Project MUSE®: Labour / Le Travail - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Labour / Le Travail.daily12026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 66 (2010) through current issueLatest Articles: Labour / Le TravailTWOProject MUSE®Labour / Le Travail1911-48420700-3862Latest articles in Labour / Le Travail. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Contributors / Collaborateurs
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989030
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Cherene Aniyan is a history PhD student at Rutgers–New Brunswick. Her research follows global anticolonial solidarities and the unravelling of the British Empire in the Arabian Gulf in the 1960s and 1970s. Previously, she worked on oral histories of immigrant women's organizing in British Columbia with Lynne Marks at the University of Victoria.Erika Borrelli recently earned her PhD in sociology and criminology from the University of Windsor.Giovanni Carranza-Hernandez is a PhD candidate in sociology at York University, a research associate at the Centre for Refugee Studies, and a sessional instructor at McMaster University. His research program is rooted in the coloniality philosophical orientation and contributes
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallContributors / Collaborateurs2026-05-15text/htmlen-USContributors / Collaborateurs2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®92902026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Union Organizing in the Northern Canadian Mining Industry
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989031
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There is currently a crisis of union representation in northern mines. Over the past 30 years, union coverage in the mining sector in Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut has fallen tremendously. Most northern mines were unionized from the 1960s through to the 1990s, significantly increasing the share of wealth and political power claimed by northern mining workers. By 2024, however, only two of the ten producing mines in the northern territories were organized. To some extent, this decline reflects broader trends in unionization rates in extractive industries as a whole: in Canada, unionization rates in mining and forestry fell from 46 per cent in 1981 to 26.3 per cent in 1998, and unionization rates in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallUnion Organizing in the Northern Canadian Mining Industry2026-05-15text/htmlen-USUnion Organizing in the Northern Canadian Mining Industry2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®1441122026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Social Support, Strain, and Surveillance: Peer Relationships and Representation among Migrant Farm Workers in Canada
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989032
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Workplace representation – the process through which workers voice concerns, negotiate conditions, and participate in decision-making – can be a vital tool for improving job quality and worker well-being, addressing substandard working conditions, and alleviating job-related strain.1 It is especially vital for those in precarious employment relationships, where formal voice channels and other forms of protection are often constrained by structural barriers and regulatory limitations. Temporary migrant farm workers in Canada, in particular, encounter multiple intersecting barriers that contribute to job-related strain and contend with a persistent representation gap, leaving them with limited access to meaningful
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallSocial Support, Strain, and Surveillance: Peer Relationships and Representation among Migrant Farm Workers in Canada2026-05-15text/htmlen-USSocial Support, Strain, and Surveillance: Peer Relationships and Representation among Migrant Farm Workers in Canada2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®1302382026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Deskilled and Degraded: The Interaction of Precarious Status and Precarious Employment Trajectories for Migrant Workers in Canada
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989033
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Research has long shown that migrants are overrepresented in low-wage and precarious jobs and are more likely to face harsh working conditions than their citizen counterparts.1 The renewed popularity of temporary labour migration programs in the 2000s has contributed to the phenomenon by providing employers with a flexible workforce with limited substantive rights and differential social inclusion.2 These programs exemplify a broader trend in global migration governance, one in which temporary regular migration pathways are prioritized over permanent immigration.3 The growing prevalence of temporary statuses for various purposes – including work, study, and protection – places migrants in a precarious position, as
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallDeskilled and Degraded: The Interaction of Precarious Status and Precarious Employment Trajectories for Migrant Workers in Canada2026-05-15text/htmlen-USDeskilled and Degraded: The Interaction of Precarious Status and Precarious Employment Trajectories for Migrant Workers in Canada2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®1458122026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Poisoned Fields, Fated Lives: Destiny Politics in A Time to Rise
