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Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations

Strategic Diversity In Union Political Action: Implications For The 1992 House Elections, Richard W. Hurd, Jeffrey E. Sohl Oct 2013

Strategic Diversity In Union Political Action: Implications For The 1992 House Elections, Richard W. Hurd, Jeffrey E. Sohl

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] The purpose of this paper is to explore labor's strategic options in the 1992 elections. We will focus on House races because the diversity in political strategies among unions is most apparent there. However, our conclusions will have broader implications for union activity in elections at all levels of government. In evaluating the situation we will consider the impact of redistricting on labor's alternatives. We should note that recent developments have made many union political operatives more optimistic. The upset victory by populist Democrat Harris Wofford in the special Senate election in Pennsylvania, the eventual compromises on civil rights …


Voice Without Say: Why Capital-Managed Firms Aren’T (Genuinely) Participatory, Justin Schwartz Aug 2013

Voice Without Say: Why Capital-Managed Firms Aren’T (Genuinely) Participatory, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Why are most capitalist enterprises of any size organized as authoritarian bureaucracies rather than incorporating genuine employee participation that would give the workers real authority? Even firms with employee participation programs leave virtually all decision-making power in the hands of management. The standard answer is that hierarchy is more economically efficient than any sort of genuine participation, so that participatory firms would be less productive and lose out to more traditional competitors. This answer is indefensible. After surveying the history, legal status, and varieties of employee participation, I examine and reject as question-begging the argument that the rarity of genuine …


Review Of The Book The Davis-Bacon Act, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jun 2013

Review Of The Book The Davis-Bacon Act, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Armand J. Thieblot's monograph is not the first study of the administration and impact of the Davis-Bacon Act; however, it certainly is the most comprehensive. Successive chapters of the book consider the history of the act, definitions and interpretations of key words in the legislation, its current administrative organization and enforcement, experience under it (including improper wage determinations), and its costs and inflationary impact. A set of case studies are then presented to document the existence of improper and excessive wage determinations. Finally, the book concludes with a discussion of the original rationale of the Davis-Bacon Act and its …


Remaking The World Of Chinese Labour: A 30-Year Retrospective, Eli D. Friedman, Ching Kwan Lee May 2013

Remaking The World Of Chinese Labour: A 30-Year Retrospective, Eli D. Friedman, Ching Kwan Lee

Eli D Friedman

Over the past 30 years, labour relations, and, indeed, the entirety of working class politics in China, have been dramatically altered by economic reforms. In this review, we focus on the two key processes of commodification and casualization and their implications for workers. On the one hand, these processes have resulted in the destruction of the old social contract and the emergence of marketized employment relations. This has implied a loss of the job security and generous benefits enjoyed by workers in the planned economy. On the other hand, commodification and casualization have produced significant but localized resistance from the …


Steelworkers' Victory At Ravenswood: Picket Line Around The World, Tom Juravich, Kate Bronfenbrenner Apr 2013

Steelworkers' Victory At Ravenswood: Picket Line Around The World, Tom Juravich, Kate Bronfenbrenner

Kate Bronfenbrenner

The second in a two-part series details the sophisticated international campaign and grass-roots activism that gave labor one of its biggest wins in the '90s.


Locked Out But Holding Together In Ravenswood, Tom Juravich, Kate Bronfenbrenner Apr 2013

Locked Out But Holding Together In Ravenswood, Tom Juravich, Kate Bronfenbrenner

Kate Bronfenbrenner

The first in a two-part series that details the Steelworkers' victory at Ravenswood Aluminum - one of labor's biggest wins in the '90s.


Organizing In The Nafta Environment: How Companies Use “Free Trade” To Stop Unions, Kate Bronfenbrenner Apr 2013

Organizing In The Nafta Environment: How Companies Use “Free Trade” To Stop Unions, Kate Bronfenbrenner

Kate Bronfenbrenner

[Excerpt] These findings point to both an enormous challenge and a great opportunity for American unions. Clearly, under NAFTA and other free trade agreements more and more employers will feel emboldened to threaten to close the plant during organizing campaigns, and workers and unions will find organizing increasingly difficult. At the same time, unions have an opportunity to overcome these barriers to organizing if they commit enough resources to run large-scale, aggressive campaigns which mobilize the rank-and-file workers to build a union in their workplace, regardless of the intensity of the employer’s campaign.


