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Globalisation is often accused of unleashing a race to the bottom in labour regulation and social protection. The evidence suggests otherwise. This column explains how, historically, trade itself was a path to better labour regulation and social entitlements.

Standard trade theory, as invoked by political scientists and economists, would anticipate that workers in Belgium, a small Old World country, rich in labour relative to land, were in a good position to benefit from the wave of globalization before 1914. However, wage increases remained modest and ‘labour’ moved slowly towards adopting a free-trade position. Beginning in 1885, the Belgian labour party backed free trade, but its support was conditional on more and better social legislation. Belgian workers' wellbeing improved in the wave of globalization, but the vehicle was labour and social legislation and not rising wages.

This framework seems to mesh with the economic history of Canada's two central provinces, Ontario and Quebec, around the mid-twentieth century. Quebec was clearly the labour-abundant province, Ontario the capital-abundant region. Many labour reforms were first introduced in Ontario because it was the wealthier region. Since the two regions remained relatively large trading partners - as they were as long as tariffs protected Canadian industry - Quebec had an incentive to match Ontario's labour standards. ( 16) Thus, as long as Canada had effective tariff protection, producers and workers in the export industries in both regions benefited from rising labour standards, while consumers all across the country suffered, a result that was clearly not in the general interest. Since there was an incentive to overprotect, Ottawa's intervention in this area did not come up against provincial antagonism. In fact, sub-national authorities would have welcomed a central authority to coordinate standards. Richard Block and Karen Roberts (2000) provide the most exhaustive study of labour standards as they were in the late 1990s. Their results show a more consistent pattern. They divide provincial, territorial and federal labour standards for 1998 into nine categories reproduced in Table 3. ( 19) Each category is itself a composite of several indicators. Thus the category "paid time off" comprises, but is not restricted to, the variables found in Table 2. The calculation of the index value for each category followed a two-step procedure. First, individual provisions or labour standards in each category were given an index value that was greater the higher the level of employee protection; secondly, each provision was given a weight to represent its importance in its category. ( 20) There is some degree of arbitrariness in all this but, given the large number of standards included in the exercise, it would be expected that errors of commission would cancel out. The first two columns of Table 4 report the sum of the index values (nine labour standards and employment insurance) and the sum of the index values after each provision was deflated by an estimate of coverage. The higher the value, the greater the degree of labour protection. The last column of Table 4 gives the ranking of labour protection of each province and territory in North America in descending order. ( 21 ) Jurisdiction Minimum wage Over-time Paid time off Worker's compensation Federal 4.28 10.00 6.27 6.77 Alberta 1.52 (12) 7.28 (7) 7.61 (2) 6.69 (10) British Columbia 7.04 (1) 10.00 (1) 6.27 (4) 8.58 (3) Manitoba 2.44 (6) 10.00 (1) 5.89 (8) 6.54 (11) New Brunswick 2.44 (6) 3.21 (12) 5.38 (11) 5.99 (12) Newfoundland 2.44 (6) 4.57 (11) 5.53 (10) 7.25 (9) North West Territories 6.12 (3) 10.00 (1) 6.27 (4) 8.82 (1) Nova Scotia 2.44 (6) 1.85 (1) 5.71 (9) 7.32 (8) Ontario 6.12 (3) 7.28 (7) 6.07 (7) 7.64 (7) Prince Edward Island 2.44 (6) 5.92 (10) 5.20 (12) 7.72 (6) Quebec 6.12 (3) 7.28 (7) 7.23 (3) 8.35 (5) Saskatchewan 2.44 (6) 10.00 (1) 9.11 (1) 8.66 (2) Yukon 7.04 (1) 10.00 (1) 6.27 (4) 8.43 (4) Jurisdiction Collective Employment Unjust Occupational Advance notice bargaining equity discharge safety of plant closing and health largescale layoffs Federal 6.00 9.00 7.00 4.33 5.53 Alberta 6.00 (9) 8.10 (11) 7.00 3.07 (5) 0.00 (11) British Columbia 10.00 (1) 8.60 (5) 7.00 3.20 (2) 7.89 (1) Manitoba 9.00 (3) 9.10 (1) 7.00 3.13 (4) 6.03 (5) New Brunswick 8.00 (8) 8.10 (11) 7.00 2.11 (10) 5.71 (6) Newfoundland 9.00 (3) 8.60 (5) 7.00 2.08 (11) 5.03 (8) North West Territories 6.00 (9) 9.00 (3) 7.00 2.18 (8) 3.21 (10) Nova Scotia 6.00 (9) 9.10 (1) 7.00 2.18 (8) 6.37 (4) Ontario 9.00 (3) 8.50 (9) 7.00 3.24 (1) 7.03 (2) Prince Edward Island 9.00 (3) 8.60 (5) 7.00 1.87 (12) 0.00 (11) Quebec 10.00 (1) 9.00 (3) 7.00 2.63 (7) 4.50 (9) Saskatchewan 9.00 (3) 8.60 (5) 7.00 3.00 (6) 6.87 (3) Yukon 6.00 (9) 8.50 (9) 7.00 3.17 (3) 5.21 (7)

