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This thesis addresses the issue of foreign domestic workers. The government of Canada has been involved in the recruitment of people to perform domestic service for households since the turn of the century. The devaluation of domestic labour and increasing employment opportunities for Canadian women resulted in a constant shortage of labour to fill the demand. A variety of programs have been initiated to solve the "servant problem" culminating in the Foreign Domestic Movement in 1981. Within this policy foreign domestics are classified as a category of migrant labour and, as such, are formally denied citizenship rights. The majority of workers who come to Canada as foreign domestics under this program are Filipino women. These women often migrate to Canada as domestic workers due to limited options for employment in their home country. Their need to remain in Canada due to limited options in the Philippines, the lack of political rights in Canada, and the restrictions placed on workers who enter Canada under the Foreign Domestic Movement combine to situate these women in a position of dependence and vulnerability. In addition, live-in domestics perform devalued labour within an isolated work setting, and are often not included within provincial labour standards. These conditions keep wages depressed and lessen the ability to bargain for improved conditions of employment. The thesis problem is examined within an historic context. In addition to a literature review of the specific topic and related areas of gender and migrant labour, the data are from Statistics Canada, Employment and Immigration and the Special Collections Division of the University of British Columbia. The data shows : the labour market activity of Canadian women, the shift away from domestic service as other alternatives became open, the increasing number of dual income earning families, and the number of foreign domestics recruited to provide domestic service for Canadian households. Interviews with a variety of people draw out the particular factors leading to the reasons for the supply and demand of this group of workers. In addition, the interviews point to specific problems frequently experienced by women who work as live-in domestics.

The purpose of the thesis is to compare mining and forestry single-industry-towns in Canada in terms of their community and work structures. More specifically, what is examined is how these structures interconnect at local levels and impact upon social relations and class consciousness. Following a critical review of selected literature in political economy, labour and community studies, insights from Harold Innis' staple theory are expanded in order to link these three theoretical approaches and to justify the analysis of community and work in specific resource contexts. Drawing from this discussion, a comparative model of forestry and mining town structures is outlined. The main underlying idea is that the overall structure of forestry towns could be seen as more modern--in spite of its traditional elements--for it is more diversified and opaque, whereas that of mining towns is more archaic--despite the modern features of its industry--because of the greater control industry has on economic and community life. This theoretical model however needs further empirical testing.

During the late 1930s and early 1940s, as a part of broad North American phenomenon of industrial militancy and labour law reform, the International Woodworkers of America (IWA) became recognized as the legitimate bargaining agency for most woodworkers throughout the Pacific coast. In British Columbia, as a basis for consolidating trade unionism and furthering the class struggle within the important forest industry, a well-organized cadre of communist trade union militants channelled the syndicalist and revolutionary traditions of earlier twentieth century woodworkers organization into District One of the IWA, and into compliance with state institutions governing industrial relations that emerged during World War Two. By 1948, though, the quest for legitimacy had entrammelled the communist leaders of District One in a restrictive web of institutional, bureaucratic and political relationships from which they sought escape by serving ties with the union they had struggled hard to establish. Their fledgling Woodworkers' Industrial Union of Canada, considered illegitimate by both the state and the mainstream labour movement, attracted only a small minority of woodworkers and enjoyed a very short, unremarkable history. Through a detailed examination of union, industry and state records of industrial relations activity, this thesis provides both narrative and analysis of a complex course of events leading from the era of the open shop, through the attainment or union recognition and a period of consolidation, to a final confrontation in 1947-48 within the Canadian IWA between two distinct visions of trade union practice. Ultimately, the early, militant woodworker traditions, subsumed within communist industrial unionism, proved to be in contradiction with the institutional structures governing relations between labour and capital in postwar Canada. The post-1948 leaders of IWA District One more closely reflected the emerging North American reality in their approach to trade unionism and industrial relations than did their predecessors. Out of the intense struggles of the 1930s and 40s, a full-blown business unionism emerged by the latter 1950s as the governing programme of the modern Canadian IWA, albeit a programme not universally accepted by rank-and-file woodworkers....

