In Search of Competitive Efficiency: Labour Process Flexibility in Canadian Newsprint Mills

This paper focuses on the strategies for production and work reorganization pursued in the Canadian newsprint industry during the 1990s. Many newsprint mill managers view new pulping technologies and increased labour process flexibility as the important keys to success in their never-ending quest to remain competitive in the U.S. market. These strategies are discussed in the context of two underlying themes: the nature of the particular competitive pressures faced by Canadian newsprint producers in the early 1990s and the specific nature of the labour process in newsprint mills. Evidence points to the central importance of achieving functional labour flexibility in newsprint mills and to the fact that numerical labour flexibility is not a viable strategy, given the continuous-process nature of the industry.
The Economics of Production, Technological Change, and Cost Competitiveness in the Newsprint Industry
Work Practices and Labour Conventions in the Newsprint Industry
Flexibility and the Quest for Competitive Efficiency in Canadian Newsprint Mills     

Graph Theory Interpretation of Flow Matrices: A Note on Maximization Procedures for Identifying Significant Links

A maximization procedure for identifying significant links in a flow matrix is described and its use illustrated. The method appears to have advantages over primary-flow linkage methods and over methods based on flow-combination procedures.     

Making federalism work—The state perspective

Making Federalism Work: Towards a More Efficient, Equitable and Responsive Federal System, edited by Russell Mathews. Centre for Research on Federal Financial Relations, ANU, Canberra, 1976. pp. xiv + 219.

Labor and the Constitution 1972–1975: The Whitlam Years in Australian Government, edited by Gareth Evans. Heinemann, Melbourne, 1977. pp. xv + 383.

The Government of Tasmania, by W. A. Townsley. University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, 1976. pp. xii + 169.

The Government of Victoria, by Jean Holmes. University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, 1976. pp. ix + 205.

The Government of South Australia, by Dean Jaensch. University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, 1977. pp. vii + 203.

Administrative Federalism: Selected Documents in Australian Intergovernmental Relations, compiled land edited by Kenneth Wiltshire. University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, 1977. pp. xiii + 309.     

Books: Notes & reviews

Australian

T. Brennan, New Community, Problems and Policies, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1973, pp. 353, $3.95.

J. E. Richardson, Patterns of Australian Federalism, Centre for Research on Federal Financial Relations, Research Monograph No. 1, ANU, Canberra, 1973, pp. 142 + x, $4.00.

Australian Women in Governments Past and Present, revised as of July, 1973, pp. 15. Survey of Women in Local Government in Australia, 3rd edn, September, 1973, pp. 60. Both compiled by A. Viola Smith, 6 Baden Road, Neutral Bay, NSW 2089.

The Government Law Newsletter (the Newsletter of the Government Law Interest Group of the Australasian Universities Law Schools Association), No. 1, August, 1970; from No. 2, March, 1972, issued twice a year. Editor: Stan Hotop, University of Sydney Law School, 173–5 Phillip St, Sydney, NSW 2000. Free.

Australian Law Librarians’ Group Newsletter, No. 1, December, 1973. Six times a year. Editor: Robert Watt, Law Reform Commission, Box 6, GPO, Sydney, NSW 2001. Free.

Non‐Australian

Jeffrey L. Pressman and Aaron B. Wildavsky, Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland; or, Why It's Amazing that Federal Programs Work at all, This Being a Saga of the Economic Development Administration as Told by Two Sympathetic Observers Who Seek to Build Morals on a Foundation of Ruined Hopes. University of California Press, 1973, pp. 182 + xviii.

Dusan Sidjanski, ed., Political Decision Making Processes: studies in national, comparative and international politics, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Co., Amsterdam, 1973, pp. 237, Dfl 27.50.

P. R. Kaim‐Caudle, Comparative Social Policy and Social Security: A Ten Country Study, Martin Robertson, 1973, pp. viii + 357, £2.25.

Prasanta K. Pattanaik, Voting and Collective Choice. Some Aspects of the Theory of Group Decision‐Making, Cambridge University Press, 1971, pp. viii + 184, $9.50.

Government Publications Review: an international journal, 1 (1), Fall, 1973, quarterly, $US35 p.a. Published by SEBD Publications Inc., 380 Saw Mill River Road, Elmsford, New York 10523.

Bertell Oilman, Alienation: Marx's Conception of Man in Capitalist Society, Cambridge University Press, 1971. pp. 325 + xvi, paperback, £1.80.

L. G. Churchward, The Soviet Intelligentsia: An essay on the social structure and roles of Soviet intellectuals during the 1960s, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. 1973, pp. xiii + 204, $9.85.

Nancy Whittier Heer, Politics and History in the Soviet Union, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, 1971, pp. xi + 319, $12.50.

Leslie R. Marchant, The Phoenix Seat: An Introductory Study of Maoism and the Chinese Communist Quest for a Paradise on Earth, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1973, pp. 276, $7.95.

F. C. Langdon, Japan's Foreign Policy, University of British Columbia Press, 1973, pp. 231 + xiv, $9.00.

Donald F. Miller, Pervasive Politics: a study of the Indian district, Melbourne Politics Monograph, 1972.

Brian Edwards, ed., Right Out—>The Labour Victory 1972, A. H. and A. W. Reed, 1973, pp. 262, $6.50.

Mahdi Elmandjra, The United Nations System: An Analysis, Faber and Faber, London, 1973, pp. 329 + annexes, $16.50.

Gerhard Mally, The European Community in Perspective, the New Europe, the United States and the World, D. C. Heath and Co., Lexington, Massachusetts, 1973, pp. xvi + 349, $11.50.     

Problematizing Labour's Agency: Rescaling Collective Bargaining in British Columbia Pulp and Paper Mills

Abstract: This paper focuses on the contradictory nature and sometimes unintended consequences of workers’ efforts to defend particular communities against the ravages of capital restructuring. In the past decade, pattern collective bargaining in the highly unionized British Columbia pulp and paper industry has faced enormous strains due to intense industry restructuring. Our analysis focuses on the repercussions of actions taken by union locals in two British Columbia towns—Port Alice and Port Alberni—to try to secure the survival of their pulp and paper mills and, even in the case of Port Alice, the continued existence of the community. Our analysis resonates with recent debates surrounding worker agency as well as writing in the 1980s which addressed the often contradictory and problematic nature of workers’ struggles to “defend place”; writing largely neglected in more recent work in labour geography.