Your search

This article assesses one of the longest private sector strikes in Canadian history — the United Steelworkers (USW) Local 6500 strike at Vale in Sudbury, 2009-2010. It argues that in the context of corporate globalization and the recent financial crisis, Vale took full advantage of its economic power to win major concessions from Local 6500. The USW's community, political, and corporate campaigns were unable to pressure the company or the federal and provincial government effectively and the result was that a powerful international corporation prevailed in its efforts to erode the material well-being of its Canadian workforce. Such a defeat, alongside the recent collective bargaining concessions by auto workers in Canada and the United States, is a major blow to the North American labour movement. Trade unions must therefore develop more successful strategies of resistance and begin the process of reforming and rejuvenating themselves as organizations defending workers. If this is not done the future of North American labour is bleak indeed.

The article reviews the book, "Uniting in Measures of Common Good: The Construction of Liberal Identities in Central Canada," by Darren Ferry.

This paper explores the structures and practices of temporary migrant worker programs (TMWP) as they operate in Canadian agriculture. Acting within highly competitive, globalized markets, agri-food employers rely on the availability of migrant workers to achieve greater flexibility in their labor arrangements, drawing on employment practices beyond those possible with a domestic workforce. Most recently, changes to Canada’s two TMWP schemes have provided employers with greater scope to shape the social composition of their workforce. The paper analyzes these changes while exploring their implications for workplace regimes in agriculture.

Few Canadian data sources allow the examination of disparities by ethnicity, language, or immigrant status in occupational exposures or health outcomes. However, it is possible to document the mechanisms that can create disparities, such as the over-representation of population groups in high-risk jobs. We evaluated, in the Montréal context, the relationship between the social composition of jobs and their associated risk level. We used data from the 2001 Statistics Canada census and from Québec's workers' compensation board for 2000-2002 to characterize job categories defined as major industrial groups crossed with three professional categories (manual, mixed, non-manual). Immigrant, visible, and linguistic minority status variables were used to describe job composition. The frequency rate of compensated health problems and the average duration of compensation determined job risk level. The relationship between the social composition and risk level of jobs was evaluated with Kendall correlations. The proportion of immigrants and minorities was positively and significantly linked to the risk level across job categories. Many relationships were significant for women only. In analyses done within manual jobs, relationships with the frequency rate reversed and were significant, except for the relationship with the proportion of individuals with knowledge of French only, which remained positive. Immigrants, visible, and linguistic minorities in Montréal are more likely to work where there is an increased level of compensated risk. Reversed relationships within manual jobs may be explained by under-reporting and under-compensation in vulnerable populations compared to those with knowledge of the province's majority language.

The article reviews the book, "Public Policy for Women: The State, Income Security and Labour Market Issues," edited by Marjorie Griffin Cohen and Jane Pulkingham.

The Human Side of Outsourcing: Psychological Theory and Management Practice, edited by Stephanie Morgan, is reviewed.

The complex story of labour unrest in Quebec’s shipbuilding industry considerably broadens understanding of Canada’s wartime industrial relations. For while trade union leaders were significant in organizing thousands of shipyard workers, and government and business opposition were givens, workers sometimes struggled in the absence of leadership to achieve their goals and inter-union conflict frequently obstructed their efforts. The spontaneity of worker struggle in Quebec shipyards was less due to union weakness, however, than to conflict between craft versus industrial-based trade unionism. Strikes in Quebec’s shipbuilding plants during 1943 also shed light on the growing failure of the Canadian government’s labour policy known as compulsory conciliation. The contextualization of labour relations in Quebec’s shipyards during that long, angry summer lends support to those historians who argue that workers’ struggle rather than politicians’ acuity had a greater impact on the eventual appearance of pc 1003 than others would allow.

The article reviews the book, "Networking Futures: The Movements Against Corporate Globalization," by Jeffrey S. Juris.

One manifestation of the 'new managerialism' in the Canadian health care system is the increase in workplace bullying. An occupational group especially susceptible to workplace bullying is Continuing Care Assistants (CCAs) who provide personal care to long-term care home residents and individuals in their own homes in Saskatchewan. These foot soldiers of end-of-life care have no professional society or regulatory agency to advocate for their occupational status and the social value of the work they perform. The paper argues that workplace bullying cannot be understood unless it is related to the social structure from which it derives. One underlying cause of bullying among CCAs is the reorganization of their work under current health care reforms. Potential solutions to workplace bullying must start with transformative processes rooted in an understanding of these larger contextual forces.

Immigration and Integration in Canada in the Twenty-first Century, edited by John Biles, Meyer Burstein and James Frideres, is reviewed.

The article reviews the exhibition, "Handel the Philanthropist," at the Foundling Museum in London, England in 2009.

This paper presents empirical evidence about HRM practices in Chilean organizations with the aims of providing an overview of employment relations and adding to limited existing literature. Research was conducted in a sample of 2000 Chilean workers in the Metropolitan Region. The paper argues that HRM practices in Chilean organizations illustrate the normative perspective of modern HRM discourse, where managers understand the nature of employment relationships to be the control of workers. While HRM processes are articulated under a discourse of worker emancipation, in reality, discursive practices perpetuate patterns of subordination that have historically shaped employment relations in Chile.

Much has written about the growth of legislative interference in collective bargaining and the right to strike in Canada in the latter part of the 20th century. However, consideration of the specifically gendered impacts of this interference has been largely neglected. This paper argues that suspension of collective bargaining rights and the right to strike impacts women workers in unique and disproportionate ways. Two cursory case studies from Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador provide examples of how suspension of bargaining rights has a differential impact on women. The paper calls attention to the need for a heightened focus on the specifically gendered impacts of neoliberal governments´ growing propensity to suspend collective bargaining rights in Canada.

The article reviews the book, "Regulating Flexibility: The Political Economy of Employment Standards," by Mark P. Thomas.

The article reviews the book, "Bodies of Work: Civic Display and Labor in Industrial Pittsburgh," by Edward Slavishak.

Based on National Hockey League club and league correspondence, congressional transcripts, newspapers, and government documents, this essay examines the first attempt to organize a National Hockey League Players' Association. For just over a year, the NHLPA struggled to overcome the resistance of NHL owners, the uncertainty of its own members, and the confusing legal environment created by overlapping transnational, interstate, and inter-provincial jurisdictions. These issues make the NHLPA a compelling case study of the way in which the borders between business and sport began to shift in the 1950s, a time when new forces-technological (television), legal (congressional investigation and judicial decisions), and social (player activism)-were preparing the way for the struggle for free agency.

Interrogating the New Economy: Restructuring Work in the 21st Century, edited by Norene J. Pupa and Mark P. Thomas, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "Contemporary Latin America: Development and Democracy Beyond the Washington Consensus," by Francisco Panizza.

The role of the Left in unions, women´s activism, and the rise of industrial unions in the post-World War II decades have been the subject of valuable academic scrutiny. This article seeks to add to our understanding of these topics by looking at the role that one prominent activist—Al Campbell—played in building UAW/CAW Local 27 from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s. Campbell strongly advocated an independent Canadian autoworkers´ union, supported women´s activism, and was instrumental in helping expand a major composite local in the union. I argue in this article that, in order to understand the nature of the post-war Canadian labour movement, we need to devote greater attention to the role of devoted leftists in building local unions.