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The recent historiography pertaining to women during World War II has tended to focus on women in either the war industries or armed forces. While the first feminist scholars argued that women experienced a type of second emancipation during this period due to changes in societal attitudes, more recently, historians have contended that women were temporarily treated to certain economic and social benefits during the War because the government and industries were in desperate need of workers. This paper attempts to offer an alternative interpretation of women's experiences during this time, through the investigation of female textile workers in Cornwall, Ontario. Using a dual structural analysis, this study illustrates how male union leaders and company owners often collaborated in maintaining a segregated work force. Instead of experiencing a type of liberation from traditional occupational constraints, Cornwall's female textile workers remained subjugated in lower paying and lower skilled "female" jobs in the mills. Within this industry then, continuity rather than change characterized the experiences of female textile workers during World War II.

During the 1980s, the unemployment rate in Canada was several percentage points higher than in the US. Prior to this time, the level and the movements in the unemployment rates in the 2 countries were similar. Reasons for the shifts in the unemployment vacancy (UV) relationship in Canada and the US during the past 2 decades are examined to determine whether these shifts can explain this gap in unemployment between the 2 countries. Changing structural imbalances in the labor markets by themselves cannot explain the shifts in the UV curves or the gap in the unemployment rates in the 2 countries. It is concluded that aggregate economic shocks that create some structural imbalances are required to explain the shifts in the UV curves and the differing unemployment experiences in the 2 economies.

The article reviews and comments on the book "Improper Advances: Rape and Heterosexual Conflict in Ontario, 1880-1929," by Karen Dubinsky.

The article reviews the book, "International and Comparative Industrial Relations : A Study of Industrialised Market Economies," edited by Greg J. Bamber and Russell D. Lansbury.

The article reviews the book, "Education for Motherhood: Advice for Mothers in Twentieth-Century Canada," by Katherine Arnup.

This book covers 108 years of labour history at the John Inglis factory in Toronto's west end. For years, the Inglis plant was at the bedrock of Canada's manufacturing economy until it was finally closed in 1989. The authors present a critical narrative that looks at union struggles to organize the plant, discusses the gendered segregation of work during WWII, and analyses the importance of Free Trade to the plant's closure. The book includes over 150 archival and contemporary photographs, drawings, and other visual materials. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Le Québec en jeu : comprendre les grands défis," edited by Gérard Daigle, with the collaboration of Guy Rocher.

The article reviews the book, "Japanization at Work," by John Bratton.

Introduces and presents a selection of messages posted during the Solidarity Network's "electronic conference" on Canadian labour education that was moderated by Athabasca University from October to December 1992. The 68 registrants included labour educators from across Canada (including some working overseas), two US academics, and a range of union reps with CUPE being in the majority. Topics included the relationship between postsecondary education institutions and trade unions, technology, gender in labour education, pedagogy, and courses/programs taught by unions/colleges/universities. Concludes that this type of computer conference would be an exciting application for distance education.

This history of the Teaching Support Staff Union is timely since, as TSSU's parent, the Association of University and College Employees, has now existed for twenty years. TSSU is the last remaining independent local of AUCE. though several other locals have joined mainstream unions. The three essays included describe three different eras in the history of AUCE and TSSU, but some of the tensions found in the organization have remained the same over time. For twenty years AUCE has represented, at least to the activists involved in it, an intersection between feminism and trade unionism in British Columbia. Because the principle of local control over union decisions rather than joining a larger union hierarchy has been consistently maintained, AUCE and TSSU have frequently operated from a locally-defined idealistic feminist standpoint. The tensions, broadly painted, have been between feminists and traditional trade unionists (most often male).... --Introduction

In this further volume of autobiography, BC labour and human rights lawyer John Stanton returns to his career in the law. After reviewing his childhood, education, and early political experiences in Vancouver during the Depression years, he discusses some of his most important cases. These include: the defence of Fergus McKean, a BC communist leader who was interned during World War II; an exceptional criminal libel suit prosecution in Cold War BC; and an account of his relations with the Mine Mill and Smelter Workers. --Publisher's description

