model of sophisticated decollectivist behaviour which has policy implications for many countries. Some analogies can be seen between certain sophisticated strategies of decollectivizing employers and state strategies of Oceania in Orwell's 1984, though there are many limits to such analogies and indeed to the success of decollectivist strategies, due to the contradiction between rhetoric and actions, employees' exposure to other discourses and the potential for union response and renewal.

The article reviews the book, "Steam laundries: Gender, technology, and work in the United States and Great Britain, 1880-1940," by Arwen P. Mohun.

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The article reviews the book, "Under attack, fighting back: Women and welfare in the United States," new edition, by Mimi Abramovitz.

The article reviews the book, "The new rank-and-file," edited by Staughton Lind and Alice Lind.

The article reviews the book, "Children's interest/mothers' rights: the shaping of America's child care policy," by Sonya Michel

This study examines the effect of employee involvement and job insecurity on employee satisfaction and commitment. A data set incorporating information from employees, managers and government sources in 15 hospitals in a single metropolitan region in the US is used to test these issues. In contrast to previous research, it is found that workers' satisfaction and commitment persist as long as the form of employee involvement in place increases worker input and control in their jobs and as long as management is perceived to be making clear efforts to enhance the future security of workers' jobs. Employee perception of management effort to maintain employment security, however, is based on past downsizing within the organization, thus raising the potential that continued downsizing will increase insecurity and therefore will decrease both employee desire to participate in decision-making, as well as employee satisfaction and commitment to the organization.

The article reviews the book, "On the Front Line: Organization of Work in the Information Economy," by Stephen J. Frenkel, Marek Korczynski, Karen A. Shire, and May Tam.

The article reviews the book, "Telling Tales: Essays in Western Women's History," edited by Catherine A. Cavanaugh and Randi R. Warne.

Globalization and the Canadian Economy: The Implications for Labour Markets, Society and the State, edited by Richard P. Chaykowski, is reviewed.