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Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations
Trade Unions And Collective Bargaining: Suggestions For Emerging Democracies In Eastern Europe And The Former Soviet Union, Harry C. Katz, Sarosh Kuruvilla, Lowell Turner
Trade Unions And Collective Bargaining: Suggestions For Emerging Democracies In Eastern Europe And The Former Soviet Union, Harry C. Katz, Sarosh Kuruvilla, Lowell Turner
Lowell Turner
This paper provides lessons for industrial relations reform efforts in the new nations emerging from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. Our purpose is to identify the basic industrial-relations practices that enable the advanced industrial countries to compete in world markets. The paper does not provide a detailed descriptive account of the existing industrial-relations institutions in the formerly communist countries, nor does it assess the likely short-run consequences of the economic restructuring under way across the new nations. Rather, our focus is on the experiences in the advanced economies and the lessons those experiences contain regarding successful industrial-relations practice.
From Transformation To Revitalization: A New Research Agenda For A Contested Global Economy, Lowell Turner
From Transformation To Revitalization: A New Research Agenda For A Contested Global Economy, Lowell Turner
Lowell Turner
[Excerpt] The revitalization perspective is hardly new. With deep roots in both labor movement history and industrial relations research, such work was marginalized for much of the postwar period both in union strategy and in the field of industrial relations. What is new is the rather sudden arrival of revitalization research in the mainstream of industrial relations along with a broader literature on contentious politics in a global economy (e.g., Klein, 2002; Delia Porta & Tarrow, 2004). This introductory article offers an overview of the revitalization perspective, deepened in relevance by contemporary struggles for democratic representation in the modern workplace …
Reviving The American Labor Movement: Institutions And Mobilization, Richard Hurd, Ruth Milkman, Lowell Turner
Reviving The American Labor Movement: Institutions And Mobilization, Richard Hurd, Ruth Milkman, Lowell Turner
Lowell Turner
[Excerpt] The reawakening of the American labor movement under new leadership with new strategic orientations is a remarkable chapter in late 20thcentury American economic and political history. Given up for dead by so many at home and abroad, under relentless attack from American employers and with government supports disappearing, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFLCIO) and a core of key member unions have re-emerged since the mid-1990s as prominent workplace, community and political actors. With both strategic reorientation and new local mobilization, these unions have fought to reverse decline and re-energize the movement. While the …
Prospects For Worker Participation In Management In The Single Market, Lowell Turner
Prospects For Worker Participation In Management In The Single Market, Lowell Turner
Lowell Turner
[Excerpt] This paper examines the development of and debates over the so-called social dimension of the single market project, with particular reference to the issues of employee information, consultation, and participation rights. The Social Charter, issued by the European Commission and agreed to in December 1989 by eleven of the twelve member states of the Council of Ministers, lists the expansion of such rights as one of its planks. In principle, therefore, most employers, governments, and unions are in agreement; the problem comes in implementation and regulation.
Reviving The Labor Movement: A Comparative Perspective, Lowell Turner
Reviving The Labor Movement: A Comparative Perspective, Lowell Turner
Lowell Turner
[Excerpt] In recent years, the long-declining U.S. labor movement has refocused in new and promising ways on rank-and-file mobilization, in organizing drives, collective bargaining conflicts and political campaigns. Such efforts are widely viewed as the best hope for revitalizing the labor movement: breathing new life into tired old unions, winning organizing drives and raising membership levels, increasing political influence, pushing toward the power necessary to reform labor law and ineffective labor institutions. The stakes are high and the goals ambitious: to close the "representation gap" at the workplace, reverse growing economic and social inequality, and build new coalitions for expanded …
Paths To Global Social Regulation – What Can Americans Learn From The European Union, Lance Compa, Lowell Turner
Paths To Global Social Regulation – What Can Americans Learn From The European Union, Lance Compa, Lowell Turner
Lowell Turner
[Excerpt] For American proponents of global justice, social Europe appears distant yet inspirational, with all its weaknesses still a "vanguard" model for the social regulation of the global economy. We believe that a great deal can be learned by other countries, regions and the global economy as a whole from the ongoing experience of European economic and social integration. We also believe, however, that American experiences with NAFTA as well as with contemporary labor movement revitalization and coalition building offer positive lessons for Europeans and other actors in the global North and South. As much as we admire the European …
The Politics Of The Labor Movement Revitalization: The Need For A Revitalized Perspective, Lucio Baccaro, Kerstin Haman, Lowell Turner
The Politics Of The Labor Movement Revitalization: The Need For A Revitalized Perspective, Lucio Baccaro, Kerstin Haman, Lowell Turner
Lowell Turner
[Excerpt] Unions everywhere are struggling. Globalization, with its supporting neo-liberal ideology, encourages employers and governments to push vigorously against the constraints of employment regulation. Unions have to fight to protect past gains, resist decline and find new allies. To some extent, labor is always on the defensive in a capitalist economy, where ownership and economic decision-making lie largely beyond the reach of workers and unions. Yet the competitive pressures of today's increasingly global capitalism accentuate the pressure. Firms have new options and increasing mobility, far beyond those that most workers and unions can claim. One response is common to all …
Social Partnership: An Organizing Concept For Industrial Relations Reform, Lowell Turner
Social Partnership: An Organizing Concept For Industrial Relations Reform, Lowell Turner
Lowell Turner
