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The Hudson's Bay Company is usually seen as a group of explorers and fur traders, an image reinforced by fur trade historians who focus on officers, native-European relations, women, and "fur trade society," while paying scant attention to the majority of the HBC's men who were labourers and tradesmen. The notion that trading posts resembled traditional households in which subordinate members were subsumed has come to dominate the discussion of HBC employees, thereby relegating them to the margins of Canadian history. Labour historians tend to ignore the HBC altogether. But, the posts and ships of the HBC were workplaces and, therefore, "contested terrain," as indeed was the pre-industrial household itself. The assumption, shared by the London committee and fur trade historians, that order and subordination were the norm in such traditional settings means that conflict and disobedience are considered almost aberrant and attributed to ethnic peculiarities. The HBC has thus come to be seen as a monolithic, paternalistic organization in which all members were united in a mentalite characteristic of the harmonious, pre-industrial society from which most of them were drawn. However, pre-industrial social relations were negotiated, not imposed from the top. This thesis rests on the assumption that such negotiation occurred in the HBC and explores this relationship for the period 1770-1870, a century of drastic change for the company. The HBC's archives preserve the journals, logs, and reports of unusual events, which officers and ships' captains had to submit, correspondence between them and the London committee, letters from HBC recruiters, petitions from servants asking for assistance or demanding justice, and a variety of personal letters. These records document the behaviour and views of both officers and servants and reveal that conflict was very much a part of life in the HBC. Regardless of ethnicity and like other workers, HBC men negotiated the terms of their engagements, retained customs and habits their superiors abandoned, engaged in private trade, were frequently disobedient and defiant, tried to control the pace and conditions of their work, and acted collectively to increase wages or oppose unfair treatment.

Following capitalism's arrival on the Canadian Prairies, the desire to challenge the existing order grew within a number of sharply divided communities. Immediately following World War I, moderates and radicals alike responded to the grim realities of unemployment, starvation wages, poor working conditions, and unsanitary housing by challenging a contradictory system of social relations in a battle over the meaning of "democracy". It was a golden age of social criticism, as pioneer reformers reached out to the large community audiences. In colleges, in churches, and in a radicalized press, the arrival of reform was heralded as the coming of a new day. Few persons were as outspoken or were able to gain as wide an audience as William Ivens. As a Methodist minister, a Labour Church leader, a working-class intellectual, and eventually as a member of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly, William Ivens challenged the existing order. He represented a tendency in Western Canadian thought throughout the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. His Labour Church as a working-class institution helped forge a political space in the community. Ivens offered Manitobans a new social order based not on competition, but rather on co-operation. His tendency was the result of passing various elements of Marxism, and Labour Marxist thought through the lens of a non-conformist Christianity and Methodism. The end result was an ethical socialist social philosophy that effectively addressed the social problems of the period. As a spokes-person and as an agitator for social reform, Ivens' ethical socialist outlook achieved a consensus among radical and moderate labourists. His importance as an activist in the community and the type of reforms that he was advocating, make him an important, interesting and worthwhile study in Western Canadian history.

Against the background of growing demands in Britain for anti-discrimination legislation covering disabled persons, the study examines the case for reform, and the shape which such legislation might take, in the employment field. Using the socio-legal tradition, the meaning of disability is explored and the demography, nature and experience of disability is described. The evidence of employment discrimination against disabled persons is evaluated and their position in the labour market is plotted. Existing law on disabled employment rights in Britain is set out and its strengths and weaknesses weighed. The employment rights of disabled workers in the European Community, the United States, Canada and Australia are narrated. Then, using comparative legal methodology, a number of problems and issues in the regulation of disability-related employment discrimination (and the promotion of equal opportunities) are recounted and critically analysed. These problems and issues include the definition of disability discrimination, identification of the protected class, fitness for work and employment qualification, use of reasonable accommodation and positive action, preferential treatment and the role of quotas, and enforcement strategies and remedial action. The experience of the United States is recruited as the primary basis of comparison and lessons for suggested legal reforms in Britain are pointed out. Some general conclusions on the efficacy of disability discrimination laws are drawn. The study surveys a wide variety of primary and secondary legal materials, including legislation and case law, and reviews the pertinent literature drawn from legal scholarship and other relevant disciplines. It does so in the context of a theoretical perspective that borrows from the body of legal theory and concepts developed in race and gender discrimination law.

This thesis is a study of the commodification of domestic labour in a particular type of domestic labour firm, housekeeping services franchises, in southern Ontario. Specifically, I investigate the labour-related experiences of the women employed in these franchises. There are two goals: (1) to draw out, describe, and analyse the relations and processes within which women engage while employed as workers in housekeeping services franchises and (2) to devise conceptual tools that can be used to refine and enhance explanations of waged domestic labour processes. I designed the project in three phases. I was employed at a housekeeping services franchise in Hamilton for three and a half months in the Spring of 1990. During the Fall of 1990 and Winter and Spring of 1991 I carried out multiple-depth conversations with 14 women employed as franchise housekeepers and ten interviews with managers/owners of franchises in southern Ontario and head office personnel. The analysis and write-up began in May 1991 and was completed in February 1993. The thesis as a report of this research can be divided into three areas, methodology, theory, and topic. Methodologically, I implement a set of feminist principles drawn from a feminist marxist framework. Theoretically, I offer a set of abstractions which together conceptualise waged domestic labour processes in a post-1973 organisation of production relations: 'total labour', production regime, class formation, and gender formation. These concepts in part explain and in part interpret workers' experiences of waged domestic labour processes. Topically, I extend domestic labour studies to include waged domestic labour processes that generate surplus value. I focus on the transformation of the traditional relation of "mistress and maid" to that of "mistress and manager" and "manager and maid".