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Solidarity First

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Edited by Robert O’Brien
Solidarity First
Canadian Workers and
Social Cohesion

© UBC Press 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior
written permission of the publisher, or, in Canada, in the case of photocopying
or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian
Copyright Licensing Agency), www.accesscopyright.ca.
16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in Canada on ancient-forest-free paper (100 percent post-consumer
recycled) that is processed chlorine- and acid-free, with vegetable-based inks.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Solidarity first : Canadian workers and social cohesion / edited by Robert O’Brien.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7748-1439-3 (bound); 978-0-7748-1440-9 (pbk.)
1. Working class – Canada. 2. Employees – Canada. 3. Social values – Canada.
4. Solidarity – Canada. 5. Social participation – Canada. 6. Social integration –
Canada. 7. Canada – Social conditions – 1991- 8. Canada – Economic conditions –
1991- I. O’Brien, Robert, 1963-
HD8104.S66 2008 305.5’620971 C2007-907465-0
UBC Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support for our publishing
program of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry
Development Program (BPIDP), and of the Canada Council for the Arts, and
the British Columbia Arts Council.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation
for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications
Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada.
Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens
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ish Columbia
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604-822-5959 / Fax: 604-822-6083
www.ubcpress.ca

Contents
List of Tables and Figures / vii
Acknowledgments / ix
List of Abbreviations / xi
1Introduction: Canadian Workers and Social Cohesion / 1
Robert O’Brien
Part 1: Conceptualizing Social Cohesion
2Gendering the Concept of Social Cohesion through an Understanding
of Women and Work / 21
Belinda Leach and Charlotte Yates
3Social Cohesion, International Competitiveness, and the “Other”:
A Connected Comparison of Workers’ Relationships in Canada
and Mexico / 38
Holly Gibbs
Part 2: Constructing Social Cohesion
4Workplace Cohesion and the Fragmentation of Solidarity: The Magna
Model / 63
Wayne Lewchuk and Don Wells
5Working Time and Labour Control in the Toyota Production System / 86
Mark Thomas
6Cultural Production and Social Cohesion amid the Decline of Coal and
Steel: The Case of Cape Breton Island / 106
Larry Haiven

viContents
Part 3: Internationalizing Social Cohesion
7Civil Society Targets the International / 131
Robert O’Brien
8International Labour Norms and Worker Disorganization in Canada / 150
Roy Adams
9ILO Action on “The Scope of the Employment Relationship”:
Lessons from Canada on the Gendered Limits of Fostering Social
Cohesion / 169
Leah F. Vosko
10Conclusion: Beyond Social Cohesion / 190
Robert O’Brien
Notes / 196
References / 201
List of Contributors / 216
Index / 218

Tables and Figures
Tables
5.1 Vehicle production, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, 2002-04 / 91
7.1 Civic association social cohesion typology / 142
8.1 The decline in collective employment representation in Canada,
1997-2004 / 153
8.2 The decline in private sector collective employment representation,
1997-2004 / 154
Figures
6.1 Extractive and environmental views of local economies / 116
6.2 The calculus of power in the development of a resource / 117
6.3 Circuits of capital / 119
7.1 United Food and Commercial Workers – Canada (UFCWC) : Engaging
the international / 137
Appendix
7.1 Ontario civic associations / 149

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Acknowledgments
This book is the result of a team-based, multi-year research project. The
research was funded by a Strategic Theme Grant (Exploring Social Cohesion
in a Globalizing Era) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada. Publication of the research was aided by a grant from
the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through
the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Additional
funding for publication was provided by the LIUNA/Mancinelli Professor-
ship in Global Labour Issues at McMaster University.
The contributors would like to thank the many individuals who partici-
pated in the research, from workers in factories to officials at international
organizations. Numerous students provided valuable research assistance,
including Andrew Burdeniuk, Niki Capogiannis, Jessica Edge, Holly Gibbs,
Kate Laxer, Anthony Lombardo, Mark Thomas, and Sam Vrankul j. Mara
Giannotti provided essential administrative support to the project. Early
drafts of the chapters were workshopped at the Workers Arts and Heritage
Centre in Hamilton in January 2005. We would like to thank the partici-
pants, including presenters Karen Bird (McMaster), Jeff Dayton-Johnson
(OECD), Grace-Edward Galabuzi (Ryerson), Sandra Micucci (McMaster),
Charles Smith (York), and Larry Savage (Brock). Two anonymous referees
provided rapid and constructive advice for improving the general argument
of the book. Our editor at UBC Press, Emily Andrew, assisted with the timely
production of the book.
Finally, as principal investigator of the SSHRCC project and editor of this
volume, I would like to thank the contributors for their hard work, pa-
tience, and intellectual vision. It has been a great challenge and a wonder-
ful learning experience to work with people using diverse methodologies
from a variety of disciplines. I hope they are as happy with the final product
as I am.
– Robert O’Brien

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Abbreviations
AI Amnesty International
APEC Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation
BCNI Business Council on National Issues
CAW Canadian Auto Workers
CCAAC Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada
CCCE Canadian Council of Chief Executives
CCF Cooperative Commonwealth Federation
CCLA Canadian Civil Liberties Association
CCSD Canadian Council on Social Development
CDCS European Committee for Social Cohesion
CEDB Council of Europe Development Bank
CFIB Canadian Federation of Independent Business
CHALN Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network
CIDA Canadian International Development Agency
CLC Canadian Labour Congress
CPRN Canadian Policy Research Networks
CSJ Centre for Social Justice
CWA Communications Workers of America
ECBC Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation
ESA Employment Standards Act
ETFO Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario
FTAA Free Trade Agreement of the Americas
HRM human resource management
HAS Hemispheric Social Alliance
ICFTU International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
ILC International Labour Code
ILO International Labour Organization
IMF International Monetary Fund
MUFA McMaster University Faculty Association
MSN Maquila Solidarity Network

xii
NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement
NUPGE National Union of Public and General Employees
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OFL Ontario Federation of Labour
SCD Social Cohesion Developments
TMMC Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada
TPS Toyota Production System
UFCW United Food and Commercial Workers
UNI Union Network Initiative
USWA United Steelworkers of America
WTO World Trade OrganizationSolidarity First
Abbreviations

Solidarity First

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1
Introduction: Canadian
Workers and Social Cohesion
Robert O’Brien
In an analysis of how ideas are diffused in the field of development theory
and policy, Desmond McNeill (2006, 348) argues that the ideas that are
most successful “are not those that are most analytically rigorous, but those
that are most malleable.” He also suggests that researchers eager to partici-
pate in policy debates or tap associated resources tend to latch on to popu-
lar concepts rather than subject them to critical scrutiny. This study of
workers and social cohesion heeds such warnings by analyzing the subject
matter from the perspective of workers themselves rather than from the
perspective of state policy makers.
Our primary argument is that, while the concept of social cohesion offers
workers an opportunity to raise some significant issues, the practice of social
cohesion often operates to their detriment. Thus, a prerequisite for a worker-
friendly form of social cohesion is renewed solidarity between workers them-
selves. In the absence of renewed labour solidarity, social cohesion practices
are likely to remain a form of social control rather than serve as a set of
policies that improves the lives of workers and their families.
Social cohesion is a slippery and malleable concept with a large number
of definitions and uses. Cohesion is a state of existence in which people are
bound together in a group. Members of a cohesive group are concerned
about its welfare and work toward improving the group’s well-being (Friedkin
2004, 411-12). Because cohesion can be analyzed at the individual level or
at various group levels from a club to a nation, it is used in a wide number
of cases. Social cohesion refers to the degree to which members of a society
feel that they belong to that society, participate in its operation, and work
toward its well-being. A society with relatively low social cohesion is marked
by the exclusion and marginalization of particular groups within that soci-
ety. As argued below, social cohesion becomes a policy issue when excluded
or marginalized groups pose a threat to the larger social order.

2Robert O’Brien
In Canada, Jane Jenson (1998) has led the effort to clarify the meaning of
social cohesion and the ways in which it might be pursued. In a review of
the term, she concludes that those who use it demonstrate analytical pro-
clivity for seeing social order as the consequences of values more than inter-
ests, of consensus more than conflict, and of social practices more than
actions (38). In other words, social cohesion is usually viewed as a positive
alignment of common values that facilitates co-operation and the smooth
functioning of the society or nation. Given that modern liberal democra-
cies espouse a plurality of (liberal) values, social cohesion discussions tend
to focus on the ability of institutions to resolve and manage conflict in
increasingly diverse societies.
In practice, social cohesion has taken a number of different forms in a
variety of countries across historical eras. This variance makes it almost
impossible to agree on a definition that fits the practices and uses of the
concept. However, it is possible to locate discussion of a concept in a par-
ticular historical context and draw out similarities and differences (Cox
1996a, 125). Underlying most discussions of social cohesion or related con-
cepts is the notion that particular sections of society are behaving in such a
way that they are undermining the order or the integrity of the political
community in which they are located. Efforts are then undertaken to re-
store social cohesion and order by reintegrating the target groups into the
dominant understanding of how the society should be organized and run.
Reintegration can take place through a variety of means. Benefits can be
transferred to target groups to regain their trust and co-operation. Violence
and state power can be used to suppress or isolate dissatisfied groups. The
threat of external or internal enemies can be highlighted to bring alienated
groups back into the fold of existing institutions and politics.
Because social cohesion integrates members of a society, it is usually seen
as a positive condition. Our approach is more skeptical and critical because
we believe that the basis, nature, and form of social cohesion determine
whether or not the condition is desirable. Social cohesion based on gender
inequality, national chauvinism, or the marginalization or suppression of
segments of society is not normatively desirable.
This book focuses on one of the central elements of social cohesion: the
activity of workers in response to economic dislocation and rising inequal-
ity. However, the intellectual task is not to discover a method of returning
the system to an orderly equilibrium, but to better understand the methods
and mechanisms that workers can use to improve their conditions of life.
This introductory chapter unfolds in the following manner: first, it samples
a number of specific approaches to social cohesion and positions our re-
search agenda in relation to these trends; second, it outlines our own re-
search project.

3Introduction
Social Cohesion in Historical Context
A survey of the political economies of advanced industrialized states during
the twentieth century reveals three periods when official concern about
social cohesion became prominent. The three eras are the years between
World War I and World War II (the interwar years), the mid-1970s, and the
late 1990s. Each period was marked by economic uncertainty and growing
inequality within societies. The solutions devised to restore order varied
between states and across eras. They illustrate the variety of policies and
arrangements that can be put in place in the pursuit of more cohesive soci-
eties. The policies can be divided into three categories: those that use the
coercive powers of the state to reassert control over society, those that aim
to redistribute wealth to vulnerable groups, and those that look for a solu-
tion within civil society itself. We examine these types of approaches in
their historical contexts.
The Interwar Years
Although Karl Polanyi (1957) does not use the term “social cohesion,” his
interpretation of the early twentieth century is a study in the destruction
and rebuilding of social cohesion. He argues that the creation of liberal
markets nationally and internationally resulted in such a high degree of
alienation and chaos within societies that people mobilized to rebuild their
social arrangements by reasserting control over the market. Efforts to re-
assert control over the market and restore order took several forms. In Rus-
sia, the victory of the Bolsheviks led to the establishment of a redistributive
command economy under a one-party state. In Western Europe and North
America, state configurations ranged from the fascist corporatist to the wel-
fare nationalist (Cox 1987, 164-98). Both forms offer examples of mecha-
nisms to bind economically dislocated groups to the national project.
In the fascist corporatist case, autonomous labour organizations were elimi-
nated, and state-dominated labour groups “represented” workers’ interests.
Violence was used to destroy political opposition. The state dominated a
corporatist arrangement that negotiated and articulated the “national” in-
terest. Cohesion was bolstered by identifying, blaming, and attacking inter-
nal and external enemies. Fascist organizations built cohesion in the sense
that the majority of German and Italian society was united behind a par-
ticular leadership and set of values in the 1930s in a way that it wasn’t in the
turbulent 1920s. However, the principles on which this cohesion was built
led to war and genocide.
In countries such as the United States, Canada, and Britain, some ele-
ment of economic reform and welfare redistribution featured in the begin-
ning of a welfare state. The coercive powers of the state were still employed
against communist and left-leaning organizations, but some efforts were

4Robert O’Brien
also made to boost public spending and redistribute resources. The trans-
formation into fully fledged welfare states would await the experience of
wartime planning and the spectre of postwar demobilization.
In the immediate postwar period, the question of social cohesion was
temporarily solved. The Keynesian welfare state redistributed income to dis-
advantaged groups such as the sick, elderly, and unemployed, while gov-
ernment spending was used to maintain economic growth. Class conflict
was subsumed by what Charles Maier (1977) called “the politics of produc-
tivity.” The economic benefits of increasing productivity were divided be-
tween workers and employers, assuring a large degree of industrial and social
peace. Western states were still wracked by inequality and injustice (espe-
cially in racial and gender terms), but compared with the interwar years,
society appeared cohesive.
Internationally, this compromise was supported by what John Gerard
Ruggie (1982) termed “embedded liberalism.” International trade and mon-
etary arrangements were created that supported the gradual liberalization
of the economy but in a way that would not threaten domestic commit-
ments to stability and full employment. However, by the mid-1970s, the
international environment was much less supportive of the welfare state.
The compromise of embedded liberalism began to break down.
The 1970s
The issue of social cohesion reared its head again in the 1970s but under a
different rubric. In the 1970s, Western industrialized states were buffeted by
inflation and recession. Economic and political elites faced a deteriorating
international economy and demands from national electorates to continue
with the economic progress that had marked the postwar era until that
time. While adherents of the regulation school of political economy saw
this as a crisis of the Fordist model of production and consumption, many
elites termed it a crisis of governability.
A report sponsored by the Trilateral Commission suggested that “the op-
erations of the democratic process do indeed appear to have generated a
breakdown of traditional means of social control, a delegitimation of polit-
ical and other forms of authority and an overload of demands on govern-
ment, exceeding its capacity to respond” (Crozier, Huntington, and Watanuki
1975, 8). Members of the commission and many in the intellectual estab-
lishment thought that it was becoming more difficult for elites to guide the
public. The “ungovernability” school argued that governments faced an
ever-greater number of demands, many of them non-bargainable, from an
increasingly fragmenting political community (Huntington 1974; O’Connor
1973; Offe 1984; Rose 1980, 1981).
The solution to the “crisis” was provided by a neoliberal program of eco-
nomic restructuring combined with an attempt to shift public expectations

