Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class - Milligan, Ian (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class," by Jefferson Cowie.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; COWIE, Jefferson; History; Nonfiction; STAYIN' Alive: The 1970s & the Last Days of the Working Class (Book); United States; Working class

American Railroad Labor and the Genesis of the New Deal, 1919-1935 - Milloy, eremy (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "American Railroad Labor and the Genesis of the New Deal, 1919-1935," by Jon R. Huibregtse.
Keywords: AMERICAN Railroad Labor & the Genesis of the New Deal 1919-1935 (Book); BOOKS -- Reviews; HUIBREGTSE, Jon R.; Labor Unions; Nonfiction; RAILROADS -- Employees

Restructuring in the Forest Sector and the Re-Shaping of Women's Work Identities - Mills, Suzanne E. (The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien, 2012)
This article explores how women forest workers’ perceptions of restructuring are related to their work identities. Drawing on semi‐structured interviews with 29 women working in subsidiaries of a multinational forest company in northern Saskatchewan, I describe how women workers selectively drew on traditional mill worker and flexible worker identities to legitimize and delegitimize restructuring. Women's understandings of themselves as workers were shaped by their paradoxical relationships to standard forest processing work. Some women with previous experience working in low‐waged service industries adopted worker subjectivities that legitimized restructuring and valued flexibility, individual empowerment, and mobility. Other women delegitimized restructuring, referencing traditional characterizations of forest work that valued community stability, collective resistance, and security. Many women, however, neither consistently legitimized nor delegitimized restructuring throughout their interviews. This last group's ambiguous portrayal of work and restructuring demonstrates the identity dilemmas faced by new entrants to declining industrial sectors. Restructuring interrupted women's narratives of having found a “good job” in forestry and prompted the renegotiation of their understandings of mill work. This article contributes to our understanding of restructuring in resource industries by drawing attention to how worker identities, gender, and industrial change are interrelated.

The Gospel of the Working Class: Labor's Southern Prophets in New Deal America - Mitchell, Tom (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "The Gospel of the Working Class: Labor's Southern Prophets in New Deal America," by Erik S. Gellman and Jared Roll.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; GELLMAN, Erik S.; GOSPEL of the Working Class: Labor's Southern Prophets in New Deal America, The (Book); LABOR leaders -- United States; Nonfiction; ROLL, Jared

Women in the Margins: Media Representations of Women's Labour in the Canadian Press, 1939-1945 - Moniz, Tracy (Ryerson University, 2012)
During the Second World War, women's participation in Canada's 'total war' effort meant increased domestic responsibilities, volunteering, enlisting in the armed forces, and joining the civilian workforce. Women's labour force participation more than doubled throughout the war, with more women working alongside and in place of men than ever before. This created a situation that could challenge the traditional sexual division of labour, and so women's labour became a subject for discussion in the public sphere. Through a comparative content analysis of the commercial and alternative (labour) press, this study examines representations of women's labour in wartime in the context of women's mobilization into the war effort through to subsequent demobilization near war's end. It first considers the theoretical and methodological issues involved in the historical study of news media and women and then offers original empirical research to demonstrate that when women's labour did emerge as a subject in the Canadian press, gender, not labour, was prioritized in the news. This was symbolically and systematically leveraged both within and across the commercial and alternative press, which reinforces stereotypical values about women and their labour and upheld the patriarchal status quo. In the end, while there were surface-level changes to the nature of women's paid labour during the war, the structures of female subordination and exploitation remained unchallenged despite women's massive mobilization into the workforce. By setting media representations against the wartime realities of women's labour told through archival records and secondary literature, this dissertation argues that news media generally presented a 'history ' of women's labour that did not reflect the lived reality or the political economic and social significance of women's labouring lives. This not only coloured how women's labour was represented in the news, but it can also shape the history that scholars construct from the newspaper. In contributing to feminist media and media history scholarship, this dissertation offers empirical evidence that challenges dominant ways of thinking about women's history in terms of the domestic sphere and furthers an understanding of women's wage labour as a provocation to such historical public-private divisions. This may, in turn, inspire histories that more fully and equitably capture women's experiences.
Keywords: Communication and the arts; Employment; Gender identity in mass media; Labor force; Media representations; Mobilization; Press; Social sciences; WORLD War, 1939-1945; Women workers; World War II

Sandine, The Taming of the American Crowd: From Stamp Riots to Shopping Sprees - Moore, Jay (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "The Taming of the American Crowd: From Stamp Riots to Shopping Sprees," by Al Sandine.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; CROWDS; Nonfiction; SANDINE, Al; TAMING of the American Crowd: From Stamp Riots to Shopping Sprees, The (Book)

Race, Resistance and Co-Optation in the Canadian Labour Movement: Effecting an Equity Agenda like Race Matters - Nangwaya, Ajamu (University of Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 2012)
[Analyzes] the dialectic of co-optation/domestication and resistance as manifested in the experience of racialized Canadian trade unionists. The seven research participants are racialized rank-and-file members, elected or appointed leaders, retired trade unionists, as well as staff of trade unions and other labour organizations. In spite of the struggle of racialized peoples for racial justice or firm anti-racism policies and programmes in their labour unions, there is a dearth of research on the racialized trade union members against racism, the actual condition under which they struggle, the particular ways that union institutional structures domesticate these struggles, and/or the countervailing actions by racialized members to realize anti-racist organizational goals. While the overt and vulgar forms of racism is no longer the dominant mode of expression in today’s labour movement, its systemic and institutional presence is just as debilitating for racial trade union members. This research has uncovered the manner in which the electoral process and machinery, elected and appointed political positions, staff jobs and formal constituency groups, and affirmative action or equity representational structures in labour unions and other labour organizations are used as sites of domestication or co-optation of some racialized trade unionists by the White-led labour bureaucratic structures and the forces in defense of whiteness. However, racialized trade union members also participate in struggles to resist racist domination. Among some of tools used to advance anti-racism are the creation of support networks, transgressive challenges to the entrenched leadership through elections, formation of constituency advocacy outside of the structure of the union and discrete forms of resistance. The participants in the research shared their stories of the way that race and gender condition the experiences of racialized women in the labour movement. The racialized interviewees were critical of the inadequacy of labour education programmes in dealing effectively with racism and offer solutions to make them relevant to the racial justice agenda. This study of race, resistance and co-optation in the labour movement has made contributions to the fields of critical race theory, labour and critical race feminism and labour studies.

The Punjabis in British Columbia: Location, Labour, First Nations, and Multiculturalism - Nayar, Kamala E. (Kamala Elizabeth) (McGill-Queen's studies in ethnic history, 2012)
In this richly detailed study, Kamala Nayar documents the social and cultural transformation of the Punjabi community in British Columbia. From their initial settlement in the rural Skeena region to the communities that later developed in larger urban centres, The Punjabis in British Columbia illustrates the complex and diverse experiences of an immigrant community that merits greater attention. Exploring themes of gender, employment, rural and urban migrant life, and the relationships between the Punjabis and surrounding First Nations and other immigrant groups, Nayar creates a portrait of a community in transition. Shedding light on the ways in which economic circumstances affect immigrant communities, Nayar presents findings from interviews conducted with over one hundred participants. She details the relocation of Punjabi populations from the Skeena region to British Columbia's lower mainland during the decline of the forestry and fishery industries, how their second migration changed their professional and personal lives, and how their history continues to shape the identities and experiences of Punjabis in Canada today. A nuanced look at the complexities of social and cultural adaptation, The Punjabis in British Columbia adds an essential perspective to what it means to be Canadian. --Publisher's description
Keywords: Panjabis (South Asian people) -- British Columbia -- Skeena River Region -- Economic conditions -- 20th century -- Case studies

Against Company, Church and State: Madeleine Parent and the Dominion Textile Strike of 1946 - Neigh, Scott (Gender and Sexuality: Canadian History Through the Stories of Activists, 2012)
Considers the life of Quebec labour organizer Madeleine Parent, notably her role in the Dominion Textile strike of 1946, in the context of work as a social relation, the impetus of the Canadian labour movement, and the conservative political climate in Quebec.
Keywords: Dominion Textile Strike (1946); Gender identity; History; Québec (Province); Roman Catholic Church; Sex; Sex discrimination; Sexism; Sexual minorities; Social aspects; Social movements

"I Call It Surviving:" Lynn Jones on Fighting Racism in the Community and in the Labour Movement - Neigh, Scott (Resisting the State: Canadian History Through the Stories of Activists, 2012)
The author reflects on his interview with Nova Scotia activist Lynn Jones, who fought racial discrimination in her community, work place, and union.
Keywords: History; Political activists; Politics and government; Social movements

Alliance Building to Create Change: The Women´s Movement and the 1982 CUPW Strike - Nichols, Leslie J. (Just Labour: A Canadian Journal of Work and Society, 2012)
Social movements are significant to change mainstream ideologies and values over what is seen to be critical for society. The women´s movement helped to change ideas about women and their roles in society. One significant change, for more universal maternity, only occurred through the alliance with CUPW. This paper will illustrate that the alliance between the women´s movement and CUPW was significant to change public opinion and help to gain paid maternity leave for the majority of working women in Canada. In sum, the power these two groups generated in alliance produced one of the most important social benefits we currently enjoy as Canadian citizens. As a result, alliances are powerful and should be used to further any movement to towards equality.

Street Vendors in the Global Urban Economy - Nichols, Leslie J. (Just Labour: A Canadian Journal of Work and Society, 2012)
The article reviews "Street Vendors in the Global Urban Economy" by Sharit Bhowmik.

Liberalism: A Counter-History - Nurse, Andrew (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "Liberalism: A Counter-History," by Domenico Losurdo, translated by Gregory Elliot.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; LIBERALISM -- History; LIBERALISM: A Counter-History (Book); LOSURDO, Domenico; Nonfiction

Workplace Training: How Context Impacts on Instructor's Activities - Ouellet, Sylvie (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2012)
This study describes the difficulties and challenges that instructors encounter when implementing structured training sessions to teach apprentices how to debone meat on the production line of an SME in the agri-food sector. The results obtained through our ergonomic approach showed that, in order to organize learning situations, the instructors, who were experienced employees, had to consider physical, material, and organizational conditions and choose between "what they would have liked to do" and "what they could really do." The results also showed that the work group can contribute to the training activity. The observations made in our study can serve as food for thought for anyone interested in workplace training conditions.
Keywords: Apprenticeship; Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Labor Unions; Meat industry; Small & medium sized enterprises-SME; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z; Studies; Training

Editor's Introduction = Mot du directeur - Palmer, Bryan D. (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
Introduces articles in the issue including on the Knights of Labor in Quebec, a 1913 protest by Jewish students against antisemitic remarks at Aberdeen School in Montreal, and a tribute to the labour activist and organizer, Madeleine Parent.
Keywords: DEMONSTRATIONS (Collective behavior); KNIGHTS of Labor; PARENT, Madeleine, 1918-2012; QUEBEC (Province)

Introduction - Palmer, Bryan D. (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
A eulogy is provided for the Canadian labour leader and social activist Madeleine Parent.
Keywords: EULOGIES; Labor leaders; PARENT, Madeleine, 1918-2012

Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism - Palmer, Bryan D. (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism," by Erik S. McDuffie.
Keywords: BLACK feminists; BOOKS -- Reviews; MCDUFFIE, Erik S.; Nonfiction; Political activity; SOJOURNING for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism & the Making of Black Left Feminism (Book)

"Cracking the Stone": The Long History of Capitalist Crisis and Toronto's Dispossessed, 1830-1930 - Palmer, Bryan D.; Heroux, Gaetan (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
What constitutes proletarianization? The conventional answer to this seemingly simple question often stresses waged labour. Yet many workers, past and present, are routinely unable,to secure paid employment, in part because of the persistence of capitalist crises of various kinds. This study of indigent workers in Toronto from the 1830s to the 1930s is premised on an understanding of proletarianization as dispossession, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the ways in which capitalism necessarily produces recurrent crises, leaving many workers wageless. It addresses how wagelessness and poverty were criminalized through the development of institutions of ostensible charitable relief, such as the Toronto House of Industry, in which those seeking shelter and/or sustenance were required to chop wood or, more onerously, break stone in order to be. admitted to the ranks of those 'deserving' of such support. By the end of the nineteenth century-resistance to such "labour tests" was increasingly evident. Protests took place in Toronto, where the black flag was carried in demonstrations demanding "work or bread." Refusing to "crack the stone" and demands that relief be administered differently were common features of mobilizations of the wageless in the opening decades of the twentieth century, in which socialists often took the lead. By the time of capitalism's devastating collapse in the Great Depression of the 1930s, Toronto's wageless were well situated to mount an outcasts' offensive.
Keywords: CHARITIES; Canada; Capitalism; Economic conditions; History; Ontario; POOR people -- Services for; POVERTY; Proletarianization; TORONTO (Ont.) -- Economic conditions; Toronto (Ont.); Wages

Keynote Address, 18 May 2002, 50th Anniversary of Paul Robeson's Concert at the Peace Arch, Blaine, Washington/Douglas, British Columbia - Parent, Madeleine (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article presents a speech delivered by the Canadian labor leader Madeleine Parent at the 50th Anniversary of Paul Robeson's Concert at the Peace Arch at the border of Blaine, Washington and Douglas, British Columbia on May 18, 2002. Parent discusses several issues, including peace activism in the U.S., peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the persecution by the U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy and a call for the international unity of the labour movement.
Keywords: ARAB-Israeli conflict -- Peace; Activism; INTERNATIONAL cooperation; Labor movement; PACIFISTS -- United States; PARENT, Madeleine, 1918-2012; United States

Down But Not Out: Community and the Upper Streets of Halifax, 1880-1914 - Parsons, Christopher L. (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "Down But Not out: Community and the Upper Streets in Halifax, 1880-1914," by David Hood.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; DOWN But Not Out: Community & the Upper Streets in Halifax 1890-1914 (Book); HALIFAX (N.S.) -- Social conditions; HOOD, David; Nonfiction

Jobs and Justice: Fighting Discrimination in Wartime Canada, 1939-1945 - Patrias, Carmela (University of Toronto, 2012)
Despite acute labour shortages during the Second World War, Canadian employers—with the complicity of state officials—discriminated against workers of African, Asian, and Eastern and Southern European origin, excluding them from both white collar and skilled jobs. Jobs and Justice argues that, while the war intensified hostility and suspicion toward minority workers, the urgent need for their contributions and the egalitarian rhetoric used to mobilize the war effort also created an opportunity for minority activists and their English Canadian allies to challenge discrimination. Juxtaposing a discussion of state policy with ideas of race and citizenship in Canadian civil society, Carmela K. Patrias shows how minority activists were able to bring national attention to racist employment discrimination and obtain official condemnation of such discrimination. Extensively researched and engagingly written, Jobs and Justice offers a new perspective on the Second World War, the racist dimensions of state policy, and the origins of human rights campaigns in Canada. --Publisher's description
Keywords: Civil rights; Discrimination in employment; Employment; Government policy; History; Minorities; Race relations; Racism

Union Power: Solidarity and Struggle in Niagara - Patrias, Carmela; Savage, Larry (Working Canadians: Books from the CCLH, 2012)
From factory workers in Welland to retail workers in St. Catharines, from hospitality workers in Niagara Falls to migrant farm workers in Niagara-On-The-Lake, Union Power showcases the role of working people in the Niagara region. Charting the development of the region's labour movement from the early nineteenth century to the present, Patrias and Savage illustrate how workers from this highly diversified economy struggled to improve their lives both inside and outside the workplace. Including extensive quotations from interviews, archival sources, and local newspapers, the story unfolds, in part, through the voices of the people themselves: the workers who fought for unions, the community members who supported them, and the employers who opposed them. Early industrial development and the appalling working conditions of the often vulnerable common labourer prompted a movement toward worker protection. Patrias and Savage argue that union power – power not built on profit, status, or prestige – relies on the twin concepts of struggle and solidarity: the solidarity of the shared interests of the working class and the struggle to achieve common goals. Union Power traces the evidence of these twin concepts through the history of the Niagara region's labour movement. --Publisher's description
Keywords: History; Labor Unions; Labor movement; Nigara Peninsula

A Coal Miner's Shadow - Pelissero, Adam (Dalhousie University, 2012)
Light and shadow have the capacity to move us emotionally and create atmospheres that allow us to better understand stories. This thesis explores how light and shadow can propel the design of a music hall and museum space to commemorate the miners that lived and worked in the former industrial landscapes of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Boom, Bust and Crisis: Labour, Corporate Power and Politics in Canada - Peters, John (Labour in Canada (Halifax, N.S.), 2012)
Boom, Bust, and Crisis addresses...how work has changed across Canada, from the auto and steel industries of Ontario, to the tar sands of Northern Alberta and First Nations casinos in Saskatchewan. This edited collection explains the massive lay-offs in unionized manufacturing industries, the expansion of low-wage work and the rise of increasingly aggressive employers by critically examining Canada’s political economy and assessing the impact of government policy and labour market deregulation on Canada’s workers. The book also explores the recent policy changes to employment standards and health and safety protection in the context of neoliberal globalization. Written by leading political scientists, sociologists and journalists in concise, accessible language, this volume provides a rich and vibrant assessment of why some businesses have boomed while others have failed and why, through it all, Canadian workers have paid the price. --Publisher's description. Contents: Pt.1. The shifting political landscape. Free markets and the decline of unions and good jobs / John Peters -- The spoils of the Tar Sands: profits, work and labour in Alberta / Diana Gibson and Regan Boychuk -- Boom, bust, and bluster: Newfoundland and Labrador's "oil boom" and its impacts on labour / Sean T. Cadigan -- Steel City meltdown: Hamilton and the changing Canadian steel industry / Stephen R. Arnold -- Pt.2. Deregulation and changes in provincial labour market policy, politics and institutions. The biggest roll-back of worker rights in Canadian history: the Campbell government and labour market deregulation in British Columbia / David Fairey, Tom Sandhorn and John Peters -- Whither the Quebec model? Boom, bust and Quebec labour / Peter Graefe. Pt.3. New challenges facing labour organizing, health and safety. Indigenous workers, casino development and union organizing / Yale D. Belanger -- Precarious employment and occupational health and safety in Ontario / Wayne Lewchuk, Marlea Clarke and Alice de Wolff.
Keywords: Business and politics; Economic conditions; Employee rights; Industrial relations; Labor policy

Free Markets and the Decline of Unions and Good Jobs - Peters, John (Boom, Bust and Crisis: Labour, Corporate Power and Politics in Canada, 2012)
Docments the rising inequality, financialization of the economy, erosion of the manufacturing sector, the growth in resource industries and construction, changes in the workforce, and ithe decline in union density in the context of the neoliberal poltiical climate in Canada. Concludes that unions must contribute to a broader working class organization that redresses the balance.
Keywords: Business and politics; Economic conditions; Employee rights; Industrial relations; Labor policy

Harvest Pilgrims: Migrant Farm Workers in Ontario - Pietropaolo, Vincenzo (Constitutional Labour Rights in Canada: Farm Workers and the Fraser Case, 2012)
Annotated photographs of migrant farmers in Ontario from 1984 to 2009, drawn from the author's book, "Harvest Pilgrim's" (Between the Lines, 2009).
Keywords: Agricultural laborers; Canada. Arbeitsrecht. Verfassungsrecht; Canada. Collective bargaining; Canada. Employee rights; Canada. Freedom of association; Canada. Liberté d'association; Canada. Migrant agricultural laborers; Canada. Négociations collectives; Canada. Personnel; Canada. Travailleurs agricoles; Canada. Travailleurs agricoles migrants; Droit; Droits; Law and legislation; Legal status, laws, etc.