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989034
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The activist, a young Charan Gill, confronts a Punjabi farm worker dutifully spraying pesticides in the farmlands of British Columbia. "What you spraying there?" he calls out to the young man.1 The farm worker shrugs off Gill, saying that he had not bothered to ask. But Gill persists, instructing the young man to stop spraying against the wind and to wear protective gear. After finally capturing the obedient Punjabi farm worker's attention, Gill hands over a union flyer. The exchange is an invitation for the young man to stop working and protect himself from the poisoned fields of British Columbia – an invitation to take his fated life into his own hands.Four decades later, we watch this scene unfold, and it is one
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallPoisoned Fields, Fated Lives: Destiny Politics in A Time to Rise2026-05-15text/htmlen-USPoisoned Fields, Fated Lives: Destiny Politics in A Time to Rise2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®1058462026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Exceptional Exceptionalism: Does Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code Authorize the Federal Government to Terminate or Suspend the Freedom to Strike by Executive Order?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989035
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This research note began its life as an expert witness affidavit that I was retained to provide by CaleyWray, the law firm representing the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (tcrc) in its challenge to the federal government's use of section 107 of the Canada Labour Code (clc) to end an otherwise lawful strike and lockout in August 2024. The tcrc was involved in negotiations to renew collective agreements with two major Canadian railways, Canadian National (cn) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (cpkc).1 Bargaining had reached an impasse earlier that year, and a majority of union members voted to authorize a strike. On 9 May 2024, the Liberal government's Minister of Labour, Steven MacKinnon, made a referral to the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallExceptional Exceptionalism: Does Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code Authorize the Federal Government to Terminate or Suspend the Freedom to Strike by Executive Order?2026-05-15text/htmlen-USExceptional Exceptionalism: Does Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code Authorize the Federal Government to Terminate or Suspend the Freedom to Strike by Executive Order?2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®994632026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15From "Offender" to "Employee": Canadian Prison Labour and Neoliberal Citizenship
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989036
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In Canadian federal penitentiaries, nearly a third of prisoners are workers. Supervised and managed by corcan, a special operating agency (sao) of Correctional Service Canada (csc), about 4,000 prisoners in 39 facilities across Canada do a variety of jobs in light manufacturing and other industries. Many of corcan's workers are assigned work placements as part of their correctional plan. Turnover is high; a federal prisoner spends, on average, between three and six months working for corcan, and capacity levels at corcan sites can fluctuate, reducing the number of job placements available.1 corcan sells a wide variety of products and services, including desks, lockers, apparel, stationery, institutional laundry and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallFrom "Offender" to "Employee": Canadian Prison Labour and Neoliberal Citizenship2026-05-15text/htmlen-USFrom "Offender" to "Employee": Canadian Prison Labour and Neoliberal Citizenship2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®1926712026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Good Enough to Work, Good Enough to Stay: Domestic Work, Feminist Publishing, and the Archive
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989037
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The International Coalition to End Domestic Exploitation (intercede) was a Toronto-based organization that began to mobilize in 1979 in response to the growing crisis of abuse faced by domestic workers as a result of exclusionary immigration laws and the absence of workplace rights. Its initial project was to organize in defence of the case of the "seven Jamaican women," in which the federal Department of Immigration attempted to deport seven domestic workers after these women applied in 1976 to sponsor their children as immigrants to Canada.1 The case garnered widespread media attention, and a national campaign was coordinated by several domestic workers' organizations. As a result of this campaign, six of the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallGood Enough to Work, Good Enough to Stay: Domestic Work, Feminist Publishing, and the Archive2026-05-15text/htmlen-USGood Enough to Work, Good Enough to Stay: Domestic Work, Feminist Publishing, and the Archive2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®1095962026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Canada's Women's Land Army: Wartime Labour and the Power of Visual Evidence
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989038