Winnipeg tailoring craftworkers formed four unions during 1882-1921. This master's thesis in Canadian labour history finds that their institutionally-differentiated practice of labour organization expressed a sustained remedial effort to codify, enforce and reformulate elements of their craft subculture. They mounted this effort in response to the competitive constraints of clothing sector capitalism as these conditioned workplace experience in the city trade as well as the tailors' identifications with other working-class Winnipeggers. The study first discusses the reproduction of tailoring craft subculture in the energing city market, and offers a periodized sketch of the 'double jeopardy' which merchant tailors faced as master artisans and as clothing sector capitalists. The remaining chapters employ this periodization to organize discussion of the course of working-class activism pursued by the tailors. During c1882-1900, the integration of national markets in sewn clothing and in tailoring craft labour power exhausted the jour tailors' earliest attempts - the 'Winnipeg Operative Tailors Union' (fl. 1882) and Harmony Local Assembly 9036 of the Knights of Labor (fl. 1886-87) - to devise a viable labour organization. Only with the chartering of Journeymen Tailors' Union Local 70 (fl. 1892- 1919) was this achieved. During c1901-13, Local 70 secured significant wage and other concessions from boss tailors. Wheat Boom-era economic development, coupled with a persisting city-market skills scarcity, broadly favoured such gains. Meanwhile, JTU Local 70 inbibed ideas about industrial unionism and social radicalisn which were encouraged by such figures as John T. Mortimer (d1908), a Socialist Party of Canada activist. During c1914-21, the custom tailors' experience was overshadowed by the exigencies of war-making, the labour revolt, and of the post-war recession. Paradoxically, Local 70 momentarily became in 1918 the largest JTU local in Canada, yet soon bolted from the international parent body to reconstitute itself as Tailors' Industrial Unit Number One of the One Big Union. The study interprets this development in terms of Local 70's war-time isolations from the south and the east, which were counterbalanced by an epochal quickening of working-class activist identifications and social conflict in the city itself. But the new OBU Unit retained the jour tailors' craft-bounded distinctiveness within the OBU's organizational structure, and was blooded in 1921 attempting to enforce a contractual measure inherited from Local 70. The study's major primary sources include the local labour press, as well as an intensive reading of the JTU's journal, The Tailor, 1887-1921. The study's general approach is indebted chiefly to perspectives suggested by the work of Gregory S. Kealey, Herbert Gutman, Eric Hobsbawm, David Montgomery, Geoffrey Crossick, and David H. Bensman.

Trade unions in a liberal society are caught on the horns of a dilemma over freedom of association. In respect to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, unions are faced with relying on the positive freedom to associate as a defence for union security clauses, and, at the same time, denying freedom from association claims of those who do not wish to participate in union membership and/or union activities. The aim of this thesis is to explore that dilemma, and to assess some of the possible strategies union leaders could employ to come to terms with it. The dilemma that trade unions face consists of several elements. The source of the dilemma is found in the conflict over negative and positive liberty and the nature of freedom, and more specifically over competing visions of freedom of association in the trade union context. This conflict has found its way into the courts; in particular, the Lavigne case, which challenges political expenditures by unions (in certain circumstances), has generated much controversy and resulted in two opposing judicial decisions. However, the courts are not the only arena in which an attempt is being made to balance the competing claims of liberty; the political realm offers another avenue through which trade unions could attempt to influence labour legislation. However, unlike other intervenors such as women's or aboriginal groups, the trade union movement was largely absent from pre-Charter Joint Committee hearings. In hindsight it is quite clear that labour's non-participation represented a missed opportunity to influence the wording of freedom of association in a way that would make challenges from a negative liberty standpoint more difficult. In addition, the post-Charter prospects of lobbying government to implement legislation which would prevent negative liberty claims from succeeding (possibly through the "notwithstanding" clause in the Charter) appear quite dismal. Thus, a trade union strategy which would look for a political avenue out of its dilemma was not implemented pre-Charter and looks doubtful post-Charter. Nonetheless, in terms of the individual and his freedom (of association) in a liberal society, a fair balance between negative and positive liberty claims should be struck; one which allows limited coerion of the individual in the form of union security (the agency shop), but also restricts trade unions in the form of limits on political expenditures. This balance may, however, seriously threaten the political role of the trade union community. But, while individuals retain their right to exercise negative liberty claims, whether or not they exercise them depends upon their moral beliefs. And an individual convinced of the importance of the trade union community and the threat to that community posed by negative liberty claims, will be much less likely to exercise his right to invoke freedom from association. Unions might be able to meet this difficulty, however, by working towards a consensus about the importance of the trade union community and, more particularly, its political objectives. Such a strategy may be the most suitable alternative that trade unions can adopt in a liberal society.