The Long, Lingering Death of Social Democracy - Pilon, Dennis (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews several books including "What’s Left of the Left," edited by James Cronin, George Ross and Jame Shoch, "Social Democracy After the Cold War," edited by Bryan Evans and Ingo Schmidt and "The Labour Party in Britain and Norway," by David Redvaldsen.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; CRONIN, James; EVANS, Bryan; LABOUR Party in Britain & Norway: Elections & the Pursuit of Power Between the World Wars, The (Book); Nonfiction; REDVALDSEN, David; ROSS, George; SCHMIDT, Ingo; SHOCH, James; SOCIAL Democracy After the Cold War (Book); WHAT'S Left of the Left: Democrats & Social Democrats in Challenging Times (Book)

Hurrah Revolutionaries and Polish Patriots: The Polish Communist Movement in Canada, 1918-1950 - Polec, Patryk (University of Ottawa, 2012)
This thesis constitutes the first full-length study of Polish Communists in Canada, a group that provided a substantial segment of the countries [sic] socialist left in the early 20th century. It traces the roots of socialist support in Poland, its transplantation to Canada, the challenges it faced within an ethnic community heavily influenced by Catholicism, the complications caused by its links to the Comintern, and its changing strength and decline. It offers a deeper understanding of the ways in which the Communist party was able to appeal to certain ethnic groups, such as through cultural outreach, as well as its complicated and often arguably counter-productive relationship with the Comintern. It also furnishes important information on the efforts of the RCMP and Polish consulates to maintain control over the communists, as well as how generally improved material conditions among Poles, especially following the Second World War, along with the influence of the Cold War, accounted for a rapid decline in support. The thesis is primarily based on sources generated by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs or, more precisely, by the Polish consulates in Winnipeg, Montreal and Ottawa. One the Canadian side, the thesis took advantage of RCMP records, Canadian security bulletins, immigration records and Polish-language newspapers printed in Canada. By utilizing these sources, this study not only analyses the interaction of the Polish Canadian communist movement with other segments of the Polish community in Canada, but it also moves beyond the introverted approach that has characterized most studies of ethnic organizations in Canada by placing the movement within a "Canadian" context to analyze its relations with the government, broader segments of Canadian society, and the Communist Party of Canada (CPC).
Keywords: Albert; Communist Party of Canada; Dutkiewicz; Ethnic Polish; Glos Pracy; Immigration; Kronika Tygodniowa; Labor radicalism; Morski; Polonia; Polskie Towarzystwo Ludowe; Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP); Social sciences; Wladyslaw

What Fraser Means for Labour Rights in Canada - Poskanzer, Ethan; Barrett, Steven (Constitutional Labour Rights in Canada: Farm Workers and the Fraser Case, 2012)
An analysis of the impact of the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Fraser on protection of freedom of association in the collective bargaining context in Canada, with particular emphasis on the different approaches taken by the Court, including the dissenting reasons of Justice Rothstein, and what those reasons reveal about the Court's disagreement over the scope of freedom of association in the collective bargaining context.
Keywords: Agricultural laborers; Canada. Arbeitsrecht. Verfassungsrecht; Canada. Collective bargaining; Canada. Employee rights; Canada. Freedom of association; Canada. Liberté d'association; Canada. Migrant agricultural laborers; Canada. Négociations collectives; Canada. Personnel; Canada. Travailleurs agricoles; Canada. Travailleurs agricoles migrants; Droit; Droits; Law and legislation; Legal status, laws, etc.

Militant Minority: British Columbia Workers and the Rise of a New Left, 1948-1972 - Powell, Christopher (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "Militant Minority: British Columbia Workers and the Rise of a New Left, 1948-1972," by Benjamin Isitt.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; BRITISH Columbia -- Politics & government -- 20th century; ISITT, Benjamin; MILITANT Minority: British Columbia Workers & the Rise of a New Left 1948-1972 (Book); Nonfiction

In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism, and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India - Prakash, Amit (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism, and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India," by Alpa Shah.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; IN the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism & Insurgency in Jharkhand, India (Book); JHARKHAND (India); Nonfiction; SHAH, Alpa

Development as Remittances or Development as Freedom? Exploring Canada's Temporary Migration Programs from a Rights-Based Approach - Preibisch, Kerry (Constitutional Labour Rights in Canada: Farm Workers and the Fraser Case, 2012)
[Provides] a critical examination of Canada's Temporary Migration Programs for agriculture. I show how migrants are positioned to be relatively more vulnerable than other workers within the country's food agricultural system owing to their position at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy, their precarious immigration status as temporary "foreign" workers, and their racialization as non-Whites from the global South. Moreover, I illustrate how changes to policies of temporary migration have constituted farm work as an even more precarious form of employment for migrants in particular, but also Canadians.... Finally, while recognizing that TMPs may contribute to aspects fo economic development, enabling participants to access income and assets formerly out of their reach, I call for greater attention to the rights, welfare, and dignity of migrants when considering temporary migrations programs.
Keywords: Agricultural laborers; Canada. Arbeitsrecht. Verfassungsrecht; Canada. Collective bargaining; Canada. Employee rights; Canada. Freedom of association; Canada. Liberté d'association; Canada. Migrant agricultural laborers; Canada. Négociations collectives; Canada. Personnel; Canada. Travailleurs agricoles; Canada. Travailleurs agricoles migrants; Droit; Droits; Law and legislation; Legal status, laws, etc.

Risques psychosociaux : quelle réalité, quels enjeux pour le travail ? - Prud'homme, Daniel (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "Risques psychosociaux : quelle réalité, quels enjeux pour le travail ?," edited by François Hubault.
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z

Dynamic Negotiations: Teacher Labour Relations in Canadian Elementary and Secondary Education - Queen's University (Kingston, Ont.). School of Policy Studies (Queen's Policy Studies Series, 2012)
Taking an inter-provincial comparative approach, Dynamic Negotiations identifies potential avenues of reform. Academic and legal experts describe and analyse the history, current structure, and functioning of bargaining in public elementary and secondary schools in six key jurisdictions - Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland - representing a spectrum of approaches. This is a vital area of public policy that is much discussed but not well enough understood. The volume is a valuable resource for policy-makers, academics, and practitioners in education and labour relations. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction: Labour Relations in Primary and Secondary Canadian Education / Sara Slinn and Arthur Sweetman -- Crosscurrents: Comparative Review of Elementary and Secondary Teacher Collective Bargaining Structures in Canada / Karen Schucher and Sara Slinn -- The Great Divide: School Politics and Labour Relations in British Columbia before and after 1972 / Thomas Fleming -- Conflict without Compromise: The Case of Public Sector Teacher Bargaining in British Columbia / Sara Slinn -- Oil and Ideology: The Transformation of K-12 Bargaining in Alberta / Kelly Williams-Whitt -- Teacher Collective Bargaining in Manitoba / Valerie J. Matthews Lemieux -- The Evolution of Teacher Bargaining in Ontario / Joseph B. Rose -- Collective Bargaining for Teachers in Ontario: Central Power, Local Responsibility / Elizabeth Shilton -- The Centralization of Collective Bargaining in Ontario's Public Education Sector and the Need to Balance Stakeholder Interests / Brendan Sweeney, Susan McWilliams, and Robert Hickey -- Labour Relations in the Quebec K-11 Education Sector: Labour Regulation under Centralization / Jean-Noël Grenier and Mustapha Bettache -- K-12 Teacher Collective Bargaining in Newfoundland and Labrador / Travor C. Brown.
Keywords: Collective bargaining; Public schools; Teachers; Teachers' unions

K-12 Collective Bargaining in Newfoundland and Labrador - Queen's University (Kingston, Ont.). School of Policy Studies; Brown, Travor C. (Dynamic Negotiations: Teacher Labour Relations in Canadian Elementary and Secondary Education, 2012)
[E]xamines the collective bargaining system for teachers employed in the kindergarten to grade 12 public school system in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. ...[Concludes that the] long tradition of centralized labour relations, reinforced by legislation that preserves the centralized system, appears to serve the parties well. --Editor's introduction.
Keywords: Collective bargaining; Public schools; Teachers; Teachers' unions

The Great Divide: School Politics and Labour Relations in British Columbia Before and After 1972 - Queen's University (Kingston, Ont.). School of Policy Studies; Fleming, Thomas (Dynamic Negotiations: Teacher Labour Relations in Canadian Elementary and Secondary Education, 2012)
[The author] delves into the influence on teacher labour relations of the decades-long struggle for control of public education in British Columbia. The chapter identifies key developments in the pre- and post-1972 periods and their effects. --Editor's introduction
Keywords: Collective bargaining; Public schools; Teachers; Teachers' unions

Labour Relations in the Quebec K-11 Education Sector: Labour Regulation Under Centralization - Queen's University (Kingston, Ont.). School of Policy Studies; Grenier, Jean-Noël; Bettache, Mustapha (Dynamic Negotiations: Teacher Labour Relations in Canadian Elementary and Secondary Education, 2012)
[D]escribes the current system of collective bargaining and labour relations in this sector. The underlying theme is that of progressive centralization...at the provincial level. ...[D]iscusses the historical evolution of the collective bargaining regime. ...[C]onsiders the outcomes of collective bargaining in terms of process, conflict, and working conditions.
Keywords: Collective bargaining; Public schools; Teachers; Teachers' unions

Teacher Collective Bargaining in Manitoba - Queen's University (Kingston, Ont.). School of Policy Studies; Matthews Lemieux, Valerie J. (Dynamic Negotiations: Teacher Labour Relations in Canadian Elementary and Secondary Education, 2012)
[E]xplains the unique dual statutory model regulating teacher employment in Manitoba and key junctures in the development of this model, and the organization of the education system in a highly politicized context. ...[C]oncludes by offering some observations on the effectiveness of the collective bargaining structure of kindergarten to Grade 12 public school teachers in Manitoba as well as possible impacts on future bargaining.
Keywords: Collective bargaining; Public schools; Teachers; Teachers' unions

The Evolution of Teacher Bargaining in Ontario - Queen's University (Kingston, Ont.). School of Policy Studies; Rose, Joseph B. (Dynamic Negotiations: Teacher Labour Relations in Canadian Elementary and Secondary Education, 2012)
[The author] traces the evolution of teacher collective bargaining from its pre-collective bargaining roots, through several distinct stages, including the 1997-2001 restructure of the bargaining system as well as the current era in which the provincial government ha staken a more conciliatory, two-tier approach to negotiations. ...[C]oncludes that a consistent them throughout this history is the struggle about the issue of control over education policy and, in particular, teachers' voices in the bargaining workload. --Editors' introduction
Keywords: Collective bargaining; Public schools; Teachers; Teachers' unions

Collective Bargaining for Teachers in Ontario: Central Power, Local Responsibility - Queen's University (Kingston, Ont.). School of Policy Studies; Shilton, Elizabeth (Dynamic Negotiations: Teacher Labour Relations in Canadian Elementary and Secondary Education, 2012)
[E]xamines the structure and functioning of teacher bargaining under both the Conservative government (1997-2001) and the subseuqent Liberal government, including the latter's innovative and informal introduction of centralizaiton, and the effects of these approahces on fostering or impeding bargaining. --Editors' introduction
Keywords: Collective bargaining; Public schools; Teachers; Teachers' unions

Conflict Without Compromise: The Case of Public Sector Teacher Bargaining in British Columbia - Queen's University (Kingston, Ont.). School of Policy Studies; Slinn, Sara (Dynamic Negotiations: Teacher Labour Relations in Canadian Elementary and Secondary Education, 2012)
[The author] traces the development of teacher bargaining structures in BC through three distinct historical periods. ...[C]oncludes that, by any measure, K-12 teacher collective bargaining has not been a success. --Editors' introduction
Keywords: Collective bargaining; Public schools; Teachers; Teachers' unions

Crosscurrents: Comparative Review of Elementary and Secondary Teacher Collective Bargaining Structures in Canada - Queen's University (Kingston, Ont.). School of Policy Studies; Slinn, Sara; Schucher, Karen (Dynamic Negotiations: Teacher Labour Relations in Canadian Elementary and Secondary Education, 2012)
[P]rovides an overview and comparative discussion of the basic legal frameworks regulating K-12 teacher bargaining. --Editors' introduction
Keywords: Collective bargaining; Public schools; Teachers; Teachers' unions

The Centralization of Collective Bargaining in Ontario's Public Education Sector and the Need to Balance Stakeholder Interests - Queen's University (Kingston, Ont.). School of Policy Studies; Sweeney, Brendan; McWilliams, Susan; Hickey, Robert (Dynamic Negotiations: Teacher Labour Relations in Canadian Elementary and Secondary Education, 2012)
Employing data from interviews with education sector stakeholders, this study assess the degree to which the more centralized bargaining structure that existed during teacher negotiations in 2005 and 2008 addressed and balanced stakeholders' interests. --Editors' introduction
Keywords: Collective bargaining; Public schools; Teachers; Teachers' unions

Oil and Ideology: The Transformation of K-12 Bargaining in Alberta - Queen's University (Kingston, Ont.). School of Policy Studies; Williams-Whitt, Kelly (Dynamic Negotiations: Teacher Labour Relations in Canadian Elementary and Secondary Education, 2012)
[M]aps the development of K-12 teacher bargaining, which has been strongly influenced by a series of provincial government social re-enginereering efforts that have shaped the province as a whole. ...[C]oncludes that the system will likely move toward a two-tiered bargaining structure. --Editors' introduction
Keywords: Collective bargaining; Public schools; Teachers; Teachers' unions

How the Media View Public-Sector Workers: A Critical Discourse Analysis of a 2009 Municipal Workers' Strike in Windsor, Ontario - Reitsma, Travis G. (University of Windsor, 2012)
Research in the field of media coverage of organized labour has found that there often exist biases in the way in which unions and their workers are presented. With the ever increasing influence of both the media and neoliberal political and economic ideologies, the public image of organized labour has come under attack. This thesis seeks to expose another instance of this bias in the Windsor Star 's coverage of a 2009 municipal workers' strike in Windsor, Ontario, Canada; a public-sector strike. A detailed critical discourse analysis (CDA) was conducted on 480 texts regarding the strike in 2009. An anti-union bias was found especially throughout the coverage. This bias can be seen to have a detrimental effect on the image of public-sector workers which serves to further discredit them in their struggle against neoliberal power structures which seek to minimize their influence.
Keywords: Communication and the arts; Critical discourse analysis; Labor strikes; News bias; News coverage; Social sciences

A History of Canadian Culture - Rifkind, Candida (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "A History of Canadian Culture," by Jonathan F. Vance.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; CANADA -- Social life & customs; HISTORY of Canadian Culture, A (Book); Nonfiction; VANCE, Jonathan F.

The Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis and Union Strategies in the Australian Public Service - Roles, Cameron; O'Donnell, Michael; Fairbrother, Peter (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2012)
While Australia escaped the harshest aspects of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), public services at the federal level have experienced financial stringency in the form of efficiency-related budget cuts from late 2011 as the Australian government strived to achieve a budget surplus. This paper explores the ways in which the main Australian Public Service (APS) trade union, the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), developed innovative strategies in 2011 and 2012 to meet this challenge. The CPSU was able to utilize the capacities and experiences gained from operating under a conservative government to expand its activities and capabilities from 2007 under a more socially aware, though neo-liberal, Labor government whose industrial relations legislation and policy agenda were more supportive of collective bargaining. The CPSU developed more targeted campaigns, deployed a broader range of industrial tactics, and mobilized the union's membership in more active and creative ways. The outcome was a renewed form of trade unionism.
Keywords: Budget surplus; Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Labor Unions; Labor relations; Public administration; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z; Studies

Business Unionism and Social Unionism in Theory and Practice - Ross, Stephanie (Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada, 2012)
Explores the conceptual categories of business unionism and social unionism commonly used to classify different approaches to workers' interests, identities and strategies. [The author] points to their much more complex concrete expressions, and argues for a more careful assessment of different forms of workers' political activity, particularly since so many strategic recommendations for the movement's revival emphasize the centrality of social unionism to renewal. --Editor's introduction
Keywords: History; Labor Unions; Labor movement; Political activity; Political aspects

Canadian Labour in Crisis: Reinventing the Workers' Movement - Ross, Stephanie (Socialist Studies/Études socialistes, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "Canadian Labour in Crisis: Reinventing the Workers' Movement," by David Camfield.

Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada - Ross, Stephanie; Savage, Larry (Labour in Canada (Halifax, N.S.), 2012)
Though the Canadian labour movement’s postwar political, economic and social achievements may have seemed like irrevocable contributions to human progress, they have proven to be anything but. Since the mid-1970s, labour’s political influence and capacity to defend, let alone extend, these gains has been seriously undermined by the strategies of both capitalist interests and the neoliberal state. Electoral de-alignment and the decline of class-based voting, bursts of unsustained extra-parliamentary militancy and a general lack of influence on state actors and policy outcomes all signal that the labour movement is in crisis. Despite much experimentation in an attempt to regain political clout, labour continues to experience deep frustration and stagnation. As such, the labour movement’s future political capacities are in question, and the need for critical appraisal is urgent. Understanding how and why workers were able to exert collective power in the postwar era, how they lost it and how they might re-establish it is the central concern of Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada. With essays from established and emerging scholars from a wide range of disciplines, this collection assesses the past, present and uncertain future of labour politics in Canada. Bringing together the traditional electoral-based aspects of labour politics with analyses of the newer and rediscovered forms of working-class organization and social movement-influenced strategies, which have become increasingly important in the Canadian labour movement, this book seeks to take stock of these new forms of labour politics, understand their emergence and assess their impact on the future of labour in Canada. --Publisher's description
Keywords: History; Labor Unions; Labor movement; Political activity; Political aspects

Labour Force Participation and Health-related Quality of Life in People Living with HIV - Rueda, Sergio Ismael (University of Toronto, 2012)
This dissertation consists of four papers aimed at understanding the complex relationship between employment and health. One paper is a systematic review of the return to work literature, while the other three papers used secondary data from three cohorts of people with HIV to examine the association between employment and health-related quality of life. The systematic review looked at longitudinal studies that reported health outcomes associated with return to work in relation to other employment trajectories. This review supported the beneficial effect of return to work on health in a variety of populations, times, and settings, and also found evidence that poor health interferes with the prospects of returning to work. Two other papers looked at the association between employment and health-related quality of life in people with HIV; one paper used a cross-sectional sample of people with HIV, while the other paper used a longitudinal sample of men who have sex with men. These two studies found evidence to support the association between employment and both physical and mental health-related quality of life. They also found that employment had a stronger relationship with physical than mental health, suggesting an adaptation process to the experience of unemployment. Finally, another paper examined the cross-sectional association between job security and quality of life in men and women living with HIV. This study found that job security offered additional mental health quality of life benefits, over and above participation in employment alone, for men living with HIV. On the other hand, women benefited from the availability of work, but the perception of job security failed to offer additional health benefits. The current level of evidence on the relationship between work and health in HIV needs to be strengthened by further research to develop and support practical clinical and policy recommendations.