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During both world wars, women and girls across Canada were mobilized for farm work. The nation approached food production with a sense of urgency, and with fewer men to toil the land, farmers demanded a solution. Influenced by the Women's Land Army in America, Australia, and the UK, housing was arranged in fruit-growing districts of Ontario and British Columbia to host thousands of female farm workers. Yet after the wars were over, their labour was largely forgotten.Those who occupy the most marginalized positions within a workforce have often lacked the means or opportunity to document their experiences. Archival records are frequently shaped by institutional or policy-driven perspectives, reflecting the views of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallCanada's Women's Land Army: Wartime Labour and the Power of Visual Evidence2026-05-15text/htmlen-USCanada's Women's Land Army: Wartime Labour and the Power of Visual Evidence2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®1240432026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15A Timely Exhibit in a Gem of an Archive: Labour, Feminism, Trade, and Free Trade, Then and Now
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989039
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What could be timelier than an archival exhibit on the anti-free-trade struggles of the 1980s? Canadian news is replete with Trump's tariff temper tantrums, unemployed workers in industries devastated by his trade war, and the latest federal government excuses for lowering their elbows and begging the US for a trade deal. Former National Action Committee (nac) president Judy Rebick, who has a long feminist memory, noted recently that "they should have listened to us about free trade,"1 recalling the broadly based progressive alliance that warned about the dangers of an economy integrated with and beholden to US interests. It is difficult not to notice the contrast between spirited opposition from the labour
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallA Timely Exhibit in a Gem of an Archive: Labour, Feminism, Trade, and Free Trade, Then and Now2026-05-15text/htmlen-USA Timely Exhibit in a Gem of an Archive: Labour, Feminism, Trade, and Free Trade, Then and Now2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®482672026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Democracy's Decline: What's Class Got to Do with It?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989040
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In the past decade, concern over democratic decline across Western countries has advanced from increasingly shrill warnings by essayists in magazines like The Atlantic and The Baffler to the creation of a wholly new academic subfield covering "democratic backsliding." Shelves at university libraries are crammed with books diagnosing democracy's ills. Most track the problems back to the rise of populism, a term that acts as a catch-all concept for political behaviour marked by high levels of personalism, authoritarianism, and a break with accepted democratic norms. In one particularly influential account, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt's How Democracies Die, things go awry for democracies primarily when norms of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallDemocracy's Decline: What's Class Got to Do with It?2026-05-15text/htmlen-USDemocracy's Decline: What's Class Got to Do with It?2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®526012026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15The Persistent Roots of Racial Capitalism in the Era of Digital Platforms
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989041
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What does the expansion of digital platforms mean for the lives of people of colour in the Global South and for those in migration? This essay navigates this question using the theoretical framework of racial capitalism. The essay begins by addressing what racial capitalism is and what this theoretical approach contributes to analysis, as compared with a Marxist framework. This is followed by a critical review of three books that talk about racial capitalism in social reproduction, migration, border control, and digital platforms; it dives into the alternatives to racial capitalism that have been envisioned and, finally, applies the theoretical analysis of racial capitalism to a fourth book, a text on digital
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallThe Persistent Roots of Racial Capitalism in the Era of Digital Platforms2026-05-15text/htmlen-USThe Persistent Roots of Racial Capitalism in the Era of Digital Platforms2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®722782026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Ships of State: Literature and the Seaman's Labour in Proto-Imperial Britain by Laurie Ellinghausen (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989042
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This book examines the imagery of the "common seaman's labour" in an emerging British imperial identity in the 17th century. (4) Ellinghausen argues that the maritime industries of the North Atlantic from the British Isles – fishing and mercantile seafaring, and associated shipbuilding – were key to an emerging consciousness about what a British empire should be: one that accommodated the desire for upward social mobility among maritime working people and the bourgeoisie. Representations of the labour in such industries in specific texts from the period defined such consciousness. Ellinghausen discusses the early Newfoundland cod fishery from the perspective of promotional works, especially Richard Whitbourne's A