This paper deals with the Needle Trades Industrial Union (NTIU) organization drive in the garment industry of the cities of Montréal, Toronto, and Winnipeg. I argue that the relative success of this branch of the Workers Unity League (WUL) in unionizing the female workforce originates in part from the union's internal representation structure. Women's work was isolated from men's by the sharp gender division of work, which characterized the garment trade. A union structure adopted to overcome this division of work, one based on the place of work (and not on the industrial branch) favoured women's participation to unionism.

This paper centres on the struggles over job ownership between labour and management that have been integral to the shaping and reshaping of the Canadian steel industry over the course of the 20th century. In the first phase of industry development (1900-1940s), management had virtual control over the structuring of jobs. The second phase (1940s-1970s) saw the arrival of industrial unionism and the establishment of seniority and grievance systems which gave workers employment security and, over time, a sense of job ownership. The third phase (1980s) has been a period of crisis in which steel management in Canada has embarked on a restructuring campaign -- a critical feature of which is their determination to recapture job ownership through the introduction of new technologies, job amalgamations, and the implementation of teams. If steel management succeeds in wresting job ownership back from its workers, the paper concludes, then conditions will return to the pre-union period where management created and destroyed jobs as they desired.

The growth of the United Auto Workers in Canada dramatically improved the lives of thousands of workers. Not only did it achieve impressive bargaining gains, but the UAW was regarded as one of the most democratic and socially progressive of the major industrial unions in North America. However, workers in the automotive sector, who constituted the largest segment of the UAW membership, witnessed blatant gender inequalities. From 1937 to 1979, UAW leaders did little to challenge these inequalities. Both the union and the workplace remained highly masculine settings in which male workers and bosses played out the gender politics of the times. Pamela Sugiman draws on archival materials and in-depth interviews with workers and union representatives to explore the ways in which the small groups of women in southern Ontario auto plants fought for dignity, respect, and rights within this restrictive context. During the Second World War, women auto workers formed close bonds with one another - bonds that rested largely around their identification as a sex. By the late 1960s, they were drawing on a growing union consciousness, the modern women's movement, and their gender identity, to launch an organized collective struggle for sexual equality. In describing the women's experiences, Sugiman employs the concept of a `gendered strategy.' A gendered strategy incorporates both reasoned decisions and emotional responses, calculated interests and compromises. Within a context of gender and class divisions, workers developed strategies of coping, resistance, and control. Labour's Dilemma reveals how people may be simultaneously agents and victims, compliant and resistant. --Publisher's description

Examines the values of work and employment in federal and provincial policy papers on regional development versus those in Newfoundland's popular culture, as expressed in the heroic, masculine ideals of its folksong tradition. Argues that Newfoundlanders seeming resistance to change stems from this conflict in values. Concludes that long-term policy development of viable alternatives to the traditional, resource-based occupations should focus on the elements of status, autonomy, and identity that comprise meaningful work.

The article reviews the book, "Notes of a Red Guard," by Eduard M. Dune and edited by Diane P. Koenker and S. A. Smith.

The article reviews the book, "From Plant to Politics: The Autoworkers Union in Postwar Canada," by Charlotte Yates.

Unions and employers are no doubt aware that retaining legal cousel necessitates a more expensive and less expeditious grievance arbitration process. However, if a party's prospects for success are enhanced by legal representation, the additional delay and expense may be justified. Does legal representation affect grievance outcomes? Most arbitrators are lawyers. Does an arbitrator's legal training affect the outcome of a grievance? In an effort to answer these questions, all discipline or discharge grievance arbitration awards decided in the Canadian province of Newfoundland during the period 1980-1992 were analyzed. The results suggest that legal representation does not affect grievance outcomes, nor do lawyer-arbitrators decide cases any differently than their lay colleagues.