This book is about a coercive assault on trade union rights in Canada by both federal and provincial governments of every political stripe that has spanned two decades. Societies defined as free in the sense of free trade and free enterprise have often been, and often are today, societies in which the freedoms of workers and those who advance the interests of workers are suppressed. Indeed, what confronts Canadians today is the actual meaning of the word free. We need to ask ourselves whether free pertains only to the freedom of those who do business or whether it pertains also to the freedom of the majority of Canadians who do not do business, but rather, work for those who own businesses, or who work for governments, which increasingly act as if they were businesses themselves. This new edition contains two new chapters, one on coercion in the Chrétien era and another which advances a bold new strategy for labour movements to confront the difficult challenges facing working people today.

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