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallShips of State: Literature and the Seaman's Labour in Proto-Imperial Britain by Laurie Ellinghausen (review)2026-05-15text/htmlen-USShips of State: Literature and the Seaman's Labour in Proto-Imperial Britain by Laurie Ellinghausen (review)2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®108652026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Claiming the City: A Global History of Workers' Fight for Municipal Socialism by Shelton Stromquist (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989043
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The city plays an understated role in the broader history of socialism. Given that socialists generally speak to the necessity of attaining power at a national – or at least a regional – level in order to address broad inequities, this seems appropriate. Modern cities exist as subunits of broader polities and generally lack the constitutional and economic power to address deeply rooted social relations. In Claiming the City, Shelton Stromquist argues that this perspective is a mistake. Throughout his rich career as a labour historian, he has explored the ways in which the experiences of working-class communities constitute the bedrock of class identity and activity. It is at the local level, in the city, he argues
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallClaiming the City: A Global History of Workers' Fight for Municipal Socialism by Shelton Stromquist (review)2026-05-15text/htmlen-USClaiming the City: A Global History of Workers' Fight for Municipal Socialism by Shelton Stromquist (review)2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®97632026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15After Redress: Japanese Canadian and Indigenous Struggles for Justice ed. by Kirsten Emiko McAllister and Mona Oikawa (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989044
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A tanka poem by Takeo Ujo Nakano, written just after the 1988 Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement (jcra), hangs in my grandparents' home. The accompanying English translation reads: "Our dark cloud of a half century dissipated,/ The fairest day/ In Japanese-Canadian history/ Dawns./ Our joy is unsurpassable." When I asked my grandmother about the piece, she was dismissive. While my nisei grandparents – working-class people with limited means – benefitted from the $21,000 payments granted by the jcra, they were ambivalent about redress. The dark cloud of internment, largely undissipated, has continued to shadow the narrative of their lives.After Redress is a wide-ranging investigation of these kinds of lingering
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallAfter Redress: Japanese Canadian and Indigenous Struggles for Justice ed. by Kirsten Emiko McAllister and Mona Oikawa (review)2026-05-15text/htmlen-USAfter Redress: Japanese Canadian and Indigenous Struggles for Justice ed. by Kirsten Emiko McAllister and Mona Oikawa (review)2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®105302026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15A Political Economy of Canadian Broadcasting: Public Good Versus Private Profit by David Skinner (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989045
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This deep and wide-ranging history of the regulation of Canadian broadcasting combines venerable Canadian scholarly literatures in communications, political economy, and the history of state-owned and private-owned broadcasting. It is of wider importance than just broadcasting history, as the author justly believes that the mass media is a product of, and given form by, industrialization as well as political structures. "The development of broadcasting in Canada undoubtedly took a unique path, but its form and content were contextualized by the larger pressures of commodification and the dynamics of transnational productive relations." (105–6) The book is theoretically informed, thoroughly grounded in both the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallA Political Economy of Canadian Broadcasting: Public Good Versus Private Profit by David Skinner (review)2026-05-15text/htmlen-USA Political Economy of Canadian Broadcasting: Public Good Versus Private Profit by David Skinner (review)2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®95792026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Law at Work: The Coercion and Co-option of the Working Class by Harry Glasbeek (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989046
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In his latest book, Law at Work: The Coercion and Co-option of the Working Class, Harry Glasbeek uses a Marxist analysis to expose the longue-durée history of the law and its role in perpetuating capitalist social relations, in turn structurally reproducing inequality. He writes in a very clear, accessible style that appears to be aimed to educate the worker as opposed to the academic or legal expert. Glasbeek's main argument is that "we cannot look to the contract-based capitalist system to be a road to freedom, to self-fulfilment and contentment." (7) The essays in his book are organized to deal with various aspects in the history of labour relations and their evolution in law, particularly in Canada, the United