5Introduction
about the role of government. The Anglo-American advanced industrial-
ized states saw a rollback of the welfare state and a restructuring of the
labour market. Competitive pressures increased in these and other OECD
states. After some political conflict, restructuring led to renewed economic
growth in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, by the late 1990s, social
cohesion became an issue once again.
The 1990s
At the end of the twentieth century, the problem was not economic growth
or government deficits but exclusion of large sections of the population
from economic benefits, and rapidly increasing inequalities between mem-
bers of society. Popular discontent with the human casualties of neoliberal
globalization caused governments to rethink their economic and social
policies. Discontent was expressed in numerous ways. In Europe, electors
increasingly turned to far-right political parties and resisted moves toward
further economic integration. In Europe and North America, civic associa-
tions launched campaigns against elite initiatives such as the Multilateral
Agreement on Investment, the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The responses to this increase in resistance varied across advanced indus-
trialized countries. From the perspective of the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD), the goal was to manage the turbu-
lence of social exclusion and fragmentation that accompanies liberal globali-
zation of the economy (Michalski, Miller, and Stevens 1997). In this view,
wealth creation requires the extension of market mechanisms over more
areas of human activity and the management of resulting strains in the
social fabric. Globalization under neoliberal conditions is unquestioned;
the problem is limiting its negative consequences. Social cohesion is about
keeping the lid on a boiling pot. It is the art of managing the turbulence of
liberal globalization. Plans for social cohesion can thus be seen as a strategy
of control that preserves the social fabric in the context of increasing in-
equality within a society.
In this view, social cohesion can be bolstered by state action addressing
the dislocation caused by increased competition. This is not an argument
for reinforcing the welfare state. It is an argument for bolstering “the com-
petition state,” which prepares its population to be more efficient competi-
tors in the global economy (Cerny 2006). It could also be an argument for a
more authoritarian state that prefers to use police powers to deal with dis-
content rather than redistribute the profits from increased liberalization.
In Europe, some organizations and states are attempting to rebuild social
cohesion by retooling the welfare state at a regional level. Building on ear-
lier European work on social exclusion (HDSE 1998; Silver 1994), the no-
tion of social cohesion has been raised as a policy priority in some arenas.

6Robert O’Brien
The lead has been taken by the Council of Europe, an intergovernmental
body founded in 1949. It is charged with working for greater European unity,
upholding parliamentary democracy and human rights, improving living
conditions, and promoting human values (http://www.coe.int/). It includes
forty-one European states in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe.
There are several significant elements to the council’s approach to social
cohesion. First, the vision of social cohesion is reminiscent of the welfare
state. It envisages government activity to support high levels of social pro-
tection, combat inequality, reduce unemployment, and eliminate social ex-
clusion. In policy terms, the focus is on reintegrating excluded people in
the areas of access to social protection, housing, employment, health care,
and education. It differs from earlier concepts of the welfare state in that
the approach is less formally corporatist, aiming to bring in a wider range of
partners, including marginalized people themselves, non-governmental or-
ganizations, workers, and employers. The council defines social cohesion as
“the capacity of a society to ensure the welfare of all of its members, mini-
mising disparities and avoiding polarisation” (CDCS 2004, 2).
Second, the council refers to the building of social solidarity and the inte-
gration of social partners into its activity. Mutual aid, supported by public
policy, is seen as the answer to threats against the European welfare model
generated by internationalization and globalization (SCD 2000). Notably,
these partners include workers and their representatives.
Third, institutional resources have been committed through three steps.
The first step was the creation of the intergovernmental European Commit-
tee for Social Cohesion (CDCS) to develop priorities and plans. A second
step was the establishment of a Social Cohesion Development Division to
monitor and analyze social cohesion policies. Its activities are published
through an electronic newsletter, Social Cohesion Developments. A third step
was directing the Council of Europe Development Bank to add social cohe-
sion to its list of lending priorities (CEDB 2000). Its loans now support pro-
jects that would bolster social cohesion by increasing employment,
supporting social housing, expanding health care services, and developing
education infrastructure.
In the United States, concerns about social cohesion have tended to focus
on developments within civil society and avoid the class and equity issues
altogether. Several US intellectuals have located the glue of social cohesion
in civil society rather than in state policies. Social cohesion is bolstered or
undermined to the degree that civil society shows signs of associational life
(Putnam 2000) or trust (Fukuyama 1995). The key to prosperity and social
cohesion is to be found in the forms of links within or between communi-
ties. It is the social capital of particular communities that explains their suc-
cess or failure in the broader system. A civil society focused approach shifts

7Introduction
the responsibility for exclusion and poverty from the state and the society
as a whole to the disadvantaged groups themselves.
Social capital has become such a major approach to understanding the
performance of groups and societies that it is necessary to take a moment to
reflect on its significance and relationship to social cohesion. Similar to
social cohesion, social capital is used in a number of different ways. How-
ever, the various approaches all focus on “the importance of social net-
works, of communication, and of an exchange of resources that strengthen
communities” (Kay and Johnston 2007, 1). Communities that have high
levels of social capital have active networks where information is shared,
support is given to the members of those communities, and relations among
members are facilitated by high levels of trust. Levels of social capital are
said to have an impact on a wide variety of life circumstances, from educa-
tion to employment to health.
Standards of social capital are often applied to particular groups within a
society. Some groups will have higher social capital than others. An increase
of social capital within a particular group does not necessarily increase overall
social cohesion (Kay and Bernard 2007, 44). Indeed, increased social capital
within a group may give that group particular benefits as it excludes out-
siders from those benefits. Some groups may be more successful at securing
economic and political benefits because of high levels of social capital, but
this does not help other groups with lower levels of social capital. The prob-
lem of the relationship between those who do well and those who do not
remains. The issue of social cohesion remains.
Until recently, the relationship between social capital, trust, and equality
was ignored. However, Bo Rothstein and Eric Uslaner (2005) argue that the
societies with the greatest amount of trust are also those with the highest
levels of equality, usually generated through universal social programs. This
observation about the relationship between trust and equality leads one
back to the role of the state and the ability of social groups to insist that the
state engage in redistributing wealth through broadly based social programs.
Our study echoes this approach by suggesting that increased labour solidar-
ity is required before states and corporations are forced into accepting poli-
cies that would facilitate a more worker- and family-friendly version of social
cohesion.
In summary, we can see that fears about social cohesion have taken a
number of forms in several different historical eras. Policy initiatives have
tended to stress one of three options. The state may reintegrate sectors of
society through deploying its coercive powers, some attempt may be made
to redistribute wealth, or social cohesion may be privatized in the sense
that it is seen to exist apart from state action.

8Robert O’Brien
Social Cohesion in the Canadian Context
The Canadian social cohesion debate is characterized by two elements. The
first aspect is similar to social cohesion discussions in other states. It con-
cerns the problem of dealing with the economic dislocations generated by
neoliberal economic globalization. Government policies and corporate ac-
tivities favour high- and middle-income classes over the working class. As
larger numbers of people are alienated from political institutions and are
marginalized in the economy, some concern is expressed about what this
might do to the functioning of the system as a whole. However, a second
and more prominent strand focuses on fault lines in the political commu-
nity that are distinctly Canadian (although some other countries may share
similar cleavages). Thus, particular communities that express dissatisfaction
with the political system and threaten the integrity of the state are candi-
dates for further attention. Three key Canadian concerns are the national
question in Quebec, the fate of resource-producing regions, and the status
of Aboriginal populations. Although these groups have serious economic
concerns, their demands are often articulated in ethnic or regional rather
than class terms.
An indication of the various issues that fall under the Canadian social
cohesion umbrella can be found by reviewing the seventeen grants distrib-
uted under the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Can-
ada’s (SSHRCC) strategic program Exploring Social Cohesion in a Global
Era (see http://geog.queensu.ca/soco/projects.htm). Almost half of the pro-
jects focus on Canada’s regional and ethnic cleavages: five projects examine
rural, northern, or regional areas, two examine Aboriginal issues, and one
focuses on Chinese immigrants. Two projects examine class issues (one looks
at workers and the other studies low-income populations). The family and
the role of girls are also investigated. The label “social cohesion” is flexible
enough to incorporate studies of Canada’s environmental community, so-
cial cohesion in Asia, rights in an information age, and value surveys.
One could conclude two things from this profile. First, Canadian con-
cerns about social cohesion are also about national unity. They involve the
roles of regional populations and visible minorities. Second, the concept is
elastic and imprecise enough to cover a wide range of research agendas.
Indeed, almost any topic dealing with a group in Canadian society (and
beyond) could have something to do with social cohesion!
This book is directed toward the more explicit class-based approach to
social cohesion. In Canada, as throughout most advanced capitalist coun-
tries, increasing concerns about social cohesion emerge out of the ongoing
erosion of state-centred national welfare or Fordist regimes. Parallel to wel-
fare state containment of class conflict in Western Europe, in Canada certain
forms of social cohesion emerged in response to working-class activity that
developed during the 1930s and 1940s. Although Canada’
s state-centred,

9Introduction
“top-down” (rather liberal), “social democratic” model of social cohesion
that was built during the 1950s and 1960s was weaker than most other
advanced capitalist welfare state models (Esping-Anderson 1990) and Can-
adian Fordism was more “permeable” to extranational economic pressures
(Jenson 1989), this welfare state Fordist model became central to national
and interclass social cohesion. Although employer and state repression re-
mained important features of societal control, it was through this regula-
tory system that state social policy expansion became central to Canadian
citizenship.
One of the consequences of this model was that it demobilized the very
forces responsible for putting redistributive policies on the agenda – that is,
workers’ organizations. Postwar Canadian Fordism channelled autonomous,
spontaneous worker activity into bureaucratically redistributive welfare state
and trade union regulatory frameworks. Together with mechanisms of in-
dustrial “due process” (mainly for core Fordist workers), this state-centred
model of social cohesion reduced the collective capacity of workers to en-
gage in such political and industrial self-activity. The earlier popular soli-
darity that was both the predicate and the consequence of worker self-activity
of the 1930s and 1940s weakened in this context. Gradually, Fordism re-
duced the collective capacities of workers to carry out social and political
action.
Since the 1970s, and taking advantage of this erosion of popular collective
capacities, alternative forms of state administration and production have
emerged, entailing an “escape from Fordism” (Bakker and Miller 1996; Jessop
1993). In Canada, the political hallmarks of this current period include a
weakening of the universality and quality of national and provincial social
programs, a more decentralized federalism, tendencies toward a more au-
thoritarian statism (particularly in relation to political dissent), and a more
privatized form of citizenship, entailing among other things a marked de-
cline in conventional electoral political participation (Boggs 2000). The eco-
nomic hallmarks include greater inequality in labour markets, greater
flexibility (numerical and functional) in production relations, and an effec-
tive (not merely statutory) decline in labour standards for growing numbers
of workers (McBride and Shields 1997; Teeple 2000).
These tendencies have become apparent in many OECD countries, par-
ticularly among the category of Anglo-American regimes to which – increas-
inglystarkly – Canada belongs as a region of an integrating North American
political economy. In Canada, as in the United States, Britain, and Aus-
tralia, there has been a dramatic restructuring not only of interclass rela-
tions, with the balance of power shifting more decisively in favour of capital,
but also, and integral to this shift, of intra-working-class relations. The latter
have become increasingly fragmented, competitive, and unequal. At the
same time, there are growing indications of a decline in the legitimacy

10Robert O’Brien
afforded economic and political elites. The most obvious manifestations
have been not only the decline in electoral and political party participation
but also the re-emergence of forms of “direct action” social movement pol-
itics and extra-parliamentary protest (e.g., strikes and protests during the
Ontario Days of Action, the APEC protests in Vancouver, and the anti-
neoliberal globalization protests in Windsor and Quebec City).
In this context, there has been a renewal of concern, particularly among
elites, about the need to strengthen social cohesion as a basis of political
stability and social control. The more common orientations for renewing
social cohesion built around the restructuring of interclass relations include
increasing state-centred and employer-centred authoritarianism (e.g., em-
ployer surveillance, surveillance state, prison industrial complex), a
strengthening of state-civil society relations (e.g., public-private partner-
ships in public policy and delivery of social services, regulation of employ-
ment relations, workfare), and a partial strengthening of certain welfare
state functions (particularly focused on the deserving poor and on the so-
cially disposable). Hence, certain kinds of (demobilizing) social cohesion
are necessary complements to a lack of other kinds of social cohesion, such
as the popular forms of the 1930s and 1940s noted above (collective action
and social solidarity).
Increased levels of social cohesion are also advanced as a solution to
economic dislocation in rural areas of Canada. For example, Jo Ann Jaffe
and Amy Quark (2006) argue that in Saskatchewan governments advance
the concept of community social cohesion as an alternative to state invest-
ment in social and economic development in rural areas. Their study ex-
amines two communities engaged in alternative forms of cohesion
development: one based on ethnic identities and the other on an entrepre-
neurial identity. While both models offer evidence of cohesion, they are
under immense pressure because of the larger environment of economic
restructuring.
In summary, the move to a more liberal and unequal political economy
in Canada has led to the re-emergence of the social cohesion concept and
attention to the place of workers in Canadian society.
Social Cohesion Problems and Opportunities
The discussion to this point has hinted of problems with the social cohe-
sion discourse from the perspective of workers’ welfare. This section makes
these problems explicit so that it is easier to comprehend our alternative
approach. Three of the key problems are that (1) some social cohesion
models promote state control and undermine worker autonomy, (2) the
political prerequisites for a European social cohesion model are lacking in
Canada, and (3) social cohesion models are often at the expense of non-
citizens, and this can undermine the position of workers.

