Labor Relations Commons^™

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 …

Women's Pay In Australia, Great Britain And The United States: Commentary, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] My reaction to this paper is mixed. On the one hand, it represents one of the few serious efforts I know of to place discussions about comparable worth in a comparative perspective and to bring evidence from other countries' experiences into the debate about policy in the United States. For this the authors should be resoundingly applauded. On the other hand, I am left with the feeling that they have not pushed their empirical analyses as hard as they might have, and because of this, in places they may have drawn some inappropriate conclusions. My discussion will elaborate on …

Bringing Unions Back In: Labour And Left Governments In Latin America, Maria Lorena Cook, Joseph C. Bazler

Maria Lorena Cook

In the 2000s an unprecedented wave of left-party victories in presidential elections swept across Latin America. Although scholars have studied variation among left regimes and how these regimes differ from neoliberal-era predecessors, few have addressed the role of labour unions and labour policy under the Left. We argue that ‘bringing unions back in’ to the analysis of left governments’ performance sharpens distinctions with neoliberal governments and unsettles existing typologies. We review the labour policies of left governments in four countries—Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina—to show how a labour lens enriches our understanding of left governments in the region.

Enhancing The Attractiveness Of Research To Female Faculty, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] CSWEP has long been concerned about the underrepresentation of women in faculty positions at major research universities. I have been charged by the committee with enumerating a set of policies that might enhance the attractiveness of research universities to female faculty. After presenting some data that suggest the magnitude of the underrepresentation problem, I do so below. In each case, I sketch the pros and cons of the policy. Although the focus is on increasing the attractiveness of research universities to female faculty, many of the policies would increase the attractiveness of academic careers per se to new female …

A Theory Without A Movement, A Hope Without A Name: The Future Of Marxism In A Post-Marxist World, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Just as Marx's insights into capitalism have been most strikingly vindicated by the rise of neoliberalism and the near-collapse of the world economy, Marxism as social movement has become bereft of support. Is there any point in people who find Marx's analysis useful in clinging to the term "Marxism" - which Marx himself rejected -- at time when self-identified Marxist organizations and societies have collapsed or renounced the identification, and Marxism own working class constituency rejects the term? I set aside bad reasons to give on "Marxism," such as that the theory is purportedly refuted, that its adoption leads necessarily …

Employment Arbitration: Empirical Findings And Research Needs, Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

[Excerpt] There is vociferous opposition to employers forcing pre-dispute arbitration agreements on employees. Critics argue that employees are not voluntary participants in the process, which they say unfairly favors employers. Advocates of mandatory arbitration dispute these charges and argue that arbitration offers employees and employers significant advantages over litigation. For example, they argue, among other things, that that litigation is not as accessible as arbitration because lawyers will not take low value employment cases on a contingency basis.

Critics of mandatory employment arbitration have moved the debate into the legislative arena. Bills have been introduced in state legislatures and in …

Participation Versus Procedures In Non-Union Dispute Resolution, Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

This study examines the resolution of conflict in non-union workplaces. Employee participation in workplace decision making and organizational dispute resolution procedures are two factors hypothesized to influence the outcomes of conflicts in the non-union workplace. The adoption of high involvement work systems is found to produce an organizational context in which both triggering events for conflict, such as disciplinary and dismissal decisions, and dispute resolution activities, such as grievance filing and appeals, are reduced in frequency. Dispute resolution procedures have mixed impacts. Greater due process protections in dispute resolution procedures in non-union workplaces are associated with increased grievance filing and …

The Emerging Anglo-American Model: Convergence In Industrial Relations Institutions?, Alexander Colvin, Owen R. Darbishire

Alexander Colvin

The Thatcher and Reagan administrations led a shift towards more market oriented regulation of economies in the Anglo-American countries, including efforts to reduce the power of organized labor. In this paper, we examine the development of employment and labor law in six Anglo-American countries (the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand) from the Thatcher/Reagan era to the present. At the outset of the Thatcher/Reagan era, the employment and labor law systems in these countries could be divided into three pairings: the Wagner Act model based industrial relations systems of the United States and Canada; the voluntarist system …