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallLaw at Work: The Coercion and Co-option of the Working Class by Harry Glasbeek (review)2026-05-15text/htmlen-USLaw at Work: The Coercion and Co-option of the Working Class by Harry Glasbeek (review)2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®90842026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Place Émilie-Gamelin. 200 ans de cohabitation sociale by Camille Champagne-Tremblay et Martin Petitclerc (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989047
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Depuis plusieurs décennies, la place Émilie-Gamelin se démarque dans le paysage du centre-ville montréalais. Dans le cadre d'une exposition présentée à l'Écomusée du fier monde, Camille Champagne-Tremblay et Martin Petitclerc proposent d'examiner deux siècles d'histoire afin de retracer les origines de cette place publique et du quartier environnant, notamment sous l'angle de l'itinérance. Ce faisant, la candidate à la maîtrise et le professeur au département d'histoire de l'Université du Québec à Montréal livrent une réflexion importante sur les rapports sociaux qui s'inscrivent dans le territoire urbain.À l'entrée de la salle d'exposition se dresse une imposante œuvre photographique. C'est le portrait d›une femme
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallPlace Émilie-Gamelin. 200 ans de cohabitation sociale by Camille Champagne-Tremblay et Martin Petitclerc (review)2026-05-15text/htmlen-USPlace Émilie-Gamelin. 200 ans de cohabitation sociale by Camille Champagne-Tremblay et Martin Petitclerc (review)2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®98362026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15We Always Had a Union: The New York Hotel Workers' Union, 1912–1953 by Shaun Richman (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989048
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When thinking about militant organizing, the Waldorf-Astoria, Plaza, or Belmont are hardly the first places to spring to mind. Yet for the waiters, bellhops, line cooks, and chambermaids who staffed New York's luxury palaces in the early to mid-20th century, these extravagant spaces represented sites of class struggle. In this compelling study, historian and labour organizer Shaun Richman reconstructs how union activists developed a slew of tactics ranging from walkouts during peak dining hours, targeted boycotts and picketing, and on some occasions, sabotage. Against the backdrop of a highly gendered and racialized industry, hospitality workers sought an end to disciplinary fines, the withholding of tips, and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallWe Always Had a Union: The New York Hotel Workers' Union, 1912–1953 by Shaun Richman (review)2026-05-15text/htmlen-USWe Always Had a Union: The New York Hotel Workers' Union, 1912–1953 by Shaun Richman (review)2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®108312026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15The Working Class and Politics in Canada ed. by Jacob Robbins-Kanter et al. (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989049
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Mainstream political scientists have often treated class as analytically irrelevant. At best, they tend to situate class as a residual category overshadowed by region, ethnicity, or language, rather than a central and enduring axis of political life. It was therefore refreshing to read an edited collection by a group of political scientists that recentres class and calls into question the discipline's longstanding aversion to labour and working-class politics.The volume's four parts trace multiple dimensions of working-class politics in Canada. The first section, "Political Science, Capitalism, and the Working Class," sets out the book's critique of disciplinary neglect. Dennis Pilon makes a notable contribution by
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallThe Working Class and Politics in Canada ed. by Jacob Robbins-Kanter et al. (review)2026-05-15text/htmlen-USThe Working Class and Politics in Canada ed. by Jacob Robbins-Kanter et al. (review)2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®86302026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Oil Money: Middle East Petrodollars and the Transformation of US Empire, 1967–1988 by David Wight (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989050
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In Oil Money: Middle East Petrodollars and the Transformation of US Empire, 1967–1988, historian David Wight explores the development, sustainment, and geopolitical consequences of what he labels the "petrodollar order." Wight argues that petrodollar profits (moneys procured from petroleum sales) of oil-rich Middle East and North Africa (mena) states fundamentally transformed the relationship between mena and US empire. Prior to the long 1970s, US government and oil companies, through a system of "cooperative international empire", were able to secure cheap crude from oil-exporting mena states, spurring economic development for the US and its allies. (5) However, this system was radically disrupted in the early
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallOil Money: Middle East Petrodollars and the Transformation of US Empire, 1967–1988 by David Wight (review)2026-05-15text/htmlen-USOil Money: Middle East Petrodollars and the Transformation of US Empire, 1967–1988 by David Wight (review)2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®100082026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Invested in Crisis: Public Sector Pensions Against the Future by Tom Fraser (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989051
