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)

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)

Fight Back

Work Place Justice for Immigrants

Aziz Choudry, Jill Hanley, Steve Jordan, Eric Shragge, Martha Stiegman

Displacement of people, migration, immigration and the demand for labour are connected to the fundamental restructuring of capitalism and to the reduction of working class power through legislation to free the market from “state interference.” The consequence is that a large number of immigrant and temporary foreign workers face relentless competition and little in the way of protection in the labour market. Globally and in Canada, immigrant workers are not passive in the face of these… (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)

Industry and Society in Nova Scotia

An Illustrated History

Edited by James E. Candow

In 1990 the steam locomotive Samson was relocated to its current home in Stellarton’s Museum of Industry, where it was dismantled, conserved, re-assembled and put on display as the centerpiece of the Museum’s permanent collection. It is now the oldest surviving locomotive in Canada, and one of the oldest in the world. Samson, Hercules and John Buddle arrived in Nova Scotia in September 1839, the most conspicuous evidence yet that this British North American province had joined the industrial… (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)

Recasting Steel Labour

The Stelco Story

June Corman, D.W. Livingstone, Meg Luxton, Wally Secombe

This is a local study of steelworkers employed at, or aid off from, Stelco’s Hilton Works in Hamilton, Ontario. This local study has been situated in the context of the global restructuring of capitalism. The authors content that more than ever before the dynamics of the whole world economy limit and shape the actions of its past – a process referred to as “globalizing the local.” Restructuring is taking place in response to global demands. As the global net tighten,… (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)

Women Fishes These Days

Brenda Grzetic

As the fisheries have dramatically changed in Newfoundland and Labrador, so has the work and learning experiences of women fishers. Restructuring, work and learning are not gender neutral. Women Fishes These Days explores women’s lives in the restructured fishery, their workload and work responsibilities, work relations, professionalization and training. It also, through a series of interviews with women fishers, looks at the impact on their identity, their autonomy and, particularly, their… (more information)