With few expections trade union histories, even those emanating from the broad left, trace the development of the union movement through a series of hard-won victories codified in modern collective bargaining law. This thesis joins with more recent critical approahcees to industrial legality in a fundamental quesstioning of the effect of progressive legal victories. American scholarship especially has begun to probe the limitations imposed by a framework of rigid legal rules that work as much to circumscribe the expression of workers' interests as they do to promote them. In an attempt to understand this two-sidedness of industrial legality, the first chapter of the thesis embarks on a theoretical examination of law, paying particular attention to the meaning of the base/superstructure configuration. The chapter builds on the original writings of Marx and Engels - which never fully developed a theory of 'law' - bringing their concepts into the context of twentieth-century capitalism and highlighting the role of class struggle. In this way, the law is revealed as growing out of, and sharing, the essential values that constitute cpaitalist accumulation - values that elevate property and the procewss of production and accumulation above the aspirations of the working class. The second chapter traces the development of industrial legality in Canada, situating it in terms of class formation, class struggle, and the role of the state. This is a synthetic account of the formative years of Canadian industrial legislation, setting the stage for the analysis of collective agreements that follows. Chapter 3 explores the developing content of collective agreements forged in the 1940s through a sample of 120 contracts signed between employers and the Steelworkers, Packinghouse Workers, and Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers. Of particular interest is the effect of management rights clauses, union security and seniority clauses, and grievance procedures. Finally, the last chapter will consider the dilemmas facing unions that now find themselves caught in the web of legality, with alienated memberships and the possibilities for class-action severely circumscribed.

This thesis examines the experiences, attitudes and actions of the women who trained and worked as graduate nurses during the 1920-1939 years--of the third generation of hospital-trained Canadian nurses. The 1920s and 1930s were decades of crisis for Canadian nursing, and the occupation's majority, working in the private duty sector, was most severely affected by the problems of oversupply and underemployment. The economic crisis was national in scope, and endemic to the health care system, and was therefore exacerbated rather than created by the depression of the 1930s. In order to analyze the structure and content of the occupation during these years of crisis, a wide variety of national sources were consulted, supplemented by a detailed case study of nursing in the prairie metropolis of Winnipeg, Manitoba. This research on Canadian nursing during the 1920s and 1930s adds another chapter to the growing scholarly literature on Canadian women and work. It also contributes to the secondary literature on the social history of medicine and of labour in two particular ways. First, as the largest health care workforce, the actions of graduate nurses during the 1920s and 1930s, their agency, served as a critical, force within the development of the Canadian health care system, a force frequently overlooked within medical history. Secondly, the third generation of Canadian nurses borrowed from the organizational strategies of both professionals and trade unions, but neither concept fully captured the reality of nurses' occupational identity as women and as workers. This thesis argues that the third generation of Canadian nurses was recruited from sex-segregated female labour market. The many rituals and routines which constituted nursing technique were based on a theoretical understanding and practical application of the germ theory. As such, nursing practice during the interwar years must be defined as scientific. Nurses' scientific skills permitted practioners to integrate caring and curing, and thereby to create their own definition to what constituted skilled service. Out of this self-definition came a specific occupational identity which was reflected in the many associations designed to reflect nurses' interests. As the interwar decades progressed, conflict developed within nursing organizations as to appropriate solutions to the economic crisis. The compromise solution, hospital employment of graduate nurses, initiated the demise of both the apprenticeship system of hospital staffing, and private duty nursing. This solution successfully prevented the fracturing of nursing organizations in the 1920s and 1930s, but also facilitated the transformation of hospital staffing which would occur in the World War II years. This research suggests that the scholarly literature on professionalism, and on labour organizations, must more fully account for gender as a historical determinant. In suggesting a historical periodization for Canadian nursing history, and in focussing on the third generation of Canadian nurses who struggled through the economic crisis of the interwar decades, this thesis contributes to the growing body of scholarly literature dedicated to placing nursing history in history.