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Tom Fraser's Invested in Crisis offers a critical account of how Canadian public pension funds turned to real estate and infrastructure investment on a staggering scale, and the detrimental consequences of attaching the retirement incomes of millions of Canadian workers to the exploitation of tenants, workers, public services, and ecological systems around the world. If we are to resist financial capitalism's dismantling of the welfare state, then it is essential to understand that public pension funds have furthered the privatization of housing, services, and infrastructure over the past four decades. Fraser's book is an essential contribution to this kind of public education and to the emerging strategy debate on
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallInvested in Crisis: Public Sector Pensions Against the Future by Tom Fraser (review)2026-05-15text/htmlen-USInvested in Crisis: Public Sector Pensions Against the Future by Tom Fraser (review)2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®94312026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Salud y Shalom: Conversations with Jewish Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade by Joseph Butwin (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989052
<p></p>
Between 1936 and 1938, nearly 3000 Americans volunteered to defend the Spanish Republican government against an alliance of fascists, monarchists, and Catholic conservatives. The Nationalist forces received assistance from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, while the Popular Front government of socialists, anarchists, and communists relied on support from the Soviet Union and International Brigades from different countries. The group of recruits that travelled to Europe from the United States was called the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (alb). Approximately 75 per cent of those who enlisted were members or affiliated with the Communist Party, and nearly 33 per cent of them were Jewish. Joseph Butwin's Salud y Shalom:
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallSalud y Shalom: Conversations with Jewish Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade by Joseph Butwin (review)2026-05-15text/htmlen-USSalud y Shalom: Conversations with Jewish Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade by Joseph Butwin (review)2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®87822026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Shifting Gears: Canadian Autoworkers and the Changing Landscape of Labour Politics by Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989053
<p></p>
The Canadian Auto Workers was born in struggle. The Canadian region separated from the US-based uaw in 1985 over their divergent responses to the unfolding industrial crisis. The caw's tough "no concessions" stance captured the imagination of many Canadians, making the union, and its first leader, Bob White, the standard-bearer for activist "social unionism" in Canada. Picking up where others left off, Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage offer us a political history of what happened next. In doing so, Shifting Gears makes the case that "the union's strong commitment to, and exercise of, a social unionist politics has, over time, played a diminished role in its politics." (236) Politically, you might say the union lost
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallShifting Gears: Canadian Autoworkers and the Changing Landscape of Labour Politics by Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage (review)2026-05-15text/htmlen-USShifting Gears: Canadian Autoworkers and the Changing Landscape of Labour Politics by Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage (review)2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®96572026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Remapping an Ableist World: Disability and Oppression Under Capitalism by Vera Chouinard (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989054
<p></p>
"The point of knowledge is not merely to understand the world but to change it for the better," writes Vera Chouinard. (35) Chouinard sadly passed away on 11 January 2026, but her message carries on through Remapping an Ableist World.For Chouinard, disability was both a professional object of study and highly personal. She was a professor emeritus of Earth, Environment, and Society at McMaster University, with a record of academic contributions about disability and human geography. She was also a disabled woman. Her impassioned monograph weaves together scholarly research and autoethnographic reflection, with a particular focus on ableism, which Chouinard calls "a regime of power, privilege, and oppression
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallRemapping an Ableist World: Disability and Oppression Under Capitalism by Vera Chouinard (review)2026-05-15text/htmlen-USRemapping an Ableist World: Disability and Oppression Under Capitalism by Vera Chouinard (review)2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®90212026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15A Brilliant Red Thread: Revolutionary Writings from Don Hamerquist by Don Hamerquist and Luis Brennan (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989055
<p></p>
