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Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations

A Strange Case, Lance A. Compa Nov 2010

A Strange Case, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] The disconnect reflected in Bosch's action at the Wisconsin plant between promise and performance is the theme of a new Human Rights Watch report titled A Strange Case: Violations of Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States by European Multinational Corporations. The report details ways in which European firms have exploited weak US labour laws to carry out aggressive campaigns against workers' organising and bargaining in the United States. "A Strange Case" comes from Robert Louis Stevenson's famous The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.


Unfair Advantage: Workers’ Freedom Of Association In The United States Under International Human Rights Standards, Lance A. Compa Nov 2010

Unfair Advantage: Workers’ Freedom Of Association In The United States Under International Human Rights Standards, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] Human Rights Watch selected case studies for this report on workers’ freedom of association in the United States with several objectives in mind. One was to include a range of sectors - services, industry, transport, agriculture, high tech – to assess the scope of the problem across the economy, rather than to focus on a single sector. Another objective was geographic diversity, to analyze the issues in different parts of the country. The cases studied here arose in cities, suburbs and rural areas around the United States. Another important goal was to look at the range of workers seeking …


[Review Of The Book We Can’T Eat Prestige: The Women Who Organized Harvard], Richard W. Hurd Sep 2010

[Review Of The Book We Can’T Eat Prestige: The Women Who Organized Harvard], Richard W. Hurd

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] In 1988 the fifteen-year campaign to organize office and laboratory workers at Harvard University ended with an NLRB election win. We Can't Eat Prestige is the most comprehensive examination to date of this compelling story, offering new detail and sufficiently bold assertions to re-ignite a smoldering debate about what this victory means for the future of unions. The author is a highly regarded journalist with thirty years of experience reporting on labor issues. Predictably, the book is extraordinarily well written, weaving a fascinating story of the union's evolution.


Organizing And Representing Clerical Workers: The Harvard Model, Richard W. Hurd Sep 2010

Organizing And Representing Clerical Workers: The Harvard Model, Richard W. Hurd

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] The private sector clerical work force is largely nonunion, simultaneously offering the labor movement a major source of potential membership growth and an extremely difficult challenge. Based on December 1990 data, there are eighteen million workers employed in office clerical, administrative support, and related occupations. Eighty percent of these employees are women, accounting for 30 percent of all women in the labor force. Among private sector office workers, 57 percent work in the low-union-density industry groups of services (only 5.7 percent union) and finance, insurance, and real estate (only 2.5 percent union). With barely over ten million total private …


Beyond The Organizing Model: The Transformation Process In Local Unions, Bill Fletcher, Richard W. Hurd Sep 2010

Beyond The Organizing Model: The Transformation Process In Local Unions, Bill Fletcher, Richard W. Hurd

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] The ideological foundations of traditional U.S. trade unionism have been called into question by world and domestic events. The post-World War II labor movement, founded on a social truce with capital and the apparent inevitability of a rising living standard, has hit a bulkhead-piercing iceberg of dramatic proportions. The global economy, economic restructuring, deregulation, and privatization have wrought destruction on U.S. unions. In the wake of this devastation, it has become common, even for union leaders, to define unionism in objectively negative terms (e.g., without a union, you have no protection from arbitrary management). As a movement, we have …


The Evolution Of Strategic And Coordinated Bargaining Campaigns In The 1990s: The Steelworkers’ Experience, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Tom Juravich Aug 2010

The Evolution Of Strategic And Coordinated Bargaining Campaigns In The 1990s: The Steelworkers’ Experience, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Tom Juravich

Kate Bronfenbrenner

"With the refocusing of attention of the labor movement on organizing, an increasing number of scholars have been directing their research toward the nature and practice of current union organizing efforts. These scholars have begun updating a literature that had grown sorely out of touch with the organizing experience of America’s unions and have provided the foundation for a more sophisticated understanding of the organizing process. While we applaud this resurgence in organizing research, there has not been a comparable resurgence in research on collective bargaining…"


Revival Of The American Labor Movement: Issues, Problems, Prospects, Lowell Turner, Harry C. Katz, Richard W. Hurd Aug 2010

Revival Of The American Labor Movement: Issues, Problems, Prospects, Lowell Turner, Harry C. Katz, Richard W. Hurd

