From mining to sex work and from the classroom to the docks, violence has always been a part of work. This collection of essays highlights the many different forms and expressions of violence that have arisen under capitalism in the last two hundred years, as well as how historians of working-class life and labour have understood violence. The editors draw together diverse case studies, integrating analysis of class, age, gender, sexuality, and race into the scholarship.

Essays span the United States and Canadian border, exploring gender violence, sexual harassment, the violent kidnapping of union organizers, the violence of inadequate health and safety protections, the culture of violence in state institutions, the mythology of working-class violence, and the changing nature of violence in extractive industries. The Violence of Work theorizes and historicizes violence as an integral part of working life, making it possible to understand the full scope and causes of workplace violence over time.

Jeremy Milloy is the W.P. Bell Postdoctoral Fellow in Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University.

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Joan Sangster is a professor of women's studies and history at Trent University, where she also teaches at the Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Native Studies. Her most recent books are Girl Trouble: Female 'Delinquency' in English Canada and Transforming Labour: Women and Work in Postwar Canada.

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"The contributors’ examples of violence are heart-rending, convincing, and extremely diverse."

<em>Histoire sociale / Social History</em>

"I applaud the editors’ decision to take the long-view and bring this history right up to the present time. One gets a strong sense here of the continuity in violence."

<em>Labour/Le Travail</em>