This article constructs new measures of worktime for Europe, North America, and Australia, 1870–1913. Great Britain began with the shortest work year and Belgium the longest. By 1913 certain continental countries approached British worktimes, and, consistent with recent findings on real wages, annual hours in Old and New Worlds had converged. Although globalization did not lead to a race to the bottom of worktimes, there is only partial evidence of a race to the top. National work routines, the outcome of different legal, labor, and political histories, mediated relations between hours and income.

This paper brings a historical perspective to debates on worktime differences across OECD countries, exploiting new data sets on hours of work per week, and days and hours of work per year between 1870 and 2000. We contest the popular view that the divergence in worktimes between Europe and North America and Australia is a recent phenomenon. Since 1870 the decline in weekly and annual hours was consistently greater in the Old World; the New World has had fewer days off for the last 130years. Labor power and inequality, held to be important determinants of worktime after 1970, had comparable effects in the period before 1913. We find that given their levels of income in 1870 New World workers supplied relatively too many hours of work.

Globalisation was a fact of life in Europe before 1913, but as trade shares increased, so did wage and employment instability. Faced by growing pressure from workers, national authorities established labour compacts – a packet of labour market regulations and social insurance programmes – that defended workers against the risks they faced in and outside the factory. The labour compact provided workers with insurance because it compressed wage structures. We construct an index of labour market regulations and social insurance schemes for seventeen European countries and find that the extent of the labour compact varied with the level of openness. We conclude that the labour compact gave workers reason to support free trade because it protected them from external risk. Contrary to the received view, globalisation before 1913 was compatible with state intervention. Our findings are consistent with Rodrik's and Agell's for the period after 1945.

The received view is that, across countries and time, strike dimensions trace an empirical regularity. The incidence and duration of contract strikes move in opposite directions over the business cycle: incidence is procyclical and duration countercyclical. The Canadian experience in the interwar years was different. Strike incidence was independent of the business cycle and strike durations fell steadily over the period. A distinct pattern emerged. The 1920s saw a decline in strike activity and steady losses for workers; in the 1930s strike activity gained momentum and there were more worker wins. Our interpretation of this extraordinary episode is based on a new data set collected for the period 1920 to 1939. We evaluate strikes in the context of a war-of-attrition model and estimate the probability of strike outcomes (success, failure, or compromise) and capitulation times (for firms and workers) as functions of firm and striker characteristics. We find that workers capitulated first in the 1920s because firms used replacement workers as part of a larger strategy to break the union movement. In the 1930s, it was firms' turn to capitulate first because they had cut back on resources to fight strikes, even as workers became more belligerent.