Solidarity Forever, Canadians Never: SAWP Workers in Canada - Russo, Robert Marc (University of British Columbia, 2012)
This doctoral thesis focuses on collective bargaining and temporary migrant workers within Canada participating in the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). The intent is to analyze the range and efficacy of legal responses to the problems encountered by this community within Canada, focusing on the unionization of SAWP participants. The dissertation addresses the fundamentally legal relationship between unionization and SAWP workers in Canada. It takes an approach that considers both historical and legal considerations leading to the use of SAWP workers in Canada, and the eventual attempts at unionization. Recent legal developments in several Canadian provinces involving SAWP workers and efforts collective bargaining are analyzed. There is a comparison with similar efforts to unionize migrant workers in the United States, and of efforts to address violations of collective bargaining rights through international complaints as well as within the broader framework of international law. The conclusion reached is that within the current framework of provincial labour legislation and the current structure of the SAWP, collective bargaining alone represents an inadequate response to violations of SAWP workers’ workplace rights in Canada.
Keywords: Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP)

Occupied St. John's: A Social History of a City at War, 1939-1945 - Rutherdale, Robert (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "Occupied St. John's: A Social History of a City at War, 1939-1945," edited by Stephen High.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; HIGH, Stephen; History; Nonfiction; OCCUPIED St. John's: A Social History of a City at War 1939-1945 (Book); ST. John's (N.L.)

The Biggest Roll-Back of Worker Rights in Canadian History: The Campbell Government and Labour Market Deregulation in British Columbia - Sandborn, Tom; Fairney, David; Peters, John (Boom, Bust and Crisis: Labour, Corporate Power and Politics in Canada, 2012)
Analyzes the housing boom, rising inequality, lowering of employment standards, the attack on organized labour and public sector contracts, and the expansion of temporary and/or precarious workers under the the provincial Liberal government of Gordon Campbell (in office, 2001-2011) in British Columbia. Concludes that unions are in a weakened state and that a broader solidarity movement is needed.
Keywords: Business and politics; Economic conditions; Employee rights; Industrial relations; Labor policy

Making a Living: Place, Food and Economy in an Inuit Community - Sandlos, John (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "Making a Living: Place, Food and Economy in an Inuit Community," by Nicole Gombay.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; Food; GOMBAY, Nicole; Indigenous Peoples; MAKING a Living: Place, Food & Economy in an Inuit Community (Book); Nonfiction

Aboriginal women and work across the 49th parallel: Historical antecedents and new challenges - Sangster, Joan (Indigenous women and work: From labor to activism, 2012)
Interpretations of Aboriginal women's work have shifted over time, but they have been absolutely central to First Nations women's experiences of colonialism. Yet, in both women's history and Aboriginal history, there has been a "mystification" of Indigenous women's labor, because it was often defined as nonproductive or marginal within capitalist economies; wage work was particularly neglected (Littlefield and Knack 1999: 4). Yet, by studying women's labor in its multiple forms (paid, unpaid, voluntary, ceremonial, commodity production), and in multiple contexts (bush, urban, reserve or reservation), we can gain immense insight into how colonialism was structured, experienced, negotiated, and resisted by women at the level of daily life. By perusing past academic writing on Aboriginal women and work, this paper explores some of the intellectual, political, and social influences that have shaped understandings of Aboriginal women's labor in Canada and the United States, asking what insights we have gained, what questions we need to answer, and what contradictions we still face in our research. Arguably, we need a dialogue that crosses disciplines and theoretical approaches, with perspectives and traditions from Aboriginal history, feminist theory, and labor studies informing and challenging each other. There are transnational trends and shared perspectives in Aboriginal women's history that cross the 49th parallel; however, we also need to identify how and why national and regional histories and interpretations diverge. Still, one transnational commonality highlighted in this paper is the close connection between politics and research, between the present and the past: the questions posed by scholars have been stimulated and inspired by Aboriginal thought and organizing, and Aboriginal politics have benefited from scholarly research. Although research may still be difficult and contested terrain in Aboriginal–non-Aboriginal relations (Smith 1999; Biolsi and Zimmerman 1997), there is hope that scholarly dialogue might contribute productively to decolonization. --From Introduction
Keywords: Employment; Employment. Native women; Indigenous women

Historical Legacies - Sangster, Joan (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
Pays homage to the union organizer and labor leader, Madeleine Parent.
Keywords: EULOGIES; Labor leaders; PARENT, Madeleine, 1918-2012

Ocularcentric Labour: "you don't do this for money" - Sappey, Jennifer; Maconachie, Glenda (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2012)
Building on the tradition of emotional labour and aesthetic labour, this study of fitness workers introduces the concept of "ocularcentric labour" (the worker seeking the adoring gaze of the client as the primary reward). It is a state in which labour's quest for the psycho-social rewards gained from their own body image shapes the employment relationship (both the organization of work and the conditions of employment). We argue that for many fitness workers the goal is to gain access to the positional economy of the fitness centre to promote their celebrity. For this they are willing to trade-off standard conditions of employment, and exchange traditional employment rewards for the more intrinsic psycho-social rewards gained through the exposure of their physical capital to the adoration of their gazing clients. Significantly, with ocularcentric labour the worker becomes both the site of production and consumption.
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Employment; Labor Unions; Personal trainers; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z; Sociology; Studies

Labour and the Politics of Voting System Reform in Canada - Savage, Larry (Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada, 2012)
Assesses labour's approach to electoral reform, making the case that shifting union support for voting system reform has reflected broader strategic considerations about how best to secure progressive public policy changes for unions and the working class in particular historical moments. --Editor's introduction
Keywords: History; Labor Unions; Labor movement; Political activity; Political aspects

Organized Labour and the Politics of Strategic Voting - Savage, Larry (Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada, 2012)
Explores the labour movement's contemporary engagement with strategic voting campaigns. [The author] argues that this approach has been a failure for labour, as both an instrumental tactic designed to block the election of right-wing parties and a practice which ultimately undermines labour's capacity to develop a political alternative to neo-liberalism. --Editor's introduction
Keywords: History; Labor Unions; Labor movement; Political activity; Political aspects

Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada: An Introduction - Savage, Larry; Ross, Stephanie (Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada, 2012)
Introduces the book's principal themes and comments on the essays contained therein.
Keywords: History; Labor Unions; Labor movement; Political activity; Political aspects

Organizing the Ivory Tower: The Unionization of the Brock University Faculty Association - Savage, Larry; Webber, Michelle; Butovsky, Jonah (Labor Studies Journal, 2012)
Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews and analysis of relevant primary documents, this article explores the 1996 unionization of full-time academic faculty at Brock University, a public and primarily undergraduate university in southern Ontario, Canada. The case study examines both the impetus for unionization and the strategies employed by the faculty association in support of certification with a view to demonstrating how discourses of professionalism and collegiality can be challenged, subverted, and redeployed by academics intent on organizing, mobilizing, and ultimately winning support for unionization.
Keywords: Canada; Unionization; faculty associations; higher education; professionalism

One Hundred Years of Social Work: A History of the Profession in English Canada 1900- 2000 - Schmidt, Glen (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "One Hundred Years of Social Work: A History of the Profession in English Canada 1900-2000," by Therese Jennissen and Colleen Lundy.
Keywords: 100 Years of Social Work: A History of the Profession in English Canada 1900-2000 (Book); BOOKS -- Reviews; Canada; JENNISSEN, Therese; LUNDY, Colleen; Nonfiction; Social services

Older Workers with Caregiving Responsibilities: A Canadian Perspective on Corporate Caring - Schroeder, Bonnie; MacDonald, Jane; Shamian, Judith (Ageing International, 2012)
This article provides an overview of current research on older workers with caregiving responsibilities from Canadian perspective. The first section presents relevant demographic and policy trends. The second section outlines impacts of these trends on caregiving employees, communities, employers, businesses and governments. The third section identifies potential policy responses and program solutions that support the needs of older workers with caregiving responsibilities. The article concludes with a recommended plan of action to move forward in addressing the emerging challenges associated with this issue.

The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers, 1650-2000 - Schulman, Michael D. (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers, 1650-2000," edited by Lex Heerma Vam Voss, Els Hiemstra-Kuperus, and Elise Van Nedeveen Meerkert.
Keywords: ASHGATE Companion to the History of Textile Workers 1650-2000, The (Book); BOOKS -- Reviews; HIEMSTRA-Kuperus, Els; History; Nonfiction; TEXTILE workers; VAN Nederveen Meerkerk, Elise; VAN Voss, Lex Heerma

The Argentine Folklore Movement: Sugar Elites, Criollo Workers, and the Politics of Cultural Nationalism, 1900-1955 - Seman, Ernesto (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "The Argentine Folklore Movement: Sugar Elites, Criollo Workers, and the Politics of Cultural Nationalism, 1900-1955," by Oscar Chamosa.
Keywords: ARGENTINA; ARGENTINE Folklore Movement: Sugar Elites, Criollo Workers & the Politics of Cultural Nationalism 1900-1955, The (Book); BOOKS -- Reviews; CHAMOSA, Oscar; Folklore; Nonfiction

Immigrants and the Dynamics of High-Wage Jobs - Skuterud, Mikal; Su, Mingcui (Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 2012)
The authors exploit immigrant identifiers in the Canadian Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the longitudinal dimension of these data to compare the labor force and job dynamics of immigrants and nativeborn workers. They examine the role of job, as opposed to worker, heterogeneity in driving immigrant wage disparities and investigate how the paths into and out of jobs of varying quality compare between immigrant and native-born workers. They find that the disparity in immigrant job quality, which does not appear to diminish with years since arrival, reflects a combination of relatively low transitions into high-wage jobs and high transitions out of these jobs. The former result appears to be due equally to difficulties obtaining high-wage jobs directly out of unemployment and to using low-wage jobs as stepping-stones. The authors find little or no evidence, however, that immigrant job seekers face barriers to low-wage jobs.

Labour, Courts and the Erosion of Workers' Rights in Canada - Smith, Charles W. (Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada, 2012)
In [exploring] the labour movement's engagement with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, [the author] considers the labour movement's pursuit of legal strategies as a method of advancing its strategic interests. ...[The author] argues that labour's judicial-based strategies have produced mixed results for labour, and that ultimately, granting small protections to unions, courts have simultaneously reinforced legal constraints on workers' ability to to organize, associate and challenge the inqualities inherent in the employment relationship. --From editors' introduction
Keywords: History; Labor Unions; Labor movement; Political activity; Political aspects

Rose Henderson: A Woman for the People - Smith, Julia (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "Rose Henderson: A Woman for the People," by J. Peter Campbell.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; CAMPBELL, Peter; HENDERSON, Rose; Nonfiction; ROSE Henderson: A Woman for the People (Book)

Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers and the Strike that Changed America - Solomon, Norman A. (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers and the Strike that Changed America," by Joseph A. McCartin.
Keywords: Air traffic controllers; Book reviews; Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Labor Unions; Labor relations; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z; Strikes

Canadian Labour and the Environment: Addressing the Value-Action Gap - Soron, Dennis (Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada, 2012)
Explores labour's participation in coalition-building on the issue of the environment. ...[The author] argues that social unionism, as a general union commitment, is not enough, gvien the real material conflicts to sort out between different ways of defining and acting on workers' interest. --Editor's introduction
Keywords: History; Labor Unions; Labor movement; Political activity; Political aspects

Human Resource Management in Context: Strategy, Insights and Solutions - Sparrow, Paul (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "Human Resource Management in Context: Strategy, Insights and Solutions," 3rd edition, by David Farnham.
Keywords: Book reviews; Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Human resource management; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z

Retail Nation: Department Stores and the Making of Modern Canada - Srigley, Katrina (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "Retail Nation: Department Stores and the Making of Modern Canada," by Donica Belisle.
Keywords: BELISLE, Donica; BOOKS -- Reviews; Department stores; History; Nonfiction; RETAIL Nation: Department Stores & the Making of Modern Canada (Book)

New York Longshoremen: Class and Power on the Docks - Stanley, Jason (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "New York Longshoremen: Class and Power on the Docks," by William J. Mello.
Keywords: 20th century; BOOKS -- Reviews; MELLO, William J.; NEW York Longshoremen: Class & Power on the Docks (Book); Nonfiction; STEVEDORES; Social conditions

The Working Poor in the Toronto Region - Stapleton, John; Murphy, Brian; Xing, Yue (Metcalf Foundation, 2012)
The term ‘working poor’ is in common usage, but it does not have a widely accepted definition. We use the term throughout the paper to refer to persons with non-trivial paid earnings who live in a household with low income. Our report provides a new definition of ‘working poverty,’ one that allows researchers to measure the incidence of working poverty now and in the future. It identifies the areas in the Toronto Region where they live, and describes the changing trends for this group, based on custom tabulations drawn from Statistics Canada microdata using both the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) and the Canadian Census. --From Summary

We Are the Union: Democratic Unionism and Dissent at Boeing - Stauch, Michael (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "We Are the Union: Democratic Unionism and Dissent at Boeing," by Dana Cloud and Keith Thomas.
Keywords: AIRLINE industry employees -- Labor unions; BOOKS -- Reviews; CLOUD, Dana; Nonfiction; THOMAS, Keith; WE Are the Union: Democratic Unionism & Dissent at Boeing (Book)

Embedded with Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home/The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor: Birth of a New Workers' Movement or Death Throes of the Old? - Stevens, Andrew (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2012)
Embedded with Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home and The Civil Wars in US Labor: Birth of a New Workers' Movement or Death Throes of the Old?, both by Steve Early, are reviewed.
Keywords: Book reviews; Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Industrial democracy; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z; Social change

No Quarter Required: Japanese Experiences and Media Distortions in the Steveston Fishers’ Strike of 1900 - Stielow, Timothy Mark (Simon Fraser University, 2012)
The brief histories of the Steveston Fishers’ Strike of 1900 are dominated by the arrival of the militia on 24 July and images of racialized violence between Japanese and white fishers. This thesis analyzes Japanese language sources and re-evaluates contemporary English language press reports to expand the strike narrative and demonstrate that Japanese fishers held significant negotiating power throughout the standoff. It argues that labeling Japanese as strikebreakers ignores their perspectives and goals in the labour dispute; however, this thesis also explains that there were important differences within the Japanese community and that to speak of a single Japanese perspective is to privilege individuals in positions of power who benefitted financially from fellow community members. It also demonstrates that by emphasizing tensions between groups of fishers, existing histories overlook the fact that the most violent acts of the month were done by the cannery owners through their connections with government.

Storied Landscapes: Ethno-Religious Identity and the Canadian Prairies - Stoesz, Susie Fisher (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "Storied Landscapes: Ethno-Religious Identity and the Canadian Prairies," by Frances Swyripa.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; Canada; Ethnicity; Nonfiction; STORIED Landscapes: Ethno-Religious Identity & the Canadian Prairies (Book); SWYRIPA, Frances

The Political Economy of Workplace Injury in Canada - Storey, Robert (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "The Political Economy of Workplace Injury in Canada," by Bob Barnetson.
Keywords: BARNETSON, Bob; BOOKS -- Reviews; Nonfiction; POLITICAL Economy of Workplace Injury in Canada, The (Book); WORK-related injuries

This Great National Object: Building the Nineteenth-Century Welland Canals - Styran, Roberta M. (Roberta McAfee); Taylor, Robert R. (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2012)
[The authors] recount the story of the canals, with particular emphasis on the experiences of the engineers, contractors, and labourers who built the inland waterways between 1824 and 1889. Making extensive use of the National Archives and the Archives of Ontario, Styran and Taylor unveil previously unpublished information about the construction of the canals, including technical plans and drawings from a wide variety of sources. They illustrate the technical and management intricacies of building a navigational trade and commerce lifeline while also revealing the vivid characters - from businessman William Hamilton Merritt to engineer John Page - who inspired the project and drove it to completion. The history of the Welland Canals is a gripping tale of epic proportions. Given the ongoing importance of the Great Lakes in the North American economy, interest in the St. Lawrence Seaway - of which the Welland is "the Great Swivel Link" - and the relevance of labour history, This Great National Object will be of interest to enthusiasts and historians alike. --Publisher's description
Keywords: Histoire; History

Making a 'Global' City: Racialization, Precariousness, and Regulation in the Toronto Taxi Industry - Sundar, Aparna (Immigration and Settlement: Challenges, Experiences, and Opportunities, 2012)
The ubiquity of the immigrant worker in the service sector has come to symbolize the global city, with the taxi industry as a prime example. As participants in a growing number of international conferences, festivals, and business meetings fly into Toronto, they are met and taken to their destination by a taxi driver who himself has journeyed here from some part of the Global South. The trajectories of the taxi drivers greeting visitors in any other “global city,” at least in North America, such as New York or San Francisco or Vancouver, are similar…. From introduction

Canadian Labour and the Crisis of Solidarity - Swartz, Donald; Warskett, Rosemary Elizabeth (Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada, 2012)
[The authors] explore the narrow and legalistic form of labour solidarity entrenched and institutionalized in the wake of the Second World War, and argue that the seeds of labour's current political impasse are to be found in that era. --Editor's introduction
Keywords: History; Labor Unions; Labor movement; Political activity; Political aspects

Sailor's Hope: The Life and Times of William Cooper, Agrarian Radical in an Age of Revolutions - Sweeny, Robert C. H. (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book "Sailor's Hope: The Life and Times of William Cooper, Agrarian Radical in an Age of Revolutions," by Rusty Bittermann.
Keywords: BITTERMAN, Rusty; BOOKS -- Reviews; COOPER, William; Nonfiction; SAILOR'S Hope: The Life & Times of William Cooper, Agrarian Radical in an Age of Revolutions (Book)

Fired Over Facebook: The Consequences of Discussing Work Online - Teitel, Jared (Western Journal of Legal Studies, 2012)
Examines the Canadian and American legal approaches to assessing employee’s claims of unfair discipline over allegedly egregious comments on social media, and argues that the Canadian approach is more flexible and better suited to handle these claims in the social media context. Both countries apply traditional labour law frameworks to manage employee conduct online, despite the fact that Facebook, et al, represent a novel form of communication. However, the two systems are quite different. While American triers of fact examine whether an employee’s social media communications constitute protected concerted activity, Canadian triers of fact apply the doctrine of just cause dismissal. The American framework is problematic, as it cannot always distinguish between employees who use Facebook to advance their workplace interests from those who use it for other purposes. Consequently, American employers may be forced to tolerate an employee’s social media posts, regardless of how malicious they might be.

