Building a Better World 2nd Edition

An Introduction to Trade Unionism in Canada, 2nd edition

Errol Black, Jim Silver

Substantially revised and updated, this widely used introductory text emphasizes how values, objectives and activities of unions are shaped in the face of employer resistance and hostile governments. It includes an analysis of why workers form unions; organization and democracy; collective bargaining and grievances; historical development; and gains unions have achieved for their members and all working people. It also examines the challenges created by rapid economic and technological change, the rise of neoliberalism and the increasingly contingent and acialized character of the labour force.

Contents

• Introduction
• Workplace Citizenship: Union Roles and Structures
• Acting for Members, Acting for Society
• Creative Organizing and Determined Militancy: A Brief History of Trade Unions in Canada
• Acting Politically
• Facing the Twenty-First Century

About the Authors

Errol Black is a retired university professor and current municipal politician in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada. He has been an activist with the New Democratic Party for several years.
Black was born in Brandon, Manitoba. He is a Professor Emeritus at Brandon University, where he taught for many years in the fields of Economics and Industrial Relations. He is the co-editor of such books as Hard bargains : the Manitoba labour movement confronts the 1990s (1991), A square deal for all : historical essays on labour in Brandon (2000) and Building a better world : an introduction to trade unionism in Canada (2001). He has written several pieces for Canadian Dimension magazine, and has done research for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. During the early 1980s, Black argued that university president Harold J. Perkins was ruling the university in an autocratic manner, and supported his removal by the Board of Governors. He later served as president of the Manitoba Organization of Faculty Associations in the 1990s.
Black supported reforms to the Ontario Labour Relations Act introduced by the government of Bob Rae in the 1990s, and strongly opposed efforts to bring “right-to-work” and workfare legislation into Manitoba. He has also written in support of Canada’s public health care system, criticized the financial dependence of governments on gambling revenues, argued for increases to the minimum wage, and lobbied against spending public money on a new arena for the Winnipeg Jets hockey team in the 1990s. He was a particularly strong critic of the governments of Ralph Klein and Mike Harris.
Black was elected to the Brandon City Council in 1998, and has been re-elected two times since then. He won the New Democratic Party’s Brandon—Souris nomination in 2000 over Wayne Langlois, and finished fourth against Tory candidate Rick Borotsik. He is considered to be on the left-wing of the NDP, and opposed the party’s drift toward the “Third Way” socialism favoured by Tony Blair.
In 2001, he introduced a motion for Brandon to adopt one of the toughest anti-smoking motions anywhere in Canada. Two years later, he pushed the NDP government of Gary Doer to extend labour rights to farm workers. Two years later, he called for the establishment of urban reserves in Brandon. In 2005, he wrote a piece criticizing the Doer government’s record on labour issues.

Professor Silver’s research interests are in inner-city, poverty-related and community development issues. His most recent book is In Their Own Voices: Urban Aboriginal Community Development. Among other books, he is the co-author of Building a Better World: An Introduction to Trade Unionism in Canada, a revised, second edition of which will appear in 2008; and editor of Solutions that Work: Fighting Poverty in Winnipeg. He is co-editor of Doing Community Economic Development, scheduled for release in 2007. Some other recent publications include the following monographs, published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Manitoba and available for free download from their website: Unearthing Resistance: Aboriginal Women in the Lord Selkirk Park Housing Developments; Safety and Security Issues in Winnipeg’s Inner City Communities: Bridging the Community-Police Divide (co-authored with Elizabeth Comack); North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Public Housing Development: History, Comparative Context, Prospects; and Gentrification in West Broadway? Contested Space in a Winnipeg Inner City Neighbourhood.

Professor Silver did an M.A. in Political Science at Carleton University, and completed a Ph.D. in Politics at Sussex University in 1981. He started teaching on a full-time basis at the UW in 1982. He was the recipient of the UW’s Robson Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1985, the UW’s Atchison Award for Community Service and the Joe Zuken Citizen Activist Award in 1997, and is the 2007 recipient of the UW’s Erica and Arnold Rogers Award for Excellence in Research. He has been Department Chair since 2006.

Professor Silver is also the Co-Director of the UW’s new Urban and Inner-City Studies program.

Excerpt

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