Cet article évalue cinq expériences récentes sur le partage du travail au Québec depuis 1994: Bell Canada, Alcan, Papier Scott, Sico et le Ministère de l'environnement et de la faune. Basées sur des évidences de sondages qui démontrent que les heures de travail désirées tendent vers une approximation des heures de travail actuelles, des études antérieures ont souligné des doutes en ce qui concerne les chances de succès des initiatives pour le partage du travail. Par contre, dans les cas que nous avons étudiés les taux de participation dans les programmes volontaires de partage de travail étaient élevés, particulièrement lorsque le coût d'opportunité (les salaires perdus) des travailleurs n'était pas élevé et lorsque les travailleurs avaient déjà été exposé à des expériences de temps de travail réduit et flexible. Les initiatives de partage du travail ont rencontré moins de succès lorsqu'elles étaient obligatoires. Les programmes étudiés suggèrent que les réponses à l'offre de travail sont importantes lors de la création de politiques. Les gouvernements ont un rôle dans la création de politiques qui rendent le partage du travail plus attrayant aux travailleurs en plus de changer les attitudes des travailleurs envers le partage du travail. Nos résultats sont en accord avec les recommendations du Groupe consultatif sur le temps de travail du gouvernement fédéral. /// This paper evaluates five recent experiences of worksharing in Quebec since 1994: Bell Canada, Alcan, Scott Paper, Sico, and the Ministère de l'environnement et de la faune. Based on survey evidence showing that desired work hours tend to approximate actual work hours, previous studies have raised doubts about the likelihood of successful worksharing initiatives. However, in the cases we have studied, participation rates in voluntary worksharing programs were high, especially where the worker's sacrifice (lost wages) was not great and where workers had previous experience with reduced and flexible worktime. Worksharing initiatives were less successful when they were mandatory. The programs studied point to the importance of labour-supply responses in policy design. Governments have a role to play in designing policy that makes worksharing more attractive to workers and then changes their attitudes toward it. Our findings are consistent with the recommendations of the federal government's Advisory Group on Working Time.

Social sciences recently witnessed an increase in multidisciplinary studies. Economists are part of this movement. Do they have an impact on other disciplines? Few studies are concerned with the transfer of knowledge from one discipline to another. Our paper tries to shed some light on this issue in the specific case of the contribution of economics to historical research in Canada in the last three decades. Is the use of economic tools widespread? Does it follow an upward trend over the period? Is it related to research topic, period treated or historiographical tradition? Is there a difference between Anglophone and Francophone historians? These are some of the questions explored.

Based largely on the Fifteenth Annual Report of the U.S. Department of Labor, published in 1900, we have built a sample of wages and hours for roughly fifty countries in six continents that covers the period 1890-1900. The Report, which is drawn from official (national) publications, gives information on normal or usual hours and earnings per week at the establishment level. To our knowledge, this is the most extensive data set of its kind totaling about 15,000 observations. We combine the data set with other country-specific evidence to derive implications about labour supply. The data reveal a cross-country supply curve that was markedly backward-bending. In addition, for a given wage level, we find a positive relation between a country's per-capita income and work hours. We interpret the patterns by proposing a standard utility function in consumption and hours of work, where a minimal level of consumption is introduced as a constraint. We interpret that minimum more broadly than biological subsistence. Rather minimal consumption is assumed to increase with the average income of a country. We also explore the possible role of climate in affecting the consumption constraint. Given the size of the data set, although coverage is uneven, we are able to estimate labour supply curves within countries and regions, in addition to making overall comparisons of work hours across countries. Our preliminary work suggests that a consumption constraint played a key role in the negative relation between wages and hours of work within countries, and that across countries higher average incomes, which effectively raised the constraint, promoted greater work hours.

Nous traçons un portrait de l'évolution de la ségrégation professionnelle selon le sexe au 20ième siècle, et de ses conséquences sur la condition féminine dans le marché du travail. Dans la première partie du 20ième siècle, la ségrégation professionnelle hiérarchique ou verticale a considérablement décliné alors que les travailleuses quittaient les emplois de domestique et du secteur manufacturier en faveur des emplois de bureau. Ceci créa néanmoins une importante ségrégation professionnelle horizontale qui persiste jusqu'à aujourd'hui. Pour étudier les effets de la ségrégation professionnelle sur l'écart salarial selon le sexe, nous présentons une technique de décomposition qui divise l'écart salarial en deux composantes: l'une due aux différences intra-occupations et l'autre due aux différences inter-occupations. Depuis le début des années 90, la composante intra-occupation est prédominante. /// We document the evolution of occupational gender segregation and its implications for women's labour market outcomes over the twentieth century. The first half of the century saw a considerable decline in vertical segregation as women moved out of domestic and manufacturing work into clerical work. This created a substantial amount of horizontal segregation that persists to this day. To study the effects of occupational segregation on the gender gap, we introduce a decomposition technique that divides the gap into between-occupation and within-occupation components. Since the 1990s the component attributable to within-occupation wage differentials has become predominant.