Organizing Migrant and Immigrant Workers in Canada - Thomas, Mark P. (Mark Preston); Choudry, Aziz (Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada, 2012)
[E]xplores the dynamics of labour organizing amongst migrant workers in Canada, focusing on two case studies. First, [the authors] examine recent efforts to unionize migrant farmworkers in the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program. ...[The authors] then turn to the case of the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal, Québec. ...[Concludes] by assessing the limits and possibilities of [various] strategies, particularly in terms of the implications for labour organizing amongst the growning number of temporary foreign workers in Canada. --From editors' introduction
Keywords: History; Labor Unions; Labor movement; Political activity; Political aspects

Public Sector Industrial Relations in Canada: Does It Threaten or Sustain Democracy? - Thompson, Mark; Slinn, Sara (Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal, 2012)
Examines labour relations between the state (provincial and federal governments) and public sector workers since the 1960s, including interventions into collective bargaining through wage control legislation, wage control policies, back-to-work legislation, and emergency no-strike legislation. Concludes that, although Canadian governments have generally accepted the industrial relations system, they have not accepted bargaining outcomes. Also concludes that there is little evidence to support the thesis of Wellington and Winters (1969) that public sector labour unions use their power to threaten democracy by settling agreements contrary to the mandate and best interests of the electorate.

The Labor Question in America: Economic Democracy in the Gilded Age - Tomchuk, Travis (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "The Labor Question in America: Economic Democracy in the Gilded Age," by Rosanne Currarino.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; CURRARINO, Rosanne; Citizenship; History; LABOR Question in America: Economic Democracy in the Gilded Age, The (Book); Nonfiction; United States

Ces entreprises qui font la Chine - Tremblay, Diane-Gabrielle (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2012)
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z

Les politiques sociales - Tremblay, Diane-Gabrielle (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2012)
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z

Le rôle des conditions de travail dans la satisfaction et la loyauté des infirmières d'agence au Québec - Tremblay, Michel; Chênevert, Denis; Hébert, Audrey (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2012)
In recent years, the attractiveness of temporary placement agencies for nurses has grown significantly. In a labour scarcity context, it is worth exploring the motivations that encourage nurses to choose temporary work and remain loyal to their agency. Building on the classification of Tan and Tan (2002), four sources of motivation were explored: individual or family incentives, economic incentives, professional motivations and personal preferences. Regarding family motivations, this study was mainly interested in the role of flexible working conditions offered by placement agencies. Concerning economic motivations, we examined the influence of pay conditions. Our investigation of professional motivations centered on agency nurses' opportunities for skills development. Finally, the role of personal preferences was explored via workload. The results of our study, conducted on two samples, one of 500 nurses working in nursing agencies in Quebec and the other of 99 nurses from two agencies, showed that family and professional development motivations had a positive influence on agency nurses' satisfaction. In contrast, their loyalty is more closely related to the need for flexible hours, training and skills development, job security and the possibility of choosing one's assignments. Good salary conditions are not sufficient. Nurses who choose temporary work are motivated by more than a quest for better economic conditions. They also want greater freedom of choice and self-determination, and more opportunities for professional development.
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Employment agencies; Flexible hours; Labor Unions; Nurses; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z; Studies; Temporary employment

(Still) Up to No Good: Reconfiguring Worker Resistance and Misbehaviour in an Increasingly Unorganized World - van den Broek, Diane; Dundon, Tony (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2012)
The way industrial conflict and worker resistance have been analyzed has undergone significant transformation over the past few decades. While researchers have observed the quantitative decline of traditional forms of employee resistance, others have highlighted the diversity and range of more informal employee behaviours. Following Peetz (2002), we show six distinct forms of worker resistance in response to three overlapping decollectivizing employer strategies. We locate the trajectory and significance of these employer strategies and subsequent forms of worker resistance in a neglected consideration of institutional and industrial context. The implications for the way worker resistance and misbehaviour is analyzed and theorized in an increasingly non-union world are discussed. The paper indicates the need to consider the importance of institutional factors in reassessing potential delineations between what are considered formal (and often collective) indicators of conflict, and those more informal instances of workplace misbehaviour.
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Conflicts; Employee attitude; Employee management relations; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z; Studies

When Sex is Work: Organizing for Labour Rights and Protections - van der Meulen, Emily (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
Research on sex work has documented the harmful effects of criminalization on sex workers' safety. Despite this body of research, the effects of criminalization on the organization of labour within the sex industry and sex workers' suggestions for labour improvements have been largely ignored. In part, this is .due to the mostly hypothetical nature of sex work labour organizing, as many common work-related activities are illegal. When one cannot work from a fixed location, have a manager or employer, or communicate about the terms and conditions of services, focusing on labour improvements can become secondary to protecting oneself from criminal charges. However, the 2010 Ontario Superior Court ruling to decriminalize aspects of prostitution opens the door for a mole nuanced analysis of sex work as a form of labour and for the development of diverse labour organizing strategies. This article presents narratives from a qualitative study with ten current and former sex workers and two allies. It begins by highlighting interviewees' arguments in favour of a "sex is work" paradigm before presenting their suggestions for workplace improvements and ideas about effective labour organizing efforts.
Keywords: Canada; DECRIMINALIZATION; LABOR laws & legislation; LABOR organizing; Legal status, laws, etc.; Ontario; PROSTITUTION -- Law & legislation; SEX workers; Toronto (Ont.)

"À faire un peu de poussière:" Environmental Health and the Asbestos Strike of 1949 - van Horssen, Jessica (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
In mid-February 1949, workers at the Jeffrey Mine in Asbestos, Québec, voted to strike against the American-owned Johns-Manville Company. This work stoppage precipitated a provincial industry-wide strike that lasted for almost five months. The 1949 Asbestos strike has been incorporated into Québec's broader political historiography, and is generally regarded as a critical turning point in the history of labour and social relations in French-speaking Canada. Yet the environmental health aspects of the conflict in Asbestos remain largely unexamined. Showing how environmental health issues were a trigger for the strike and a sustained goal of the Asbestos workers seeking improvements in their conditions of work, this article demonstrates how central dust and disease were in the negotiations and arbitration hearings involving unionized workers and the company, both in 1949 and in the years that followed. It also accents the extent to which these environmental issues became health concerns that spread throughout the community. In looking at the Asbestos strike of 1949 through the lens of environmental concerns, fresh insight is gained about the nature of one of Canada's major labour conflicts, expanding our understanding of how health issues emerging in the workplace but extending well past it can affect the nature of everyday life and well being in a resource community.
Keywords: 20th century; ASBESTOS Strike, Quebec, 1949; Canada; ENVIRONMENTAL health; HISTORY & politics; History; Industrial relations; JOHNS Manville Corp.; LUNG diseases; QUEBEC (Province); STRIKES & lockouts; Work environment

La coexistence de la liberté d'entreprise et de la liberté syndicale - Verge, Pierre (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2012)
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z

Mine-Mill’s Peace Arch Concerts: How a ‘Red’ union and a famous singer-activist fought for peace and social justice during the Cold War - Verzuh, Ron (BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly, 2012)
When Harvey Murphy, the pugnacious western regional director of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, learned that his friend and fellow leftist, American opera star Paul Robeson, was not going to be allowed to cross the Canada-United States border to sing at the Vancouver Mine-Mill convention on February 1, 1952, he didn’t mourn, he organized. First, he organized an impromptu concert where Robeson sang through long-distance phone lines to the delight of convention delegates. Then he promised a much bigger concert that May at the Peace Arch near the Canada-United States border at Blaine, Washington. If the American authorities wouldn’t let Robeson come to the convention, Murphy reasoned, they would take the convention to Robeson. Those authorities had quietly pulled Robeson’s passport in 1950. Had they needed to defend the suspension of the singer’s constitutional right to free passage, they might have said it was a matter of national security; they were protecting the nation from a threat of Communist infiltration. But they needed no such defence. After all, it was the McCarthy era and Communist sympathizers like Robeson were fair game.
Keywords: Paul Robeson

Concevoir des environnements capacitants en atelier de travail protégé - Vidal-Gomel, Christine; Rachedi, Youcef; Bonnemain, Antoine; Gébaï, Déborah (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2012)
Dans cet article, nous analysons l’activité de travail d’opérateurs en situation de handicap, en prenant en compte leur santé, leur sécurité, leurs compétences professionnelles et les activités de médiation des moniteurs d’atelier qui les encadrent, avec l’objectif de préciser des caractéristiques de ce que pourraient être des situations capacitantes pour ces opérateurs. Nous présentons deux études ergonomiques réalisées dans des ateliers de travail protégé en France, au sein d’un établissement et service d’aide par le travail (ESAT). La notion « d’environnement capacitant » nous sert de fil directeur pour aborder les conditions de travail des personnes en situation de handicap mais aussi les situations d’apprentissage qui leur sont proposées. Nous avons ainsi identifié des postes de travail et du matériel qui conduisent à des postures inadaptées et dangereuses ; des stratégies de travail qui permettent aux opérateurs de se préserver mais qui sont aussi limitées et insuffisantes, et des difficultés qui leur font courir des risques. Nous soulignons également des difficultés d’apprentissage en situation. Les moniteurs d’atelier ont un rôle central. Leurs activités de médiation sont un déterminant du développement possible des opérateurs handicapés : d’une part, parce que leur rôle pédagogique est important et, d’autre part, parce qu’ils prennent en charge une partie de la gestion des risques des opérateurs. Ils ont donc une véritable activité de prévention des risques d’atteinte à la santé de ces opérateurs. Toutefois, leurs propres conditions de travail, leur manque de connaissances sur les handicaps et leur faible accès à des formations limitent leurs apports à la fois sur le plan pédagogique et sur le plan de la prévention des risques. Concevoir des situations capacitantes pour des opérateurs en atelier protégé passe par l’amélioration des conditions de travail des opérateurs handicapés, mais aussi par l’amélioration des conditions de travail et d’accès à des formations des moniteurs.
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Disabled workers; Ergonomics; Labor Unions; Mediation; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z; Studies; Working conditions; Workshops

I'm Neither Here nor There: Mexicans' Quotidian Struggles with Migration and Poverty - Villegas, Paloma E. (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "I'm Neither Here nor There: Mexicans' Quotidian Struggles With Migration and Poverty," by Patricia Zavella.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; CALIFORNIA; I'M Neither Here nor There: Mexicans' Quotidian Struggles With Migration & Poverty (Book); MEXICANS; Nonfiction; ZAVELLA, Patricia

Bohemian Bolsheviks After World War II: A Minority within a Minority - Wald, Alan (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
Institutionalized forgetting about the scope of the Trotskyist experience in the United States was on display in every venue following the deaths of Peter Rafael Bloch (1921-2008), an authority on Puerto Rican artistic culture, and George Perle (born George Perlman, 1915-2009), a Pulitzer Prize-winning music theorist and composer once married to the sculptress and painter Laura Slobe (1909-58). Nothing written even hinted that the two iconoclasts were in the past highly educated and committed Marxists, or that revolutionary ideas oxygenated their cultural thinking at crucial moments. Alarm over memory loss of this type is the motive for this present essay, which appraises the lives of Bloch, Perle, and Slobe along with other "Bohemians" who sought a vexed amalgam of unconstrained cultural creativity, personal freedom, and disciplined "Bolshevik" politics in the Socialist Workers Party (swp) during the late 1940s and 1950s. What can be recovered of the political and personal passions of many "outlaw" lives on the Left, of cultural revolutionaries and sexual non-conformists, especially from those who infused anti-capitalism with anti-Stalinism, are only fragmentary narratives to be steered warily into coherency. For the postwar decade, one must write a kind of ghostly history, the reconstruction of the presence of an absence in a time of persecution.
Keywords: BLOCH, Peter Rafael; BOHEMIANISM -- United States; BOLSHEVISM; COMMUNISTS -- United States; PERLE, George; Social aspects; TROTSKYISM; United States

Woody Guthrie, American Radical - Wallace, Len (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "Woody Guthrie, American Radical," by William Kaufman.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; GUTHRIE, Woody, 1912-1967; KAUFMAN, William; Nonfiction; WOODY Guthrie, American Radical (Book)

Is the Union Employment Suppression Effect Diminishing? Further Evidence from Canada - Walsworth, Scott; Long, Richard J. (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2012)
This paper examines the impact of unions on employment growth in a longitudinal sample of Canadian workplaces collected during the period 2001-2006. To facilitate comparability with earlier Canadian results, we segment our analysis by industrial sector and establishment size, and find that unions suppress employment growth only in larger manufacturing establishments, and actually seem to promote employment growth among smaller service sector establishments. These results differ substantially from results found twenty-one years previously. We extend previous analysis by examining whether a declining union wage premium may have played a role in these results, and find suggestive evidence for such a contention.
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Employment; Impact analysis; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z; Studies

Negotiating in Silence: Experiences with Parental Leave in Academia - Weststar, Johanna (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2012)
This paper presents a case study of pregnancy/parental leave arrangements among faculty members at a mid-sized Canadian University from 2000-2010. The data show that leave arrangements were very inconsistent across faculties, across and within departments, and even for individual faculty members who had taken more than one leave. The majority of problematic cases were instances where a faculty member began or ended a leave in the middle of an academic term. Without specific language in their collective agreement, these faculty members often negotiated circumstances that carried individual penalties for duties that were unassigned in light of the leave. This research has implications for unions who must be particularly vigilant and active in professional environments where individual negotiation takes place and union consciousness is lower. It also emphasizes the burden placed on parents when the bearing and rearing of children is framed as an individual right rather than an issue of social reproduction. The paper uses data from a sample of collective agreements across Canadian universities to make recommendations to clarify the procedures for pregnancy and parental leave.
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Colleges & universities; Labor Unions; Labor relations; Maternity & paternity leaves; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z; Studies; University faculty

Company Towns: Corporate Order and Community - White, Neil (University of Toronto Press, 2012)
Company towns are often portrayed as powerless communities, fundamentally dependent on the outside influence of global capital. Neil White challenges this interpretation by exploring how these communities were altered at the local level through human agency, missteps, and chance. Far from being homogeneous, these company towns are shown to be unique communities with equally unique histories. Company Towns provides a multi-layered, international comparison between the development of two settlements—the mining community of Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia, and the mill town of Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Canada. White pinpoints crucial differences between the towns' experiences by contrasting each region's histories from various perspectives—business, urban, labour, civic, and socio-cultural. Company Towns also makes use of a sizable collection of previously neglected oral history sources and town records, providing an illuminating portrait of divergence that defies efforts to impose structure on the company town phenomenon. --Publisher's description
Keywords: Community life; Company towns; Corporations; Economic conditions; History; Social aspects; Social conditions

The Colonization of Mi'kmaw Memory and History, 1794-1928: The King V. Gabriel Sylliboy - Wicken, William Craig (University of Toronto Press, 2012)
In 1927, Gabriel Sylliboy, the Grand Chief of the Mi'kmaw of Atlantic Canada, was charged with trapping muskrats out of season. At appeal in July 1928, Sylliboy and five other men recalled conversations with parents, grandparents, and community members to explain how they understood a treaty their people had signed with the British in 1752. Using this testimony as a starting point, William Wicken traces Mi'kmaw memories of the treaty, arguing that as colonization altered Mi'kmaw society, community interpretations of the treaty changed as well. The Sylliboy case was part of a broader debate within Canada about Aboriginal peoples' legal status within Confederation. In using the 1752 treaty to try and establish a legal identity separate from that of other Nova Scotians, Mi'kmaw leaders contested federal and provincial attempts to force their assimilation into Anglo-Canadian society. Integrating matters of governance and legality with an exploration of historical memory, The Colonization of Mi'kmaw Memory and History offers a nuanced understanding of how and why individuals and communities recall the past."--Publisher's description. Contents: Part 1: Why the Men Testified. 1. Accounting for Alex Gillis's actions: the Mi'kmaq in rural society -- 2. Why Nova Scotia prosecuted Gabriel Sylliboy -- 3. Moving to appeal: Mi'kmaw and government motivations. Part 2: How the Men Remembered. 4. Parents, grandparents, and great grandparents, 1794-1853. 5. Reserve life, 1850-1881: remembering the treaty. Part 3: Why the Men Remembered. 6. The demography of Mi'kmaw communities, 1871-1911 -- 7. Moving into the city: the King's Road Reserve and the politics of relocation. Appendix: The Federal and DIA censuses, 1871-1911.
Keywords: Aspect social; Colonisation; Colonization; Government policy; Histoire. Collective memory. Memory; Histoire. Micmac (Indiens); History. Micmac (Indiens); History. Micmac Indians; Micmac Indians; Nouvelle-cosse; Nouvelle-cosse. Micmac (Indiens); Nouvelle-cosse. Mmoire; Nouvelle-cosse. Mmoire collective; Nova Scotia; Nova Scotia. Collective memory; Nova Scotia. Memory; Nova Scotia. Micmac Indians; Politique gouvernementale; Social aspects; Social aspects. Micmac Indians. Micmac Erinnerung

Indigenous Women and Work: From Labor to Activism - Williams, Carol (University of Illinois Press, 2012)
The essays in [this book] create a transnational and comparative dialogue on the history of the productive and reproductive lives and circumstances of Indigenous women from the late nineteenth century to the present in the United States, Australia, New Zealand/Aotearoa, and Canada. Surveying the spectrum of Indigenous women's lives and circumstances as workers, both waged and unwaged, the contributors offer varied perspectives on the ways women's work has contributed to the survival of communities in the face of ongoing tensions between assimilation and colonization. They also interpret how individual nations have conceived of Indigenous women as workers and, in turn, convert these assumptions and definitions into policy and practice. The essays address the intersection of Indigenous, women's, and labor history, but will also be useful to contemporary policy makers, tribal activists, and Native American women's advocacy associations. --Publisher's description
Keywords: Employment; Employment. Native women; Indigenous women

The Social Organization of the Ontario Minimum Wage Campaign - Wilmot, Sheila (University of Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 2012)
My dissertation research is interdisciplinary in nature, at the nexus of three areas of scholarly work and actual practices: union renewal and non-unionized workers-rights organizing in Canada and the US; feminist, anti-racist Marxian approaches to class relations as being racialized, gendered and bureaucratic; and, the institutional ethnographic method of inquiry into social reality. My empirical focus is on the Ontario Minimum Wage Campaign (OMWC). The OMWC was a Toronto-based labour-community project to raise the minimum wage to $10 per hour. It was started in 2001 by Justice for Workers (J4W), was carried on by the Ontario Needs a Raise coalition (ONR) from 2003 to 2006, and was re-launched in 2007 by the Toronto and York Region Labour Council (TYRLC) in association with some community groups. The OMWC brought together across time and space activist groups, community agencies and labour organizations, all of whose volunteers, members, clients, educators, officials and staff were the agents and/or targets of the campaign. The apparent victory of the OMWC is quite contested. Local campaign realities were compartmentalized in numerous ways and OMWC involvement met different institutionally specific and coordinated needs. And while coalitions generally arise as vehicles to transcend such institutional separation, the campaign was challenged to materially bridge such compartmentalization. The fragmentation of reality amongst institutions and how it was managed in practice affected how collaboration, participation, and decision-making happened and appeared to have happened in organizing and educational activities. While there were at times transformative intentions, there was generally a pragmatic anti-racist organizing practice and effect. I contend that the complexity of contemporary society poses great challenges for the possibilities for human-agency based labour-community workers-rights organizing with a broad-based, political capacity for movement building orientation. I suggest that this is largely so because the social coordination of what we do and what we understand about what we do turns on at least three components of social reality: an institution-based organization of multi-layered social relations that is generally locally circumscribed but extralocally driven; a conditioned individually-driven orientation to meeting human needs; and an ideological orientation to both the content of ideas and thought, and the process of that reasoning.

