Were You Born on the Wrong Continent

How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life

Thomas Geoghegan

Tired of working ‘til you drop and not going anywhere? Try to imagine your life in a full-blown European social democracy—especially the German version. In an idiosyncratic, entertaining travelogue written in a “chatty, anecdotal style [that’s] appealingly digressive and winning” (Publishers Weekly), Thomas Geoghegan explains the appeal of “boring” Germany, where workers sit as directors on the big corporate boards and ordinary people have six weeks off… (more information)

The Westray Tragedy

A Miner’s Story

Sean Comish

”Shaun pulls no punches and gives no quarter to those responsible for what took place on May 9th. This is a book that Canadians will want to read. The company, as Shaun states in his book, tried to pull the wool over the eyes of the public. They were not fooled. Shaun’s book gives the screaming truth of the incompetency and lack of regard for human life by company officials and politicians.” - Mike Piche, United Steelworkers (more information)

Hollow Work, Hollow Society

Globalization and the Casual Labour Problem in Canada

Dave Broad

More and more people in Canada and other Western countries are now working at part-time, short-term and other casual jobs. People are now asking: What happened to full-time employment? Why is part-time work being promoted by business people and politicians as a positive thing? Situated historically, the restructuring of global capital and labour markets does not paint such a rosy picture. This book explains the contemporary casualization of work as integral to global economic restructuring. Hence… (more information)

The Socialist Register 2001

Working Classes, Global Realities

Edited by Colin Leys, Leo Panitch

Managers want new workers who can be used casually-people scared and disciplined by lacking a secure job. Restricting workers’ skills and depriving workers of opportunities to learn and to organize makes for a more dependent and docile work force. Unions are not welcome. Blairs, Clintons and Schroeders may believe that their policies are working, and that opportunities are growing for ‘everyone’ but class exploitation and oppression remain facts of life in the new century. Socialist… (more information)

Stickin’ to the Union

Local 2224 vs. John Buhler

Doug Smith

Stickin’ to the Union tells the story of the nine-month battle that the workers at Versatile Industries fought with their employer, the eccentric millionaire John Buhler, in the winter of 2001. Buhler, who had just bought the Versatile tractor plant with a $32-million government loan, provoked a strike by demanding a gutting of benefits and seniority provisions in the union contract. The union surprised all by charging Buhler with bargaining in bad faith and won a $6-million dollar labour-… (more information)

Capitalism Rebooted?

Work, Welfare, and the New Economy

Edited by Wayne Antony, Dave Broad

The so-called New Economy, based on huge advances in information and communication technologies, economic globalization and neoliberalism, promised to expand economic opportunities and growth, provide stimulating and well-paid jobs, reduce inequalities and develop the Third World. But the experiences of the past two decades have hardly been positive for workers and their families. While there have been significant economic and workplace changes, these changes have not been the boon to working people… (more information)

Mining Town Crisis

Globalization, Labour and Resistance in Sudbury

Edited by David Leadbeater

Sudbury is the largest hardrock mining centre in North America and among the largest in the world. Given the enormous mineral wealth that exists in the Sudbury Basin, one might think that prosperity would abound and that cultural, educational, health and social-welfare institutions would be of the highest order, existing within a well-maintained and attractive physical infrastructure. But this is not the Sudbury that people know. This book explores key aspects of Sudbury’s economic, health… (more information)

The Guy in the Green Truck

John St. Amand – A Biography

James N. McCrorie

Few mature men and women choose to abandon secure employment with handsome health and retirement benefits for a cause and an uncertain future. This biographical memoir is about a man who did just this, abandoning a promising career as a sociologist at Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario, for the turbulent life of union organizer in Nova Scotia. In one of his first organizing campaigns, John St. Amand crisscrossed industrial Cape Breton signing up workers to the new Canadian Miner’s Union… (more information)

Histories of Labour

National and International Perspectives

Edited by Joan Allen, Alan Campbell, John McIlroy

This book is a survey of the global trajectory of labour history, written by labour historians of international repute who are experts in the labour history of particular countries. Considering the labour histories of a number of countries, these essays examine early labour history, the 1960s, the mid-twentieth century, institutional contexts, links to the labour movement and conceptions of class, gender, ethnicity, culture, community and power. The authors analyze key debates, question dominant… (more information)

Manufacturing Meltdown

Reshaping Steel Work

D.W. Livingstone, Dorothy Smith, Warren Smith

In the 1980s, following decades of booming business, the global steel industry went into a precipitous decline, which necessitated significant restructuring. Management demanded workers’ increased participation in evermore temporary and insecure labour. Engaging the workers at the flagship Stelco plant in Hamilton, the authors document new management strategies and the responses of unionized workforces to them. These investigations provide valuable insights into the dramatic changes occurring… (more information)

Generation NGO

Edited by Alisha Apale, Valerie Stam

Young Canadians are increasingly active and engaged in global issues. Many are eagerly poised to contribute—in smaller and even larger ways—to international development and the Canadian national politics that, for better or worse, shape the field. Generation NGO captures some of the first impressions of these young international development professionals before they are relegated to the dusty corners of memory. It provides snapshots of some of their first experiences with inequality… (more information)

Wage Theft in America

Why Millions of Working Americans are Not Being Paid – And What We Can Do About It

Kim Bobo

In what has been described as “the crime wave no one talks about,” billions of dollars worth of wages are stolen from millions of workers in the United States every year— a grand theft that exceeds every other larceny category. Even the Economic Policy Foundation, a business-funded think tank, has estimated that companies annually steal an incredible $19 billion in unpaid overtime. The scope of these abuses is staggering, but activists, unions, and policymakers—along with… (more information)

Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada

Edited by Stephanie Ross, Larry Savage

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… (more information)

Thailand’s Hidden Workforce

Burmese Women Factory Workers

Kyoko Kusakabe, Ruth Pearson

Millions of Burmese women migrate into Thailand each year to form the basis of the Thai agricultural and manufacturing workforce. Un-documented and unregulated, this army of migrant workers constitutes the ultimate ‘disposable’ labour force, enduring grueling working conditions and much aggression from the Thai police and immigration authorities. This insightful book ventures into a part of the global economy rarely witnessed by Western observers. Based on unique empirical research,… (more information)