Introduction To Eugene V. Debs: Citizen And Socialist, Nick Salvatore Mar 2013

Introduction To Eugene V. Debs: Citizen And Socialist, Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

[Excerpt] This is a social biography of Eugene Victor Debs. It is a traditional biography in that it emphasizes this one individual's personal and public life as far as the evidence allows. But the book is also a piece of social history that assumes individuals do not stand outside the culture and society they grew in and from. I have stressed each aspect of Debs's story in order to present both the importance of the man and a more complete picture of the political and cultural struggles his society engaged in during his lifetime. Neither in his time nor in …


Introduction To Faith And The Historian: Catholic Perspectives, Nick Salvatore Mar 2013

Introduction To Faith And The Historian: Catholic Perspectives, Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

[Excerpt] What follows are the essays by eight historians touched by Catholicism on the meaning of that experience and its effect on their professional work. The essays are presented in broad chronological order, organized more by generational cohort than by specific date of birth. The essays are reflections, in some cases even meditations, and were never intended to conform to the structure and methodology of the historical article for a professional journal. Still, we have tried to shed some light on the inner processes that create that very work.


Introduction To The Pullman Strike And The Crisis Of The 1890’S, Richard Schneirov, Shelton Stromquist, Nick Salvatore Mar 2013

Introduction To The Pullman Strike And The Crisis Of The 1890’S, Richard Schneirov, Shelton Stromquist, Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

The strike of Pullman carshop employees and the subsequent boycott that disrupted rail traffic throughout the territory west of Chicago in June-July 1894 marked the culmination of nearly two decades of the most severe and sustained labor conflict in American history. Yet until very recently little new scholarship has focused on the meaning of the Pullman strike and its historical context. By offering a close reading of contemporary perceptions of the strike and by examining the organizational and political continuities and discontinuities the Pullman conflict reveals, these essays resituate the strike in its historical context. They demonstrate that Pullman played …


Deeply Within: Catholicism, Faith And History, Nick Salvatore Mar 2013

Deeply Within: Catholicism, Faith And History, Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

[Excerpt] In the decade I spent living with Gene Debs, I thought much about faith's relation to intellect, especially in the political realm. It was not just that a socialist in capitalist America needed faith but rather that Debs's very vision of America's promise was itself a profound act of faith. But with the exception of the last chapter, which I titled, "A Species of Purging," following a phrase in one of Debs's prison letters, overt discussion of any religious sensibility was largely sotto voce, echoes of a private dialogue with myself. Pleased as I was with the book when …


Introduction To We All Got History: The Memory Books Of Amos Webber, Nick Salvatore Mar 2013

Introduction To We All Got History: The Memory Books Of Amos Webber, Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

[Excerpt] Who was this Amos Webber who assumed such a prominent role in this public, regional celebration of the black presence in American life? That he was a veteran was clear, but that alone did not account for his prominent position in that day's events. Certainly James Monroe Trotter, the eminent musician, author, and politician, William H. Carney, and William Dupree were all more widely known in the black North. How did a man such as Amos Webber, unknown beyond his own circle, the recipient of no awards or editorials in the local or national press, achieve such prominence in …


The Effectiveness Of Reinstatement As A Public Policy Remedy: The Kohler Case, John Drotning, David Lipsky Mar 2013

The Effectiveness Of Reinstatement As A Public Policy Remedy: The Kohler Case, John Drotning, David Lipsky

David B Lipsky

This article is concerned with two aspects of the NLRB reinstatement remedy as applied in the famous Kohler case: (1) how effective the remedy was, particularly in terms of the number of employees who returned to Kohler under its protection, and (2) what factors, in order of significance, affected a worker's decision to return. The authors find the remedy was effective, since about 40 percent of those workers who received reinstatement offers accepted them. Regression and discriminant analyses of the variables affecting the decision to return confirm the thinking of labor market economists that the most disadvantaged worker (lower paid, …


Final-Offer Arbitration And Salaries Of Police And Firefighters, David B. Lipsky, Thomas A. Barocci Mar 2013

Final-Offer Arbitration And Salaries Of Police And Firefighters, David B. Lipsky, Thomas A. Barocci

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] Did final-offer arbitration have a discernible impact on the salaries of police and firefighters in Massachusetts during the 3-year trial period which ended June 30, 1977? To analyze this question, we collected information on the maximum salary paid to police patrolmen, police sergeants, firefighters, and fire lieutenants for a large sample of Massachusetts municipalities. We integrated these data with police and fire impasse experiences and added several economic and environmental characteristics for each Massachusetts municipality. Then we performed several tests of the economic impact of final-offer arbitration.