This thesis is a comparative study of the changing work experience and relations of two groups of Canadian postal employees in St. John's, Newfoundland. Two related factors are identified as underwriting these changes: technological based reorganization of work and the demand of a conservative state for a move to a private sector model of operations. The latter factor includes the requirement for a deficit free, and even profit-generating, operation at Canada Post Corporation and the divestment of public ownership. Underlying this empirical analysis is a theoretical interest in the labour process, technology and the managerial problem of control. -- I argue in this thesis that among inside postal workers, members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, technological change and the bureaucratic reorganization of work which has surrounded it has undermined their ability to resist management incursions on the shop floor. The subsequent shift in the frontier of control has enabled management to implement a number of productivity and efficiency measures, which from the workers' point of view, has had a major negative effect on their work experience and relations. Moreover, the recent move toward privatization and the generation of more flexible, casual labour further undermines the ability of workers to defend themselves. -- While inside workers have had a continuous history of conflict over the degradation of work through technological change, letter carriers have experienced a relatively stable, institutionalized relationship with management during the past 15 years. This relationship, in contrast to the inside workers', may be characterized as "consent" based. However, with growing pressure on management to solve the economic "crisis" at Canada Post, the status quo between letter carriers and management is eroding and an ultimately antagonistic set of interests is being revealed. -- The data from this comparative study lead to the conclusion that recent interest in the notion of consent within the labour process literature has definite theoretical and empirical limits which become apparent in examining production relations in periods of economic instability. On the other hand, the question of control of labour and technologicl change cannot be addressed in formulistic, determinist fashion. Rather, the unique organizational and historical characteristics of "each" labour process must be understood in its own context.

This study analyzes the concept of alienated labour in the practice of street prostitution in Canada's prairie region and explores the relationship between profit-making relations in street prostitution and the exploitation of street prostitutes in this region. It begins with a brief introduction to the themes of social control that dominate within the Sociology of Prostitution and a discussion of the sources and limitations of data employed. The basic proposition that is drawn from this discussion is that the exploitation of street prostitutes is secured in the organization of the labour process of street prostitution. The review of relevant literature is organized around the basic themes of supply, demand and profit.. This organizational scheme allows the evaluation and critique of the loose application of economic concepts to the causal analysis of prostitution. It concludes with the finding that prostitution is the expression of a profit-making relation and establishes a basis for the analysis of the appropriation of labour within profit-making relations. In light of the focus on the regulation of working activity in economic organization, Marx's theory and method of historical materialism is identified as a fruitful conceptual framework for the analysis of this relation. The discussion of subjective interpretations of Marx's theory of alienation is followed by a detailed discussion of the ontological continuity and epistemological focusing of Marx's intellectual outlook. This leads into an explication of Marx's theory of alienation. A detailed description of the street prostitution commodity market and the street prostitution industry is constructed around the producer's relation to the product and activity of labour in the circulation and production of commodified intimacy. This is followed by a specific analysis of the concept of alienated labour as it is expressed in the social relations of production of the street prostitution industry. The conclusion that is reached is that two forms of alienated labour can be identified within the street prostitution industry in the Canadian prairie region. As free agents, the working activity of prostitutes is subject to regulation by the market and overall structure of the street prostitution industry, and the appropriation of labour is expressed in circulation. As bonded labour the working activity of prostitutes is subject to regulation by the social relations of production that are established between male owners and female workers. As such, the appropriation of labour is accomplished through relations of dependency and domination that are expressed in the production of commodified intimacy and the exploitation of the prostitute is stripped of any appearance of freedom.

In 1937 the strike at General Motors in Oshawa resulted in the first major victory for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in Canada. The president of the Oshawa local was Charles Millard (1896-1978), who subsequently played an influential role in most of the major developments in organized labour between 1937 and 1956. He was the first National Director of the Canadian branch of the United Steel Workers of America in 1943, a position which he retained until his retirement in 1956. Under his leadership the steelworkers’ union became a dominant force in the Canadian Congress of Labour (CCL), taking a very active role in political action initiatives, and achieving a number of strategic victories through strike action. Millard was personally involved in the creation of the CCL and its subsequent development. He was also very active in opposing the Communist faction within organized labour, and labored throughout his career to further the relationship between organized labour and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). Despite Millard’s many significant contributions during what was a formative period for both organized labour and the CCF, he has been mostly ignored. This thesis sketches Millard’s life, focusing on the major events in which he was involved.