11Introduction
State Control and Loss of Autonomy
As the brief history of social cohesion recounted above suggests, some “so-
lutions” to the cohesion problem bolster the coercive power of the state
and threaten the autonomy of workers and their organizations. Social co-
hesion initiatives can be a form of social control where state actors design
policies that demobilize and suppress dissent. Citizens may be coerced into
complying with dominant principles and institutions even though they
operate against workers’ interests.
In the social cohesion as social control model, inequality between groups
or classes is not seen as a public policy issue. The problem to be solved is
social order. Workers’ experience with fascist social cohesion cautions against
enthusiasm for state-led projects stressing political and cultural unity. The
values fostered by the state often serve particular interests that can threaten
workers. For example, in Europe, far-right parties increasingly influence the
political agenda, calling for forms of social cohesion based on an exclusive
definition of the nation and political community.
Prerequisites for Redistribution Lacking
The form of social cohesion that stresses redistributive policies requires so-
cial forces that can win the struggle for such policies. Some political juris-
dictions lack the balance of forces to make such a strategy viable.
Several of our local case studies take place in Ontario. At the present time,
political forces are aligned in such a manner as to make a redistributive
strategy, such as that of the Council of Europe, unlikely in a North Ameri-
can context. Indeed, the rhetoric of partnership between social partners is
increasingly foreign to Canada. Recent developments in the labour market
and in labour legislation indicate that the dominant corporate and political
forces have little interest in a welfare-based form of social cohesion.
As in Great Britain and the United States, economic inequality and inse-
curity is increasing in Canada. The 1990s saw growing inequality in family
incomes, declining economic mobility, unequal outcomes for groups seg-
mented by ethnicity and gender, a growing number of single-parent fam-
ilies with low incomes, increasing incomes for those at the top of the scale,
and declining incomes for those at the bottom (Green and Kesselman 2006).
With regard to the labour market, Mike Burke and John Shields (1999) have
found that Canadian workers are increasingly insecure. Here are some of
the startling facts: one-fifth of the workforce (3.2 million people) is struc-
turally excluded from the labour market in that these workers are either
unemployed or underemployed; 37 percent of adult employees are engaged
in flexible forms of employment; these forms of employment are compen-
sated between five and eight dollars an hour less than full-time work; flex-
ible workers lack job ladders to increase income; 53 percent of the adult
workforce (6.7 million) are in vulnerable employment; single mothers and

12Robert O’Brien
women are overrepresented among flexible workers and the vulnerably
employed; and, although trade union membership and public sector em-
ployment mitigate these trends, both are on the decline.
An uncertain and deteriorating labour market is unlikely to bolster norms
and behaviour seen as key to social cohesion (i.e., trust, associational life,
equality). Insecurity in the workplace is likely to undermine trust in corpo-
rate activity and economic decision makers. The time for associational life
will be scarce if some workers are pressed into longer hours and others are
disillusioned by lack of employment. As mentioned above, segmentation of
the labour market into secure and insecure jobs will only increase income
polarization and reduce equality.
National Projects Target Foreigners
Another problem with social cohesion discourse is that it is inherently part
of a national project. It is about the unity of a particular people. How does
group x relate to other groups within the state and to the state itself? It
privileges the fate of a closed community over the fate of people living in
other parts of the world. The builders of social cohesion are relatively un-
concerned with the fate of people beyond the state’s borders. One could
conceive of measures that might build social cohesion internally but injure
people in other places. For example, Canada might be faced with deter-
mined domestic opposition to the disposal of nuclear waste within its terri-
tory. A method of removing that conflict would be to export the waste to
poorer countries. This tactic might build social cohesion within the coun-
try, but it would do so at the cost of injury to others. Social cohesion would
be achieved at an unacceptable cost.
In the case of Canadian workers, the call for social cohesion within the
nation, the state, or the firm holds particular dangers. It suggests that the
interests of workers lie in outcompeting workers in other countries. Rather
than co-operate with people from other countries to raise standards every-
where, the social cohesion approach suggests that common values stop at
the border. While this message appeals to corporate managers eager to in-
crease competition between their workers in different national locations, it
is likely to worsen workers’ conditions as they engage in a downward com-
petitive spiral. The social cohesion doctrine preaches a particular form of
labour management relations: business unionism. Labour studies have raised
doubts about whether such practices are actually in the best interests of
workers and unions (Wells 1998).
In addition to building walls between Canadian workers and workers in
other countries, the national social cohesion project can raise tensions be-
tween established workers and immigrant communities. Newly arrived im-
migrants, migrants, and refugees may not be included in the definition of
the cohesive community because of cultural or racial differences
.

13Introduction
The Social Cohesion Opening
Although the concept of social cohesion has drawbacks from the perspec-
tive of Canadian workers, there is something in the social cohesion debate
that is worth exploring: the social discontent created by the process of lib-
eral economic restructuring. The social cohesion discourse provides a lim-
ited opening to raise issues of equality. It might be possible to radicalize the
social cohesion debate to focus on social justice rather than on social order
(Maloutas and Malouta 2004).
Some economists have used the social cohesion concept to advocate for a
more just and egalitarian approach to economic policy (Osberg 2003). For
example, Jeff Dayton-Johnson (2001) argues that social cohesion is neces-
sary for economic growth. Focusing on Canada, he suggests that commu-
nity economic development, strong labour standards, vigorous cultural
policies, and redistributive public finances will increase economic prosper-
ity. Drawing on political science and economic literature, he argues that
factors such as trust and associational life are crucial for well-performing
economies.
Social policy advocates have also used the concept to argue for compen-
satory policies in the face of economic liberalization. This line of thinking
was illustrated in a 1999 report on social cohesion by a Senate Committee
on Social Affairs. It argued that economic globalization risked social dis-
integration and that, while social cohesion encompassed shared values, it
also implied redistributive issues (Senate 1999).
The difficulty, as Paul Bernard (1999) argues, is that although the concept
of “social cohesion” rallies those who do not see the market as the solution
for all aspects of social life, it also risks diverting attention away from an
essential element of democratic order – that is, equality. Social cohesion
focuses on managing conflict rather than on reducing inequalities. The so-
cial cohesion mantra forces those concerned with greater equality (whether
it be in life chances, education, or health) to argue that inequality leads to
conflict that existing institutions cannot manage. Greater equality is no
longer an end in itself but only a means to an end. The problem here is that
if social cohesion can be achieved or increased through means that sidestep
equality, the case for a more equitable distribution of resources collapses in
the social cohesion universe.
Solidarity First
In light of the fact that some forms of social cohesion are coercive, others
require a political alignment that may not exist, and still others disadvan-
tage non-citizens, what are the options for Canadian workers? This intro-
duction argues that elements of the various social cohesion approaches can
inform worker responses to increased competitive pressures in an era of
renewed globalization. The social control school is correct to stress the link

14Robert O’Brien
between increased liberalization, competition, and breakdown of social co-
hesion. However, the response should be not the creation of mechanisms to
stifle discontent but a reconsideration of the mantra of liberalization and
increased competition. The European welfare state discourse is interesting,
but its discussion of social partnership is so far away from the Canadian real-
ity that its relevance is limited. The Canadian unity approach to cohesion is
not terribly relevant to this study other than the possibility that the concern
for unity, as well as the other concerns, might have a class dimension. We see
developments in civil society, similar to the civic virtue school, as being cru-
cial to bolstering social cohesion. However, rather than placing the empha-
sis on trust or social capital, we stress solidarity as the key ingredient.
Given the multiple meanings that people attach to words, it is possible to
confuse social cohesion with solidarity. Solidarity is the mutual aid that
people give to each other in a situation of conflict or crisis. Groups charac-
terized by solidarity are cohesive. However, whereas cohesion implies a lack
of conflict with a social group, solidarity highlights the actions that people
take to address economic or environmental threats to well-being. Solidarity
groups often confront more powerful structures and people. This book ar-
gues that a renewed and reformulated worker solidarity is a prerequisite for
resisting negative forms of social cohesion and forming the types of com-
promises that might lead to redistributive social cohesion models. Our cases
highlight the struggle for worker solidarity in the face of corporate or gov-
ernment attacks on living and working conditions.
In an environment in which the working conditions of most workers are
deteriorating and their primary line of defence (unions) is under attack from
government and corporate actions, workers must look to themselves for
coping and self-defence mechanisms. Rick Fantasia (1988) has argued that
cultures of solidarity are most likely to develop in situations of conflict be-
tween workers and their employers. This study examines which types of
cultures of solidarity or social cohesion are developing in Canada in the
early twenty-first century and what implications they hold for the concept
and practice of social cohesion.
Developing an Alternative Understanding
This book deals with many of the same social cohesion issues as other pro-
jects but differs, crucially, in starting from the perspective of working women,
men, and families. For working people, social cohesion is something that is
done to them. It is a strategy for redirecting their unhappiness about their
lot in a way that is the least disruptive. It is a depoliticizing device. A more
positive value from a working perspective is that of solidarity. Most versions
of social cohesion lack this element of solidarity; they are social cohesion
without solidarity.

15Introduction
In exploring an alternative understanding of responses to the tensions
created by neoliberal globalization, we examine the place of workers in eco-
nomic restructuring and social cohesion initiatives. We also consider what
workers could do under a different environment. Our method to achieve
this task is to conduct research on a series of topics in concentric circles
from the local community to global regulatory institutions. By building
from the bottom up, we hope to discover and articulate alternative under-
standings and strategies to existing social cohesion agendas. Our core argu-
ment is that meaningful social cohesion policies in the economic realm are
only likely in the event that Canadian workers broaden and deepen their
solidarity with each other and with workers in other states.
One key element of our study is the focus on the interaction of different
levels. Competitive pressures build and are fought in a variety of arenas,
from local communities to corporate networks to international agencies.
The stress caused by global restructuring is played out at the local level.
Workers adopt a number of different strategies at the community level to
respond to restructuring. Corporate, state, and global institutions set the
terms under which competition will take place and become targets for worker
mobilization and interest. The contest is played out across levels and states.
As a result, our research crosses different levels of analysis but is attentive to
the interaction between them.
A second element of the book is its multi-disciplinary nature. The con-
tributors come from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, busi-
ness, economic history, international relations, labour studies, and political
science. In addition to focusing on a number of levels of analysis, they em-
ploy several methodologies, which range from ethnographic interviews with
workers to elite interviews with members of civic and public organizations,
from critical textual analysis to cultural analysis. The various approaches,
methods, and subjects allow us to build up a more detailed and nuanced
view about the relationship between workers and social cohesion.
The empirical work takes place primarily in Ontario, with some reference
to national associations and groups in Mexico and Nova Scotia. The book
does not examine the case of Quebec, which is characterized by a distinc-
tive national question and a particular social model (Salée 2003). Our case
studies begin with a section titled “Conceptualizing Social Cohesion.” It
contains two chapters that challenge existing conceptions of social cohe-
sion by highlighting the roles that gender and otherness play in building or
undermining social cohesion. In Chapter 2, Belinda Leach and Charlotte
Yates argue that gender is a significant component in structuring workers’
responses to increased competition at the plant level. The trend toward
“gender neutral” work arrangements has individualized women’s working
struggles, leading to a breakdown in solidarity and the strengthening of a

16Robert O’Brien
negative form of social cohesion. All social cohesion models are gendered
and rely on particular gender models to function. They also have distinct
gender implications. A connected comparison study of Mexican and Can-
adian workers by Holly Gibbs in Chapter 3 reveals how perceptions of
otherness reinforce or undermine models of cohesion. In this case, workers
blame and fear other workers, leading to individual strategies for coping
with competitiveness and a lack of collective action. Both studies empha-
size how increased pressure for competitiveness is increasingly and harm-
fully being absorbed by individuals rather than collectivities such as the
nation, class, or community.
The second section of the book, “Constructing Social Cohesion,” shifts the
analysis to attempts to construct social cohesion in a more individualized
liberal economy. In Chapter 4, Wayne Lewchuk and Don Wells examine
the attempt of a private corporation to build its own form of social cohe-
sion with a case study of auto parts maker Magna International. They find
that Magna has been successful in creating social cohesion between man-
agement and workers but that this cohesion comes at the expense of other
workers and rests on a precarious financial foundation. Mark Thomas’ in-
vestigation of the Toyota production system in Chapter 5 reveals a slightly
different story. Toyota’s management of overtime work inflicts stress on its
workforce and negatively impacts workers’ family, community, and social
lives. A degree of social cohesion is created within the company but at the
expense of contract workers and workers’ personal lives. This section con-
cludes with Chapter 6, in which Larry Haiven analyzes the growth of cul-
tural industries in Cape Breton as a response to the closure of heavy industries.
Local communities draw on their own forms of social capital to nurture
artists, but the “new economy” remains highly insecure for its members.
Methods of formulating corporate- or community-based cohesion projects
are fragile and exclusive.
The third section, “Internationalizing Social Cohesion,” takes up the role
of international factors raised in previous chapters. In Chapter 7, Robert
O’Brien surveys the activities of Ontario-based civic associations to gauge
their relationships with international actors. He finds that the division be-
tween civic associations highlights two fault lines in social cohesion strate-
gies. One fault line is between those that have a national focus versus those
that have an international focus. The other division is between those that
stress competition versus those that stress co-operation as strategies for build-
ing social cohesion. In Chapter 8, Roy Adams examines Canada’s failure to
live up to its international and national obligations to promote the right of
workers to collectively represent their interests. He argues that Canadians
need to think of methods in addition to union certification that might de-
velop workplace rights to representation. Such steps could lead to a more

17Introduction
worker-friendly form of social cohesion. Leah Vosko investigates in Chap-
ter 9 recent attempts to broaden the work of the International Labour Or-
ganization (ILO) to include self-employed workers. She argues that the ILO’s
ambition is too modest and that in a country like Canada it would still
leave many workers outside legal protection. It would not bolster worker-
friendly social cohesion, and large groups would continue to be marginalized.
The book concludes by bringing together the main themes of the chap-
ters and suggesting how workers might move beyond existing concepts of
social cohesion. A worker-friendly form of social cohesion will have to be
preceded by new forms of solidarity.