Unions, Gender Equity and Neoconservative Politics - Yates, Charlotte A. B. (Charlotte Alyce Bronwen); Coles, Amanda (Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada, 2012)
Analyzes the role played organized labour in advancing women's equity issues in the political arena, with particular focus on the period since the 2006 election of the Conservative [federal] government. --Editor's introduction
Keywords: History; Labor Unions; Labor movement; Political activity; Political aspects

National Holidays and Minority Festivals in Canadian Nation-Building - Zhu, Lianbi (University of Sheffield, 2012)
This study of Canadian national holidays examines their role as a complex and dynamic instrument of nation-building from 1867 to the early 2000s. It indentifies three phases of nation-building, labelled assimilation, transformation and multiculturalism. It takes the ideological change in Canada in 1971, namely the proclamation of Official Multiculturalism, as the momentous turning point which motivated the pioneering changes and creation of Canadian national holidays based on negotiations in the government and the interventions of varied ethnic groups, focusing on the relationship between the commemorative and recreational functions of these holidays. Specific holidays considered including Dominion Day (Canada Day), Labour Day, Victoria Day and Remembrance Day, as well as National Aboriginal Day, Canadian Multiculturalism Day and one minority festival – Chinese New Year. Counterparts in France and the United Kingdom are presented to contrast with Canadian practices, putting Canada in the global context of nation-building and decolonisation. It argues that debates surrounding national holidays are a good measure of underlying national ideology, which underwent a real change in Canada across the period studied.

The Archaeology of American Capitalism: The American Experience in an Archaeological Perspective - Zorzin, Nicolas (Labour / Le Travail, 2012)
The article reviews the book, "The Archaeology of American Capitalism: The American Experience in an Archaeological Perspective," by Christopher N. Matthews.
Keywords: ARCHAEOLOGY & history; ARCHAEOLOGY of American Capitalism: The American Experience in an Archaeological Perspective, The (Book); BOOKS -- Reviews; MATTHEWS, Christopher N.; Nonfiction; United States

‘Modernising’ Employment Standards? Administrative Efficiency and the Production of the Illegitimate Claimant in Ontario, Canada - Gellatly, Mary; Grundy, John; Mirchandani, Kiran; Perry, J. Adam; Thomas, Mark P.; Vosko, Leah F. (The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 2011)
In October 2010, the provincial government of Ontario, Canada enacted the Open for Business Act (OBA). A central component of the OBA is its provisions aiming to streamline the enforcement of Ontario’s Employment Standards Act (ESA). The OBA’s changes to the ESA are an attempt to manage a crisis of employment standards (ES) enforcement, arising from decades of ineffective regulation, by entrenching an individualised enforcement model. The Act aims to streamline enforcement by screening people assumed to be lacking definitive proof of violations out of the complaints process. The OBA therefore produces a new category of ‘illegitimate claimants’ and attributes administrative backlogs to these people. Instead of improving the protection of workers, the OBA embeds new racialised and gendered modes of exclusion in the ES enforcement process.
Keywords: Employment standards; J710; J780; J880; Ontario; enforcement; labour market regulation; neoliberal racism; precarious work

From Cape Breton to Vancouver Island: Studying the Scots in Canada - Vance, Michael E. (Immigrants & Minorities, 2011)
This historiographical essay surveys scholarship on Scottish settlement in Canada which it classifies into three broad categories: first, works that focus on the contribution of notable Scots; second, scholarship that examines the ‘Scottish’ character of Nova Scotia; and third, investigations of Highland enclave settlements – especially in eastern Canada. The study argues that the relatively neglected experience of Scots in British Columbia offers the most fruitful comparison with the circumstances of Scottish settlers in New Zealand. In both contexts, Scottish migration contributed to the dispossession of large numbers of indigenous peoples even as some Scots contributed significantly to trade unionism and international socialist movements that sought to bring social justice to all peoples regardless of ethnicity.
Keywords: Canada; Emigration & immigration; Historiography; Indigenous Peoples; Labor Unions; Labour relations; Scots; Settlement; Socialism

Mexican Migrant Agricultural Workers and Accommodations on Farms in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia - Aguiar, Luis LM; Tomic, Patricia; Trumper, Ricardo (Working Paper Series, 2011)
Study of housing for Mexican migrant workers in the Okanagan Valley under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program. Concludes that the workforce is "captive" (i.e., lacking basic rights) to its employer, including for accommodation.

Organized Labor, Nuclear Power, and Environmental Justice: A Comparative Analysis of the Canadian and U.S. Labor Movements - Savage, Larry; Soron, Dennis (Labor Studies Journal, 2011)
This article engages in a comparative analysis of the U.S. and Canadian labor movements’ attitudes toward nuclear power, in both historical and contemporary periods, with a view to explaining the divergent policy positions on nuclear power adopted by the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) and the AFL-CIO, respectively. The contrasting views of the AFL-CIO and CLC, it is argued, arise not simply from differing levels of commitment to the principles of social unionism, but from a more complex mesh of ideological, pragmatic, and institutional factors related to union-party relationships and other important differences pertaining to the culture, membership composition, organizational maintenance requirements, and decision-making power bases in both labor organizations.
Keywords: Canada; Labor movement; United States; business unionism; nuclear power; social unionism

Abstracts = Résumés (68, Fall 2011) (Labour/Le Travail, 2011)
English/French abstracts of articles in the Fall 2011 issue.
Keywords: ABSTRACTS; Canada; History; Labor Unions

Abstracts / Résumés [v. 67, Spring 2011] (Labour/Le Travail, 2011)
English/French abstracts of articles in the Spring 2011 issue.
Keywords: ABSTRACTS; Black Canadians; DIVERSITY in the workplace; Employees; Indigenous women

Index, Volume 67 (Spring/Printemps 2011) (Labour/Le Travail, 2011)

Working for Justice: The L.A. Model of Organizing and Advocacy - Adams, Roy (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
Working for Justice: The L.A. Model of Organizing and Advocacy, edited by Ruth Milkman, Joshua Bloom and Victor Narro, is reviewed.
Keywords: Advocacy; Aliens; Book reviews; Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z

Making a Living: African Canadian Workers in London, Ontario, 1861-1901 - Adams, Tracey (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
There is a growing body of research on African Canadians in the 19th century that touches on their experiences in the workforce. Nonetheless, the literature has been largely silent on how labour market opportunities for African Canadians altered over time and, in particular, how members of this community fared with the slow, but nonetheless dramatic, rise of an industrial-capitalist economy. This study uses census data to explore the occupational experiences of African Canadians living in London, Ontario, between 1861 and 1901. Findings suggest that labour market opportunities were better for men of African origins around mid-century but declined noticeably in the succeeding years. African Canadians of both genders were largely excluded from growth areas in the economy, and their labour was highly concentrated in a narrow range of low-skill jobs. Although there is limited evidence of upward occupational mobility over time for some, and a slight broadening of occupational opportunities by 1901, African Canadian men and women were disadvantaged compared to their white counterparts.
Keywords: BLACKS -- Employment; Black Canadians; CANADA -- Economic conditions -- 19th century; CENSUS; Canada; History; LABOR market; LONDON (Ont.); Ontario; RESETTLEMENT of blacks; Race relations; Work environment

The Business of Women: Marriage, Family, and Entrepreneurship in British Columbia, 1901-51 - Adams, Tracey (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "The Business of Women: Marriage, Family, and Entrepreneurship in British Columbia, 1901–51," by Melanie Buddle.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; BUDDLE, Melanie; BUSINESS of Women: Marriage, Family & Entrepreneurship in British Columbia 1901-1951, The (Book); BUSINESSWOMEN; Canada; Nonfiction

The Nurture of Nature: Childhood, Antimodernism, and Ontario Summer Camps, 1920-55 - Anuik, Jonathan (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "The Nurture of Nature: Childhood, Antimodernism, and Ontario Summer Camps, 1920–55," by Sharon Wall.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; CAMPS; History; NURTURE of Nature: Childhood, Antimodernism & Ontario Summer Camps 1920-1955, The (Book); Nonfiction; Ontario; WALL, Sharon

Power in Coalition: Strategies for Strong Unions and Social Change - Bailey, Janis (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
Power in Coalition: Strategies for Strong Unions and Social Change, by Amanda Tattersall, is reviewed.
Keywords: Book reviews; Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z; Social activism

Resistance as Emotional Work: The Australian and Canadian Non-Profit Social Services - Baines, Donna (Industrial Relations Journal, 2011)
Drawing on data collected as part of a larger qualitative study of the experience of restructuring in the non‐profit social services in Canada and Australia, this article argues that resistance, including social unionism, is often a complex form of emotional labour and a source of deep satisfaction for care workers in the non‐profit social services.

Privatizing Pensions: The Transnational Campaign for Social Security Reform - Baldwin, Bob (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "Privatizing Pensions: The Transnational Campaign for Social Security Reform," by Mitchell A. Orenstein.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; Government policy; Nonfiction; ORENSTEIN, Mitchell A.; PRIVATIZING Pensions: The Transnational Campaign for Social Security Reform (Book); Social security

Employment Policy in the European Union: Origins, Themes and Prospects - Barbier, Jean-Claude (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
Employment Policy in the European Union: Origins, Themes and Prospects, edited by Michael Gold, is reviewed.
Keywords: Book reviews; Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Employment policies; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z

Making Capitalism Safe: Work Safety and Health Regulation in America, 1880-1940 - Barnetson, Bob (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "Making Capitalism Safe: Work Safety and Health Regulation in America, 1880-1940," by Donald Rogers.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; INDUSTRIES -- Safety measures; MAKING Capitalism Safe: Work Safety & Health Regulation in America 1880-1940 (Book); Nonfiction; ROGERS, Donald

La signification du travail : nouveau modèle productif et ethos du travail au Québec - Barré, Philippe (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "La signification du travail : nouveau modèle productif et ethos du travail au Québec," by Daniel Mercure and Mircea Vultur.
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z

Seeking Spatial Justice - Barsky, Robert F. (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "Seeking Spatial Justice," by Edward W. Soja.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; Nonfiction; SEEKING Spatial Justice (Book); SOJA, Edward W.; Social justice

Dead Horse on the Tulameen: Settler Verse from B.C.'s Similkameen Valley - Bartlett, Jon; Ruebsaat, Rika (Canada Folk Workshop, 2011)
A drill makes the music that rings in his ears But a candle's the charmer to drive away fears, Down deep underground where grim shadows are thick - Here's to you always, my old candlestick! So said an underground miner in the Similkameen Valley back in 1900. This book brings the abandoned mines and ghost towns of southwestern BC back to life as voices from the grave tell their stories in verse. These voices lay silent for decades until Jon Bartlett and Rika Ruebsaat discovered them. Like prospectors panning for gold, Bartlett and Ruebsaat sifted through the fragile pages of old newspapers in the Princeton Archives until they hit paydirt in the form of poems about daily life in the Similkameen valley ~ how did it feel to leave the fields and hedgerows of England and come to the BC wilderness? What tools did our early miners use? Why did it take so long for the railway to come to the Similkameen? The poems in this book together with extensive archival photographs as well as Bartlett and RuebsaatÃ¢ÂÂs historical narrative paint a vivid picture of pioneer life in BC's Similkameen valley. --Publisher's description
Keywords: 1900-1999; Canadian poetry; Canadian poetry (English) 20th century; Canadian poetry (English) Similkameen River Valley (B.C. and Wash.); Canadian poetry 20th century; Canadian poetry Similkameen River Valley (B.C. and Wash.); Chansons folkloriques anglaises Similkameen, Vallée de la (C.-B. et Wash.) Textes; Folk songs, English; Folk songs, English Similkameen River Valley (B.C. and Wash.) Texts; History; North America Similkameen River Valley; Poésie canadienne-anglaise 20e siècle; Poésie canadienne-anglaise Similkameen, Vallée de la (C.-B. et Wash.); Similkameen River Valley (B.C. and Wash.) History; Similkameen, Vallée de la (C.-B. et Wash.) Histoire; Texts

Embedded With Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home - Bates, Matthew C. (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "Embedded With Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home," by Steve Early.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; EARLY, Steve; EMBEDDED With Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home (Book); Labor movement; Nonfiction; United States

Labour at the Lakehead: Ethnicity, Socialism, and Politics, 1900-35 - Beaulieu, Michel S. (UBC Press, 2011)
In the early twentieth century, the Canadian Lakehead was known as a breeding ground for revolution, a place where harsh conditions in dockyards, lumber mills, and railway yards drove immigrants into radical labour politics. This intensely engaging history reasserts Northwestern Ontario's rightful reputation as a birthplace of leftism in Canada by exposing the conditions that gave rise to an array of left-wing organizations, including the Communist Party, the One Big Union, and the Industrial Workers of the World. Yet, as Michel Beaulieu shows, the circumstances and actions of Lakehead labour, especially those related to ideology, ethnicity, and personality were complex; they simultaneously empowered and fettered workers in their struggles against the shackles of capitalism. Cultural ties helped bring left-wing ideas to Canada but, as each group developed a distinctive vocabulary of socialism, Anglo-Celtic workers defended their privileges against Finns, Ukrainians, and Italians. At the Lakehead, ethnic difference often outweighed class solidarity - at the cost of a stronger labour movement for Canada. --Publisher's description
Keywords: 20th century; Ethnic relations; History; Labor movement; Labor unions; Ontario; Politics and government; Social conditions; Thunder Bay, Ont.

The Lakehead & Canada’s First Social Democratic Party: - Beaulieu, Michel S (Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society Papers and Records, 2011)
During the last two days of December in 1911 the Finnish Labour Temple in Port Arthur, Ontario, was the scene of one of the most significant events in both Canadian and regional political history before the First World War. Chosen for its geographic position, the temple hosted a pan-national gathering of socialists who, in an attempt to unite the Canadian left, established Canada’s first social democratic party, the Social Democratic Party of Canada (SDPC). The goal of the SDPC was to educate the workers of Canada to consciousness of their class position in society, their economic servitude to the owners of capital, and to organize them into a political party to seize the reins of government and transform all capitalist property into the collective property of the working class. Its activity during the next decade would have a profound influence on both the various manifestations of socialism regionally and nationally over the next century and on mainstream Canadian social politics. However, the hundredth anniversary of its establishment has gone unnoticed by political and labour historians. Part of the reason rests with the simply fact that, although many works mention and even briefly discuss the SDPC, no full-length study has yet been written. In an attempt to rectify this situation, this paper provides an overview of its actions and activities at the Lakehead,between 1911 and 1918. --Introduction

The Sex Worker Rights Movement in Canada: Challenging the 'Prostitution Laws' - Beer, Sarah (University of Windsor, 2011)
The contemporary movement for sex workers' rights organizes around a range of international, national, and localized grievances. They are unified in their efforts to promote and protect sex workers' human and labour rights through the decriminalization and destigmatization of sex industry work. Within the context of social movement theory, literature on the sex worker rights movement has focused mainly on its failure to mobilize due to inadequate resources, small membership base, lack of sex worker leadership and absence of influential allies. In 2007, sex workers in Toronto, Ontario and in Vancouver, British Columbia, launched constitutional challenges to their respective Provincial Superior Courts to strike down Criminal Code of Canada provisions related to adult prostitution. The two court challenges are contrary to what would be predicted based on the extant literature on the sex worker rights movement. That literature supports a conclusion that due to marginalization, ambivalence toward their work, and feelings of inadequacy as political actors, sex workers lack the material and organizational strength to impact state regulation and alter social perceptions of sex work. This dissertation was based on a multi-site ethnographic study examining the processes by which constitutional challenges were initiated, the role of sex workers, and how the cases were perceived by the larger movement of sex worker rights activists in Canada. Drawing on primary and secondary data sources, including interviews with 26 movement activists, I examined constitutional litigation from the perspective of social movement theory, specifically considering the political opportunities, alliances, and resources necessary for these challenges to take place. This research demonstrates some tangible successes for the sex worker rights movement in Canada, despite ongoing social movement obstacles. The history of sex worker rights activism in Canada has produced sex worker-run organizations and political coalitions. These have garnered support from other organizations, researchers, cause lawyers and their teams, making it possible for sex workers, as individuals and via organizations, to mobilize legally against federal prostitution laws.

