Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> Labor & Industrial Relations

The massive changes under way in capitalist commodity production include the transition from a traditional or Fordist approach to a post-Fordist one, involving practices such as employee involvement, continuous improvement, and gainsharing. In this research monograph, Bob Russell explores the changing character of industrial relations and labour processes in two staple industries: potash and uranium mining.

Using an innovative case-analytic approach, Russell compares the managerial strategies used by five transnational firms. As indicated by his title, More with Less, he sees the...

Workers' compensation, begun in the early 1900s to address some of the human costs of the Industrial Revolution, was the first of Canada's social institutions. It aimed to redress social instability by reimbursing workers for their suffering while protecting companies from costly court cases. The need for its regulatory function did not diminish over the course of the century; indeed the need is just as significant today. Nevertheless, making workers' compensation work in Canada at the end of the century is a difficult task.

Today employers feel overburdened and workers believe they...

The first in-depth analysis of temporary work in Canada, Leah F. Vosko's important new book examines a number of important trends, including the commodification of labour power; the decline of the full-time, full-year job as a norm; and the gendered character of prevailing employment relationships. Spanning the period from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, Temporary Work traces the evolution of the temporary employment relationship in Canada and places it in an international context. It explores how, and to what extent, 'temporary work' is becoming a norm for a diverse...

"The Limits of Rural Capitalism" is an important study of the social and economic development of the Municipality of Montcalm, a largely French-Canadian community in southern Manitoba. It challenges the view in prairie historiography that agriculture had commercialized before the west was opened to settlement, and that ethnic communities alone resisted the market's potential. Using a novel combination of demographic, financial, and legal evidence, Sylvester shows that both Ontario and Quebec migrants came west within family networks, and that neither economic individualism nor ethnic...

Against all odds, the miners of Bienfait, Saskatchewan attempted, in 1931, to change their miserable situation by organizing a union. Stephen Endicott focuses on the miners' tumultuous thirty-day strike to explore the social consequences of capitalist restructuring during the Great Depression. The miners' bid to gain union recognition with the aid of the Workers' Unity League of Canada failed, and Endicott's in?depth examination of the key factors and players attempts to explain why it did so, and why a similar union drive a decade later eventually succeeded.

Based on a large number...

In recent years, the Canadian labour movement has undergone fundamental change in response to demands for greater inclusion and representation by women, visible and sexual minorities, and people with disabilities. Equity, Diversity, and Canadian Labour explores the specific challenges put to outmoded attitudes and practices, charting the efforts made by organized labour in Canada towards addressing discrimination in the workplace and within unions themselves. While there has been a fair amount of progress in this regard, persistent impediments to equity and uneven responsiveness...

The election of neo-conservative governments in Alberta and Ontario in the early 1990s brought dramatic changes to provincial public policy; both the Ralph Klein Revolution and Mike Harris' Common Sense Revolution emphasized fundamental changes in the role of government, balanced budgets, and the elimination of provincial debts. While public sector unions were forced to react, the response of the Alberta and Ontario unions differed significantly. The reasons, outcome, and long-term impact of the difference is the focus of Yonatan Reshef and Sandra Rastin's careful and revealing...

In recent years, the Canadian labour movement has undergone fundamental change in response to demands for greater inclusion and representation by women, visible and sexual minorities, and people with disabilities. Equity, Diversity, and Canadian Labour explores the specific challenges put to outmoded attitudes and practices, charting the efforts made by organized labour in Canada towards addressing discrimination in the workplace and within unions themselves. While there has been a fair amount of progress in this regard, persistent impediments to equity and uneven responsiveness...

Native Americans and Wage Labor: Ethnohistorical Perspectives presents historical evidence that wage labor was prevalent among Native Americans.

In this timely collection of essays, leading ethnographers and ethnohistorians, as well as innovative younger scholars, present field and primary historical evidence that wage labor was a significant American Indian economic adaptation as early as the seventeenth century in some areas and was common in many U.S. indigenous communities by the late nineteenth century.

These well-written, well-documented case studies form a concrete picture of...