Latest Winners
The Eugene A. Forsey Prize
2017
Julia Smith, Union Organizing in the Canadian Banking Industry, 1940–1980,” Ph.D. dissertation, Trent University, 2016.
This lively thesis examines efforts by a mainly female labour force across Canada to exercise a degree of collective influence on the job, evaluating what factors contributed to success for the few and failure for the many. Smith uses feminist and class analyses as well as a close dissection of limitations of established trade union attitudes and practices to explain the overall dismal results of organizing efforts in the banking sector despite considerable militancy and grassroots feminist organizing of poorly paid and often poorly treated bank workers.