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Part 1
Conceptualizing Social Cohesion

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2
Gendering the Concept of Social
Cohesion through an Understanding
of Women and Work
Belinda Leach and Charlotte Yates
This chapter offers a rethinking of the concept of social cohesion. We argue
that there is a need to gender the concept of social cohesion in ways that
recognize women as a collective group whose experiences of and structural
position in work and labour markets shape the form and extent of social
cohesion in society. Beginning with a brief historical analysis of the gendered
nature of social cohesion in postwar Canadian society, we argue that con-
temporary patterns of work reorganization and labour market practices in
Western industrial countries intertwine with neoliberal conceptions of citi-
zenship with their emphasis on individual responsibility and rights in ways
meant to degender women’s experience and the regulation of work and
labour markets. However, by denying women’s gender-specific position in
society, these provisions end up setting into play some new dynamics of
gendering that reinforce economic and labour market inequalities between
men and women and result in working women ’s social exclusion. In so
doing, these dynamics threaten any hope of building a more cohesive or
solidaristic and inclusive society.
This chapter is aimed at disentangling the gendered ideas embedded within
the concept of social cohesion and laying out the implications of this analysis
for labour market policy and work organization.
1
Our critical reflections on
the concept of social cohesion were born out of a research project aimed at
investigating the factors underlying the presence or absence of social cohe-
sion among workers in their workplaces and local communities. For this
project, we interviewed approximately seventy workers in four Ontario com-
munities who were employed in the auto parts industry. Our analysis of
these interviews forced us to reconsider the concept of social cohesion, wres-
tling in particular with how the concept might capture the very different
experiences of men and women in terms of their relationships to work and
community. This chapter is the fruit of that rethinking. In developing our
argument, we draw on our interviews and plant visits for examples and
substantive discussions of women and men at work.
2

22Belinda Leach and Charlotte Yates
The chapter is presented in three parts. The first part begins with a discus-
sion of the concept of social cohesion, which includes the particular form
taken by social cohesion under Fordism. We contend that the Fordist form
of social cohesion was built on gendered relations of domination and in-
equality that devalued and isolated to the private sphere women’s respon-
sibilities for social reproduction. Fordism institutionalized the distinction
between paid and unpaid work. Attention to the historical shifts in the
policies that underpinned postwar social cohesion in Canada indicates that,
paradoxically, postwar welfare state institutions entrenched recognition of
women’s collective needs as women with responsibilities for social repro-
duction. In the 1970s, women’s collective needs were reconceptualized and
institutionalized through equality measures instigated by the feminist move-
ment. These measures allowed women more equal access to the advantages
of labour market participation by addressing some of the roots of systemic
discrimination against them in the labour market and beyond. While not
recognized in terms of social cohesion at the time, feminists effectively ex-
posed the gendered (and racialized) nature of postwar social cohesion and
challenged it, demanding a new approach to social cohesion premised on
equality.
But as we discuss in the second part of the chapter, the growing adoption
of neoliberal ideology and economic and political practices in the 1980s
and 1990s was accompanied by changes to equality rights policies that de-
nied gender as a legitimate basis for analysis. These policies have been re-
placed with “gender-neutral” policies.
In the third part, we use examples from our research to argue that gendered
work roles in the twenty-first century are being contested, negotiated, and
reconstructed as the collective gender equality gains of the feminist move-
ment in the late twentieth century are transformed by neoliberalism into
an individualistic, gender-neutral ideology. Our research suggests, however,
that far from degendering the workplace, gender-neutral ideologies serve
only to obscure the slipperiness and ambiguity of the gendering that actu-
ally takes place. In this context, women’s gendered lives, specifically their
continued responsibility for social reproduction, are increasingly difficult,
and this difficulty leads to their further marginalization and exclusion from
the fruits of labour market participation. We argue that these shifts delegit-
imate women’s needs as a collective group. Women and men must now
individually confront at the workplace the consequences of gendered social
reproduction, making social cohesion with equity an ever-elusive goal.
Social Cohesion: A Gendered Historical Concept
Women appear in varying guises in the social cohesion literature. They are
“invisible” mothers whose children are the primary focus of government
actions to generate inclusion (Dobrowolsky with Lister 2005); they are

23Gendering the Concept of Social Cohesion
deviant, often racialized, welfare dependent, single mothers who require
moral regulation (Little 1998); they are individual citizens with growing
permanent attachments to the labour market who have no time for volun-
teer activities (Jenson 1998, 25-26); or they are the idealized mother who is
the selfless glue of the community and the family. Yet, despite women’s
apparent centrality to social cohesion considerations, there is limited rec-
ognition in the social cohesion debate of women as a subordinated collec-
tive whose experiences are shaped by restricted freedoms and structural social
and economic disadvantages. As Alexandra Dobrowolsky and Ruth Lister
(2005) point out, this lack of recognition is even more pronounced for
racialized women.
We contend that widespread interest in social cohesion and the proposed
recipes for its regeneration reflects a hankering for a lost past characterized
by a sense of belonging and community, the experience of stability and
predictability, and inequalities that seemed less stark and not so threaten-
ing. In other words, embedded within the concept of social cohesion is a
yearning for a golden past, a past that is perhaps more a figment of our
collective imagination than one based on the social, political, and economic
experience of the postwar years (National Spiritual Assembly 2003). By so
entangling the concept of social cohesion with understandings of the past
and expectations of the future, this concept has lost much of its political
utility and has ended up masking some of the very inequalities and process-
es of exclusion it was intended to illuminate and resolve. Our first task in
this chapter is therefore to briefly examine the ways in which postwar cohe-
sion and prosperity were undergirded by gendered relations of domination
and inequality.
Gendered Social Cohesion in the Postwar Period
It has long been established that work is “gendered.” From existing litera-
ture, it is possible to identify two dimensions to this gendering, using post-
war Canada to illustrate our point. The first dimension rests on the distinction
between paid and unpaid work, a distinction that separates productive work
from that of social reproduction. Women have long borne the bulk of re-
sponsibility for unpaid work, including caring labour, food preparation,
household maintenance, and to a lesser extent volunteer labour. With the
advent of Fordism, the gendered division of labour became more deeply em-
bedded in social structures aimed at securing wages adequate to sustain
family consumption (Barrett 1980). Unions fought successfully in the im-
mediate postwar years to extend this “family” wage far beyond what em-
ployers such as Ford initially conceived, such that a growing number of
working-class families achieved middle-class levels of income and consump-
tion (see, e.g., Livingstone and Mangan 1996). Paying men a family wage
“freed up” married women to leave the labour force and stay at home to

24Belinda Leach and Charlotte Yates
raise the family and run the household. For male workers and the unions
that represented them, the family wage helped resist women’s entry into
male jobs and thus protected higher wages for men.
This gendered division was reinforced by government policy. Social poli-
cies – such as the family allowance, pensions, and mother’s allowance as
well as education and immigration policies that targeted men for certain
kinds of jobs and women for others or in many cases not for labour market
participation at all – encouraged a gendered division of paid and unpaid
labour. Here a woman was assumed to engage in paid work only until she
got married, at which point she exchanged “the rights she had acquired in
employment before marriage for new rights flowing from her status as wife
and mother” (O’Connor, Orloff, and Shaver 1999, 57).
Of course, these gendered norms were not always possible. In practice,
many men could not make a family wage, and women had to work for pay
either to supplement a male wage or, in many cases, to support the family
alone. When women worked for these kinds of reasons, they usually found
their labour market opportunities limited by gendered expectations and
restrictions. This brings us to the second dimension of the gendering of
work, namely, the gendered division of paid labour seen in segmented la-
bour markets and occupational segregation (Armstrong and Armstrong 1978).
Women who did work in the paid labour market found their labour market
opportunities restricted by formal rules and informal practices, which had
the effect of segregating them into “women’s” jobs such as nursing, light
manufacturing (especially in the production of garments and textiles or food
products), and service work such as waitressing or retailing at department
stores. Women were systematically paid less than men for comparable work,
had few if any benefits (including the benefit of union representation),
worked in jobs with limited internal career opportunities, and were more
likely to work part time or on a non-permanent basis. This gendering of
paid work was reinforced by the gender bias of technology (Cockburn 1983,
1985), government policy that privileged men’s employment status, and
employer hiring and management practices. Women who did continue to
work in the paid labour market once they were married and/or had chil-
dren shouldered the additional burden of primary responsibility for unpaid
work in the home and with family dependants.
Keynesian welfare states tended to support the gendered division of la-
bour implicit in the family wage and often encoded features of this relation-
ship into social and labour market policies. Immigration policies and
practices alongside labour market regulation ensured that, when women
did enter the labour market, they did so on very different terms and condi-
tions than men. Yet the impact of the postwar welfare state was not all
negative for women. Carole Pateman appreciates the apparent ambiguities
of the welfare state as rooted in a commitment to liberalism: “Pateman sees

25Gendering the Concept of Social Cohesion
liberalism’s implications for women as fraught with ‘Wollstonecraft’s di-
lemma,’ in which demands for gender-neutral inclusion on equal terms
with men seem to conflict with wishes for recognition of gender-specific
talents, needs and concerns. She sees the welfare state as oppressing women,
but at the same time as responsible for important improvements in their
circumstances and democratic opportunities. In particular, she sees welfare
state support as opening choices for women about their economic depend-
ence on men, and opening the matter of their rights to public politics”
(O’Connor, Orloff, and Shaver 1999, 64). We suggest that certain Canadian
welfare policies exemplify this paradox. Mother’s allowance policies in Can-
ada have been shown by Margaret Little (1998) to subject single mothers to
moral regulation and quite different and unequal economic rules and ex-
pectations. Yet the provision of such allowances simultaneously recognized
the contribution of mothering to society and the need to support women
financially for shouldering this responsibility. In so doing, the welfare state,
along with practices in the labour market and at work, contributed to post-
war economic prosperity and social stability and cohesion.
These two dimensions of the gendering of work – the distinction between
paid and unpaid work, and the segregation of women into certain kinds of
jobs – are mutually reinforcing. Together with associated policies and prac-
tices, they provide the basis for the systemic discrimination that women
have faced historically in the labour market and fought in the courts, in
their unions, and in public and political discourse in the 1960s and 1970s.
We argue that the gendering of both paid and unpaid work, and the con-
struction of men’s and women’s roles as complementary, comprised a source
of social cohesion in the postwar years. The male family wage and bread-
winner identity, in large part born out of struggles by unions for a living
wage, provided financial stability for families. This male role was comple-
mented by women’s production and reproduction of a home and a domes-
tic identity. Women combined their work in the home with volunteering in
the community, through which they built and sustained the social inter-
connections and relations of trust and mutual responsibility among com-
munity members that were the bedrock of social cohesion. Under these
conditions, gender roles were clearly defined, expected, and understood.
The stability of this gendered norm, in which women either did not work in
the paid labour market or, if they did, performed “women’s work,” pro-
vided the basis for fostering social cohesion in the postwar years.
3
In loca-
tions where social cohesion could take on a class edge and become a culture
of solidarity (see Haiven in this volume), it was based on unequal relations
between women and men.
This form of social cohesion was clearly built on relations of domina-
tion and inequality that sustained systemic discrimination against women.
But, paradoxically, it also contained elements that recognized women as

26Belinda Leach and Charlotte Yates
members of a collective group with specific needs and interests related to
how gender had been constructed. At one level, the domestic ideology, roles,
and responsibilities and the institutions and practices that reinforced this
model provided some recognition of women’s role in raising families and
maintaining households. In this regard, there was recognition of women’s
collective position and responsibilities from which flowed some benefits
for women. Yet because this recognition was rooted in notions of “natural”
abilities, the frailty of the female sex, and the inability of women to per-
form on equal terms with men in the public and paid labour market sphere,
women paid a heavy price for this recognition of their collective differences.
Many groups, such as racialized minorities and sole-support mothers, suf-
fered the limits of this form of social cohesion since they did not have ac-
cess to the family wage, were stigmatized as the “other,” and were excluded
from many of the benefits of the economy and society. This experience
points to an important dimension of social cohesion, namely, the bound-
aries that it establishes. By putting boundaries in place, patterns and struc-
tures of social cohesion include some people as they exclude others. So we
argue that the longed-for past of social stability, trust, and community, that
golden age of social cohesion and high social capital, was secured through
the domination, inequality, and exclusion, in varying degrees, of women,
racialized groups, and others.
The 1970s: Feminism and Equality Rights
In the context of second-wave feminism from the late 1960s to the early
1980s, feminists demanded changes to political and economic arrangements.
They demanded greater equality for women in the paid labour market,
through which women could achieve economic independence and ulti-
mately sexual and social equality. The report of the Royal Commission on
the Status of Women (1970) set out a critical assessment of women’s status
and a blueprint for many of the changes that followed, including the estab-
lishment of government bodies with responsibility for women’s issues and
the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. Legislative changes
such as the introduction of maternity leave, child care subsidies, provincial
human rights codes, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms propelled
change toward greater equality between women and men in many con-
texts, especially the workplace. The expansion of the public sector, to sup-
port the greater welfare role of government, opened up new paid
opportunities for women, both in traditional roles of caring and in new,
more professional, capacities (Evans and Wekerle 1997). As the economy
flourished, labour shortages also shifted the terms on which women en-
tered the labour market. Women took on larger roles in their unions, de-
manding attention to issues of major concern to women, including collective
bargaining, union democracy, and their representation (White 1993). In

