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Accounts of the 1959 International Woodworkers of America strike in Newfoundland have portrayed the Newfoundland Lumbermen's Association, the local union which held jurisdiction over many of the island's loggers, as a "company union" and its president, Joseph Thompson, as a co-opted unionist. This essay examines the NLA'S origins during the 1930s and shows that Thompson built an autonomous union to improve logger's lives. The paper also brings to the fore the loggers' own experience of the Great Depression to show they did not passively accept economic hardship and exploitation and took an active role in the making of their union. At times, the loggers' militancy dictated the NLA's bargaining positions and prompted some social change in the woods. The paper concludes that while Thompson and the NLA did not view class and class conflict in explicitly political terms, it does not diminish their importance in the loggers' working lives during the 1930s.

Unions have the ability to affect exit behavior through a distinctive collective voice which provides a mechanism for expressing preferences and resolving grievances. It has been demonstrated that workers with a voice institution for the resolution of problems should resort to the exit option less frequently and maintain longer attachments with their companies. A study was conducted based on the 1986-1987 Labour Market Activity Survey (LMAS) longitudinal data from Statistics Canada. Evidence is presented of the effect of unionism on job tenure and job separation rates derived from regressions which control for the effects of wages, pension rights, firm size and other factors. The results show that unionism is associated with significantly lower probabilities of job separation and significantly longer spells of tenure.

Traditionally, management had the right to hire, fire and schedule hours of work, unless constrained by collective agreements or contracts. When exercising these rights, management has a duty to act in a fair manner. There is concern, however, that some management practices might have a disparate effect on the health and performance of disabled employees. Human rights legislation in Canada prohibits both overt discrimination and unintended systemic discrimination arising from employment practices which may seem neutral in application but which have a disparate effect on a protected group of employees. Four specific points of law illustrate the balancing act involved in adjudicating adverse effect discrimination allegations of disabled employees: 1. actuarial risk versus individual assessment, 2. shifting onus of proof from employer to employee, 3. importation of human rights principles into arbitration, and 4. discipline and discharge of employees. Special attention is placed on diabetic shiftworkers as an example of adverse effect discrimination.

The distinguishing features of the Canadian industrial relations system for research purposes are its fragmentation, its extensive legal regulation, and its pattern of strikes. Research needs should be based on this description of Canadian industrial relations, including the environment of the system, the major actors within the system, the processes of industrial relations, and the results of negotiation. Specific gaps in industrial relations research occur with regard to: 1. the treatment of regionalism or regional variables, 2. managerial policies and their determinants, 3. the theoretical bases of strikes, including noneconomic variables, interindustry variations, strike length, and mid-contract strikes, and 4. day-to-day relations among employees, management, and the union in the workplace. Greater attention to Canadian issues and closer integration with cognate disciplines will focus research efforts more effectively.

The article reviews the book, "Blackboard Unions: The AFT and the NEA, 1900-1980," by Marjorie Murphy.

The article reviews the book, "Managing Workforce 2000: Gaining The Diversity Advantage," by David Jamieson and Julie O'Mara.

The article reviews the book, "Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union," by Dan La Botz.

The article reviews the book, "Law and the Shaping of the America Labor Movement," by William E. Forbath

The article reviews the books "The Constitution of Poverty: Toward a Genealogy of Liberal Governance," by Mitchell Dean, "Un nouvel ordre des choses: la pauvreté, le crime, l'État au Québec, de la fin du XVIIIe siècle à 1840," by Jean-Marie Fecteau, "Poverty and Compassion: The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians," by Gertrude Himmelfarb.

The process of research or scientific enquiry is often serendipitous and, like art, inherently creative. The intricacies and complexities of the human mind determine its course. Exigencies such as war and social upheaval often drive its priorities. It is difficult, therefore, if not impossible, to chart out research directions the way corporations plot market strategies. Nevertheless, it is useful (even necessary, some would argue) to make some assessments of the directions in Industrial Relations (IR) research, past and present, and to speculate on its potential. It is with these ideas in mind that the Canadian Industrial Relations Association (CIRA) invited a panel of researchers and practitioners to address the issue of future directions at the meetings in Victoria in June 1990. This paper and those that follow grew out of the discussions at the panel.

The article reviews the book, "Choosing Sides: Unions and the Team Concept," by Mike Parker and Jane Slaughter.

Cette recherche a pour objet de clarifier un nouveau domaine de la gestion des ressources humaines, soit la gestion des carrières. Jusqu'à présent, les travaux ont abordé ce domaine en décrivant les pratiques de gestion de carrière une à une au lieu de décrire des systèmes de carrière (c'est-à-dire des configurations de pratiques). En développant une taxonomie des systèmes de carrière, la présente recherche comble cette lacune. À partir d'un échantillon de 254 observations, quatre types de système de carrière ont été empiriquement identifiés. Selon les résultats de cette recherche, ces quatre types ont une certaine validité, puisqu'ils sont associés significativement à 13 variables n'ayant pas servi à identifier les types (par exemple la taille, la philosophie de relations avec les employés, la stratégie de dotation, l'orientation du système, l'intégration avec les autres pratiques de gestion des ressources humaines). Finalement, ces quatre types ont été nommés et discuté.

This paper examines the uses of sedition law in Upper Canada. Largely neglected by historians, sedition prosecutions were frequently resorted to by the government between the 1790s and the 1820s, and are suggestive of larger patterns in the Canadian experience of dissent and national security measures. The essay focuses on the series of eases connected to the Gourlay affair as the best illustrations of the various facets of sedition law in the province. The availability and use of sedition law by the government to regulate provincial polities, and in particular, to delineate the loyal community and its enemies, was contested, sometimes successfully, by opposition leaders. The formal claims of the legal system, while helping to legitimate the exercise of power, also limited the repression to some extent. The cases brought to the fore the tension between the rule of law and discretionary power, played out in terms of issues about executive control over criminal prosecutions, jury selection and the scope fo the jury's verdict, and judicial independence. These contested issues appear to have had some degree of broader public engagement based on popular understandings of the British constitution. The sedition eases not only suggest the importance of law in the exercise of authority, but also the importance of the courts as a site of oppositional struggles.

The factors that might influence career opportunities for unionized part-time professionals in comparison with their full-time counterparts are analyzed. The results suggest the following conclusions. First, the career opportunities of part-time professionals are influenced by: 1. employers' less favorable perceptions of part-time professionals, 2. the differences in career goals and interests of full- and part-time professionals, and 3. the constraints that operate in collective agreements. Second, although part-time professionals are in highly skilled and well-paid occupations, their overall work environment exhibits the typical employment characteristics of the periphery: there exists little opportunity for filling full-time vacancies and little access to training programs. The results raise an important practical question for part-time professionals of how progress is possible in their organizations.

The article reviews the book, "Competitive Advantage on the Shop Floor," by William Lazonick.