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Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations

Contesting The Dinosaur Image: The Labor Movement's Search For A Future, Richard W. Hurd Nov 2015

Contesting The Dinosaur Image: The Labor Movement's Search For A Future, Richard W. Hurd

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] As labor contests the dinosaur image it will find no easy answers. Hard work, careful assessment of options, and a willingness to take risks are all required. Without widespread experimentation and a significant reallocation of resources to organizing, extinction awaits.


Comparing Mandatory Arbitration And Litigation: Access, Process, And Outcomes, Alexander Colvin, Mark D. Gough Nov 2015

Comparing Mandatory Arbitration And Litigation: Access, Process, And Outcomes, Alexander Colvin, Mark D. Gough

Alexander Colvin

[Excerpt] What do we know about mandatory arbitration and its impact? Some existing studies have examined samples of employment arbitration cases, usually obtained from the American Arbitration Association (AAA), which is currently the largest arbitration service provider in the employment area. Although some early studies found relatively high employee win rates and damage awards in arbitration, comparable to those in litigation, these results were mainly based on arbitration under individually negotiated agreements or in the securities industry and involved relatively highly paid individuals. More recent studies using larger samples of cases based on mandatory arbitration agreements find much lower employee …


Experimentation And Decentralization In China’S Labor Relations, Eli D. Friedman, Sarosh Kuruvilla Oct 2015

Experimentation And Decentralization In China’S Labor Relations, Eli D. Friedman, Sarosh Kuruvilla

Sarosh Kuruvilla

In this introduction to the special issue ‘Changing work, labour and employment relations in China’, we argue that China is taking an experimental and decentralized approach to the development of new labor relations frameworks. Particular political constraints in China prevent interest aggregation among workers, as the central state sees this as posing a risk to social stability. Firms and local governments have been given a degree of space to experiment with different arrangements, as long as the categorical ban on independent unions is not violated. The consequence has been an increasingly differentiated labor relations landscape, with significant variation by region …


Two Paths To The High Road: The Dynamics Of Coalition Building In Seattle And Buffalo, Ian Greer, Barbara Byrd, Lou Jean Fleron Sep 2015

Two Paths To The High Road: The Dynamics Of Coalition Building In Seattle And Buffalo, Ian Greer, Barbara Byrd, Lou Jean Fleron

Ian Greer

[Excerpt] Labor-community coalitions are not a new concept. Unions approach such coalitions now, as in the past, as one way to enhance their bargaining power with an employer. Such coalitions are temporary and often issue-based. In recent years, however, some local labor movements have begun to look at coalitions in a broader way – as a means of improving their public image and building power in the political arena. This broad-based approach requires the development of coalitions for the longer run, not just for temporary expediency. This paper develops the notion of a high road social infrastructure as a way …


Automobile Workers Strikes, Ian Greer Sep 2015

Automobile Workers Strikes, Ian Greer

Ian Greer

Automobile workers' strikes occurred in essentially four eras: the lost strikes by the industry's craft unions in the early twentieth century, the dramatic sit-down victories of the 1930s, the mixture of wildcat and authorized strikes during the postwar economic boom from the 1940s through the 1970s, and the decline of strikes that accompanied the policy of "jointness' between company and union after J9S0. Autoworkers' strike strategies reflected, in part, the particular structure of the industry, which took shape in the 1920s. Auto production is a complex process of interdependent operations to produce parts and assemble vehicles, each containing tens of …


Industrial Relations, Migration, And Neoliberal Politics: The Case Of The European Construction Sector, Nathan Lillie, Ian Greer Sep 2015

Industrial Relations, Migration, And Neoliberal Politics: The Case Of The European Construction Sector, Nathan Lillie, Ian Greer

Ian Greer

Transnational politics and labor markets are undermining national industrial relations systems in Europe. This article examines the construction industry, where the internationalization of the labor market has gone especially far. To test hypotheses about differences between “national systems,” the authors examine the United Kingdom, Finland, and Germany, alongside European-level policy making. Regardless of overall national institutional framework, employers seek to avoid industrial relations rules, while unions attempt to relocalize labor relations. Both use shop-floor, national, and European power resources. The authors argue that comparative industrial relations should take seriously the connection between action at the national and transnational levels.


