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Discusses "The Westray Story" (Report of the Westray Mine Public Inquiry, Justice K. Peter Richard, Commissioner, 1997) that made scathing findings regarding the operation of the short-lived mine and the government's failure to regulate it properly.

The article reviews the book, "The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor," by Nelson Lichtenstein.

The article reviews the book, "Renewing Our Days: Montreal Jews in the Twentieth Century," edited by Ira Robinson and Mervin Butofsky.

The article review and comments on Elizabeth Varon's "We Mean to be Counted: White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia" (1998) and Lora Romero's "Home Fronts: Domesticity and its Critics in the Antebellum United States" (1997).

The article reviews the book, "Droits en synergie sur le travail : éléments de droits international et comparé du travail," by Jean-Michel Servais.

This dissertation examines the history and evolution of the employment relationship associated with the contemporary temporary help industry in Canada from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century. Using gender as a central lens of analysis, it explores how, and to what extent, this employment relationship is becoming a nom for a more diverse group of workers in the Canadian labour market. In so doing, the dissertation develops the following argument: with the shift away from the standard employment relationship since the early 1970s and the coincident nse of the temporary employment relationship -- two developments indicative of the ferninization of employment -- workers situated at the expanding margins of the labour market are increasingly treated like commodities. A growing body of scholarship argues that the nature of employment is changing, citing the spread of non-standard forms of employment and women's rising and/or consistently high labour force participation rates as evidence of this claim. This dissertation confirms that important changes are indeed taking place in the labour market but it argues that the tenor and direction of these changes oniy corne into Full view when they are examined in light of continuity as well as change. To this end, it probes the shape of dualism in the Canadian labour market historically, paying particularly attention to its gendered and racialized character, through a case study of the temporary employment relationship. The dissertation begins by providing a conceptual map for understanding and interpreting contemporary employment trends that engages in three broader theoretical inquiries: the investigation of labour power's peculiar commodity statu under capitalism; the exploration of the rise and decline of the standard employment relationship as a normative mode1 of employment; and the examination of the gendered character of prevailing employment trends. Following this overview, the body of the dissertation traces the history of the temporary employment relationship in Canada, examining how its three core actors -- the temporary heip agency, the customer and the worker -- have adapted to shifting employment trends and gendered employment noms and negotiated developments at the regdatory level over the course of the twentieth century. In probing the evolution of the temporary employment relationship, it devotes special emphasis to examining the role and fùnction of early precursors to the modem temporary help agency (e-g., private employment agents such as general labour agents and so-called padrones), its immediate forerunners (Le., the 'classic' temporary help agency of the 1950s) and its most recent manifestation (Le., the employment and staffing service). AIthough the dissertation focuses on the Canadian context, it also traces developments at the international and supra-national level throughout the twentieth century, developrnents that have often mirrored, frequently affected, and occasionally even prefigured trends in Canada. Interdisciplinary in its focus, the dissertation approaches the evolution of the temporary employment relationship from a range of angles, building on scholarship fiom the fields of Law, History, Political Econorny, Sociology and Industriai Relations. The research methodoIogies used include: archivaVhistorica1 research; field observation; interviews with temporary help workers, agency managers and customers as well as government officials, representatives from organized labour and industry leaders; and analysis of industry, government and legal documentation at the municipal, provincial, national and supra-national levels.

Regulatory responses to the spread of non-standard forms of employment in North America and Europe are examined, particularly those measures directed at the temporary employment relationship associated with the temporary help services industry. Through an analysis of international labor conventions, country-specific regulations and supranational initiatives, it is demonstrated that countries party to the NAFTA and the European Community both endorse strategies aimed at numerical flexibility yet they take divergent regulatory approaches in response to the growth of temporary employment. While North American countries opt for non-regulation, the European Community is attempting to establish basic protections for workers engaged in temporary employment.

The article reviews the book, "Telecommunications: Restructuring Work and Employment Relations Worldwide," edited by Harry C. Katz.

The article reviews the book, "The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century," by Michael Denning.

The article reviews the book, "Ale, Beer and Brewsters in England: Women's Work in a Changing World, 1300-1600," by Judith M. Bennett.

What kinds of associations did Canadian 'civil servants' form in the postwar period? Why and how did they learn to become 'uncivil', transforming themselves into militant unionists during the 1980s and 1990s? These questions are addressed theoretically and empirically through a case study of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC). In 1966, PSAC leaders adopted a consultative, harmonious approach to staff relations, organizing the newly formed union to reflect the federal civil service's structure and practice. Class and gender divisions were submerged, hidden beneath the historical and ideological construction of the civil service as a distinctive, politically neutral category. Cracking apart of the unity of federal 'civil servants' began to occur in the 1960s. Class and gender divisions started to come to the fore with the expansion of the Canadian federal state, the increase of women in administrative support roles, and the enactment of collective bargaining rights. During the 1970s and 1980s, working class formation and capacity developed within the Canadian labour movement in concert with feminism, even though the legal structuring of labour relations continued to limit this class and gender formation. In this respect the Public Service Staff Relations Act and the Public Service Employment Act continued to reproduce the practices of the social category of civil servants. Nevertheless, within the PSAC, collective bargaining, the right to strike and the pay equity provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act produced openings for learning and strategizing around subordinate class and gender issues and demands. Predominately female clerical workers, successfully challenged the structure and practices of the traditional 'civil service' associations. They learned to strategize and to incorporate a working class, feminist discourse into the union's practices. In the process the demand for pay equity was redefined and transformed into a demand of wage equity for all members, thus becoming a source of solidarity during the PSAC's 1991 general strike. PSAC activists learned to use openings in state structures to transform union agency, despite the existence of a legal regime that continues to constrain the development of working class and feminist capacities.

The article reviews the book, "[Chicago Radio Station] WCFL: Chicago's Voice of Labor, 1926-78," by Nathan Godfried.

The article reviews the book, "The Philosophy of Railways: The Transcontinental Railway Idea in British North America," by A.A. den Otter.

The article reviews the book, "Bedside Matters: The Transformation of Canadian Nursing, 1900-1990," by Kathryn McPherson.

In the years following World War II, the Newfoundland fishing economy was transformed from a predominantly inshore, household-based, saltfish-producing enterprise into an industrialized economy dominated by vertically-integrated frozen fish companies. The state played a critical role in fostering this transformation, and one aspect of its involvement was the creation of a "modern" fisheries workforce. Although women's labour had historically been an integral part of the inshore fishery, state planners assumed that women would withdraw from direct involvement in economic activities. Indeed, the male bread-winner model, the dominant gender ideology of western culture (but not of Newfoundland outport culture at the time), was embedded in state economic policies for the Newfoundland fishery in the post-World War II period. Training men to become more efficient, technologically-trained harvesters and offshore trawler workers became central concerns. Although the attempts to recruit young men as trawler crews were not entirely successful, this and the other examples of the government's mediating role helps illustrate the complexity of economy, state and gender ideology, all involved in the construction of a new fisheries workforce.

The article reviews the book, "Farewell to the Factory: Auto Workers in the Late Twentieth Century," by Ruth Milkman.

The article reviews the book, "Love in the Time of Victoria: Sexuality and Desire Among Working-Class Men and Women in Nineteenth-Century London," by Francoise Barrel-Ducrocq.