Retail Nation: Department Stores and the Making of Modern Canada - Belisle, Donica (UBC Press, 2011)
[This book] traces Canada's transformation into a modern consumer nation back to an era when Eaton’s, Simpson's, and the Hudson’s Bay Company fostered and came to rule the country’s shopping scene. Between 1890 and 1940, department stores revolutionized selling and shopping by parlaying cheap raw materials, business-friendly government policies, and growing demand for low-priced goods into retail empires that promised to meet citizens' needs and strengthen the nation. Some Canadians found happiness and fulfillment in their aisles; others experienced nothing more than a cold shoulder and a closed door. The stores' advertising and public relations campaigns often disguised a darker, more complicated reality that included strikes, union drives, customer complaints, government inquiries, and public criticism. This vivid account of Canadian department stores in their heyday showcases them as powerful agents of nationalism and modernization. But the nation that their catalogues and shopping experience helped to define - white, consumerist, middle-class - was more limited than nostalgic portraits of the early department store suggest. --Publisher's description. Contents: Rise of mass retail -- Creating modern Canada -- Fathers of mass merchandising -- Crafting the consumer workforce -- Shopping, pleasure, and power -- Working at the heart of consumption -- Criticizing the big stores. Includes bibliographical references (p. 274-292) and index.
Keywords: Consumption (Economics); Department stores; History; Retail trade

Êtes-vous qualifié pour servir ? - Bernier, Colette (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "Êtes-vous qualifi é pour servir?," by Sylvie Monchatre.
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z

Puissance et pouvoir en négociation collective - Bilodeau, Pier-Luc (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
La puissance et le pouvoir sont des notions fondamentales pour l'étude de la négociation collective. Bien qu'ayant été au coeur des travaux fondateurs des relations industrielles de part et d'autre de l'Atlantique, leur traitement demeure pourtant insatisfaisant. Il convient donc de proposer une conceptualisation spécifi que et nuancée de celles-ci, permettant le cumul des acquis de connaissance afi n, notamment, de mieux comprendre les aff rontements entre employeurs et syndicats ainsi que l'équilibre au sein des régimes de rapports collectifs du travail. Pour ce faire, l'auteur propose une synthèse des travaux antérieurs intégrant certaines contributions majeures du champ de la sociologie politique. La puissance et le pouvoir, notions correspondant à une capacité et son actualisation, y sont envisagés du point de vue de la dépendance qu'entretiennent les parties à la négociation collective ainsi que des ressources et de la capacité stratégique de ces dernières.
Keywords: Relaciones colectivas de trabajo; biais institutionnels; dependence; dependencia; dépendance; empleador; employer; employeur; institutional bias; labour-management relations; rapports collectifs du travail; recursos; resources; ressources; sesgo institucional; sindicato; syndicat; union

Permanently Precarious? Contingent Academic Faculty Members, Professional Identity and Institutional Change in Quebec Universities - Birdsell Bauer, Louise (Concordia University, 2011)
Universities across Canada are increasingly using contingent, or temporary instructors to teach undergraduate courses (Rajagopal 2002, Muzzin 2008, Lin 2006). Scholars have examined the marginalization of contingent academic faculty members in Canadian universities (Rajagopal 2002, Muzzin 2008). They have also critiqued the ways in which universities use contingent faculty to create surplus value and surplus labour (Rajagopal 2002, Bauder 2006), and support a “primary segment” (Bauder 2006) of the tenured and tenure-track professoriate. In this thesis, I examine the key issues faced by contingent academic faculty members, and how these issues impact on their professional identity. I also investigate into how the use of contingent faculty impacts on teaching practices in higher education. Through the analysis of Labour Force Survey data, I ascertain to what extent contingent academic labour has increased from 1998 to 2008, suggesting that full-time temporary labour is on the rise. I then analyze data gathered from twelve interviews with contingent academic faculty members at Quebec universities to explore how their working conditions and experiences have impacted on their professional identity and perceived quality of instruction. I suggest that professional identity among contingent faculty members is not as static as suggested by Rajagopal (2002) or Gappa and Leslie (1993) Using David Harvey’s (2005) concept of neoliberalism and Ulrich Beck’s (1992) concept of the flexibilization of labour under risk society, I situate the flexibilization of academic labour within the neoliberalization of the university, and also point to linkages between contingent academic labour and the commodification of higher education.

Seated by the Sea: The Maritime History of Portland, Maine, and Its Irish Longshoremen - Bischoff, Peter C. (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "Seated by the Sea: The Maritime History of Portland, Maine, and Its Irish Longshoremen," by Michael C. Connolly.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; CONNOLLY, Michael C.; History; Nonfiction; PORTLAND (Me.); SEATED by the Sea: The Maritime History of Portland, Maine & Its Irish Longshoremen (Book)

Live Wire: Women and Brotherhood in the Electrical Industry - Bix, Amy (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "Live Wire: Women and Brotherhood in the Electrical Industry," by Francine A. Moccio.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; ELECTRICIANS; LIVE Wire: Women & Brotherhood in the Electrical Industry (Book); MOCCIO, Francine A.; Nonfiction

Canada's Colour Coded Labour Market: The Gap for Racialized Workers - Block, Sheila; Galabuzi, Grace-Edward; Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives; Wellesley Institute (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives : Wellesley Institute (Toronto), 2011)
[This report] draws on 2006 Census data to compare work and income trends among racialized and non-racialized Canadians. It’s among the more comprehensive post-Census studies on this issue to date. This joint report from the Wellesley Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reveals that despite an increasingly diverse population, Canada’s racialized income gap shows a colour code is still at work in Canada’s labour market. --Publisher's information
Keywords: Division; Labor market; Race; Race relations; Working class

Deconstructing 'Hegemonic Feminism': The Emergence of 'Second Wave' Feminism in Canada (1965-1975) - Bragg, Bronwyn (University of Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 2011)
Drawing on a collection of interviews with Canadian feminists, this thesis explores the emergence of a ‘second wave’ of feminist organizing in Canada from 1965 to 1975. Using insights from poststructural feminism and critical race theory, I deconstruct the notion of ‘hegemonic feminism’ and examine how certain women came to inhabit a position of hegemony during the movement’s early years. I focus on key events in feminist organizing during the 1960s-1970s: The Royal Commission on the Status of Women and the founding of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. Drawing on oral history interviews and a close reading of the report on the RCSW, I suggest that more nuanced approaches are needed to move beyond the binary thinking that inflects accounts of Canadian feminist history. I conclude with a series of feminist narratives which aim to complicate linear histories and offer an alternative reading of this movement.

Estevan Strike - Bright, David (Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, 2011)
On September 29, 1931, almost 400 striking coal miners clashed with local police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in the streets of Estevan, Saskatchewan. The battle lasted less than an hour but left three men dead and twenty-three seriously injured. It was Canada's worst day of labor-related violence since "Bloody Saturday" in Winnipeg (June 21, 1919), and before long Estevan's day of infamy became known simply as "Black Tuesday."

Les systèmes de représentation au travail : à la mesure des réalités contemporaines ? / Employee Representation in the New World of Work: The Dynamics of Rights, Voice, Performance and Power - Brunelle, Christian; Hayden, Annette; Murray, Gregor (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
Editorial introduction to the themes examined in the issue.

Canadian Labour in Crisis: Reinventing the Workers' Movement - Camfield, David (Fernwood Publishing, 2011)
Does Canada have a working-class movement? Though most of us think of ourselves as middle class, most of us are, in fact, part of the working class: we work for wages and are not managers. Although many of us are members of unions - the most significant organizations of the working-class movement in Canada - most people do not understand themselves to be part of this movement. Is the working-class movement a relic of the twentieth-century factory worker, no longer relevant to workers in the twenty-first century? David Camfield argues that, despite its real deficiencies, the movement is as important today as it was a hundred years ago. Drawing on the ideas of union and community activists as well as academic research, David Camfield offers an analysis of the contemporary Canadian working-class movement and how it came to be in its current state. he argues that re-energizing the movement in its current form is not enough - it needs to be reinvented to face the challenges of contemporary capitalism. Considering potential ways forward, Camfield asserts that reforming unions from below and building new workers' organizations offer the best possibilities for effecting real change within the movement. --Publisher's description
Keywords: Canada; Labor Unions; Labor movement; Political activity; Social conditions; Working class

The ‘Great Recession,’ the Employers’ Offensive and Canadian Public Sector Unions - Camfield, David (Socialist Studies / Études socialistes, 2011)
The global economic crisis and its effects have changed the context for public sector unions in Canada. There is evidence that an intensified offensive against public sector unions is beginning. Few public sector unions are prepared to respond adequately to such an offensive, as the important 2009 strike by Toronto municipal workers illustrates. In this more difficult context, change within public sector unions is increasingly urgent. The most promising direction for union renewal lies in the praxis of social movement unionism. However, there are very few signs of moves to promote this approach within Canadian public sector unions.

What Accounts for the Representation Gap? Decomposing Canada-US Differences in the Desire for Collective Voice - Campolieti, Michele; Gomez, Rafael; Gunderson, Morley (Journal of Industrial Relations, 2011)
We utilize two representative cross-national data sets to shed light on what has been a vexing problem in the industrial relations literature; namely, the existence and persistence of the representation gap documented more than a decade ago by Freeman and Rogers (1999). Specifically, we estimate the determinants of employee desire for a range of collective voice mechanisms, including unionization. We do this separately for the US and Canada and then, using an application of the Oaxaca decomposition technique, we decompose the differences in those desires between the two countries into a component due to differences in the characteristics of respondents and another due to differences in preferences for collective voice mechanisms. Our results indicate that: (1) roughly half of workers in both countries expressed a desire for a range of collective voice mechanisms to deal with workplace issues; (2) that desire for collective voice was stronger in the US than in Canada; and (3) that virtually all of the stronger desire for collective workplace voice in the US, as compared to Canada, was due to stronger employee preferences for collective solutions as opposed to differences in the characteristics of workers. We offer plausible explanations for our findings and discuss the implications for labour law reform.
Keywords: Canada; United States; comparative industrial relations; employee voice; institutional embeddedness

The Chinese Medical Doctor Association: A New Industrial Relations Actor in China's Health Services? - Cao, Xuebing (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
This paper draws on research on the emergence of the Chinese Medical Doctor Association (CMDA) in recent years, by examining interview and documentary evidence from this organization and two case study hospitals in China. With reference to mobilization theory, the research investigates whether the CMDA has developed sufficient power to effectively represent and defend members' interests. The paper reviews the increasing presence of the CMDA in doctors' professional training and education, self-discipline and ethical issues. The findings show that at present the CMDA has not become an independent Dunlop-type union organization or a new industrial relations actor. Nevertheless, the CMDA may be able to help doctors to develop their social capital and group identity, and in the future the CMDA may become more powerful in representing Chinese doctors.
Keywords: Associations; Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Labor Unions; Labor relations; Physicians; Professional ethics; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z; Social identity; Studies

When the Other is Me: Native Resistance Discourse, 1850-1990 - Carleton, Sean (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "When the Other Is Me: Native Resistance Discourse, 1850-1990," by Emma LaRocque.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; Canada; Indigenous Peoples; LAROCQUE, Emma; Nonfiction; WHEN the Other Is Me: Native Resistance Discourse 1850-1990 (Book)

L’effet de l’habilitation sur la performance adaptative des employés - Charbonnier-Voirin, Audrey; Akremi, Assâad (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
Les résultats d’une étude menée auprès de 390 employés, obtenus à l’aide de la méthode des équations structurelles, mettent en lumière une influence positive de l’habilitation du supérieur sur la performance adaptative des subordonnés. Les résultats montrent également que la perception d’un soutien de la direction favorise la réussite de l’habilitation du supérieur, en agissant comme une ressource émotionnelle valorisée par les employés dans leur stratégie d’adaptation.Si les recherches antérieures ont généralement focalisé leur attention sur les antécédents individuels de la performance adaptative, l’étude de l’influence des pratiques managériales sur ce type de performance est en revanche délaissée. Dans cette perspective, l’objectif de cet article est d’explorer l’effet de l’habilitation du supérieur (managerial empowerment) sur la performance adaptative au travail, processus visant à accroître l’étendue du pouvoir des individus et leurs capacités à contrôler leur travail. Les cas d’échec des pratiques d’habilitation nous conduisent également à étudier les conditions sous lesquelles ces pratiques peuvent faciliter le développement de la performance adaptative.Face à la complexification des situations de travail, la capacité des employés à apprendre de nouvelles compétences, à interagir avec divers acteurs et à s’adapter à de nouveaux contextes est devenue essentielle pour la compétitivité des entreprises. Ces comportements au travail, regroupés sous le nom de performance adaptative, sont désormais considérés comme un facteur crucial pour permettre aux organisations d’atteindre leurs objectifs dans un environnement marqué par le changement continu, la complexité et l’incertitude. Ce construit est encore peu étudié.
Keywords: None; adaptation strategy; apoyo del manáger; cambio organizacional; changement organisationnel; estrategia de adaptación; organizational change; promoción de la autonomía; soutien managérial; stratégie d’adaptation; supervisor support

Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World - Choudry, Aziz (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World," by Robyn Magalit Rodriguez.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; FILIPINO foreign workers; MIGRANTS for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World (Book); Nonfiction; RODRIGUEZ, Robyn Magalit

Militant Women of a Fragile Nation - Choudry, Aziz (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "Militant Women of a Fragile Nation," by Malek Abisaab.
Keywords: ABISAAB, Malek; BOOKS -- Reviews; MILITANT Women of a Fragile Nation (Book); Nonfiction; Social conditions; Women employees

Activité professionnelle et responsabilités familiales: les mères sont-elles encore perdantes dans leur qualité d'emploi? - Cloutier, Luc; Bernard, Paul; Tremblay, Diane-Gabrielle (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
Que ce soit au Québec, au Canada ou ailleurs dans d'autres pays de l'OCDE, les femmes sont désormais très présentes sur le marché du travail même lorsqu'elles ont des enfants en bas âge. Toutefois, les données révèlent qu'il existe encore des différences notables entre les genres en ce qui a trait aux conditions d'emploi et de travail. Afin de jeter un nouveau regard sur les inégalités professionnelles entre les sexes, une analyse quantitative de l'évolution de qualité de l'emploi au Québec a été réalisée en fonction de deux paramètres importants de différenciation de genres relevés dans les recherches: le degré de scolarité et la situation familiale. Le concept de qualité de l'emploi utilisé ici tient compte de quatre dimensions fondamentales, soit la rémunération, les heures de travail, la qualifi cation et la stabilité. Dans cet article, une nouvelle typologie de la qualité de l'emploi en 12 groupes est utilisée afin de faire ressortir adéquatement les différentes formes d'intégration au marché du travail. L'analyse des résultats, qui portent sur la période 1997-2007, montre qu'il y a eu une amélioration de la qualité de l'emploi des femmes, peu importe leur scolarité et leur situation familiale, et que cela s'est traduit par une réduction de l'écart avec les hommes. Toutefois, ces réductions ont été très prononcées dans le cas des personnes n'ayant pas de responsabilités familiales (baisses se situant entre 33 % et 44 %) mais sont demeurées beaucoup plus limitées pour les personnes ayant des enfants en bas âge (baisses se situant entre 14 % et 15 %). Plus particulièrement, les femmes disposant d'un fort capital humain (formation universitaire) et n'ayant pas de charge familiale ont nettement amélioré leur situation par rapport à leurs homologues masculins, contrairement à celles ayant d'importantes responsabilités familiales et détenant le même niveau de scolarité.
Keywords: Quebec; Québec; condiciones de trabajo; conditions de travail; desigualdades; empleo; emplois; femmes; inequality; inégalités; jobs; mujeres; terms of employment; women

When the Injured Nurse Returns to Work: An Institutional Ethnography - Clune, Laurel Ann (University of Toronto, 2011)
Nursing is a high risk profession for injury. A Canadian survey reports many nurses are in poor physical and emotional health; they sustain more musculoskeletal and violence related injuries than other occupational groups. In Ontario, an injury management approach called Early Return to Work (RTW) requires injured workers, including nurses, to go back to work before full recovery. The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board cite this approach as beneficial to both the employer and employee. This study uses an institutional ethnographic approach to examine critically the RTW process from the standpoint of injured registered nurses. Through interviews and mapping activities with nurses, other health professionals and managers, a rendering of the social organization of hospital injury management emerges. The findings suggest that the implementation of RTW is complicated and difficult for nurses, their families and hospital employers. Injured nurses engage in significant amounts of domestic, rehabilitation and accommodation work in order to participate in the RTW process. When the returning nurse is unable to engage in full duties hospital operations become disorganized. Collective agreements and human resources procedures limit the participation of injured nurses in creative and/or new roles that could utilize their knowledge and skills. As a result, nurses are assigned to duties, which hamper them from returning to their pre-injury positions and cause their employment with the hospital to be reconsidered. The unsuccessful return of injured nurses to employment is counter to provincial retention initiatives, which seek to sustain an adequate cadre of nurses ready and able to care for the increasing health care needs of an aging population. Sites of change which could support and promote the successful return of these injured workers to nursing work are identified in this study.

