{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02886056971514243, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0014992503748125937, 'mean_word_length': 5.079726651480637, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Unions, Equity and the Path to Renewal

UNIONS, EQUITY AND THE PATH TO RENEWAL Janice R. Foley and Patricia L. Baker, Editors. Vancouver, UBC Press 2009 It is open season on unions not just in the political arena, but in the ivory tower as well. The 'crisis' facing organized labour--an ongoing loss of membership, density, legal protection, and political influence--has been experienced differently in different jurisdictions around the world, but just as it has set unions on an increasingly urgent course to respond and adapt to the challenges they face, it has also fomented a great deal of intellectual inquiry as academics and researchers assess and analyze unions' responses, and what these efforts can help us to understand about the present and future state of the labour movement, and about workers' experience more broadly. Thus the growth of a burgeoning body of literature under the moniker of 'union renewal' or 'organized-labour-in-crisis'. There are, of course, no easy answers to the question of how unions can most effectively renew themselves (nor even to the question of what purpose they should be renewing themselves for) but feminist researchers in the field--of which, thankfully, there are no small number--have flagged one important question: what is the role of equity in rebuilding and revitalizing the labour movement? Indeed, this reviewer would suggest the union crisis/renewal literature typically addresses equity in one of two ways: either as a distraction from (what some consider) more primary goals such as an intensified (albeit romanticized and under-theorized) return to street militancy and class analysis; or, by contrast, as fundamental to reversing the decline of organized labour and correcting the failures of white masculinist labour 'organizing' of the past sixty years. Foley and Baker's collection Unions, Equity and the Path to Renewal falls firmly into the latter camp. Their focus is primarily Canadian (rightly so: while union activists have been keen to exchange strategies internationally, the fact is that Canada has not encountered the same sort of 'crisis' or 'decline' experienced elsewhere in the world, much of which can be attributed to the significance of regional policy (and cultural differences), and covers a broad swath o f research and activism taking place under the equity banner within organized labour. The twelve papers comprising the collection provide both broad overviews of equity gains and histories within the Canadian labour movement, as well as more focused critiques on particular dimensions of identity and equity and the shortcomings of organized labour in Canada on these fronts. …