Although it may not be apparent from his scant record of formal publications, Don Hamerquist has been a fixture of the North American radical left for close to seven decades – an organizer, theorist, and mentor to generations of militants across a range of ideological perspectives and organizational structures. A Brilliant Red Thread collects twenty years of Hamerquist's writings, culled primarily from correspondence and discussion documents shared with comrades since the early 2000s. Marshalling a lifetime's worth of knowledge and experience, the book advances an incisive and penetrating set of critical reflections on challenges facing contemporary popular leftist movements, from questions of organizational
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallA Brilliant Red Thread: Revolutionary Writings from Don Hamerquist by Don Hamerquist and Luis Brennan (review)2026-05-15text/htmlen-USA Brilliant Red Thread: Revolutionary Writings from Don Hamerquist by Don Hamerquist and Luis Brennan (review)2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®98532026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Tommy Douglas and the Quest for Medicare in Canada by Gregory P. Marchildon (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989056
<p></p>
The history of social democracy in Canada is rife with long biographies and glowing tributes to Tommy Douglas, leader of the ccf in Saskatchewan from 1944–1961 and later leader of the federal ndp from 1961–1971. Often called Canada's "father of Medicare," amongst followers and supporters of the ccf/ndp, Douglas' legacy certainly outshines other stalwarts of the social democratic movement. To be sure, there are many critics of the left and right of Douglas' time in office, but few would take issue with the notion that Douglas played an oversized role in laying the foundation of Canada's current public healthcare system, warts and all.It is in this spirit that Greg Marchildon has crafted this exceptionally well
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallTommy Douglas and the Quest for Medicare in Canada by Gregory P. Marchildon (review)2026-05-15text/htmlen-USTommy Douglas and the Quest for Medicare in Canada by Gregory P. Marchildon (review)2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®107722026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Statesman of the Piano: Jazz, Race and History in the Life of Lou Hooper by Sean Mills, Eric Fillion et Désirée Rochat (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989057
<p></p>
Il est rare que l'archive se retrouve dans nos bibliothèques personnelles, au sein d'un ouvrage. Il est encore plus inhabituel que celle-ci soit accompagnée de réflexions méthodologiques et analytiques par des chercheurs et chercheuses de diverses disciplines. Pourtant, c'est ce que propose Statesman of the Piano: Jazz, Race and History in the Life of Lou Hooper, dirigé par Sean Mills, Eric Fillion et Désirée Rochat. Le projet du livre est né de la découverte, par Sean Mills, du fonds d'archives du musicien et éducateur Louis Stanley Hooper (1894–1977), surnommé Lou Hooper, conservé à Bibliothèque et Archives Canada. Ce fonds contient de nombreux documents au sujet de la carrière prolifique de Hooper en tant que
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallStatesman of the Piano: Jazz, Race and History in the Life of Lou Hooper by Sean Mills, Eric Fillion et Désirée Rochat (review)2026-05-15text/htmlen-USStatesman of the Piano: Jazz, Race and History in the Life of Lou Hooper by Sean Mills, Eric Fillion et Désirée Rochat (review)2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®104602026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism 1933–1943 by Andy Friend (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989058
<p></p>
Perhaps all history is at once both local and transnational but this might be particularly the case for art history: an image or a sculpture is at once material, rooted in a particular local context, and ideological, participating in a dialogue traversing much space and time. To map an artistic movement, then, involves tracing the trajectories of individual participants, locating their works in relation to others in a world of art and ideas and locating all this within relevant political and economic contexts. It is a tremendous challenge and one that Andy Friend has met superbly in Comrades in Art. Simply put, this is an essential text for anyone interested in antifascist art of the Great Depression and the Second
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallComrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism 1933–1943 by Andy Friend (review)2026-05-15text/htmlen-USComrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism 1933–1943 by Andy Friend (review)2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®117832026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Unjust Transition: The Future of Fossil Fuel Workers ed. by Emily Eaton et al. (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989059
<p></p>
At the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (cop30) in Brazil last year, the concept of "just transition" dominated the agenda. Governments pledged new action plans and support for workers and communities facing the shift away from fossil fuels. Canada echoed this enthusiasm, supporting investments and retraining as well as community support. Yet, behind the policy language and international agreements lies a more complicated reality. In all the discussion we hear on international stages and forums, what is often missing are the actual voices and experiences of those same workers. What does a just transition really mean to them? How can we design a strategy that guarantees a future for those who rely