La représentation collective des travailleurs précaires : évolution et défis contemporains - Coiquaud, Urwana (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
En 2001, 2007 et 2011, les juges de la Cour suprême du Canada ont reconnu par une série d’arrêts le droit à la négociation collective comme un droit dérivé de la liberté d’association, liberté constitutionnelle prévue à la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés. Ces arrêts sont venus souffler un vent d’espoir pour les travailleurs précaires souvent tenus à l’écart des mécanismes de représentation et de négociation collective de leurs conditions de travail par un syndicat.Cet article analyse comment la législation et même l’action collective, jadis pilier du développement de la représentation collective, ont pu constituer des obstacles au développement de la représentation collective des travailleurs précaires. Ensuite, il examine comment aujourd’hui la Cour suprême favorise l’accès à la représentation collective de certains travailleurs « précaires » en reconnaissant la spécificité du travailleur, du travailleur précaire et en accordant une plus vaste portée à la garantie constitutionnelle de la liberté d’association. Puis, l’article analyse les retombées de ces développements sur la scène judiciaire québécoise à l’égard des responsables d’un service de garde et des travailleurs migrants agricoles, avant de discuter de la place du pouvoir judiciaire dans cette évolution. Nos travaux démontrent qu’aujourd’hui les tribunaux semblent avoir pris le relais du législateur et fournissent un terreau fertile pour l’épanouissement de la représentation collective des précaires.
Keywords: collective representation; freedom of association; home care workers; libertad de asociación; liberté d’association; migrant agricultural workers; precarious work; representación colectiva; représentation collective; responsables de servicios de guardería; responsables d’un service de garde; trabajadores emigrantes agrícolas; trabajo precario; travail précaire; travailleurs migrants agricoles

Introduction - Cooke, Fang Lee; Wood, Geoffrey (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
Editorial introduction to: Symposium sur les relations d’emploi et les nouveaux acteurs dans les économies émergentes / Symposium on Employment Relations and New Actors in Emerging Economies.
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z

Unionizing Retail: Lessons From Young Women's Grassroots Organizing in the Greater Toronto Area in the 1990s - Coulter, Kendra (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article chronicles the development of two retail workers' unionization efforts that took place in the Toronto, Ontario area in the 1990s. It examines the role that women labour leaders Wynne Hartviksen and Debora De Angelis played in organizing the drives and describes how their personal experiences working in low-wage and non-benefited retail jobs contributed to their beliefs as workers' rights activists. It also presents comments from both Hartviksen and De Angelis on topics such as fear exhibited by employees regarding being punished by employers for joining unions and their efforts to contact and recruit potential union members through mailings, phone calls, and personal interviews.
Keywords: Canada; DE Angelis, Debora; HARTVIKSEN, Wynne; Labor Unions; Labor union members; Ontario; RETAIL industry -- Employees; Toronto (Ont.); WAGES -- Retail trade employees

Insidious Workplace Behavior - Courcy, François (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
Review of: Insidious Workplace Behavior ed. by Jerald Greenberg.
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z

Studies of Labor Market Intermediation - Cousineau, Jean-Michel (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z

Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters: The Construction of Trafficking - Crago, Anna-Louise (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters: The Construction of Trafficking," by Jo Doezema.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; DOEZEMA, Jo; Human trafficking; Nonfiction; SEX Slaves & Discourse Masters: The Construction of Trafficking (Book)

Good, Reliable, White Men: Railroad Brotherhoods, 1877-1917 - Craven, Paul (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "Good, Reliable, White Men: Railroad Brotherhoods, 1877-1917," by Paul Michael Taillon.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; GOOD, Reliable, White Men: Railroad Brotherhoods 1877-1917 (Book); Nonfiction; RAILROADS -- Employees -- Labor unions; TAILLON, Paul Michael

Les identités au travail : analyses et controverses - D'Amours, Martine (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "Les identités au travail: analyses et controverses," edited by Jean-Yves Causer, Jean-Pierre Durand and William Gasparini.
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z

Fernand Daoust. Un militant social-démocrate convaincu - Dansereau, Bernard (Bulletin d'histoire politique, 2011)

Participación sindical de los trabajadores en Argentina: principales determinantes y tendencias - Delfini, Marcelo; Erbes, Analía; Roitter, Sonia (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
La crisis de representación sindical es uno de los hechos vinculados al mundo del trabajo más relevantes de los últimos treinta años. Los estudios sobre representación sindical han tomado habitualmente como medida de su nivel a la tasa de afiliación. No obstante, se puede profundizar el análisis, incorporando otros elementos que permitan explicar la participación de los trabajadores en el marco de los sindicatos, como medida del nivel de representación. En este contexto, el objetivo del presente artículo es doble. Por un lado, profundizar sobre los aspectos vinculados con la participación sindical de los trabajadores, más allá de la afiliación, incorporando otros elementos que permitan caracterizarla a partir de niveles de participación. Vinculado a ello, por otro lado, se pretende establecer la influencia que tienen los factores asociados a las características del trabajador, de la empresa y sociolaborales en la participación sindical de los trabajadores argentinos. Para identificar los distintos niveles de participación se realizó un análisis factorial de correspondencias múltiples y de cluster que posibilitó determinar la existencia de tres grupos: los trabajadores ‘desvinculados’ del sindicato, los ‘periféricos’ y los ‘integrados’ al sindicato. Por su parte, la importancia de distintos factores relacionados con características de los trabajadores, de la empresa y sociolaborales en la definición de estos grupos se evaluó a través de un modelo de regresión logística multinomial. El resultado del análisis llevado adelante muestra que los factores vinculados a la empresa no inciden en la posición en que se encuentra el trabajador con respecto al sindicato. A su vez, la probabilidad de pasar de una situación periférica a una desvinculada se encuentra fuertemente relacionada con las características del trabajador, mientras que el cambio hacia un nivel de integración mayor se halla condicionado por los rasgos sociolaborales, tales como la presencia sindical y la antigüedad. // The crisis in union representation is one of the most relevant labour-related issues of the last thirty years. Studies about union representation usually consider unionization to be central to the evaluation of this crisis. However, this analysis can be deepened by incorporating other elements that explain workers' union participation as a measure of representation levels. In this context, this paper has two objectives. First, to analyze the factors that influence worker participation in unions considering, besides membership, other elements that characterize labor participation. Second, but in connection with the first objective, it aims to establish how this participation is influenced by factors related to worker, firm, and socio-occupational characteristics. To identify different levels of employee involvement we carry out a multiple correspondence analysis and a cluster analysis, both of which enable us to build three groups of employees along a continuum from the least to the most committed to the union. A multinomial logistic regression model is applied to establish the relative importance of different factors associated with worker, firm, and socio-occupational characteristics on the definition of these groups. The results show that firm-related factors do not affect worker participation in unions. In turn, the probability of moving to a non-participative situation is strongly related to worker characteristics, while the shift to a higher level of commitment is conditioned by socio-occupational characteristics, such as the presence of unions and seniority.
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Labor Unions; Participation; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z; Studies; Trends; Union membership

Let America Be America Then: Imagining a More United Front in the Early Civil Rights Era - Dennis, Michael (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews and comments on the books "The Problem of the Future World: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Race Concept at Midcentury" by Eric Porter and "Wrestling With the Left: The Making of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man," by Barbara Foley.
Keywords: DU Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963; ELLISON, Ralph, 1914-1994; FOLEY, Barbara; INVISIBLE Man (Book : Ellison); PORTER, Eric; PROBLEM of the Future World: W.E.B. Du Bois & the Race Concept at Midcentury, The (Book); WRESTLING With the Left: The Making of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (Book)

Editorial/Éditorial/Editorial - Déom, Esther; Ponak, Allen (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
Editorial introduction to the issue.
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z

“In an Equitable and Sympathetic Manner”: Alberta's Workmen's Compensation and the United Mine Workers of America, District 18's Welfare Fund - Devine, Jason Corey (University of Calgary, 2011)
This thesis is a study of the role of the United Mine Workers of America, District 18 in the development of Workmen's Compensation legislation in Alberta. It also an investigation into the creation of District 18's Welfare Fund in the post-war period and the fund's relationship to workers' compensation legislation. The miners initiated the movement for workers' compensation in Alberta and the first law in this regard was passed in 1908. After that year, District 18 continued to be prominent in working to improve the content and administration of the legislation as it affected miners and the Alberta working class. As a result of the insufficiency of workers' compensation, District 18 created a Welfare Fund. It was not designed to replace state-provided welfare, but to provide help to members where the law fell short. The fund, as such, was an exercise in working-class agency and mutual aid.

Community Unionism in Africa: The Case of Mozambique - Dibben, Pauline; Nadin, Sara (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
Against the background of liberalization, privatization and financial crisis, unions face a declining number of core members. In emerging economies, the informal economy represents a large and growing proportion of the workforce. In many countries, unions have sought to engage these workers through "community unionism." This article draws on in-depth research to investigate how community unionism has been employed in Mozambique, an emerging economy in Africa. In doing so, it asks whether trade union engagement with community organizations is characterized by a strategic or piecemeal approach, the degree to which there are mutual benefits, and whether the relationship is sustainable in the longer term. Analysis of findings suggests that community unionism is vibrant within Mozambique, but that questions arise regarding its longer-term viability.
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Employment; Informal economy; Labor Unions; POVERTY; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z; Studies; Working conditions

Constitutional Deradicalization of the Wagner Act Model:The Impact of B.C. Health Services and Fraser - Dobson, Tracey-Ann Alecia (University of Toronto, 2011)
For many years, workers petitioned the Supreme Court of Canada to intervene in labour relations to protect their collective bargaining rights. Finally, the Court answered the call, but the drastic changes made were not what workers expected. This thesis outlines the effect that the Court’s decision to intervene in labour relations had on the existing collective bargaining model. In making this determination, a historical analysis was done of the Court’s attitude towards using section 2(d) Freedom to Associate to protect collective bargaining, followed by a comparative analysis with United States jurisprudence to explain the effect of the Canadian decisions on the statutory provisions. The analysis revealed that the decisions had significantly weakened protections for workers’ rights, and provided the basis to conclude that the Supreme Court of Canada had used the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to deradicalize the existing collective bargaining model.

The Ocean Ranger: Remaking the Promise of Oil - Dodd, Susan (Fernwood, 2011)
On February 15, 1982, the oil rig Ocean Ranger sank off the coast of Newfoundland taking the entire crew of eighty-four men – including the author’s brother – down with it. It was the worst sea disaster in Canada since the Second World War, but the memory of this event gradually faded into a sad story about a bad storm – relegated to the “Extreme Weather” section of the CBC archives. Susan Dodd resurrects this disaster from the realm of “history” and maps the socio-political processes of its aftermath, when power, money and collective hopes for the future revised the story of corporate indifference and betrayal of public trust into a “lesson learned” by an heroic industry advancing technology in the face of a brutal environment. This book is a navigational resource for other disaster aftermaths, including that of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, and a call for vigilant government regulation of industry in all its forms. --Publisher's description
Keywords: Ocean Ranger (Drilling rig)

The Shifting Landscape of Work - Duffy, Ann; Glenday, Daniel; Pupo, Norene (Nelson Education, 2011)
The Shifting Landscape of Work is a contributed text that explores contemporary issues pertaining to labour in the context of race, class, age, economics, and gender, presented from a left-of-center perspective. All of the contributors are well known and respected scholars in their field of research. The authors challenge students to think about the dynamics of the labour market, including the realities of unpaid work and the impact of structural shifts in societal power relations. --Publisher's description
Keywords: Canada; Industrial relations -- Canada -- Textbooks; Labor; Labor Canada Textbooks; Labor Social aspects; Labor Social aspects Textbooks; Textbooks; Travail Aspect social Manuels d'enseignement supérieur; Travail Canada Manuels d'enseignement supérieur

L’évolution de la négociation collective et de ses acteurs dans six pays européens - Dufour, Christian; Hege, Adelheid (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
Comment évoluent depuis la fin 1970 les statut et pratiques de négociation collective ? Quelles transformations sont repérables dans le comportement des acteurs ? Les six pays retenus dans cet article – Allemagne, Espagne, France, Grande-Bretagne, Italie, Suède – disposent de systèmes de relations professionnelles originaux. Les bouleversements économiques et sociaux poussent à des transformations, parallèlement à l’enjeu de l’Europe en construction. Les difficultés nées de la longue crise économique ne déstructurent pas ces systèmes, ni ne nivellent leur diversité. Les acteurs se montrent adaptables et jouent sur une acceptation sociale historiquement acquise pour maintenir leur influence. Ils investissent de nouveaux thèmes (emploi) et de nouveaux espaces d’échange (comités d’entreprise européens, pactes sociaux). Réponse apparemment rationnelle et efficace dans la crise, la négociation collective voit plutôt renforcée son statut, son cahier des charges densifié – dans les pays du continent européen. La Grande-Bretagne fait exception ; la mise en cause frontale du système de négociation collective et du pouvoir syndical souligne par contraste la tendance commune aux autres pays.Progressivement la négociation collective est perçue comme le pivot des systèmes de relations professionnelles ; les acteurs collectifs tendent à s’identifier à leur fonction de négociateurs. La dissolution des anciennes alliances entre syndicats et partis inaugure un mouvement peu commenté de dépolitisation du projet syndical, avec recentrage sur l’espace des relations professionnelles. Avec le 21e siècle, des contradictions apparaissent. Les acteurs, patronaux et syndicaux, perdent en représentativité et en capacité d’intégration de bases hétérogènes. Les systèmes de négociation perdent en rendement ; les États les contournent ainsi que leurs acteurs pour piloter des transformations sociales. Plus qu’à une crise des systèmes, on a affaire à une crise des acteurs. Pour les syndicats, elle soulève la question de la revitalisation de leurs liens avec leurs mandants, comme celle des nouvelles alliances à construire.
Keywords: Europa; Europe; collective bargaining; estrategia sindical; negociación colectiva; négociations collectives; pactes sociaux; pactos sociales; sindicatos; social pacts; stratégie syndicale; syndicats; union strategy; unions

Employee and Organizational Impacts of Flexitime Work Arrangements - Eldridge, Derek; Nisar, Tahir M. (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
The paper investigates the impact of flexitime programs in Britain using a linked dataset of employers and employees. Organizations adopt this practice for a variety of reasons, ranging from the concern for widening the scope for employee choice to the need to comply with public regulations. Recent public regulations are based on the premise that a rigid working hours culture exists in society that results in low levels of job satisfaction and ill and stressed employees. The results from the British Workplace Employment Relations Survey data show a weak relationship between flexitime and measures of job control used and, more importantly, the relationship is negative between flexitime and job security. There is also no evidence of the establishments with flexitime arrangements having less stressed employees.
Keywords: Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Compliance; Flexible hours; Impact analysis; Job satisfaction; Labor Unions; Regulation; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z; Studies; Work life balance

Vulnerabilities of Female Migrant Farm Workers from Latin America and the Caribbean in Canada - Encalada Grez, Eveyln (FOCAL Policy Brief, 2011)
Canada’s agricultural sector has relied on temporary foreign workers from Latin America and the Caribbean for more than 40 years. Since 1999, their numbers have tripled. Most temporary workers on farms are men, but the number of women is on the rise. Both depend on these work opportunities for the livelihoods of their families, yet women rely more heavily than men on this source of income since most are single mothers who have limited access to the labour market in sending countries because of persisting gender inequalities. In Canada, they endure precarious working and living conditions on the farms and face gender-specific challenges. This policy brief documents this new trend in temporary migration and highlights the vulnerabilities of female workers employed in Canada’s agricultural industry. The analysis is informed by various research projects, observation work and interviews with female migrant farm workers conducted in rural Canada and in sending countries over the past 10 years.

The Politics of Public Sector Wages: Ontario’s Social Dialogue for Austerity - Evans, Bryan (Socialist Studies / Études socialistes, 2011)
The economic crisis has revealed the extent to which sustaining the key tenets of the ‘Common Sense Revolution’, implemented by the Conservative government of Premier Mike Harris, have eroded the fiscal capacity of Ontario. The proposal to freeze public sector wages and the ensuing consultation with public sector unions and employers in the spring/summer of 2010 signal Ontario is about to return to the rollback neoliberalism that dominated the 1990s. The difference between now and then is the more defensive posture of organized labour and the limited capacities that exist to resist such an assault.

The Axe and the Oath: Ordinary Life in the Middle Ages - Farr, James R. (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "The Axe and the Oath: Ordinary Life in the Middle Ages," by Robert Fossier, translated by Lydia G. Cochrane.
Keywords: AXE & the Oath: Ordinary Life in the Middle Ages, The (Book); BOOKS -- Reviews; FOSSIER, Robert; FRANCE; History; MEDIEVAL period, 987-1515; Nonfiction

Economics for Everyone: A Short Guide to the Economics of Capitalism - Fast, Travis (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
Economics for Everyone: A Short Guide to the Economics of Capitalism, by Jim Stanford, is reviewed.
Keywords: Book reviews; Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Capitalism; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z; Textbooks

Regulating Flexibility: The Political Economy of Employment Standards - Fast, Travis William (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
Regulating Flexibility: The Political Economy of Employment Standards, by Mark P. Thomas, is reviewed.
Keywords: Book reviews; Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Flexibility; LABOR market; Labor Unions; Labor standards; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z

The Earnings Gap between Black and White Workers in Canada: Evidence from the 2006 Census - Fearon, Gervan; Wald, Steven (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
We analyze the Black-White earnings gap among Canadian workers using 2006 census data. The earnings gap is estimated using conventional earnings regressions, Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions and an empirical technique developed by Brown, Moon and Zoloth that allows an occupation attainment model to be incorporated into a standard earnings decomposition specification. Results from this latter method suggest that wage discrimination and occupational segregation account for the majority of the earnings gap, while endowment differences account for a fairly small portion. In light of the estimated impacts of wage discrimination and occupational segregation on full-time, full-year Black workers, we suggest various policy initiatives and further research aimed at reducing these earnings discrepancies.
Keywords: Black Canadians; Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Employment discrimination; Labor Unions; Segregation; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z; Studies; Wage differential; Whites

New Forms to Settle Old Scores: Updating the Worker Centre Story in the United States - Fine, Janice R. (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
Worker centres have emerged to address issues that low wage, largely immigrant workers, face at the workplace. They are attempting to fill a void left by the decline of labour unions, local political parties and other groups. Centres have had some significant organizing and public policy successes and have placed labour standards enforcement on the public policy agenda at the state and national levels. During their formative years, these organizations displayed important strengths but also exhibited weaknesses that appeared to limit their ability to get to scale. Over the last five years, they have moved into a new phase of development. Centres have shown institutional resilience. There is also a growing trend both toward federation and formation of institutional partnerships with unions and government. Finally, centres and their national networks are playing strategic roles in broader movement building around immigrant rights, global justice and the right to organize.
Keywords: Aliens; Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Foreign labor; Labor Unions; Low income groups; Nongovernmental organizations--NGOs; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z; Workers

Workers Across the Americas: The Transnational Turn in Labor History - Fink, Leon (Oxford University Press, 2011)
The first major volume to place U.S.-centered labor history in a transnational focus, Workers Across the Americas collects the newest scholarship of Canadianist, Caribbeanist, and Latin American specialists as well as U.S. historians. These essays highlight both the supra- and sub-national aspect of selected topics without neglecting nation-states themselves as historical forces. Indeed, the transnational focus opens new avenues for understanding changes in the concepts, policies, and practice of states, their interactions with each other and their populations, and the ways in which the popular classes resist, react, and advance their interests. What does this transnational turn encompass? And what are its likely perils as well as promise as a framework for research and analysis? To address these questions John French, Julie Greene, Neville Kirk, Aviva Chomsky, Dirk Hoerder, and Vic Satzewich lead off the volume with critical commentaries on the project of transnational labor history. Their responses offer a tour of explanations, tensions, and cautions in the evolution of a new arena of research and writing. Thereafter, Workers Across the Americas groups fifteen research essays around themes of labor and empire, indigenous peoples and labor systems, international feminism and reproductive labor, labor recruitment and immigration control, transnational labor politics, and labor internationalism. Topics range from military labor in the British Empire to coffee workers on the Guatemalan/Mexican border to the role of the International Labor Organization in attempting to set common labor standards. Leading scholars introduce each section and recommend further reading. -- Publisher's description. "Associate editors, Eileen Boris, John D. French, Julie Greene, Joan Sangster, Shelton Stromquist." Contents: Another World history is possible: reflections on the translocal, transnational, and global / John D. French -- Historians of the world: transnational forces, nation-states, and the practice of U.S. history / Julie Greene -- Transnational labor history: promise and perils / Neville Kirk -- Labor history as world history: linking regions over time / Aviva Chomsky -- Overlapping spaces: transregional and transcultural / Dirk Hoerder -- Transnational migration: a new historical phenomenon? / Vic Satzewich -- "black service ... white money": the peculiar institution of military labor in the British Army during the Seven Years' War / Peter Way -- "We speak the same language in the new world:: capital, class, and community in Mexico's "American century" / Steven J. Bachelor -- Indigenous labor in mid-nineteenth-century British North America: the Mi'kmaq of Cape Breton and Squamish of British Columbia in comparative perspective / Andrew Parnaby -- "De facto Mexicans": coffee workers and nationality on the Guatemalan-Mexican border, 1913-1941 / Catherine Nolan-Ferrell -- "No right to layettes or nursing time": maternity leave and the question of U.S. exceptionalism / Eileen Boris -- The battle within the home: development strategies and the commodification of caring labors at the 1975 International Women's Year Conference / Jocelyn Olcott -- Feminizing white slavery in the United States: Marcus Braun and the transnational traffic in white bodies, 1890-1910 / Gunther Peck -- Patronage and progress: the Bracero program from the perspective of Mexico / Michael Snodgrass -- Unspoken exclusions: race, nation, and empire in the immigration restrictions of the 1920s in North America and the greater Caribbean / Lara Putnam -- Claiming political space: workers, municipal socialism, and the reconstruction of local democracy in transnational perspective / Shelton Stromquist -- A migrating revolution: Mexican political organizers and their rejection of American assimilation, 1920-1940 / John H. Flores -- Fugitive slaves across North America / Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie -- Movable type: Toronto's transnational printers, 1866-1872 / Jacob Remes -- Global sea or national backwater? The International Labor Organization and the quixotic quest for maritime standards, 1919-1945 / Leon Fink.
Keywords: America; History. Transnationalism. Labor. Transnationalism. Genre/Form: History; Labor