Effects Of Unionization On Graduate Student Employees: Faculty-Student Relations, Academic Freedom, And Pay, Sean Rogers, Adrienne E. Eaton, Paula B. Voos Sep 2015

Effects Of Unionization On Graduate Student Employees: Faculty-Student Relations, Academic Freedom, And Pay, Sean Rogers, Adrienne E. Eaton, Paula B. Voos

Sean Edmund Rogers

In cases involving unionization of graduate student research and teaching assistants at private U.S. universities, the National Labor Relations Board has, at times, denied collective bargaining rights on the presumption that unionization would harm faculty-student relations and academic freedom. Using survey data collected from PhD students in five academic disciplines across eight public U.S. universities, the authors compare represented and non-represented graduate student employees in terms of faculty-student relations, academic freedom, and pay. Unionization does not have the presumed negative effect on student outcomes, and in some cases has a positive effect. Union-represented graduate student employees report higher levels of …


Experimentation And Decentralization In China’S Labor Relations, Eli D. Friedman, Sarosh Kuruvilla Apr 2015

Experimentation And Decentralization In China’S Labor Relations, Eli D. Friedman, Sarosh Kuruvilla

Eli D Friedman

In this introduction to the special issue ‘Changing work, labour and employment relations in China’, we argue that China is taking an experimental and decentralized approach to the development of new labor relations frameworks. Particular political constraints in China prevent interest aggregation among workers, as the central state sees this as posing a risk to social stability. Firms and local governments have been given a degree of space to experiment with different arrangements, as long as the categorical ban on independent unions is not violated. The consequence has been an increasingly differentiated labor relations landscape, with significant variation by region …


Getting Through The Hard Times Together? Chinese Workers And Unions Respond To The Economic Crisis, Eli D. Friedman Apr 2015

Getting Through The Hard Times Together? Chinese Workers And Unions Respond To The Economic Crisis, Eli D. Friedman

Eli D Friedman

How do post-socialist unions respond to market crisis? And what are the implications of this response for labor representation? Drawing on literature on post-socialist labor and union democracy, I argue that economic crisis affects not just labor – capital and labor – state relations, but also the relationship between union representatives and workers. Such a dynamic is highlighted by an empirical account of the divergent activities of workers and All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) unions in China following the economic crisis of 2008. While the union responded to mass unemployment with an administrative and policy-oriented strategy, workers took to …


Insurgency And Institutionalization: The Polanyian Countermovement And Chinese Labor Politics, Eli D. Friedman Apr 2015

Insurgency And Institutionalization: The Polanyian Countermovement And Chinese Labor Politics, Eli D. Friedman

Eli D Friedman

Why is it that in the nearly 10 years since the Chinese central government began making symbolic and material moves towards class compromise that labor unrest has expanded greatly? In this article I reconfigure Karl Polanyi's theory of the countermovement to account for recent developments in Chinese labor politics. Specifically, I argue that countermovements must be broken down into two constituent but intertwined "moments": the insurgent moment that consists of spontaneous resistance to the market, and the institutional moment, when class compromise is established in the economic and political spheres. In China, the transition from insurgency to institutionalization has thus …


Labor Relations In A Globalizing World, Harry C. Katz, Thomas A. Kochan, Alexander Colvin Apr 2015

Labor Relations In A Globalizing World, Harry C. Katz, Thomas A. Kochan, Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

[Excerpt] This book traces how labor, management, and governments acting as individuals or as groups have shaped and continue to shape the employment relationship. Employment is analyzed through the perspective of industrial relations, the interdisciplinary field of study that concentrates on individual workers and groups of workers, unions and other forms of collective representation, employers and their organizations, and the environment in which these parties interact.


More Of The Same: Wages And Collective Bargaining Still Under Pressure, Torsten Müller, Stefan Clauwaert, Isabelle Schömann, Kurt Vandaele Jan 2015

More Of The Same: Wages And Collective Bargaining Still Under Pressure, Torsten Müller, Stefan Clauwaert, Isabelle Schömann, Kurt Vandaele

Kurt Vandaele

Even as the danger of deflation looms large, the strategy of internal devaluation continues to dominate EU crisis management. In the field of wages and collective bargaining this strategy entails constant pressure on wages and the relentless pursuit of further ‘structural reforms’ aimed primarily at increasing the downward flexibility of wages. This strategy is applied, what is more, not to the ‘crisis countries’ alone but also to the rest of Europe in the context of the country-specific recommendations adopted in the framework of the European Semester (Schulten and Müller 2015). This chapter sets out to achieve 2 aims, the first …


Historical Appraisal Of Military And Civilian Governments Intervention And Contributions To The Growth Of Industrial Relations In Nigeria, Olukunle Saheed Oludeyi Jan 2015

Historical Appraisal Of Military And Civilian Governments Intervention And Contributions To The Growth Of Industrial Relations In Nigeria, Olukunle Saheed Oludeyi

Olukunle Saheed, OLUDEYI

Governance differs in approaches, methods and policy focuses because they are guided by different administrative and philosophical orientations. The resultant shifts in government policies and programs have consequences on all aspects of the country’s socio-economic, political and technological development. Industrial relations constitute one of the most delicate and complex problems of the modern society which merits national concern for proper examination and balancing. Tracing government intervention in Nigerian industrial relations, this paper weighs the contributions of military dictators and their civilian counterparts to the growth of Nigerian industrial relations. With an historical account of how government’s principle of voluntarism metamorphosed …