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallUnjust Transition: The Future of Fossil Fuel Workers ed. by Emily Eaton et al. (review)2026-05-15text/htmlen-USUnjust Transition: The Future of Fossil Fuel Workers ed. by Emily Eaton et al. (review)2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®99052026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15A Feisty Feminist Politics of Care: Wages for Housework Activism in Toronto, 1970s–1980s
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989060
<p></p>
Wages for Housework (wfh) was an international group with sharp Marxist feminist analysis, a feisty politics, and media savvy that highlighted the importance of women's unpaid and underpaid caring work. The group emerged in Europe in the 1970s and then quickly expanded to form chapters across North America. The international leaders of this movement – Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Silvia Federici, and Selma James – and other wfh activists argued that women's inequality and lack of power were rooted in their responsibility for unpaid household labour, and that part of the solution was wages for housework, paid by the state, to all women. They pointed to the failure of traditional Marxist politics to recognize the value of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallA Feisty Feminist Politics of Care: Wages for Housework Activism in Toronto, 1970s–1980s2026-05-15text/htmlen-USA Feisty Feminist Politics of Care: Wages for Housework Activism in Toronto, 1970s–1980s2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®615422026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15A Place to Call Our Own: Wages for Housework and the Winnipeg Women's Building
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989061
<p></p>
The National Grand Opening of the Women's Building will be held today, at the beautiful three-storey brick building owned and operated by women for women … in response to expressed needs from a variety of women's organizations, particularly groups involving low-income women, for a place to hold meetings, to have counselling and referral services, to relax and socialize – a place to call our own.The Winnipeg Women's Building (wwb) opened in Winnipeg's North End in 1979, offering a range of services, supports, political organizing opportunities, and social events for women. Its offerings were unique in that they amalgamated feminist praxis, class analysis, and lesbian politics, centring the needs of marginalized
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallA Place to Call Our Own: Wages for Housework and the Winnipeg Women's Building2026-05-15text/htmlen-USA Place to Call Our Own: Wages for Housework and the Winnipeg Women's Building2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®593812026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15The India Mahila Association, Ellen Woodsworth, and Wages for Housework in 1980s Vancouver
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989062
<p></p>
In the early 1980s, major Mother's Day celebrations took place in Grandview Park in East Vancouver.1 These were not saccharine, corporate Mother's Day celebrations. They were radical, feminist celebrations of the crucial, hard, unrecognized, and unpaid work of mothers by a range of marginalized groups. Ellen Woodsworth, a central organizer of these events, spoke at the 1980 celebration. Her words appeared in Kinesis under the subheading "May 11 is Mother's Day. When is pay day?"We come from a lot of different situations whether single, married, or lesbian, asian or caucasian, young or old. We are all poor and we are all working damned hard. We are all doing very similar kinds of [domestic/caring] work
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallThe India Mahila Association, Ellen Woodsworth, and Wages for Housework in 1980s Vancouver2026-05-15text/htmlen-USThe India Mahila Association, Ellen Woodsworth, and Wages for Housework in 1980s Vancouver2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®647602026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15Unpaid Work and Feminist Alliances across Difference: Three Local Studies of Wages for Housework Organizing in Canada
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989063
<p></p>
Wages for Housework (wfh) was an international group with a sharp Marxist feminist analysis that highlighted the importance of women's unpaid and underpaid caring work. The three articles gathered here explore the activism of wfh and Wages Due Lesbians (wdl, a separate but deeply connected organization) in Canada with a focus on different cities: Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. They are part of a larger ten-year research project that analyzes Indigenous, immigrant, racialized, and low-income women's activism in Canada from the 1960s to the1990s.1 The political activities of wfh in Canada in a variety of contexts, as these studies indicate, exerted significant influence on marginalized women's politics in the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/537/image/coversmallUnpaid Work and Feminist Alliances across Difference: Three Local Studies of Wages for Housework Organizing in Canada2026-05-15text/htmlen-USUnpaid Work and Feminist Alliances across Difference: Three Local Studies of Wages for Housework Organizing in Canada2026-05-152026TWOProject MUSE®225602026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-05-15