Labouring on the Edge

Labouring on the Edge CAPITALISM COMES TO THE BACKCOUNTRY . Bryan D. Palmer. Toronto: Between the Lines, 1994. viii+180 pp. HARD LESSONS. (Eds.) Mercedes Steedman et al. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1995. ix+325 pp. WORKERS' CONTROL ON THE RAILROAD: A PRACTICAL EXAMPLE "RIGHT UNDER YOUR NOSE." R.E. Morgan edited by G.R. Pool and D.J. Young. St. John's: Canadian Committee on Labour History, 1994. 203 pp. FRONTIER DEVELOPMENT: LAND, LABOUR AND CAPITAL ON THE WHEATLANDS OF ARGENTINA AND CANADA: 1890-1914. Jeremy Adelman. Oxford: OUP, 1994. xvi+322 pp. ART AND WORK: A SOCIAL HISTORY OF LABOUR IN THE CANADIAN GRAPHIC ARTS INDUSTRY TO THE 1940s. Angela E. Davis. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1995. viii+l87 pp. For nearly a generation now, Canadian labour history has gone beyond a simple identification ofits task with the writing of the labour union history. The landmarks of the latter have long been familiar to all students of Canadian history: the 1872 legalization of trade unions, the Berlin Conference, IDIA, Winnipeg General Strike, PC 1003 and the Rand formula. To this list will likely be added the recent trend away from international unions marked by the creation ofthe Canadian Auto Workers (CAW). But it has been Braverman and not Harold Logan from whom Jabour historians have taken their marching orders.' Labour history has very much become working class history. The core of the discipline, like Caesar's Gaul, has been composed ofthree unequalsized parts. The largest embraces studies of workplace control, the contested terrain of Journal ofCanadian Studies Vol. 32, No. 2 (Ete 1997 Summer) industrial capitalism. Drawing on the seminal work of Braverman, writers such as Radforth, Heron and the authors ofthe outstanding On the Job collection have given us a wealth of case studies on the work experience in a broad variety of settings.2 The issue ofskill has in particularbeen well explored, moving beyond simplistic models of de-skilling to more sophisticated understandings of the impact of new technologies and managerial strategies on the control ofproduction at the shop floor level. Working-class culture forms the second part of labour history's core. Palmer, Fingard and many others have helped us to understand the lives ofpast workers within and beyond the workplace and how gender, ethnicity and other factors have textured those lives.' Finally, a minority of labour historians has continued to find the political history oflabour to be ofinterest.•These three approaches can be seen together in one of the field's exemplary works, Kealey's well regarded Toro_ nto Workers Respond to Industrial Capitalism.' While these developments place Canadian labour history in the mainstream of contemporary English-language Jabour historiography, finding uniquely Canadian aspects of the country's labour history has been more problematic. In his review essay on American labour history, Nellis challenged practitioners of that specially to show how their work impinged on or was impinged upon by other debates and broader themes in national history.•A similar gauntlet could be thrown down on this side of the line. Kealey's own identification of continental economic integration and regional identities and federalism as "account[ing] for that national uniqueness of the historical experience ofour working class"' has not been pursued. Pentland's ambitious thesis, though admired, has not defined overall chronological developments in a clearanalytical framework;' thus Leir's recent regret over the Jack of theory in the writing of labour history.• Perhaps the most promising candidate for an approach to this problem is national comparison . Similarities and contrasts with the United States are too well known and too 195 invidious to have much merit. An exception would be the approach ofPeterWay in integrating the Canadian experience into a broader, regionalized, North American study.'0 An appropriate comparison is the Canada-Wales study sponsored by the Memorial-based labour history committee." This comparative study paraJJels work done by the Canadian Science and Technology Historical Association on understanding the history ofscience in Canada through a comparison with Australia.12 More than a decade ago, I regretted the lackofany satisfactory treatment of the history ofsupervisory personnel by labour historians , as well as their obfuscation around the issue of workers versus their unions...