China Since Tiananmen: The Labor Movement, Ching Kwan Lee, Eli D. Friedman

Eli D Friedman

[Excerpt] The twenty years since 1989 have brought two major developments in worker activism. First, whereas workers were part of the mass uprising in the Tiananmen movement, albeit as subordinate partners to the students, labor activism since then has been almost entirely confined to the working class. While the ranks of aggrieved workers have proliferated (expanding from workers in the state-owned sector to include migrant workers) and the forms and incidents of labor activism have multiplied, there is hardly any sign of mobilization that transcends class or regional lines. Second, we observe that a long-term decline in worker power at …

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

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 …

Final-Offer Arbitration And Public-Safety Employees: The Massachusetts Experience, David B. Lipsky, Thomas A. Barocci

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] We conclude that, in terms of its impact on the bargaining process, final-offer arbitration has had a mixed record in Massachusetts. On the one hand, the law must probably be given some credit for preventing police and firefighter strikes; in addition, the rate of arbitration usage was remarkably low compared to experience in other states. On the other hand, the law probably led to more impasses in police and fire bargaining (although the experience in the commonwealth was still favorable compared to other states) and reduced the effectiveness of the mediation stage of the impasse procedures. Perhaps most important, …

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

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.

Bias In White: A Longitudinal Natural Experiment Measuring Changes In Discrimination, Brian Rubineau, Yoon Kang

Brian Rubineau

Many professions are plagued by disparities in service delivery. Racial disparities in policing, mortgage lending, and healthcare are some notable examples. Because disparities can result from a myriad of mechanisms, crafting effective disparity mitigation policies requires knowing which mechanisms are active and which are not. In this study we can distinguish whether one mechanism—statistical discrimination—is a primary explanation for racial disparities in physicians’ treatment of patients. In a longitudinal natural experiment using repeated quasi-audit studies of medical students, we test for within-cohort changes in disparities from medical student behaviors as they interact with white and black patient actors. We find …

Conceptual Foundations: Walton And Mckersie's Subprocesses Of Negotiations, Thomas A. Kochan, David B. Lipsky

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] Walton and McKersie's 1965 book, A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations, provides much of the conceptual underpinnings of what grew into the modern-day teaching of negotiations in business, public policy, law, and other professional schools. We therefore believe that it is useful to outline the basic concepts and ideas introduced by these authors. We do so, however, with a word of caution. There is no substitute for the original. Every student should have the pleasure of struggling (as we did the first time it was assigned to us as students) with the tongue twisters like "attitudinal structuring" and the …

Resolving Workplace Disputes In The United States: The Growth Of Alternative Dispute Resolution In Employment Relations, David B. Lipsky, Ronald L. Seeber

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] For more than a decade a "quiet revolution" has been occurring m the American system of justice. There has been a dramatic growth in the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) to resolve disputes that might otherwise be handled through litigation. We define ADR as the use of any form of mediation or arbitration as a substitute for the public judicial or administrative process available to resolve a dispute (Lipsky and Seeber, 1998A}. In the United States mediation, arbitration, and their variants ordinarily are private processes in which the disputants themselves select, hire, and pay the third-party neutral who …

Patterns Of Adr Use In Corporate Disputes, David B. Lipsky, Ronald L. Seeber

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] Is it reasonable to expect that the use of ADR by U.S. corporations will continue to grow in the future? We asked the respondents in our survey a series of questions designed to determine their view on this issue....In general, a large majority of the respondents in our survey believe that they are "likely" or "very likely" to use mediation in the future—38% and 46%, respectively. They were more cautious about the use of arbitration. Only 24% said they were very likely to use it in the future, while 47% said they were likely to do so. More than …

The Social Contract And Dispute Resolution: The Transformation Of The Social Contract In The United States Workplace And The Emergence Of New Strategies Of Dispute Resolution, David B. Lipsky, Ronald L. Seeber

David B Lipsky

In recent years, a significant amount of public and academic attention has been devoted to the unravelling of the so-called 'New Deal' social contract and the emergence of a new social contract between workers and employers in the United States of America (US). In our paper, we will identify the forces of change that undermined the New Deal social contract during the post-World War II era and led to the reformulation of the workplace social contract in the US. It is our thesis that the transformation of the workplace social contract in the US significantly affected the resolution of employment …

Online Dispute Resolution Through The Lens Of Bargaining And Negotiation Theory: Toward An Integrated Model, David B. Lipsky, Ariel C. Avgar