27Gendering the Concept of Social Cohesion
nursing and teaching, women used their unions to acquire recognition as
well-qualified and valuable professionals. Alongside these developments,
feminists pressed for greater individual freedoms through measures such as
the right to abortion, easier divorce, and the recognition of personal sexual
and household preferences and through actions such as Take Back the Night
marches and demands for the expansion of women’s shelters and guaran-
tees of personal security.
The results of these changes were somewhat contradictory. On one hand,
women gained greater individual rights and improved their economic inde-
pendence through labour market participation. Increased education has led
to associated increases in women’s status as professionals and paraprofes-
sionals (McCall 2001). Overt sexism abated in many areas of public life. On
the other hand, women remained segregated into a small number of occu-
pations and continued to be paid less than men for comparable work. More-
over, many of these gains in the public sphere were not accompanied by
changes in the domestic sphere in terms of who looked after the children
(Folbre 1994) or household cleaning (Luxton, Rosenberg, and Arat-Koc 1990).
Women continued to shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden of
household chores and the emotional labour of raising a family (Hochschild
1997); men were not expected to care in the same way as women. These
shortcomings prompted the next push for change by women in Canada,
seen in the successful mobilization for pay equity legislation in the 1980s,
improvements in employment equity, and attempts to institute a national
child care program. Overall, the changes pushed by feminists and imple-
mented in the 1970s targeted the systemic discrimination that had segre-
gated and disadvantaged women in the postwar period and before. In this
way, women were pushing to renegotiate the terms on which postwar so-
cial cohesion had been secured.
The 1980s and 1990s: Neoliberalism Ascendant
The decades of the 1980s and 1990s offered a mixture of new opportunities
and achievements alongside setbacks for women in Canada. The 1980s be-
gan with a sharp and deep recession (1981-82) that saw unemployment
climb to levels not seen since the Great Depression, productivity and prof-
its decline, and growing momentum behind neoconservative challenges
to the prevailing Keynesian policy and ideological framing of problems
and solutions. The tremors in the political economy precipitated by this
recession became full-scale seismic changes in the aftermath of the second
and even deeper recession of 1990-93. The effects of these recessions on
women and the resulting economic and social welfare state restructuring
were contradictory.
Women’s unemployment levels fell below those of men for much of this
period, in part reflecting the growth in the service sector, where women

28Belinda Leach and Charlotte Yates
were more likely to be employed. Women’s enrolment in doctoral and vari-
ous professional programs continued to rise, and more women were found
in the ranks of engineers, university professors, and physicians. There were
also significant legislative gains for women, won through the struggles of
the women’s movement with the support of a number of groups, notably
unions. What distinguished many of the breakthroughs in this period was
recognition of the systemic and collective nature of discrimination against
women and of their experiences of inequality.
In the mid-1980s, pay equity legislation was implemented in a number of
provinces, with the most radical breakthrough in Ontario (Fudge and
McDermott 1991). The significance of Ontario’s model of pay equity legis-
lation lay in three dimensions: it was proactive in that pay equity schemes
had to be developed in workplaces according to certain timetables instead
of in response to individual complaints; it was collective in that it was in-
tended to address the pay of broad groups of workers, not just individual
pay anomalies; and it covered large parts of the public and private sector.
Pay equity provisions in Ontario were then extended in the early 1990s to
encompass an even broader range of women.
In 1986, after the release of Rosalie Abella’s findings from the 1984 Royal
Commission on Equality of Employment, the federal government intro-
duced employment equity legislation. Although limited in scope and weakly
enforced, this legislation sought to break down structural and institutional
biases that prevented women, along with three other equity groups, from
gaining proportional representation in workplaces (Jain and Hackett 1988).
In so doing, employment equity legislation recognized the collective nature
of discrimination and its effects and sought to remedy them in ways be-
yond individual redress. Although Ontario introduced more wide-sweeping
employment equity provisions in 1994, they were rescinded in 1995 by a
neoconservative government, discussed in greater detail below (Abu-Laban
and Gabriel 2002; Bakan and Kobayashi 1999).
In addition to these tangible, systemic changes, a number of symbolic
victories for women suggested more widespread social and cultural changes
in Canada. During the federal election of 1993, a much-publicized televi-
sion debate among party leaders centred entirely on women’s issues, raising
many women’s hopes even further that a national child care strategy along-
side other breakthroughs was imminent. The rise to leadership of women in
political parties, including the brief period when Kim Campbell was prime
minister, and in major private corporations, notably auto parts giants Magna
and Linamar as well as General Motors Canada, seemed to signal that the
time for women’s equality had come. Yet at the same time these gains were
won by women and as social-political-legislative recognition of their collec-
tive position in society was achieved, there was tremendous economic un-
certainty and instability, driven by the two recessions, increased global

29Gendering the Concept of Social Cohesion
competition, and attacks on the role of the state in the economy. The eco-
nomic and workplace restructuring that accompanied growing economic
uncertainty and competition had uneven effects on women and men; women
often bore the brunt of change (Bakker 1996). Women who had succeeded
in getting hired in non-traditional workplaces such as Stelco were laid off,
consistent with union rules of seniority (Corman et al. 1993). As companies
sought to capture the benefits of great flexibility of employment, much
work was transformed into individual contracts and part-time, casual, and in
some sectors home-based work (Leach 1993; Vosko 2000). Interestingly, these
trends were most pronounced in the public sector and in labour-intensive,
light manufacturing, two sectors in which women’s employment was heav-
ily concentrated. Women bore the brunt of many of these changes. Often,
restructuring initiatives ended up pushing women to exchange the pay
equity gains that had finally been negotiated for greater job security or no
wage rollbacks. Pay equity was “undertaken in relatively good economic times,
[but] it was implemented in bad times” (Armstrong, Cornish, and Millar
2003, 181).
It was in these decades that two reinforcing developments undermined
attempts to secure social cohesion with equality for women. The ascend-
ancy of neoliberalism alongside poststructuralist and postmodernist iden-
tity politics resulted in a shift of emphasis away from recognition of the
collective nature of women’s experience of discrimination and equality and
to individual rights and responsibilities or the politics of identity and differ-
ence. Moreover, the success of women’s struggles to gain greater access to
education, good jobs, and the right to participate in the economy and pol-
itics on more equal terms resulted in growing class differences among women,
based not on their husbands’ earning power but on their own income gen-
eration and structural position in the capitalist mode of production (McCall
2001). Reinforcing this shift was the determination that they should be-
have “like men.”
Neoliberalism, Work, and Social Reproduction in the
Twenty-First Century
We have argued thus far that social cohesion in the postwar period in Can-
ada was predicated on relations of inequality, deeply rooted in women’s
relationship to paid and unpaid work. This articulation of social cohesion
was successfully challenged during the 1970s. Our argument in the remain-
der of the chapter is that the ascendancy of neoliberal and neoconservative
ideas in the 1980s and 1990s conflicted with an earlier discourse and prac-
tice of collectivism that recognized the structural roots of women’s discrimi-
nation and inequality and the need for commensurate solutions. Instead,
neoliberalism and neoconservatism offered quite different views of the world
and women’s place within it, both of which undermined women’s demands

30Belinda Leach and Charlotte Yates
for greater equality through structural intervention in the economy and
society to address the collective roots of this oppression. While neoliberals
celebrated individual achievement and the contribution made to society
through individual effort and hard work, neoconservatives sought to return
us to some golden era of social cohesion when women knew their place. Yet
the combined effects of neoliberal and neoconservative change were simul-
taneously to ignore and devalue women’s role in social reproduction and to
insist on women’s need to become tied ever closer to the labour market but
without necessary collective-social supports. The effects on women are me-
diated by social class, insofar as some women can afford to pay for child
care, house cleaning, and other social reproductive support, while others
cannot. Overall, however, these changes contribute to the erosion of social
cohesion – always gendered but with differing degrees of equality – as women
become increasingly isolated, exhausted, and unable to contribute to their
communities. These are large claims that we seek in the following discourse
to substantiate through a combination of theoretical argument and sub-
stantive discussion.
Women as “Individuals”
Neoliberalism has taken deepest root in the liberal market economies of
Great Britain, the United States, New Zealand, Australia, and to a lesser
extent Canada. Julia O’Connor, Ann Orloff, and Sheila Shaver define neo-
liberalism as “a restatement of classical liberalism, reasserting the liberal
principles of freedom, market individualism and small government. Like
classical liberalism it is an ideology of possessive individualism” (1999, 52).
Policies pursued by neoliberal governments involved rolling back state inter-
vention in the economy to reassert the effects of the market through cuts to
the public sector, reductions in taxes, and the encouragement of public-
private partnerships in efforts to bring market logic to bear on public af-
fairs. In the neoliberal lexicon, success and failure were associated with
individual rights and responsibilities rather than structural discrimination
or social disadvantage. O’Connor, Orloff, and Shaver offer an important
starting point for considering how neoliberalism affected women and their
emerging greater equality in the political economy:
Neo-liberalism has been more willing than classical liberalism to recog-
nize women as individuals in their own right ... Some aspects of the ideol-
ogy of possessive individualism resonate with some of the central themes
of contemporary feminism. Key among these is its affirmation of indi-
vidual freedom and personal autonomy ... Under neo-liberal conditions,
the price of women’s liberal individualism is that their needs and
satisfactions are defined by the market paradigm. Neo-liberalism has been

31Gendering the Concept of Social Cohesion
vocal in its opposition to welfare state support for women on grounds of
gender and gender disadvantage ... Neo-liberalism pictures women in the
same terms as men, equally possessive individuals. (54)
Liberal feminists have long reinforced some of these notions, insisting
that women’s equality rests on equality of opportunity rather than outcome
and breaking down barriers to women’s ability to perform and succeed as
individuals. Wendy McKeen and Ann Porter (2003) have argued that for
feminists the focus on women as individuals was intended to make clear a
separation from the undifferentiated “family,” which had been the basis for
social policy in the postwar period. But they see this late-1970s shift as
critical in providing a foothold for neoliberalism’s attention to the indi-
vidual, and ultimately for the gender-blind turn toward child poverty as the
major social problem (see also Dobrowolsky with Lister 2005), a turn that
makes women as a social category invisible.
As part of this new emphasis on individual rights and responsibilities,
there is growing pressure on women to work, especially working-class women
and single mothers, for whom society increasingly denies social supports
and expects them to make their own way. This emphasis on work and indi-
vidual rights plays out in complex ways. Women’s ongoing involvement in
paid work has been seen by feminists as, and remains one of, the primary
means by which women achieve economic independence . From this van-
tage point, women continue to see work as a good thing in their lives, con-
tributing to a higher standard of living, offering them valuable social
networks often unavailable in the private domestic sphere, and providing
them with an independence from men, which allows them to make certain
choices, including the choice to leave abusive relationships without fear of
poverty. Yet women’s attachment to the labour force in the 1960s and 1970s,
as we have shown, grew under particular conditions of social welfare ben-
efits and the family wage that allowed women a certain amount of discre-
tionary space to decide exactly when they would enter the labour force
(e.g., while their children were preschool age or not) and the terms under
which they would engage in paid work. Neoliberalism progressively strips
away these state supports and restructures work and the labour market in
ways that reduce real wages and job security and eliminate the social net-
working space at work through more careful monitoring of workers and the
intensification of work. Expected to work like men, and increasingly de-
pendent on their own wages, women face collective constraints that go
unrecognized. Child care programs are constructed as a matter of individual
choice, not social right. Management denies women telephone calls to check
on their children or other dependants, expects women to perform routine
overtime, and ignores their particular needs for bathroom breaks. In so

32Belinda Leach and Charlotte Yates
doing, neoliberalism introduces a tyranny to paid work and attachment to
the labour market. It therefore increases dependence on paid work while
reducing its liberating elements.
These changes were experienced among the women we interviewed. De-
spite a clear gendering of auto parts jobs in the later decades of the twentieth
century, women enjoyed reasonable wages and work conditions, compar-
able to many men employed in the same industry. Supported by social wel-
fare policies such as family allowance, unemployment insurance, and
maternity leave, many were able to take time away from work to give birth
and be with young children. Women had a greater choice to re-enter the
labour market when children began school. Women were active in union
activities, taking leadership roles where their efforts were encouraged and
supported by positive union education strategies.
In more recent years, women have seen considerable changes in their
workplaces, only made worse by the cold climate for re-employment else-
where. Women told us of problems with their children and their sense that
they could do nothing to prevent these problems because they could not
afford good child care and had less and less flexibility in their employment
to respond to their children’s needs. There were declining social supports
available to them, especially if they were employed (see Vosko in this vol-
ume). New types of work organization, such as “cells,” required self- and
co-worker policing of pace and accuracy. Constant threats from manage-
ment – vocalized frequently at the workplace – of relocating production to
Mexico made even unionized workers perceive their jobs as precarious and
the work environment as more stressful and characterized by tensions among
workmates. In the newer parts facilities that flourished during the late 1980s
and 1990s, a growing number of workers were hired initially as temporary,
casual workers; several of the workers we interviewed had been through a
number of temporary placements, laid off on the eighty-ninth day of their
contracts to avoid legal commitments to more permanent status. Union rep-
resentation in these workplaces was less likely, and where unions did have a
presence they were highly constrained in their bargaining capacity due to
the mounting pressures of global competition and productive overcapacity
in the automotive industry. Employment contracts ceded more and more
authority to management to deploy workers when and how they wished
(all these points are echoed in various ways in the chapters of Gibbs and
Lewchuk and Wells in this volume, both of which also highlight how work-
ers respond as individuals to their predicaments).
Social class differences among women mediate how they experience these
changes to work, labour markets, and social supports. Many middle-class
and professional women have ended up using their greater earnings to buy
more supports in the home, thus resulting in the explosion in demand for