...In this thesis we examine the history of the telephone workers, from their earliest organizing efforts to their public campaigns of today. In restricting the restructuring of their work, telephone workers have often been in the leadership successfully applying and developing militant labour tactics, from the first successful "hello girls" strike of 1902 to the dramatic provincial-wide seizing of exchanges by telephone workers in 1981. The history of the Telecommunications Workers Union provides a valuable case study of workers' efforts to build and maintain their union in [the] face of massive and continual technological change.

What role the law should play in encouraging the growth of trade unions is a matter of considerable controversy in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Limits to growth in other sectors of the economy coupled with heightened employer hostility to unionism have made the extension of collective bargaining to the tertiary sector the most pressing task for unions in the 1980s. In a limited way, the Canadian procedure for certifying and recognizing unions is being considered as a model for labour law reform. And there is much to recommend the Canadian system. It is far more efficient than its American counterpart. There are fewer delays, fewer unlawful interventions by employers, and a substantially higher likelihood that newly organized unions will be granted certification. Even so, unions have failed to break into the trade, finance, and services industries that are so critical to their future. Taken as a whole, Canadian labour law tends to block rather than promote the growth of unions in the unorganized sectors of the economy. The certification procedure is only one aspect of a legal regime that has as its primary purpose the preservation of industrial peace, not the encouragement of union growth. By shaping bargaining structure and regulating bargaining tactics, Canadian labour law tilts the balance of power in favour of employers. Small, fragmented unions are frequently pitted against large corporations and as there is nothing to stop antiunion employers from using their overwhelming strength to frustrate the collective bargaining process, efforts to organize the tertiary sector have failed.

In February 1944 the Canadian federal government introduced Order in Council PC 1003, a system of compulsory collective bargaining which has been conventionally characterized as the culmination of the gradual evolution in federal labour relations policy towards the greater recognition of trade unions and collective bargaining. The issue addressed in this thesis is whether this characterization is accurate. As against the tendency to present federal intervention in collective bargaining as having developed towards some inevitable maturity, the account presented herein seeks to draw attention to the suppressed alternatives of history. Thus, the thesis begins with an examination of PC 1003'S historical antecedents dating back to 1900. This is followed by an examination of the developments during the Second World War. Instead of concentrating upon federal collective bargaining policy as a means of responding to wartime pressures by establishing a mechanism for mediating and resolving disputes between labour and capital, the thesis emphasizes the extent to which the policy was part of the large post-war settlement. By ignoring this, the conventional account has failed to provide any guidance for understanding either the actual provisions wheich were introduced or the longevity of PC 1003 as the dominant institutional model for Canadian labour relations. By contrast, if PC 1003 is understood as part of an attempt to forge a post-war settlement between labour and capital it is possible to identify the general thrust of the Order. Although it represented a fundamental shift in Canadian labour policy in that employers were compelled to recognize unions for the purpose of collective agreements, PC 1003 did not radically alter the balance of power to make it easier to organize or constrain managerial prerogatives. In fact, PC 1003 was consistent with the federal government's historical preoccupation with promoting responsible unions and attaining industrial peace and stability.

This study explores the subject of cross-national variations in industrial conflict, looking specifically at a 'matched set' of factories in Canada and Britain. The comparison between these two countries is intriguing. Since 1943, Canadian governments have sought to regulate industrial conflict by a distinct formula whose three pillars are a) legally enforceable collective agreements meant to circumscribe disputable issues, b) the outlawing of strikes during the term of the collective agreement, and c) the substitution, for industrial action, of a well-defined grievance and arbitration procedure to settle the disputable issues arising during that term. Dispute resolution is formal, collective agreements are comprehensive and arbitral jurisprudence is encyclopaedic. In Britain, on the other hand, dispute resolution has been left almost entirely to the parties themselves. Collective agreements are not enforceable and sketch the barest details of co-regulation. An ill-defined body of 'custom and practice' still governs in most day-to-day disputes. Strikes are legally possible for all groups of employees at any time on any issue related to the workplace. And arbitration, though available, is voluntary and widely shunned by both parties. Dispute resolution is highly informal. While one might, from this comparison, predict a higher level of strike activity in Britain, Canada has equalled or surpassed Britain over the past twenty-five years in industrial conflict. Why might this be so? The study reviews several sets of theories on cross-national variations in industrial conflict and finds that the Canada-Britain comparison does not fit any of them. Suggesting a synthesis of the "institutional" and "political economy” theoretical approaches, it proposes to concentrate on the political struggle over production at the shop floor in a "politics of production" approach. Defining four "political apparatuses of production" (interests, rights, adjustments and enforcements), the study examines how these "microinstitutions" for conflict-handling articulate with three key loci on the frontier of control where conflict can erupt (discipline, the structuring of the internal labour market and job control). Through the use of intensive interviews in four workplaces (two in each country) in the brewing and aluminium fabrication industries and the analysis of general data on industrial relations in the two countries, the analytical framework is applied to examine the generation and resolution of industrial conflict.