Working People in Alberta: A History - Finkel, Alvin (Working Canadians: Books from the CCLH, 2011)
Working People in Alberta traces the history of labour in Alberta from the period of First Nations occupation to the present. Drawing on over two hundred interviews with labour leaders, activists, and ordinary working people, as well as on archival records, the volume gives voice to the people who have toiled in Alberta over the centuries. In so doing, it seeks to counter the view of Alberta as a one-class, one-party, one-ideology province, in which distinctions between those who work and those who own are irrelevant. Workers from across the generations tell another tale, of an ongoing collective struggle to improve their economic and social circumstances in the face of a dominant, exploitative elite. Their stories are set within a sequential analysis of provincial politics and economics, supplemented by chapters on women and the labour movement and on minority workers of colour and their quest for social justice. Published on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Alberta Federation of Labour, Working People in Alberta contrasts the stories of workers who were union members and those who were not. In its depictions of union organizing drives, strikes, and working-class life in cities and towns, this lavishly illustrated volume creates a composite portrait of the men and women who have worked to build and sustain the province of Alberta. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction : Those who built Alberta -- Millennia of Native work / Alvin Finkel -- The fur trade and early European settlement / Alvin Finkel -- One step forward : Alberta workers, 1885-1914 / Jim Selby -- War, repression, and depression, 1914-1939 / Eric Strikwerda and Alvin Finkel -- Alberta labour and working-class life, 1940-1959 / James Muir -- The boomers become the workers : Alberta, 1960-1980 / Alvin Finkel -- Alberta labour in the 1980s / Winston Gereluk -- Revolution, retrenchment, and the new normal : the 1990s and beyond / Jason Foster -- Women, labour, and the labour movement / Joan Schiebelbein -- Racialization and work / Jennifer Kelly and Dan Cui -- Conclusion : A history to build upon / Alvin Finkel.
Keywords: Alberta; Economic conditions; Economic policy; History; Labor; Working class

Creating a Broader Context for Research on Coal Miners - Fishback, Price V. (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews and comments on the books "Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War," by Thomas G. Andrews, "The Politics of Identity and Civil Society in Britain and Germany: Miners in the Ruhr and South Wales, 1890-1926," by Leighton S. James, and "Welsh Americans: A History of Assimilation in the Coalfields," by Ronald L. Lewis.
Keywords: ANDREWS, Thomas G.; COAL industry -- History; JAMES, Leighton S.; KILLING for Coal: America's Deadliest Labor War (Book); LEWIS, Ronald L.; POLITICS of Identity & Civil Society in Britain & Germany: Miners in the Ruhr & South Wales 1890-1926, The (Book); WELSH Americans: A History of Assimilation in the Coalfields (Book)

The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government - Fleming, Peter (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government," by Thomas N. Bisson.
Keywords: 476-1492; BISSON, Thomas N.; BOOKS -- Reviews; CRISIS of the 12th Century: Power, Lordship & the Origins of European Government, The (Book); EUROPE; History; Nonfiction

Chartrand - Le Malcommode - Foglia, Manuel (PVP Media, 2011)
Chartrand - Le Malcommode, c’est une biographie du syndicaliste Michel Chartrand. C’est l’histoire d’un homme qui a fait le vœu d’une vie : défendre la justice sociale et porter cette cause à l’agenda des priorités de notre société. Tout en traçant le portrait de Chartrand, Chartrand, Le Malcommode, rendra compte de son influence considérable sur des gens venus d'horizons aussi différents que Gilles Vigneault, Luc Picard, Francine Lalonde ou Françoise David. Chartrand, Le Malcommode, c’est aussi l’histoire d’amour d’un peuple avec la liberté d’expression. Au cœur de la vie de Chartrand, il y a les mots justice et indignation. L’injustice lui a donné la colère, et la colère lui a donné la parole. Le cynisme et la démagogie des boss lui inspirèrent les qualités oratoires de ses discours publics et lui assurèrent son succès populaire. Chartrand, Le Malcommode, c’est enfin une vision d’auteur, qui s’interroge sur ce qu’il reste aujourd’hui des mouvements ouvriers et des enjeux oubliés. C’est un réalisateur qui cherche à savoir ce qui reste de la gauche, des coups de matraques, des assemblées monstres et des coups de gueules des chefs malcommodes? Serait-ce que les revendications d’autrefois ont été si bien entendues qu’elles n’ont plus lieu d’être ou est-ce que les révolutionnaires ont perdu la bataille? Et toutes ces luttes, tous ces combats, c’était pour quoi faire au juste? --PVP Media

Power in Coalition: Strategies for Strong Unions and Social Change - Foley, Janice (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "Power in Coalition: Strategies for Strong Unions and Social Change," by Amanda Tattersall.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; Labor Unions; Nonfiction; POWER in Coalition: Strategies for Strong Unions & Social Change (Book); TATTERSALL, Amanda

The Impact of Good Faith Obligations on Collective Bargaining Practices and Outcomes in Australia, Canada and the United States - Forsyth, Anthony (Canadian Labour & Employment Law Journal, 2011)

Supportive Legislation, Unsupportive Employers and Collective Bargaining in New Zealand - Foster, Barry; Rasmussen, Erling; Murrie, John; Laird, Ian (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
This paper reports on research into the attitudes of mainstream New Zealand employers to collective bargaining, and its union agents, in New Zealand. Despite a legislative environment supportive of collective bargaining the process has been in substantial decline in New Zealand for 20 years, notably in the private sector. A series of national surveys found that employers indicated a strong preference for individual and workplace based bargaining consistent with a shift toward more Unitarist perspectives established post-1990. Furthermore, employers consistently argued that collective bargaining and its union agents, offered little real benefit to workplaces or employment relationships. This was the case even where those employers were actively engaged in, and had a long history of, collective bargaining with unions. Overall, these results suggest that improvements in private sector collective bargaining density are unlikely.
Keywords: Advantages; Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Collective bargaining; Employee management relations; Labor Unions; Private sector; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z; Studies

Justice for Janitors in Alberta: The Impact of Temporary Foreign Workers on an Organizing Campaign - Foster, Jason; Barnetson, Bob (Journal of Workplace Rights, 2011)
This case study explores a union organizing drive that revolved in large part around a group of temporary foreign workers. The impact of this group of workers on the union’s organizing strategy and the implications of the workers’ limited residence and labour rights are examined. This article also considers the factors that appeared to make the Justice for Janitors organizing model effective in this case as well as the potential risks associated with this approach.

Organized Labour and the Making of Public Policy in Twentieth-Century New Brunswick - Frank, David (Journal of New Brunswick Studies, 2011)
The long view of New Brunswick history over the past century shows us glimpses of a vigorous tradition of social reform, much of it driven by the activism of organized labour. The New Brunswick Federation of Labour, established in 1913, was a major force in this history. The Federation played a leading part in the achievement of labour standards such as workmen’s compensation (1918) and subsequently in the enactment of laws to protect the right to union membership and collective bargaining. In pursuing these and other objectives, the province’s labour organizations have contributed to traditions of social democracy that are too easily overlooked in contemporary debates in New Brunswick. This essay sheds light on that important history, and why organized labour still matters in the province.

Beyond Bylines: Media Workers and Women's Rights in Canada - Freeman, Barbara M. (Film and media studies series, 2011)
[E]xplores the ways in which several of Canada’s women journalists, broadcasters, and other media workers reached well beyond the glory of their personal bylines to advocate for the most controversial women’s rights of their eras. To do so, some of them adopted conventional feminine identities, while others refused to conform altogether, openly and defiantly challenging the gender expectations of their day. The book consists of a series of case studies of the women in question as they grappled with the concerns close to their hearts: higher education for women, healthy dress reforms, the vote, equal opportunities at work, abortion, lesbianism, and Aboriginal women’s rights. Their media reflected their respective eras: intellectual magazines, daily and weekly newspapers, radio, feminist public relations, alternative women’s periodicals, and documentary film made for television. --Publisher's description
Keywords: History; Press coverage; Women in mass media; Women in the mass media industry; Women's rights

Globalization, Labor, and the Transformation of Work: Readings for Seeking a Competitive Advantage in an Increasingly Global Economy - Gauthier, Carol-Anne (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
Globalization, Labor, and the Transformation of Work: Readings for Seeking a Competitive Advantage in an Increasingly Global Economy, edited by Jonathan H. Westover, is reviewed.
Keywords: Book reviews; Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Competitive advantage; Employment; Globalization; Labor Unions; Labor relations; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z

Working Bodies: Interactive Service Employment and Workplace Identities - Gauthier, Carol-Anne (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
Working Bodies: Interactive Service Employment and Workplace Identities, by Linda McDowell, is reviewed.
Keywords: Book reviews; Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Employment policies; Femininity; Gender identity; Labor Unions; Masculinity; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z

La précarité au Québec : un concept parmi d’autres pour parler des jeunes - Gauthier, Madeleine (SociologieS, 2011)
Ce texte met en contexte l’usage du concept de précarité au Québec. Celui-ci a surtout été utilisé parmi beaucoup d’autres pour décrire la situation des jeunes au moment de la crise de l’emploi des décennies 1970 et 1980. Il a parfois contribué, par son attribution à l’ensemble des jeunes, à laisser les plus vulnérables dans l’ombre et à amplifier l’effet du travail atypique sur l’avenir de toute une génération. Un usage plus modéré du concept s’est imposé progressivement en présence de faits plus justement vérifiés. Sa force de persuasion a pu susciter des stratégies tant individuelles que collectives en faveur des jeunes. Ce retour dans le temps a permis de montrer que les jeunes sont sensibles à la conjoncture mais n’en restent pas pour autant les victimes. Est-ce à cause du type d’État (de Gøsta Esping-Anderson, évoqué par Mircea Vultur) que le concept n’a eu qu’une importance relative au Québec ? La question se pose-t-elle dans une approche pragmatique du changement ?
Keywords: changement social; emploi; jeunesse; précarité

Industrial Relations, the Economy, and Society - Godard, John (Captus Press, 2011)
A leading textbook in industrial relations at the university level, this book is valuable both as a primary and as a supplementary text for students of industrial relations, sociology, labour studies, economics and management programs. The book contains highly accessible coverage of conventional topic areas, including the history of industrial relations, contemporary employer practices, labour unions, labour law, collective bargaining, and contract administration. Yet it also includes coverage of broader economic and social issues relevant to the study of labour and employment relations in both the union and non-union sectors. Readers are thus able not only to develop a strong practical knowledge of Canadian industrial relations, but also to ground this knowledge in a deeper understanding of these relations and the broader issues and debates that surround them. This latest edition incorporates up-to-date statistics relevant to the study of industrial relations (e.g., strike activity, union membership, income inequality) as well as recent developments in the literature. It also streamlines the previous edition. The chapters on management practices and the effects of high performance practices have been merged and edited down, as have the chapters on contemporary developments and contemporary alternatives. --Publisher's description. Contents: Foundations: concepts, issues, and debates -- The broader debate: three theses on the nature and development of industrial relations, the economy, and society -- Understanding labour-management relations -- Work and industrial relations in historical perspective -- Contemporary management practices -- Understanding and explaining management -- Labour unions as institutions -- Labour unions as organizations -- The role of the state -- Understanding the state -- Labour law: the regulation of labour-management relations -- Collective bargaining: structure, process, and outcomes -- Strikes and dispute resolution -- The grievance and grievance arbitration processes -- The collective agreement: content and issues -- Contemporary problems, challenges, and alternatives. Includes bibliographical references (p. [431]-452) and index.
Keywords: Canada; Industrial relations

About Canada: Immigration - Gogia, Nupur; Slade, Bonnie (About Canada, 2011)
Many Canadians believe that immigrants steal jobs away from qualified Canadians, abuse the healthcare system and refuse to participate in Canadian culture. In About Canada: Immigration, Gogia and Slade challenge these myths with a thorough investigation of the realities of immigrating to Canada. Examining historical immigration policies, the authors note that these policies were always fundamentally racist, favouring whites, unless hard labourers were needed. Although current policies are no longer explicitly racist, they do continue to favour certain kinds of applicants. Many recent immigrants to Canada are highly trained and educated professionals, and yet few of them, contrary to the myth, find work in their area of expertise. Despite the fact that these experts could contribute significantly to Canadian society, deeply ingrained racism, suspicion and fear keep immigrants out of these jobs. On the other hand, Canada also requires construction workers, nannies and agricultural workers — but few immigrants who do this work qualify for citizenship. About Canada: Immigration argues that we need to move beyond the myths and build an immigration policy that meets the needs of Canadian society. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction -- Immigration: a critical analysis -- Evolution of immigration policy: learning about the past to understand the present -- Immigration policy and practices: the mechanics of migration -- Immigrants and the labour market: devaluation, frustration and downward mobility -- Reception party: the settlement process for immigrants -- Revolving door: temporary workers in Canada -- Under the surface: Canada's hidden labour force -- Coming to a better place? Not always a happy ending.
Keywords: 21st century; Canada; Economic conditions; Emigration and immigration Government policy History; Immigrants

Caught in the Work–Citizenship Matrix: The Lasting Effects of Precarious Legal Status on Work for Toronto Immigrants. - Goldring, Luin; Landolt, Patricia (Migration, Work and Citizenship in the New Global Order, 2011)
This article explores the relationship between precarious employment and precarious migrant legal status. Original research on immigrant workers' employment experiences in Toronto examines the effects of several measures including human capital, network, labor market variables, and a change in legal status variable on job precarity as measured by an eight-indicator Index of Precarious Work (IPW). Precarious legal status has a long-lasting, negative effect on job precarity; both respondents who entered and remained in a precarious migratory status and those who shifted to secure status were more likely to remain in precarious work compared to respondents who entered with and remained in a secure status. This leaves no doubt that migrant-worker insecurity and vulnerability stem not only from having ‘irregular’ status. We introduce the notion of a work–citizenship matrix to capture the ways in which the precariousness of legal status and work intersect in the new economy. People and entire groups transition through intersecting work–citizenship insecurities, where prior locations have the potential to exert long-term effects, transitions continue to occur indefinitely over the life-course, and gains on one front are not always matched on others.

The State of Working America 2008/2009 - Gould, Anthony M. (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2011)
The State of Working America 2008/2009, by Jared Bernstein, Lawrence Mishel and Heidi Shierholz, is reviewed.
Keywords: Book reviews; Business And Economics--Labor And Industrial Relations; Business And Economics--Personnel Management; Economic conditions; Family income; LABOR market; Labor Unions; SnR_publicationTitle_Relations Industrielles_Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations_2025-09-22T16:07:02.081Z

A Different Perspective on the “Labor Rights as Human Rights” Debate Organized Labor and Human Rights Activism in Canada, 1939-1952 - Goutor, David (Labor Studies Journal, 2011)
This article brings further historical and international perspective to the “labor rights as human rights” debate. It particularly contends that these perspectives need to be explored further in order to appreciate the extent to which the definitions and political implications of key ideologies behind labor and human rights activism are flexible and dependent on their context. It explores Canada in the 1940s and early 1950s, when there was major activity on the labor and human rights fronts. Although many Canadian organizations, legal systems, and campaigns were modeled on—or formally affiliated with—American ones in these years, the progress of labor and human rights activism followed a distinct path, and particularly unfolded at a distinct pace. This distinct pace, the relatively small size of ethnic and racialized minority populations, the basic political and legal structure, and rise of a leftist third party in the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation all helped labor and human rights activism fit together comfortably to a notable extent in Canada. This article will particularly show why the relationship between human rights and labor was significantly less fraught with potential downsides for Canadian labor leaders. It also highlights another important impact of context: the particular combination of conditions and forces in Canada produced a number of unexpected results.
Keywords: Canada; Cooperative Commonwealth Federation; HUMAN rights; World War II and postwar; historical perspective; immigration and race; labor rights as human rights; left politics; organized labor

In the Province of History: The Making of the Public Past in 20th-Century Nova Scotia - Guildford, Janet (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "In the Province of History: The Making of the Public Past in 20th-Century Nova Scotia," by Ian McKay and Robin Bates.
Keywords: 1867-; BATES, Robin; BOOKS -- Reviews; History; IN the Province of History: The Making of the Public Past in 20th-Century Nova Scotia (Book); MCKAY, Ian; Nonfiction; Nova Scotia

Global Cities at Work: New Migrant Divisions of Labour - Gupta, Tania Das (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews the book "Global Cities at Work: New Migrant Divisions of Labour," by Jane Will, Kavita Datta, Yarra Evans, Joanna Herbert, Jon May, and Cathy McIlwaine.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; DATTA, Kavita; EVANS, Yarra; Foreign workers; GLOBAL Cities at Work: New Migrant Divisions of Labour (Book); GREAT Britain; HERBERT, Joanna; MAY, Jon; MCILWAINE, Cathy; Nonfiction; WILL, Jane

Those Who Work, Those Who Don't: Poverty, Morality and Family in Rural America - Hall, Alan (Labour / Le Travail, 2011)
The article reviews the book, "Those Who Work, Those Who Don't: Poverty, Morality and Family in Rural America," by Jennifer Sherman.
Keywords: BOOKS -- Reviews; Economic conditions; Nonfiction; RURAL families; SHERMAN, Jennifer; THOSE Who Work, Those Who Don't: Poverty, Morality & Family in Rural America (Book)