33Gendering the Concept of Social Cohesion
domestic services ranging from house cleaning to child care. For working-
class women, such as those we interviewed, these changes have been devas-
tating. Women who juggled long hours of work with child and household
care described themselves as becoming increasingly isolated without com-
munity ties or supports and – ironically, given the recent child-centred rhet-
oric – as often unable to raise their children in ways they saw fit.
These stresses are compounded by neoconservatism, whose doctrines are
driven by a desire to restore and protect the traditional family (Leach 1997).
The combined effect of neoconservative and neoliberal doctrines is to force
a woman to assume sole responsibility for her economic future, and when
women fail in their role as mother, due to the need to work ever-longer
hours to sustain their dependants and a household, they are vilified and
morally exhorted to do a better job. These tensions are made more pro-
nounced in societies like Canada where the rates of female-headed house-
holds and single mothers have increased dramatically. For women who do
not work but rely on state social supports, these supports have been trans-
formed by neoconservative policy changes. Little (1998) demonstrates in
her work how social welfare policy in Ontario, for example, has been changed
in ways meant to monitor and regulate women’s sexual and household re-
lations while reducing levels of financial support to a point at which fam-
ilies are forced to live in poverty.
In this way, women’s increased labour market participation and greater
individual economic independence are being bought at a price of increas-
ing social exclusion and ultimately declines in social cohesion (Leach and
Yates 2006). Although social cohesion analysts recognize that women as a
group suffer particular inequalities and barriers in contemporary societies
that are likely to result in social exclusion, their proposed solutions to these
inequities and barriers ignore many of the hidden and contradictory di-
mensions of gender inequality and domination that have emerged in re-
cent years. Thus, women appear to be no further ahead. In certain respects,
they may in fact be more marginal to the proposed benefits of social cohe-
sion than they were in the postwar period.
Degendered Work or New Forms of Gendered Exclusion?
In this section, we argue that the neoliberal shifts traced above have serious
and often unrecognized consequences for the gendering of jobs and roles at
work, so as to disrupt them in complex ways. Gendering at work has be-
come more slippery and situational, but it is not absent. Leslie Salzinger
(2003) has argued in her research on Mexican auto parts maquilas that
ideasabout gender in a particular workplace may shift rapidly and over a
very short time. Salzinger considers that the way gender operates in
workplaces has much to do with meanings and subjectivities that provide

34Belinda Leach and Charlotte Yates
the frameworks through which workers and managers understand their
options. Managers want to create a particular kind of worker on the shop
floor, and they imagine and deploy gendered meanings to do so. Workers
respond to these meanings. Thus together, sometimes in opposition, some-
times in alliance, they engage in a process of recreating gendered workers.
Clearly, the details of such a process will depend on the specific context. In
a company that Salzinger calls Particimex, workers were constructed to see
themselves inside the plant as different from their gendered selves outside
the plant. Making the worker began with an explicit process in manage-
ment’s training of new workers. Workers were socialized into the gender-
neutral rhetoric of the particular management control system employed.
But as Salzinger points out, this process was deceptive because management
had already hired gender-coded workers – the emblematic docile, dexterous,
and cheap female workers who toil in multinational factories. Thus, man-
agerial decisions and worker responses operated on already gendered sym-
bolic terrain as femininity inside the plant was constructed as distinct from
femininity outside it. Salzinger says that “the effect of this layered discourse
is to evoke a split subjectivity among women workers at the plant,” and for
us her key point is that “managers effectively instantiate gender in the pro-
cess of negating it, invoking it each time they insist on its absence” (61).
She concludes that control thus owed its success to the very gendered dis-
courses it denied.
We have observed a comparable process of simultaneous degendering
and gendering taking place in Ontario auto parts workplaces. In a very dif-
ferent cultural context (though interestingly in the same industry), we under-
stand present-day gender behaviour to be in a state of constant flux rather
than operating according to determined patterns. Diverging slightly from
Salzinger, we see the making and unmaking of gender at work in the present
context in Ontario not as a management fait accompli but as a site of strug-
gle between workers and management – in other words, a site of worker and
management agency. Gender is thus a site for everyday struggle over cre-
ation of the particular kind of worker management desires.
Some examples from our research suggest the number of ways that gen-
der is being constantly reconstructed at the workplace. In a plant where the
primary work was sewing, jobs had been clearly gendered as women’s for
decades. With few exceptions in the Canadian context, sewing is unproblem-
atically identified as women’s work. “Downsizing” this unionized workplace
in the 1990s meant that men “bumped” from non-sewing jobs into women’s
sewing jobs, although many chose to seek work elsewhere rather than do
“women’s work.” This reorganization of the workplace reconfigured the
gendering of sewing work locally as men took on jobs that seemed to be
more secure than many outside the plant.

35Gendering the Concept of Social Cohesion
At another auto parts plant, where work was heavier, dirtier, and more
insecure owing in large part to management practices, masculinity was re-
produced daily on the shop floor through the danger and “heavy” nature of
the labour process and through actual and discursive interpersonal violence
and overt hostility in labour management relations. This routinized per-
formance of masculinity constructed a testosterone-charged workplace in
which women suffered the brunt of sexism (and racism) and the insistence
that they “work like a man” to prove their worth alongside their fellow
workers and in the eyes of management. The few women who survived this
workplace, driven to stay by the need for a reasonably well-paid job (thirteen
dollars per hour) to support their children alone, expressed acute anxieties
related to work, depression, and a loss of femininity and civility as they
tried to cope with the insults and injuries of the workplace.
Our research points to overtime as a critical arena for the construction
and reconstruction of gender in most workplaces and a key site where gen-
der norms are simultaneously invoked and negated. Veronica Beechey and
Tessa Perkins (1987), with Britain as the case in point, have argued that
overtime was the traditional flexibility strategy used in men’s work, while
part-time work was management’s chosen flexibility strategy for women’s
jobs. Such a pattern clearly emerged from an established gender division of
labour in the home. In contrast, in the contemporary period, overtime is
increasingly used in both male- and female-dominated workplaces for flex-
ibility to meet just-in-time commitments. In every workplace where we in-
terviewed workers, even those on the verge of being shut down, extended
hours of overtime were expected of workers as a way of expanding produc-
tion without increasing the labour force. As Mark Thomas in this volume
argues, overtime demands are accompanied by gendered assumptions and
practices of both management and workers. In our research, men’s and
women’s responses to overtime demands varied. Women sometimes chose
to refuse it in order to spend time off with their children. But such choices
were costly: other workers tacitly criticized that decision, offering dis-
approving looks as women walked out after their scheduled shift, and as
refusals to do overtime meant closing the door to overtime in the future
when women might need the money. Many of the women we interviewed
went into tremendous detail about what it meant to take or not take over-
time, and they listed the practical difficulties of life with an unstable sched-
ule. Paradoxically, single mothers sought as much overtime as they could
get because they needed the money. At the same time, they described the
regret they felt needing to prioritize money over time spent with their chil-
dren. Men talked about the effects of overtime on family life but in much
less detail than women since the complexities of negotiating family respon-
sibilities and personal identities were less fraught.

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CHAPTER XII.
They Visit the Kitchen.
ERY cautiously they set forth, Peter Pan
conducting, while Bedelia brought up the rear in
order to safeguard the small fry from any
possible attack in either direction.
Silently the little procession crept from the nursery and hopping
and sliding down the stairs swiftly advanced upon the lower regions.
In the kitchen hall they broke ranks.
The kitchen was a big, bright room, beautifully kept and as clean
as wax. Indeed, cook was in the habit of saying that you could eat
off the floor, which was undoubtedly true provided you did not prefer
a table and chair.
Everything fairly shone with cleanliness and was as bright as
sapolio and elbow grease could make it.
A great pan of bread had been put to rise on a table near the
range and this the hungry bears sampled first, upsetting the pan and
pushing their paws and noses into the dough in their impatience to
taste it. However, they did not like it at all, as it was much too raw
and sticky, and not at all unlike the library paste on Sally’s school
room desk, which Peter Pan had once upset in order to taste it and
from which he had retired in disgust. So they left it strewn all about
the newly scrubbed floor, and started on a voyage of discovery in the
pantries. Here indeed were goodies galore, plump pies and a
luscious jelly cake glistening with white frosting; shining glasses of

jelly and jam, jars upon jars of preserves, pickles and catsup of
every description.
“Putting up” was cook’s especial delight and this year she had
certainly done herself proud.
You may be sure it did not take the Teddy bears long to fall upon
such an alluring feast, or rather to fall into it, which they did head
first, scooping up the dainties with their paws and gorging
themselves like little pigs, spoiling what they could not eat out of
sheer wantonness, and finally finishing off with a quantity of luscious
honey for which they really had not a sufficient capacity after the
miscellaneous collection of sweets that they had already devoured.
They now found themselves very thirsty indeed, and recollected
that Sally was extremely fond of a good smelling stuff that she called
cider.
They at once resolved to have some, and having rummaged all
over the now disorderly kitchen without finding any, decided to

continue their researches in the cellar.
Therefore in a few moments the whole crew were scrambling
down the cellar steps, Peter Pan lighting the way with a candle,
which, with plenty of matches, he had found on one of the closet
shelves. The matches were a new proposition to him, and it required
several attempts and a quantity of wasted matches before the
candle was properly lighted. Peter Pan’s only idea of artificial lighting
was indissolubly connected with a button in the wall. But as he had
frequently seen cook take along a candle when she was going down
cellar he felt that it would be highly improper to descend thither
without one.
Teddy bears have no powers of deduction as their brains consist
solely of raveled silk and tissue paper. Consequently they never draw
inferences, a very lucky thing in the case of Peter Pan.
The cellar stairs were quite different from any that the bears had
tried before, being open at the back of the steps. When about half
way down one of the twins slipped through and fell to the floor
below with a resounding thump.
Immediately he set up a fearful shrieking, not because he was
hurt in the least, but because he was dreadfully afraid that the rest
of the family would get to the cider before he did.
Now Peter Pan was, as a rule, an extremely indulgent parent, but
of late it had commenced to dawn upon his inner consciousness that
his offspring were being fearfully spoiled.
Therefore, quickly hopping down the remaining steps he grabbed
up the squalling Jerry and administered a sound spanking, which so
took the little bear by surprise that he stopped abruptly in the
middle of a fearful shriek and at once became as still as a mouse.
After this slight interruption, the bears proceeded to institute a
vigorous search for the cider. At first they struck the vinegar barrel
from which they retired in dismay, the very odor of the acid stuff

giving the baby bear an attack of colic. But their next experiment
proved more successful and soon they were filling themselves with
the sweet liquid. When they could hold no more they all sat down
rather tipsily on the bottom step, not quite sure what they wanted to
do next. Of course they had not thought to turn off the faucet of the
cider barrel, and the little amber stream continued to run steadily,
slowly spreading over the floor, where it presently formed a shining
lake in which the flickering light of the candle cast some grotesque
and ever changing reflections.
Just about this time the swift patter of furry paws sounded on the
kitchen floor and were heard rapidly approaching the cellar door.
Immediately the frightened bears knew what had happened. Rough
House had awakened, in a really very inconsiderate manner, and
missing the bear family had hurried downstairs to do a little
detective work on his own account.
Instantly Peter Pan blew out the candle and the whole family
scurried away in the pitch black darkness, wading knee deep
through the lake of cider, and finally taking refuge in the coal bin.
Meanwhile Rough House was not a little astonished to find such a
state of affairs in cook’s orderly domain. He sniffed around cautiously

and so quick were his movements that his sharp brown eyes caught
a glimpse of the flickering candle gleam below stairs before Peter
Pan had time to extinguish it.
At once he conjectured that the Teddy bears had been the
authors of all the mischief; and filled with an impish desire to get
even with the creatures of whom he had grown so jealous, he
quickly sprang behind the door and charging upon it with lowered
head had the joy of seeing it swing securely shut, leaving his
enemies close prisoners in the darkness and silence below stairs.
Rough House had been
trained never to help
himself to anything to eat
unless it was first offered to
him. But he could not
refrain from licking up a few
tempting, sugary crumbs,
and little scraps of cake that
the bears had left scattered
about the floor. Then after
pushing at the door with his
nose to make sure that all
was hard and fast he
trotted upstairs, wagging
his tail with much
satisfaction and laid himself
down across the foot of
Sally’s bed, where he was
soon fast asleep; keeping
one eye open, however, as
he usually did, in order to be able to head off the bears should they
by any manner of means succeed in escaping from their
confinement.
Meanwhile in their dreary prison in the cellar the Teddy bears
huddled together, trembling for their lives in the inky darkness. Even

Peter Pan had lost all his impudence, for every moment he expected
to hear the cellar door open and Rough House come loping down
the steps. He shuddered as he remembered the fate of other toys
that he had seen carried away in the dog’s powerful jaws, a fate that
was perhaps now in store for him and his.
After a wait that seemed interminable, being somewhat
encouraged by the fact that nothing untoward had happened,
although momentarily expected, he summoned sufficient courage to
grope his way to the bottom of the steps, and after a period of
breathless listening, to their very top.
All was silence in the kitchen. The dog had evidently departed.
But push as he might he could not budge the tightly latched door.
Disheartened by the failure of his repeated efforts, he crept back
to the miserable little group in the coal bin.
There was nothing for it but to await whatever developments the
morning might bring forth. And huddled together they fell asleep, a
sadder if not a wiser family of Teddy bears.

