P {margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;} Dear colleagues,
We are writing to let people know about two upcoming events launching our new book, Shifting Gears: Canadian Autoworkers and the Changing Landscape of Labour Politics, published by University of British Columbia Press.
Journalist Luke Savage will moderate both the online event on Monday September 9, 2024 and the in-person book launch in Toronto on Friday September 20, 2024. Both events are free and open to the public.
Details of the events are as follows:
Online book launch for Shifting Gears by Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage
Toronto book launch for Shifting Gears by Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage
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Friday September 20, 2024: Workers' Action Centre, 720 Spadina Ave. 2nd floor, Suite 223. Another Story Bookshop will be selling advance copies of the paperback version at the event
- Facebook event page for Toronto launch: https://www.facebook.com/events/1187379669241057
About Shifting Gears:
In the decades following the Second World War, autoworkers were at the forefront of the labour movement. Their union mobilized members to rally in the streets for social change and make their voices heard at election time. 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 the union’s strategy from transformational activism to transactional politics. Postwar autoworkers played a leading role in the fight for redistributive socio-economic policies for all working-class people. Class-based collective action and social democratic electoral mobilization gave way to transactional partnerships at the bargaining table and the ballot box, however, 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 draw on primary sources and in-depth interviews with politicians, union leaders, staff, and activists to explain how and why the union shifted its political tactics. Their critical perspective on the state of working-class politics highlights the challenges faced by unions in a changing economic and political landscape.
This richly detailed and comprehensive analysis of the shifting dynamics of Canadian labour politics will be invaluable to scholars and students of labour history, industrial relations, and political science. It will also find a wider audience among labour movement leaders, activists, and union members.
https://www.ubcpress.ca/shifting-gears
What people are saying about Shifting Gears
“Shifting Gears is a masterful study of the transformation of the Canadian autoworkers from UAW to CAW to Unifor. Ross and Savage’s analysis of the challenges and decisions that moved the union politically is essential reading for anyone interested in unions and politics in Canada.”
-Elaine Bernard, Center for Labor and a Just Economy, Harvard Law School
“Shifting Gears is an excellent read and rich in detail. It does a superb job of providing a historical background and setting the stage for the reader to understand the CAW’s political strategy over the last forty years.”
-Victor G. Devinatz, Department of Management and Quantitative Methods, Illinois State University
In Solidarity,
Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage
Dr. Stephanie Ross
Associate Professor
School of Labour Studies
McMaster University
Kenneth Taylor Hall 714
1280 Main Street West
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
L8S 4L8
stephross@mcmaster.ca
labourstudies.mcmaster.ca