The Outcome Of Impasse Procedures In New York Schools Under The Taylor Law, John E. Drotning, David B. Lipsky Mar 2013

The Outcome Of Impasse Procedures In New York Schools Under The Taylor Law, John E. Drotning, David B. Lipsky

David B Lipsky

The effectiveness of New York’s Taylor Law, and of the Public Employment Relations Board established under it, may be measured in a number of ways. One is to see whether it does, in fact, eliminate strikes of public employees. Another is to compare the results of mediation and fact-finding under the Board’s auspices with settlements arrived at without intervention of PERB. The authors, who are engaged in a broad study of the latter kind, present some of their findings as they relate to the public school system during 1969 and 1970.


The Composition Of Strike Activity In The Construction Industry, David B. Lipsky, Henry S. Farber Mar 2013

The Composition Of Strike Activity In The Construction Industry, David B. Lipsky, Henry S. Farber

David B Lipsky

This study shows that strikes in construction have, by most measures, increased during the years since 1949, a period during which strike activity tended to decline in American industry as a whole. The authors demonstrate that this increase has resulted not from an increase in the number of wage disputes but from a growing number of jurisdictional strikes and the increasing severity of economic and union-organizing strikes. They also show that the number of strikes in construction does not vary significantly with the unemployment rate in that industry nor with the presence of wage controls, but both of those factors …


Introduction To The Ilr School At Fifty: Voices Of The Faculty, Alumni, And Friends, David B. Lipsky Feb 2013

Introduction To The Ilr School At Fifty: Voices Of The Faculty, Alumni, And Friends, David B. Lipsky

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] Today the school's faculty is as strong as it has ever been. It consists of renowned researchers and accomplished practitioners who are, at the same time, dedicated to their students and to classroom teaching. Our students are outstanding—so outstanding that I wonder if I could be admitted if I were applying today! Our extension and outreach programs serve 30,000 adults every year and are the envy of all our academic competitors. As we look to the future we know we have a solid foundation on which to build. In dreams begin responsibilities. The dream that Irving Ives and a …


The Future Lies Ahead (With Apology To Mort Sahl), David B. Lipsky Feb 2013

The Future Lies Ahead (With Apology To Mort Sahl), David B. Lipsky

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] The progress and development of the ILR School during the past 50 years, though sometimes uneven in both pace and direction, has largely met the promise and expectations embodied in the founding legislation. The fulfillment of the legislative purpose testifies to the contributions of those many individuals and institutions with whom we have interacted over this period of astonishing growth in size, complexity of structure and programs, and recognized stature at home and abroad in both the academic and practitioner worlds. Because the largest part of my professional life h a s been spent as a member of the …


The Politics Of Economic Restructuring In Mexico: Actors, Sequencing, And Coalition Change, Maria Lorena Cook, Kevin J. Middlebrook, Juan Molinar Horcasitas Jan 2013

The Politics Of Economic Restructuring In Mexico: Actors, Sequencing, And Coalition Change, Maria Lorena Cook, Kevin J. Middlebrook, Juan Molinar Horcasitas

Maria Lorena Cook

[Excerpt] This introductory chapter addresses three topics. The first section examines the historical origins of Mexico's postrevolutionary authoritarian regime, focusing on the principal institutional and coalitional legacies of regime formation in the aftermath of the 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution. It also addresses briefly the relationship between authoritarian rule and import-substituting industrialization from the 1940s through the 1970s, as well as the challenges posed by economic crisis in the 1980s. The second part of this chapter analyzes in greater detail the impact of economic crisis and restructuring on the stability of Mexico's governing coalition and the growing importance of opposition parties and …


Organizing Opposition In The Teachers' Movement In Oaxaca, Maria Lorena Cook Jan 2013

Organizing Opposition In The Teachers' Movement In Oaxaca, Maria Lorena Cook

Maria Lorena Cook

[Excerpt] This essay examines the continuing struggle of rank-and-file teachers to democratize the SNTE, a union of between 800,000 and one million members linked to the PRI. In particular, the essay analyzes the dissident movement's strategy of organizing to hold and win elections in union locals, and assesses the advantages and limitations of this strategy over a ten-year period (1979-1989). What were the implications of organizing within an official union for the movement's internal organization, demands, strategies, and ability to achieve its goals? This essay is divided into three parts. The first looks at the official union as an institution …


Clergy Authority And Friendship With Parishioners, Phillip E. Hammond, Albert Gedricks, Edward J. Lawler, Louise Allen Turner Jan 2013

Clergy Authority And Friendship With Parishioners, Phillip E. Hammond, Albert Gedricks, Edward J. Lawler, Louise Allen Turner

Edward J Lawler

[Excerpt] Without challenging the general truth of the observation, one can nevertheless note considerable variation in the friendliness of clergymen. Is that variation owing simply to "personality" differences, or are there further structural features that differentially apply within the occupation? This paper argues that there are further structural features which can usefully be employed in understanding the friendship patterns of clergy with parishioners.