This dissertation examines the evolution of the mining industry in three British dominions during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Adopting a case study approach, it describes the establishment and growth of mining in Rossland, British Columbia; Broken Hill, New South Wales; and Waihi, New Zealand. Separate chapters trace developments in each area, focussing on the emergence of organised labour, the growth of mining companies and the sophistication of mining operations. These underline the need to consider diverse themes, maintaining that the mining industry's pattern of growth can be understood only by adopting such a broad approach. Following the three case studies, the final chapters of the dissertation offer a comparative analysis of Rossland, Waihi and Broken Hill. The study emphasises the similarities of these three communities, especially the cycle of growth, and identifies a crucial common denominator. Despite differences in climate, in the type and nature of the ore deposit and in the scale of mining activity, all three areas experienced a common trajectory of initial boom followed by subsequent retrenchment. The changing character of the resource base forced this fundamental alteration of productive relations. In each region, the mineral content of the ore declined as the mines went deeper. In addition, with depth the ore tended to become more difficult to treat. Faced with a decline in the value of the product of their mines, companies had to adopt sweeping changes in order to maintain profitable operations. This re-structuring was accomplished in a variety of ways, but the most significant factors, common to Rossland, Broken Hill and Waihi, were the heightened importance of applied science and economies of scale. Both developments underlined the growing importance of the mining engineer and technological innovations, principally in milling and smelting operations. In addition, new non-selective extractive techniques reduced the significance of skilled underground labour. The re-structuring of the industry not only had similar causes but also had a similar effect. The comparative chapter on labour relations, for example, argues that these managerial initiatives were closely associated with militant episodes in each community. While the leading companies in Rossland, Waihi and Broken Hill successfully reduced their working costs, they all faced the same ultimate end. Their long-term success or failure reflected the skill with which they coped with the inevitable depletion of their ore body. The common experience of Rossland, Waihi and Broken Hill demonstrates the importance of placing colonial development within a larger context. Regional historians should make greater use of the comparative approach, rather than continuing to focus on the unique and the particular.

This thesis makes a contribution to three areas of sociological thought. First, it is concerned with the elaboration and extension of the political economy approach to migration as it is represented in the work of Stephen Castles and his various co-authors. It suggests that the work of Castles, et al., is relatively silent on the role of the state, and ideological relations in the structuration of migration. In seeking to further refine the political economy framework as it is applied to migration, this thesis draws upon two other sets of literature which, in part, have emerged as counters to some of the more economistic of their formulations. In this light, the second area of sociological literature I draw upon is the recent work on the concepts of free and unfree labour. Finally, this thesis is informed by an analysis of recent debates on the concept of racialization. In synthesizing these three strands of sociology, this thesis advances the theoretical claim that political economy oriented theorists should focus on modes of incorporation, or the manner in which foreign-born labour articulates with capital and the state. Within this context, four distinct modes of incorporation under capitalism are identified. These modes of incorporation are designated as: free immigrant labour, unfree immigrant labour, free migrant labour and unfree migrant labour. This thesis suggests that agents are subject to particular modes of incorporation, in part, on the basis on the process of racialization. This thesis uses the cases of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Chinese migration to Canada, and the post-1945 migration of farm labourers, from a number of source countries, including, specifically, the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, and the Caribbean, to the south western Ontario fruit and vegetable industry to highlight the centrality of the state in the process of migration, and the differential modes of incorporation of foreign-born persons into sites in production relations. Furthermore, the process of racialization is seen to have an impact on whether particular groups are allowed entry to a social formation, and upon how they are incorporated into sites in production relations.