[Excerpt] In this era of globalization and intensified world market competition, once stable relationships involving firms, unions and government have come under pressure everywhere. Here in the United States, a crisis of economic competitiveness, industrial relations instability, and union decline has generated a new openness to reform efforts, including a widespread willingness to learn from the successful practices of both domestic innovators and foreign competitors. Employers, for example, have increasingly moved to adopt "lean" and high-quality-oriented forms of organization as well as new participatory programs for employees. Unions have shown increasing interest in getting involved and providing input into the …
The Politics Of Work Reorganization: Pervasive Union Decline?, Lowell Turner
The Politics Of Work Reorganization: Pervasive Union Decline?, Lowell Turner
Lowell Turner
[Excerpt] These are hard times for unions. There is currently a broad cross-national trend toward the decentralization of bargaining in industrial relations, which challenges established bases of union influence everywhere. The combined effects of intensified world market competition, new microelectronic technologies, managerial strategies to reorganize production, and the success and influence of Japanese production models are exerting great pressure on systems of industrial relations in Western Europe and North America; in many societies, unions are among the major losers in political realignments and industrial adjustment. Alongside wide-ranging discussions of competitiveness and the causes and consequences of trade and other economic …
Conclusion: Markets, Strategies, And Institutions In Comparative Perspective, Kirsten S. Wever, Lowell Turner
Conclusion: Markets, Strategies, And Institutions In Comparative Perspective, Kirsten S. Wever, Lowell Turner
Lowell Turner
[Excerpt If this had been another collection of country case studies, it would now be possible to map out the similarities and differences across the cases covered, possibly in a figure describing various IR-related issues by country. However, since this is a collection of different kinds of analyses with a variety of different focuses, the job of concluding this volume is not so simple. Nevertheless, in the very variety offered by the chapters in this volume, several themes emerge, most of which are at least implicitly, if not explicitly, clarified in the five substantive chapters. The chapters point up the …
Three Plants, Three Futures, Lowell Turner
Three Plants, Three Futures, Lowell Turner
Lowell Turner
To spread teamwork and cooperation, managers need to reform themselves—especially their attitudes about workers. At NUMMI, management has provided a system of work and rewards that has earned the loyalty of most employees and local union leaders.
Social Partnership In Germany: Lessons For U.S. Labor And Management, Lowell Turner
Social Partnership In Germany: Lessons For U.S. Labor And Management, Lowell Turner
Lowell Turner
German industrial relations in the postwar period have made a major contribution to German industrial success. The German system is rooted in the explicit recognition of well organized interests: strong, assertive employers and employers' associations not afraid to demand what they think is right, including wage restraint as well as reorganization of production toward "lean production"; and strong, assertive unions not afraid to demand what they think is right, including broad skills training, high wages, a shorter workweek, and a "human-centered" work organization. Amazingly, these strong forces end up with negotiated outcomes in a system that is accurately called "social …
Introduction: A Wide-Angle Lens For A Global Marketplace, Kirsten S. Wever, Lowell Turner
Introduction: A Wide-Angle Lens For A Global Marketplace, Kirsten S. Wever, Lowell Turner
Lowell Turner
[Excerpt] We hope in this volume to accomplish three things. First, we hope to meet the wide and growing demand in the IR community for a better understanding of industrial relations developments abroad. That is, we would like to help lift comparative IR out of its secondary status to a more prominent position within the field as well as reaffirm its centrality to other fields, such as comparative political economy and political sociology. Secondly, we aim to shed light on the specific comparison between other advanced industrial economies and industrializing countries, on the one hand, and the U.S., on the …
The Transformation Of Industrial Relations In Eastern Germany, Ulrich Jürgens, Larissa Klinzing, Lowell Turner
The Transformation Of Industrial Relations In Eastern Germany, Ulrich Jürgens, Larissa Klinzing, Lowell Turner
Lowell Turner
Citing case studies based on interviews they conducted in 1991 and 1992 with labor representatives and managers at six eastern German manufacturing firms, the authors argue that the future could hold either vigor and growth or stagnation and permanent second-class status for the economy and labor movement in eastern Germany, depending largely on actor strategy and choice. The rapid spread of privatization and open markets is tending to undermine unions' influence, on the one hand; but on the other hand, institutional transfer from former West Germany (especially of codetermination law and centralized, regional-level collective bargaining) is giving unions and works …
A Diversity Of New Work Organization: Human-Centered, Lean, And In-Between, Lowell Turner, Peter Auer
A Diversity Of New Work Organization: Human-Centered, Lean, And In-Between, Lowell Turner, Peter Auer
Lowell Turner
Lean production, from Toyota, is said to be paradigmatic for future production organization in the auto industry. This article challenges that view. Case studies at auto plants in the U.S., Germany, and Sweden show a wide diversity of developing new work organization. Not only are there differences across countries, there are also substantial and persistent variations across firms and even individual plants. No single model of production is yet emerging from this diversity. Although there are common elements such as team and group work, just-in-time delivery, and "total quality management", the actual shape of new work organization depends on a …
Rank-And-File Participation In Organizing At Home And Abroad, Lowell Turner
Rank-And-File Participation In Organizing At Home And Abroad, Lowell Turner
Lowell Turner
[Excerpt] We know that we need labor law reform. But it is also clear that this is not all we need; nor can we expect to achieve legal reform simply by electing Democrats. That strategy did not work in 1978-79 or in 1993-94, and it will not work in the future. In the face of inevitably powerful and well-organized business opposition, even the most well-financed and articulate lobbying campaign for labor law reform can fail. What was missing in 1978-79 and in 1993-94 and is urgently needed now is the pressure of a massive social movement, mobilized to transform and …