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] In this article we apply negotiation and bargaining theory to the analysis of online dispute resolution. Our principal objective is to develop testable hypotheses based on negotiation theory that can be used in ODR research. We have not conducted the research necessary to test the hypotheses we develop; however, in a later section of the article we suggest a possible methodology for doing so. There is a vast literature on negotiation and bargaining theory. For the purposes of this article, we realized at the outset that we could only use a small part of that literature in developing a …

Unions, Markets, And Democracy In Latin America, Maria Lorena Cook

Maria Lorena Cook

[Excerpt] In the 1990s scholars of Latin America moved from a concern with democratization to a focus on the implementation of market economic reforms. With this shift, the appreciation of labor unions' value to society was lost. Whereas earlier analyses of democratic transitions recognized organized labor's important role in bringing an end to dictatorships, later studies of market reform viewed labor organizations as either obstacles to be overcome, "losers" to be compensated, or simply irrelevant.

Perhaps more important than scholarship's neglect of labor unions is the neglect that is reflected in policies toward labor in the region. Economic and labor …

The Arbitration Of Employment Disputes In The Securities Industry: A Study Of Finra Awards, 1986-2008, David B. Lipsky, Ronald L. Seeber, J. Ryan Lamare

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] This article reports on the results of our recent study of 3,200 arbitration awards issued in employment cases administered under the auspices of FINRA, its predecessor the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). It responds to Colvin’s call for more empirical research while providing some data on the debate over the fairness of mandatory employment arbitration agreements in the securities industry. After disclosing the limitations of our study and presenting our findings with regard to the FINRA cases, we consider how these findings bear on the debate about mandatory arbitration, specifically whether …

The Conflict Over Conflict Management, David B. Lipsky, Ariel C. Avgar

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] In this article we look at the traditional approach to workplace conflict, the evolution of conflict management, criticism of this process by progressive and traditional critics, and then consider whether they can be reconciled by taking what we call a strategic view of conflict management in the workplace. This view calls for an alignment between the goals of the conflict management system and the overarching nature of the organization in which that system is implemented. The management of conflict, according to this approach, should complement the organization’s strategic posture and existing structures. We maintain that the level of fit …

Workplace Arbitration In The Current Economic Crisis, David B. Lipsky

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] In the midst of our economic crisis, arbitrators are facing unprecedented challenges. As the financial implosion has spread from Wall Street to Main Street, we are hearing cases that require us to decide issues the parties never anticipated when their arbitration programs were established. Take labor-management arbitration as an example. Unlike in the past, when labor arbitrators sometimes had to decide whether a layoff complied with the collective bargaining agreement, today they are addressing the repercussions of mass layoffs resulting from plant shutdowns. Similarly, in previous years, labor arbitrators frequently decided cases dealing with alleged infractions of Title VII …

Contemporary Issues In Employment Relations—A Roundtable, David Lewin, Adrienne E. Eaton, Thomas A. Kochan, David B. Lipsky, Daniel J. B. Mitchell, Paula B. Voos

David B Lipsky

For the 2006 LERA research volume, leading scholars were assembled in a roundtable for the purpose of eliciting their views on key contemporary industrial relations issues. The roundtable members were Adrienne E. Eaton, professor and director of labor extension in the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations; Thomas A. Kochan, the George M. Bunker Professor of Management and director of the Institute for Work and Employment Research in the MIT Sloan School of Management; David B. Lipsky, the Anne Evans Estabrook Professor of Dispute Resolution and former dean of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University; …

Strikers And Subsidies: The Influence Of Government Transfer Programs On Strike Activity, Robert M. Hutchens, David B. Lipsky, Robert N. Stern

David B Lipsky

The authors assess laws governing striker eligibility for government transfers, finding evidence linking UI payments to strike activity.

Level-Of-Aspiration Theory And Initial Stance In Bargaining, Bruce K. Macmurray, Edward J. Lawler

Edward J Lawler

This research focuses on the effect of initial stance in bargaining. Following level-of-aspiration theory, the research examines whether the pattern of early concession making modifies the impact of tough vs. soft initial stance. The experiment manipulated opponent's concession pattern (decreasing, constant, increasing) in the early phase of bargaining within an overall tough or soft initial stance. Results indicated that a decreasing concession pattern within the early bargaining extracted larger initial concessions than a constant or increasing concession pattern. Implications for Siegel and Fouraker's (1960) level-of-aspiration theory are discussed.