CHAPTER XIII.
Peter Pan Uses the Telephone.
ERY early next morning Sally was wakened by
Rough House, who was standing up on his hind
legs beside her bed, licking her face and
occasionally uttering a short, sharp bark.
As soon as he saw that she was wide awake he ran toward the
door and then back to the bed, pulling at Sally’s nightgown, and
plainly begging her to follow him.
Sally jumped out of bed at once, hastily stuck her little pink toes
into her red bedroom slippers, a new pair, kept carefully in a
convenient hidie-hole where the dog’s greatest ingenuity could never
discover them, and threw over her nightie a dainty silk kimono on
which were embroidered a succession of smiling Japanese ladies,
each one sitting under a cherry tree in full bloom and holding over
her head a wonderful Japanese umbrella, which seemed to be
entirely unnecessary in view of the shade that must have been cast
by the cherry tree. It was, moreover, faced with pink satin, and was
quite the most delightful article in Sally’s wardrobe.
The little girl hastily followed the dog, who had started
downstairs, pausing now and then to look back and make sure that
Sally was following.
Down the stairs they hastened and as they reached the lower
flight sounds of woe were wafted to them from the kitchen. Thither

they hastened to find cook crying and wringing her hands over the
dreadful outlook.
Immediately Sally thought of Marius at the ruins of Carthage, and
Herculaneum and Pompeii, stories that she had learned from her
governess; but she forbore to mention them, as cook was not
exactly in a frame of mind just then to absorb ancient history.
The little girl longed to rush forward and comfort her friend whom
she had remembered from babyhood. But the kitchen floor was in
such a fearfully sticky mess with jam and pickles and scraps of cake
and pie that she could only hover on the outskirts, calling out her
condolences to cook, who for once in her life failed to pay the
smallest attention to her little favorite.
Just then John, the man who did all the chores about the house,
came stumping up the cellar stairs. He had gone down to attend to
the furnace, but had found something in the coal bin that sent him
straight back again as fast as his rheumatic leg would allow.
He now appeared in the doorway with his arms full of Peter Pan
and his family, all of which he proceeded to solemnly deposit in the
middle of the floor. And a more demoralized, disreputable looking
bunch one could never conceive or imagine.

Sticky with the cider in which they had wallowed and covered
with a fine layer of coal dust acquired in the quarters in which they
had passed the night, they presented an appalling vision, and poor
Sally lifted up her voice and wept in unison with cook.
Just then Rough House appeared at the kitchen door, having
made a trip upstairs and succeeded in arousing papa, mamma and
nurse, who now came hurrying down half-dressed. And Sally was
forthwith borne off to the nursery, where she was coddled and
comforted and dressed by the crackling wood fire.
Mamma condoled with cook and papa decided that a private
detective should henceforth look after the house during the night.
Rough House was the last one to leave for the upper regions and
as he followed mamma upstairs he cocked his eye knowingly at
Peter Pan, sitting disconsolately in the midst of his crocked and
begrimed family. That besmeared worthy glared sullenly back
without being able to hurl defiance at his enemy in any more
emphatic manner.
Breakfast was late that morning and very scrappy, but nobody
cared for anything much, so much troubled were they all over the
affair in the kitchen. And after the doleful meal was concluded papa
departed to find Pinkerton and mamma and Sally drove down town
carrying the Teddy Bears to the cleaners, where, owing to their
dreadful condition, they were obliged to remain for at least a couple
of weeks.
It is needless to say that during their absence everything
progressed smoothly and the man from Pinkerton’s found himself,
like Othello, with his occupation gone. And when they finally
returned fresh and fine and several shades lighter from the cleaning
process, they were greeted with rapture by their little mistress.
Only the dogs were sorry to see them return. If ever a dog
mourned his inability to talk, that dog was Rough House as he
watched Sally while she hugged and kissed the returned prodigals.

The dog had always been Peter Pan’s especial detestation, and
now his hatred was increased immeasurably. From his coign of
vantage on Sally’s knee he watched the dog sulkily, as he lay at the
little girl’s feet, his beautiful red coat glistening like satin in the
winter sunshine and his sharp, black nose between his two paws,
apparently asleep, but in reality watching everything through half-
closed eyelids.
Peter Pan had
added considerably to
his already varied
store of knowledge
during his stay at the
cleaning
establishment, and
had learned, for one
thing, that a
telephone is a very
handy thing to have in
the house. He had
seen the employees at
the cleaners use it
frequently and was
fairly itching to get his
mischief making paws
on the receiver of the
extension phone that
hung up in the
nursery.
Mrs. Peter Pan had
been carrying on
worse than ever, and
sulked most of the
time, for she had
grown very lonely and

did not get on at all well with the rest of the toys in the nursery. She
boxed the cubs and snapped at her husband and altogether made
life so unbearable that after deep and prolonged meditation Peter
Pan concocted a scheme which he now only awaited a favorable
opportunity to put into execution.
His chance came on a certain night, when, the dogs having gone
to the farm for a few days, the coast in the nursery was quite clear.
Dragging a chair to the telephone he joyfully mounted upon it and
pulled down the receiver. In another moment the night watchman at
Schwartz’s was more than astonished to be called to the phone and
to hear a queer little growling voice send in a large order for Teddy
bears to be delivered the first thing next morning at the North
residence.
The order was so large
that it completely cleaned
up the stock of Teddy
bears, which were duly
packed, and at an early
hour a big delivery wagon
drew up in front of Sally’s
home, and out of it the
driver lifted a huge box,
which he proceeded to
deposit in the front hall.
Mamma was not at
home, having gone to
aunty’s for luncheon, but
Sally immediately sent for
John, who opened the box
at once. When what
should tumble out but a
whole multitude of Teddy

bears, of all sizes, colors and descriptions?
Sally was rendered quite speechless with delight and
astonishment. And when mamma arrived at home, late in the
afternoon, she was more than surprised to find her little daughter
sitting on the nursery floor literally surrounded by Teddy bears, that
swarmed all over the nursery and overflowed into her own room
beyond.
In the midst of them and wearing a most delighted expression sat
Bedelia, no longer sulky but literally beaming and appearing the very
jolliest of bears.
Immediately there was a good deal of telephoning, first to papa
and then to Schwartz’s; the latter, when they learned of the practical
joke that had been perpetrated, readily agreed to take back the
Teddy bears.
Sally was of course dreadfully disappointed, and although she
could not refrain from a few tears that reddened her poor little nose,
she was, on the whole, so sweet about it that papa allowed her to
select several bears which were kept in the nursery when the rest of
the tribe journeyed away in the big delivery wagon.

CHAPTER XIV.
The Teddy Bears at the Cleaner’s.
HERE had been more than one reason for the
detention of the Teddy bears so long at the
cleaner’s. To be sure, they were very much soiled
indeed, but something else fell out which
protracted their stay during the second week.
Peter Pan and his family did not at all enjoy the cleaning process,
in which it seemed that they were literally handled without gloves,
but from which they emerged in a spotless condition. They were
then carried late one afternoon to a large store room, and set up on
a shelf to await transportation home.
As it was a very large establishment two night watchmen were
employed, and from their elevated position the bears eyed hungrily
the baskets in which they had brought their midnight lunch, and
which they had placed on a small table near by.
The night dragged slowly and the watchmen consumed a couple
of hours in playing cribbage. After they had grown tired of the game,
as it was still too early to eat, one of them proposed that they make
the rounds of the building and then sit down together to their lunch.
As soon as they were out of sight and hearing, the bears
scrambled down from their shelf and made haste to investigate the
contents of the lunch baskets.

They contained a rather slim meal for five, besides which some of
the food was of a description that caused the pampered family to
turn up their sharp noses. They afterward learned that it was called
pork and sauerkraut, a mixture that the new made-in-Germany
bears would no doubt have appreciated.
Peter Pan, however, dumped the contents of the basket out on
the floor, upsetting and breaking a bottle of milk, that ran all over
the floor and added a liquid element to the sour mess. He then
opened the other basket, in which he discovered sandwiches, fried
cakes and a triangle of pumpkin pie.
Upon these viands they feasted until not a crumb remained and
then turned their attention to the pack of cards with which the
watchmen had been playing cribbage. The board and little ivory pins
also proved very amusing.
Peter Pan had watched the game closely and it did not take him
very long to learn it. So he now set about teaching it to Bedelia.
However, they soon found the cards very awkward to handle, as
they were far too large for Teddy bears in proportion; besides which
the little pins were forever falling on the floor and getting lost.
So the pair soon gave it up and handed the cards over to the little
bears who seized upon them with the greatest avidity and examined

them curiously. They then fell to building houses with the bits of
pasteboard, which, as all houses of cards usually do, soon came
tumbling down in confusion.
As the little bears were not particularly gentle in handling their
playthings they were soon torn and defaced and were thrown in a
soiled heap on the floor, while the cubs ran after their parents, who
had now started out on a voyage of discovery.
On the floor above, level with the street, was the room in which
all the cleansed articles were displayed in glass cases and in the
large show window. Peter Pan was afraid of being seen from outside,
so with some difficulty he managed to drag down the shades. He
understood how to do that very well indeed.
So far their journey had been illuminated by the use of matches,
which Peter Pan had brought with him along with the watchman’s
pipe and a bag of Bull Durham. A trail of burned matches thrown
down when they had burned out marked their passage from below
stairs. Now that the coast seemed to be clear the electric light was
brought into play and the bears proceeded to investigate
everywhere, leaving ruin and devastation in their wake.
Fine furs and delicate laces were mauled and trampled; dainty
evening gowns were pulled about and covered with little sticky paw
marks. Mrs. Peter Pan possessed herself of an exquisite pink feather
boa in which she capered madly about, having wrapped the boa
several times around her body while the long ends trailed upon the
floor.
Meanwhile the cubs were not losing any time, but were making
merry among the kid gloves, pulling them up on their paws and
soiling and splitting every pair that they touched.
Peter Pan had been satisfied with a cursory survey of the pretty
articles on exhibition, for he soon found that they did not interest
him very much. So he soon turned his attention to the watchman’s
pipe which he had all the time been carrying about with him.

It was no difficult matter to fill and light it and the bear threw
himself luxuriously on a pile of filmy laces and proceeded to smoke
to his heart’s content.
Now Peter Pan had never heard anything concerning the effects
of the first attempt at smoking. Therefore he was much surprised at
the queer sensations which after a few moments he began to
experience, without in the least comprehending the source from
whence they came. For the pipe was about five times as large in
proportion to Peter Pan as it was to its original owner. And of course
its effects were in the same ratio.
Peter Pan began to realize a fearsome sensation at the pit of his
round stomach, the purport of which very soon became only too
evident. The floor seemed to rock beneath him, and when he
essayed to walk, it made as if to rise up and hit him on the head. It
curved in billows and tipped itself up at a fearful angle, as if offering
him a challenge.
Who had ever before seen the floor of an ordinary shop, or
indeed, any floor at all, behave in such an utterly absurd and
unaccountable manner?
Peter Pan would have wondered had he not been too ill to
wonder at anything. His head was splitting and a flame of thirst
devoured his parched tongue.
In his misery, the cause of which he did not in the least
understand, he let fall the pipe, a spark from which fell upon the
web-like lace and in a moment the whole pile was in a blaze.
Now Peter Pan knew what a fire meant, for he had seen one once
before, and although he was about as ill as a bear could well be, he
took to his unsteady heels, calling loudly to his family to follow him,
and together they plunged down the stairs, seeking safety in the
lower regions.

Hastily they climbed to their original shelf, and not a moment too
soon, for the torpor which enveloped them all day was beginning to
steal upon them, and mercifully to dull the pangs that gripped their
mischievous ringleader.
Now the watchmen, who had seen the light of the rapidly
increasing blaze, came racing to the scene of action. The fluids used
in cleansing fed the flames, that now were burning fiercely; an alarm
was turned in and by the time the fire department arrived they
found all that they could attend to.
Nearly everything in the store was destroyed, and such articles as
were saved were so soiled and begrimed by the water and smoke
that it was found necessary to clean them over again, much to the
disgust and dismay of the Teddy bears. And right glad they were
when at last they were swathed in wrappings of tissue paper, packed
in a big box and expressed home to Papa Doctor’s house.
Here Bedelia immediately set her wits to work to plan new
mischief for the amusement of the nursery and her own delectation,
the result of this scheming being a grand ball, which took place at
no very late date.

CHAPTER XV.
A Ball in the Nursery.
HE new Teddy bears proved a great acquisition to
the society of the nursery. They were fine, plump
specimens, and were all tagged “made in
Germany,” a fact which marked them with
especial distinction. Their manners were polished
in the extreme and they at once became prime favorites. One of
them, a particularly fine looking fellow, was labeled “the Kaiser,” and
his round and sleek little frau so captured Bedelia’s fancy that she
immediately devoted herself to the new acquaintances to the
exclusion of everything else, even to Peter Pan and the cubs.
Peter Pan was anything but pleased at this turn of events, and
began to fear that he had bitten off more than he could chew in
sending for the strange bears. It was now his turn to sulk, and he
behaved with such outrageous rudeness that the Kaiser took offence
and matters began to assume a threatening aspect.
Bedelia was herself a delighted spectator of the trouble that she
had stirred up, watching the trend of affairs with impish glee and
redoubling her attentions in proportion as she saw it annoyed her
husband.
Thus matters stood when the toys determined to give a grand
reception and ball in honor of the newcomers, and elegant,
engraved invitations were issued by an executive committee.

