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The history of British Columbia is a history of class struggle. From the time of the fur trade to the present, working people and their battles to make a better world have transofrmed the politics, economics, laws, and workplaces of the province. This bibliography will make this history more accessible to trade unionists, students, and the general public. ...The bibliography was compiled by graduate students of Simon Fraser University's History Department: Dennis Pilon, Todd McCallum, Andy Parnaby, and David Sandquist. --Introduction

Until the 1960s, racism was a fairly blatant aspect of Canadian society. Racism played an obvious role in shaping individual attitudes, state policies and institutional arrangements in the economy, the political system and civil society. But to what extent does racism continue to inform and structure how our institutions operate today, what is the social meaning of race in contemporary Canadian society, and what is the most effective way to combat racism in all its forms? The chapters in this book seek answers to these important questions. They analyze, in different ways, the conditions that give rise to racism in various forms, the extent to which racism permeates the way certain social institutions operate, how groups of people have organized against racism, and the ways that racism is linked to class, gender and ethnicity. They also try to provide readers with some conceptual tools and empirical evidence as a basis for discussion and debate about the meaning of race, racism, racialization and social inequality in contemporary Canada. This book may disappoint those looking for simple answers and those who are looking for the final word on whether Canada is indeed a racist society. The contributors do not fully agree on the significance of race and racism in contemporary Canada. Some see race and racism as a fundamental organizing principle of our society and of certain institutional spheres; others see racism as more situational, subtle and muted in its forms and consequences; others point to the racialization of certain aspects of Canadian society but do not necessarily see this as being equivalent to racism; and still others argue that allegations of racism in certain institutional spheres tend to be overplayed at the expense of class and gender differences. --Publisher's description

The working conditions of workers who are paid to perform domestic chores by the families in whose homes they live and work have proved to be remarkably resistant to legal regulation. The nature of this resil-ience is both ideological and material. While the logic of formal legal equality has accommodated demands by live-in domestic workers for the gradual extension of protective labour legislation to their work, this extension has been partial and ineffective. --Introduction`

This case study of union women organizing for day care in Ontario analyses the emergence of a women's movement within labour. It provides a social history of women's organizing efforts in the Ontario labour movement, tracing political mobilization of support for universally accessible, publicly funded child care. In addition, day care sheds light on recent developments in two Canadian social movements: the labour movement and the women's movement. Developments in each of these areas have facilitated gains made by both. The active campaign of trade union women for women's equality in the unions has been integrally connected to the contemporary women's movement. While the growth of feminism established a foundation for the struggles of working-class women in unions around gender issues such as day care, a growing number of working women joined unions in the last decade to organize against the domination of the labour movement by men. --Introduction

A quick perusal of the literature in work and industry, industrial relations, and labour studies readily confirms that the current trend is towards some form of Quality of Working Life coupled with an appeal for all parties involved - employer, employee, and government - to change radically their attitudes towards collective bargaining. Employers have to become more willing to accept union contributions; employees have to become more cooperative and "confine adversarial tactics"; and the government has to adopt "a more positive attitude toward employers and unions" in order to facilitate trust and harmony between the two. --Introduction

For the purposes of this review, labour studies is defined to encompass various disciplinary approaches, but, in general, this essay focuses on studies of the working class, not just of the labour movement, and material which places the working class in historical perspective. --From authors' introduction

This is a story of two Ontario towns, Hanover and Paris, that grew in many parallel ways. They were about the same size, and both were primarily one-industry towns. But Hanover was a furniture-manufacturing centre; most of its workers were men, drawn from a community of ethnic German artisans and agriculturalists. In Paris the biggest employer was the textile industry; most of its wage earners were women, assisted in emigration from England by their Canadian employer. Joy Parr considers the impacy of these fundamental differences from a feminist perspective in her study of the towns' industrial, domestic, and community life. She combines interviews of women and men of the towns with analyses of a wide range of documents: records of the firms from which their families worked, newspapers, tax records, paintings, photographs, and government documents. Two surprising and contrasting narratives emerge. The effects of gender identities upon both women's and men's workplace experience and of economic roles upon familial relationships are starkly apparent. Extending through seventy crucial years, these closely textured case studies challenge conventional views about the distinctiveness of gender and class roles. They reconfigure the social and economic change accompanying the rise of industry. They insistently transcend the reflexive dichtomies drawn between womena dn men, public and privae, wage and non-wage work. They investigate industrial structure, technological change, domesticity, militance, and perceptions of personal power and worth, simultaneously as products of gender and class identities, recast through community sensibilities. --Publisher's description

Ignored by the elite of their own community, the French miners in Sudbury sought refuge in a left-wing union that was labelled communist. The miners played a historic role in keeping one of the most progressive unions in North America from becoming totally absorbed into the Steelworkers union.

Discusses the

Examines critically three core `premises of Canadian labour historiography, namely that American unions had to move into Canada to establish a strong, viable labour movement, that the contribution of the Communist Party of Canada was largely negative; and that the relationship between the CIO and its Canadian affiliate, the Canadian Congress of Labour, was based on equality and autonomy.

Examines the historical context of the resolutions of the 1902 convention of the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada at Berlin, Ontario (the city was renamed as Kitchener during the First World War) that subordinated the TLC to Samuel Gompers' American Federation of Labor. Concludes that the decisions resulted in deep divisions in Canadian labour, including a separate movement in Quebec.

Analyzes the failure of the One Big Union as well as the historical literature.