The first two decades of the twentieth century saw a dramatic period of innovation and expansion in public health programmes in Britain and Canada. This thesis argues that this period of growth and change in public health was one aspect of a major reorientation of social policy. This reorientation had two major features. First, the national working classes of Britain, Canada and other countries were increasingly delimited through immigration controls and similar means of regulating international mobility. Secondly, new social programmes were developed which attempted to improve the physical, mental and moral condition of these delimited working classes, on the basis that their well-being was the foundation of national productivity. Public health played a major role in both the delimitation and improvement of national working classes. In Canada, the first major programme of immigration controls was introduced in this period, centering around the selection or rejection of immigrants on the basis of medical inspection conducted according to public health criteria. In both Britain and Canada, new public health programmes were developed which aimed to improve the condition of the working class. This was to be accomplished primarily through home visiting programmes which attempted through education and Inspection to establish standards for the domestic labour of women as mothers and home-makers. This thesis examines the contribution of public health to this reorientation of social policy primarily through the analysis of the theoretical work of key policy-makers as reported in professional journals and government documents. These officials displayed a keen sociological understanding of the broader significance of their activities in the development of a productive national working class prepared for work or war. Indeed, they understood clearly that the health of nations is an important basis of the wealth of nations.

The Great Depression which struck all western nations in the 1930s was a period of great hardship for Newfoundlanders. Its burdens fell particularly hard on the island's loggers and their families. During the 1930s, for at least part of the year, nearly 6,000 Newfoundlanders toiled in the woods. While some worked full-time, many laboured part-time to supplement their meagre earnings from the fishery. Their labour contributed significantly to a forest products industry which, during the 1930s, was regularly valued at over $15 million a year and, in many years, made up over 50 per cent of the value of the island's exports. And yet, despite their numbers and their contribution to Newfoundland's economy we have heard very little of these loggers' lives and as Greg Kealey puts it, "their struggles to minimize their oppression and to improve the lives of their families and their class." This thesis examines the working lives of Newfoundland loggers during the Great Depression, their labour processes, strikes, collective actions and attempts to organize in the latter half of the decade. In 1930 there were no unions specifically for loggers. By 1939, however, there were three unions, the Newfoundland Lumbermen's Association, the Newfoundland Labourers' Union, and the Workers' Central Protective Union all of which represented loggers in the regions where they were based. The Fishermen's Protective Union was also still active in the 1930s negotiating agreements on behalf of loggers on the northeast coast of the island. This thesis looks at the emergence, structure, and effectiveness of the unions and at their damaging rivalries. In doing so, it charts the changes these organizations forged in the relations between labour and capital in the Newfoundland woods before World War II.

This thesis examines the historical development of hospital-based nursing and its labour process in Ontario between 1850 and 1922. By building upon feminist critiques of Marxist theory, the thesis seeks to apply class and gender as empirically significant concepts. The analysis proceeds at two levels of abstraction. First, it locates the emergence of nursing vis-a-vis the growth of hospital-based care, both of which were influenced by broader changes in society, the economy and family. Secondly, it links changes in the content and control over nurses' work to those broader social changes, and more specifically to the struggles between physicians, hospital administrators, and nursing superintendents at the level of the workplace, namely the hospital.

In 1981 the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) staged a strike in Ontario Hospitals. This dissertation is an exploratory case study of the causes and effects of that strike. The dissertation employs elements of the labour process theory to evaluate the hospital worker's action and in so doing provides an opportunity to contribute to the on-going debate concerning this theory. The study is centred on the hospitals of Greater Hamilton and Burlington Ontario. It assesses the role of political environment, union structure and action, and gender in creating and sustaining the conditions for strike action in the public sector. The economic and political situation leading to the strike is analyzed with a view to understanding how the fiscal crisis in Canada led to the strike. Labour legislation and the fiscal policies of the federal and provincial governments had an impact on hospitals and their workers. Labour legislation in the hospital sector destroyed collective bargaining at a time when changes unpopular with the workers were taking place in the hospital. This encouraged the decision to strike. The majority of hospital workers in 1981 were women. The dissertation explores, through interviews and archival data, a possible link between gender and the decision to strike. Some changes in the organization of hospital work broke an important care-giving link between women workers and patients. The repercussions of the strike include charges for the union, for women, and the wider political consequences such as the further undermining of the Hospital Labour Disputes Arbitration Act. The dissertation concludes that the strike was caused by labour process changes made by management faced with government cost cutting measures. These changes were particularly upsetting to the majority of workers who were women. The illegality of the strike did not deter the decision to strike because the government labour legislation had destroyed the 'normal' bargaining process. Therefore workers felt that there was no real choice but to strike