The Canadian Auto Workers

Preface Introduction Part One: Waiting 1. Making Cars, Remaking People 2.Searching for a New Deal Part Two: The Union Arrives 3. The Breakthrough 4. Recognition 5. Delivering the Goods Part Three: Normal Isn't Normal Anymore 6. The Other Sixties 7. The Candy Man's Gone Part Four: Towards a New Unionism 8. Breaking Away 9. The More Things Change, The More They ... Change Again 10. Building Is Everything Suggested Readings

Bob White, president of the Canadian Auto Workers, is without a doubt the single most influential figure in the Canadian labour movement. Respected by workers and business leaders alike. White has become a major voice in national; affairs. All his life he has bargained hard, and more often that not, won.

Autonomous State provides the first detailed examination of the Canadian auto industry, the country's most important economic sector, in the post-war period. In this engrossing book, Dimitry Anastakis chronicles the industry's evolution from the 1973 OPEC embargo to the 1989 Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and looks at its effects on public policy, diplomacy, business enterprise, workers, consumers, and firms. Using an immense array of archival sources, and interviews with some of the key actors in the events, Anastakis examines a fascinating array of topics in recent auto industry and Canadian business and economic history: the impact of new safety, emissions, and fuel economy regulations on the Canadian sector and consumers, the first Chrysler bailout of 1980, the curious life and death of the 1965 Canada-US auto pact, the 'invasion' of Japanese imports and transplant operations, and the end of aggressive auto policy-making with the coming of free trade. More than just an examination of the auto industry, the book provides a rethinking of Canada's tumultuous post-OPEC political and economic evolution, helping to explain the current tribulations of the global auto sector and Canada's place within it.

Follows the evolution of the Canadian Auto Workers union. In the decades after the Second World War, autoworkers were at the forefront of the labor movement. Their union urged members to rally in the streets and use the ballot box to effect change for all working-class people. But by the turn of this century, the Canadian Auto Workers union had begun to pursue a more defensive political direction. Shifting Gears traces the evolution of CAW strategy from transformational activism to transactional politics. Class-based collective action and social democratic electoral mobilization gave way to transactional partnerships as relationships between the union, employers, and governments were refashioned. This new approach was maintained when the CAW merged with the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union in 2013 to create Unifor, Canada's largest private-sector union. Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage explain how and why the union shifted its political tactics, offering a critical perspective on the current state of working-class politics.

This book brings together the voices of contemporary labour leaders, activists, old timers, and academics to discuss the first hundred years of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union.

A examination of the politics of gender in the auto industry and in the labor movement from 1937 to 1979 in southern Ontario. Discusses women's roles in the United Automobile Workers, industrial restructuring and the UAW women's struggle for equality, and relationships between women in the workplace. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Canadian call number: C94-931771-3. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A deep exploration of the experience of work in Canada Canada, A Working History describes the ways in which work has been performed in Canada from the pre-colonial period to the present day. Work is shaped by a wide array of influences, including gender, class, race, ethnicity, geography, economics, and politics. It can be paid or unpaid, meaningful or alienating, but it is always essential. The work experience led people to form unions, aspire to management roles, pursue education, form professional associations, and seek self-employment. Work is also often in our cultural consciousness: it is pondered in song, lamented in literature, celebrated in film, and preserved for posterity in other forms of art. It has been driven by technological change, governed by laws, and has been the cause of disputes and the means by which people earn a living in Canada’s capitalist economy. Ennobling, rewarding, exhausting, and sometimes frustrating, work has helped define who we are as Canadians.