This was not a difficult thing to achieve, as Bedelia had purloined
the same from mamma’s desk.
To be sure they had been neither filled out nor directed, as none
of the toys could write, but neither could they read; the invitations
were handed around merely as a matter of form, for every toy in the
nursery knew the time and place of the wonderful event.
Such a brilliant affair had never before taken place, and society
was all agog and in a flutter of excitement.
The committee was at first somewhat puzzled as to how they
should secure adequate refreshments, as, in the light of recent
events, a raid on the kitchen was out of the question. But Bedelia
again came to the rescue, and by the aid of the telephone ordered
such a gorgeous supper that the caterer who had served the North
family for years concluded that some grand society function was
afoot.
All this time Peter Pan was growing sulkier and sulkier, and his
attitude had become more threatening. He had even been overheard
to vow that he would not attend the ball.
All the rest of the toys felt extremely anxious as to the outcome
of affairs. Many of them sided with Peter Pan, for he had always
been friendly and courteous with everyone, while his wife had kept,
to herself. And her accession of friendship with the newcomers had
only tended to aggravate society at large.
The Kaiser and his plump and pretty wife, however, had become
extremely popular, and owned a goodly following. So public opinion
appeared to be about evenly divided.
It seemed a great shame that such a radical split should have
taken place in a society that heretofore had always moved in perfect
unison.
The twins had been looking forward to the coming festivities with
the liveliest anticipations, but on the very day before the ball their

father, having been offended at them for some infringement of rules,
declared that they should not set foot in the ball-room. Bedelia
immediately vowed that they should, and so matters stood on the
evening of the ball.
All the dolls were rigged out in their best attire, and Bedelia had
borrowed a beautiful pink silk dècolletè gown from one of them who
was fortunate enough to own several.
To be sure, it was rather a tight fit and two buttons indignantly
burst off the back of the waist when they discovered who it was that
was putting it on. A pin or two, however, made good the deficiency,
and Bedelia really looked very charming in the glistening pink silk
with a wreath of tiny pink rosebuds twined around her ears. She felt
entirely satisfied as she surveyed herself in the mirror on Sally’s
bureau, to the top of which she had climbed in order to get a full
view of herself, and quite forgot all about the anxious twins who,
decorated with two of Sally’s newest blue hair-ribbons, hovered
nervously in the background awaiting developments.
Soon the music struck up and the Kaiser and Bedelia proceeded
to lead the grand march around the nursery.
To be sure the music was not very grand, for the doll’s piano was
the sole instrument available and the only personage who could be
persuaded to perform upon it was an ancient china doll, who had

lost both feet, the result of having been dropped in the wash basin
by Sally, and consequently was unable to do any dancing. However,
the hearty good-will of the guests and their vigorous execution of
the various dances on the program quite made up for all deficiencies
in other directions.
At first the twins hid themselves behind the door and contented
themselves with simply watching the opening exercises, although
they fairly itched to be on the floor, but as the tail end of the grand
march swung past them, they resolved to do or die and, boldly
emerging from the hiding-place, fell into line and went capering
along after the rest of the crowd, taking care, however, to keep a
sharp lookout for their father, who apparently had so far failed to
observe their presence.
Peter Pan, in fact, was having the time of his life, marching with
an extremely pretty and vivacious stuffed guinea pig, and had
already commenced to pay her such marked attention that Bedelia
was observed to cast a number of uneasy glances in their direction.
That two should play at her own little game was not at all a part of
her program.
Peter Pan had evidently forgotten her existence; while as for the
Kaiser, he never noticed him at all, save once, to salute him with a
rude and irreligious gesture as they were dancing vis-à-vis. The
meaning of this was as Greek to the imported bear, and as nobody
cared to enlighten him on the subject the affair came to nothing.
The twins had meanwhile been dancing together, as no other
partners seemed available. They might have gotten through the
evening without especial notice from anyone had not Tom, after the
first three dances, refused to dance lady any longer, while selfish
Jerry insisted on keeping the gentleman’s part. Words soon came to
blows, and in a moment the dancing ceased and everyone came
hurrying up to ascertain the cause of the disturbance.

Immediately Peter Pan was in the middle of the fray, and collaring
his offspring, one in each paw, he yanked them off to the dogs’ lair
under Sally’s bed, where he presently left them, a considerably less
impudent pair of cubs.
As Rough House was still away at the farm, there was nothing to
fear from his dreadful jaws. Joined by a common trouble and each
one equally anxious to get even with his father, they had now quite
forgotten their differences, and held a most emphatically worded
conference under the bed, at last deciding that they would run away
and so square accounts with their unfeeling parent.
It was now high time to serve supper, and the committee on
refreshments descended to the kitchen, only to find nothing at all
that resembled freezers of ice-cream and boxes of cake and
sandwiches.
They had not counted on the fact that everything would be
received at the door by cook, but such had been the case, and she
had declined to receive them in language more emphatic than that
usually employed in polite society. That there was no party at that
house she had vigorously maintained, and the driver had retreated
in some perplexity, carrying along the goodies.
Loud were the exclamations of disappointment, as the hungry
toys crowded around the dismayed and disheartened committee,
and in the general confusion the twins crept noiselessly out from
under the bed and slipped into the dark hall. They had learned by
this time that to slide down the banisters is really the swiftest
method of locomotion, and they quickly availed themselves of this
speedy method and went skimming fleetly away to the lower
regions.

CHAPTER XVI.
The Twins Abscond.
ELIGHTED with their new found shoot-the-chutes,
the twins hastily climbed the stairs to try it again
and yet again, finally rolling off the banisters and
landing on the soft fur rug at the foot of the
stairs, breathless and too tired to try even one
more climb.
Squatting together in the dim light from the hall lamp that was
always left burning all night, they suddenly remembered that they
had started to run away and immediately began to discuss the
question of ways and means.
Papa Doctor’s big, fur-lined coat, that he always wore when going
out to night calls during the severe weather, hung on the hat rack,
and the cubs knew that its side-pockets were huge and that a Teddy
bear might easily find refuge therein.
While they were deliberating whether or no to seize this method
of escape from the house, their decision was hastened by the sound
of the telephone ringing furiously.
It was a call for Papa Doctor and in a moment he was heard
hurrying about in the room overhead as he sprang into his clothes.
The cubs hesitated no longer, but swarming up the sides of the
greatcoat they dove one into each pocket, and lay there quaking
with fright as Papa Doctor came running downstairs, hastily

struggled into his coat, pulled his sealskin cap down over his ears
and hurried away, pulling on his gloves as he went.
Whither lay his route the cubs, of course, were
unable to divine. They rode for some distance in a
street car and then there was a short walk, a run up a
flight of steps and Papa Doctor was ringing the bell at
the door of a cheap apartment house, a fact which the
cubs discovered by poking their heads one out of each
pocket. They grinned at the thought of how astonished
the doctor would be could he know what he was
carrying along with his pills and powders. But they
quickly subsided as the front door swung open all by itself, a habit
that the front doors of flat houses usually follow, and the doctor ran
quickly upstairs, up and up and up five flights to the very top.
Here a light streamed into the hall from an open
door and an anxious, white-faced woman ran to meet
him. And while he divested himself of his heavy outer
garments and went to work over a dangerous attack
of croup, the twins slid warily each out of his
respective pocket and slipped, trembling, to their
usual refuge under the bed.
Finally, after an hour’s hard work, the little patient
was left in a satisfactory condition, Dr. North promising to return
early next morning, and after a little, all preparations for the night
were concluded and quiet reigned in the little flat.
For a while the cubs remained quietly where they were, but as
they were not accustomed to sleeping on the hard floor they
speedily concluded to seek for a softer spot.
They knew that their father always slept in Sally’s bed, so without
any more ado, as all was now dark and still, they climbed up on the
bed, rooted their way underneath the bedclothes and were soon
snugly and soundly fast asleep.

It was such a poor, plain tiny room into which the jolly, smiling
face of the round red sun peeped the next morning, but his face
grew several shades less jolly and his smile a trifle less broad as he
noted the thin little face on the pillow and the outline of the poor
little twisted limb lying stiffly under the spotless bedclothes.
Jimmy-boy sighed and stirred feebly, wakening slowly, weak and
worn out after the terrible struggle of the night before.
Presently his eyes opened and the very first thing they fell upon
was two pairs of round, golden-brown ears sticking up out of the
bedclothes.
The little fellow raised himself slowly on his elbow, and his thin
little hand crept forth uncertainly and slowly drew first one cub and
then the other from beneath the quilt.
Delight and amazement contended on his wistful little face and he
called for his mother in a tone that brought her running from the
wee kitchen where since daybreak she had been busily working at
the fine sewing that kept Jimmy-boy and herself out of the poor-
house.
Together they admired and speculated over the cubs, theorizing
over their strange advent and finally deciding that Dr. North must
have surreptitiously smuggled them in as a new kind of medicine for
his little patient.
But when Dr. North arrived, some time later, he disclaimed all
knowledge of the twins. The city was full of Teddy bears, and all the
little chaps looked alike to him, and it never in the world occurred to
him that they could be the property of his small daughter. Their
coming remained wrapped in mystery that caused Mrs. Gray no little
uneasiness. However, as Jimmy-boy was feeling much better and Dr.
North decided that there would probably be no return of last night’s
paroxysm, she resigned herself to the pleasure of seeing her frail
little son enjoying his play with the jolly-looking bears, hoping

devoutly they would not disappear as mysteriously as they had
arrived.
She sat beside his bed, her slender hands busy with her sewing,
while her soft brown eyes smiled approval on the happiness of her
boy.
Jimmy-boy was eight years old, but he had never walked. That he
never would walk had been the verdict of several physicians, but Dr.
North, who was deeply interested in the case, was beginning to
fancy that he saw a tiny ray of light, so very faint, however, that he
forbore to express his idea even to Jimmy-boy’s mother.
All that day the twins sat stiffly upon Jimmy-boy’s bed, while his
active little brain invented queer games in which his imagination
made them take an active part; while he talked aloud, first for one
and then for the other in a queer little growling voice, which he
varied from time to time accordingly as it represented one cub or the
other.
At last he fell asleep with the twins clasped close to him, having
passed a happier day than any that he could remember in many a
long year.
As soon as it was quite safe to do so, the cubs wriggled out of the
child’s embrace and started out to investigate their new

surroundings and, above all, to find, if possible, something to put
into their clamoring little stomachs.
It did not take very long to go over the territory included in two
small rooms. Mrs. Gray slept beside Jimmy-boy’s bed in an
astounding arrangement that shut up in the daytime and imposed
itself upon a credulous public as a shabby chest of drawers, which
the cubs regarded with unqualified amazement, as they had never
before beheld such a contrivance. They could see no good reason
why the thing did not shut up and flatten out its occupant and
indeed rather expected to see that event take place at any moment.
Teddy bears, however, never lose any time in speculation, and the
cubs turned their attention to the kitchen, being very much
disgusted that the only available light consisted of an oil lamp, an
article which, like the folding-bed, they had never before
encountered, and of which they were proportionately afraid.
With the aid of a box of matches, however, they raided the larder,
a very slender one, indeed, but they discovered a couple of fresh
eggs intended for Jimmy-boy’s breakfast, and a bottle of rather blue-
looking milk. The eggs they sucked greedily, and after drinking all
the milk they wished for, upset the remainder on the floor.
They were greatly disgusted at being obliged to put up with such
short rations, and resolved as soon as practicable to leave a place
where they could find so very little that was congenial.
They had about concluded to go to bed, when suddenly without
the slightest warning and like a bolt from a clear sky, something
happened that very nearly put an end to their careers for good and
all.
Suddenly out of the darkness, apparently from nowhere at all,
sprang a huge gray cat, eyes flaming and tail high in air, that leaped
upon the terrified cubs, and seizing Jerry by the back of the neck,
shook him as he often had shaken a rat.

Billy, the big coon-cat who was
Jimmy-boy’s dear friend and
playmate, had been down in the
cellar for several days enjoying a
protracted mouse hunt, and now,
returning by devious ways best
known to himself, had surprised the
marauders at the very height of
their evil doing.
He was too full of fresh game to
care anything about eating these
queer looking animals, besides
which the flavor of Jerry’s neck was
anything but appetizing. But the lust
of killing was in his blood, and he shook him fiercely, wondering
greatly at the toughness of the creature, who was so much harder to
dispatch than a rat.
Oh, how Jerry screamed! Surely never before did Teddy bear raise
such a fearful racket. Luckily for him, Mrs. Gray was awakened by
the noise and now came running out of the bedroom, just in time to
prevent Jerry’s complete undoing.
“Dear old Billy! You thought you were doing your duty,” she
exclaimed, stroking the big fellow, who was purring and rubbing
against her, very proud indeed of what he had done, but on the
whole somewhat piqued that he had not been permitted to complete
the good work.
As for Jerry, the chief damages that he had suffered seemed to
be done to Sally’s blue hair-ribbon, that still adorned his neck.
Both he and Tom were extremely glad to be deposited in a place
of safety high on the mantel shelf, there to remain until Jimmy-boy
called for them in the morning.

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Solidarity First Canadian Workers And Social Cohesion 1st Edition Robert Obrien

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