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] The purpose of this book is to examine union revitalization efforts: to identify central developments, to analyze strengths and weaknesses in the new initiatives, and to assessprogress made and prospects for the future. We ask questions such as: Can union decline be reversed? Are there serious indications of revitalization beyond new leadership and publicity? What accounts for successes and failures so far, and what strategies have shown the most promise for future success? Can innovations in areas such as vocational training consortia contribute to labor movement revitalization? Are there ways to reconcile the contradictions between an "organizing model" of …


Unionization Of Professional And Technical Workers: The Labor Market And Institutional Transformation, Richard W. Hurd, John Bunge May 2010

Unionization Of Professional And Technical Workers: The Labor Market And Institutional Transformation, Richard W. Hurd, John Bunge

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] Established institutions that serve the interests of white-collar workers find themselves at a critical juncture. On the one hand they can foresee the potential to augment membership and influence. On the other hand, they confront the reality of reconfigured labor markets. Growth (and indeed survival) is contingent upon being able to adapt to the changing needs and interests of professional and technical workers. The combination of technological advances and alterations in the functioning of white-collar markets suggests strategic reconceptualization and institutional transformation. This chapter explores the attitudes of professional and technical workers toward their jobs and labor market organizations …


Collective Bargaining In The Era Of Grocery Industry Restructuring, Richard W. Hurd May 2010

Collective Bargaining In The Era Of Grocery Industry Restructuring, Richard W. Hurd

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] As UFCW international and local leaders know from first hand experience, there have been dramatic changes in the retail grocery industry over the past 15 years. Of most direct relevance to the collective bargaining environment, the absolute size of key corporations has increased and economic power in the industry has become more concentrated. Influenced by the spread of Wal-Mart's grocery operations, established companies like Kroger, Safeway, Supervalu, and Loblaw have pursued aggressive merger and market expansion strategies. Further complicating the situation has been the success of other alternative format grocers (such as Costco, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and BJ's), …


Organizing To Win: Introduction, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Sheldon Friedman, Richard W. Hurd, Rudolph A. Oswald, Ronald L. Seeber May 2010

Organizing To Win: Introduction, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Sheldon Friedman, Richard W. Hurd, Rudolph A. Oswald, Ronald L. Seeber

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] The American labor movement is at a watershed. For the first time since the early years of industrial unionism sixty years ago, there is near-universal agreement among union leaders that the future of the movement depends on massive new organizing. In October 1995, John Sweeney, Richard Trumka, and Linda Chavez-Thompson were swept into the top offices of the AFL-CIO, following a campaign that promised organizing "at an unprecedented pace and scale." Since taking office, the new AFL-CIO leadership team has created a separate organizing department and has committed $20 million to support coordinated large-scale industry-based organizing drives. In addition, …


Contesting The Dinosaur Image: The Labor Movement’S Search For A Future, Richard W. Hurd May 2010

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

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] But the increased effectiveness of labor's political activities has not resulted in major improvements legislatively, and now there is a hostile President who opposes nearly every aspect of the union policy agenda. The promise for the future lies in the demonstrated ability to mobilize at the grassroots. But there are recent signs that national unions are breaking ranks and pursuing narrow self interest. The USWA joined with the steel industry to persuade the Bush administration to restrict imports, and even hinted at a possible endorsement for his reelection in 2004 (Murray). The UMWA has praised the president's energy policy, …


Les Grèves En Flandre Depuis 1966: Une Région Docile En ‘Colère Blanche’?, Kurt Vandaele Jan 2010

Les Grèves En Flandre Depuis 1966: Une Région Docile En ‘Colère Blanche’?, Kurt Vandaele

Kurt Vandaele

No abstract provided.


Significant Victories: An Analysis Of Union First Contracts, Tom Juravich, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Robert Hickey Oct 2009

Significant Victories: An Analysis Of Union First Contracts, Tom Juravich, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Robert Hickey

Kate Bronfenbrenner

[Excerpt] After two decades of massive employment losses in heavily unionized sectors of the economy and exponential growth of the largely unorganized service sector, the U.S. labor movement is struggling to remain relevant. Despite new organizing initiatives and practices, union organizing today remains a tremendously arduous endeavor, particularly in the private sector, as workers and their unions are routinely confronted with an arsenal of aggressive legal and illegal antiunion employer tactics. This vigorous opposition to unions in the private sector does not stop once an election is won, but continues throughout bargaining for an initial union agreement, all too often …


Ensuring A Decent Global Workplace: Labor Rights Belong In Trade Agreements, Lance A. Compa May 2009

Ensuring A Decent Global Workplace: Labor Rights Belong In Trade Agreements, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] Linking workers' rights to international trade is an idea whose time has come and stayed, despite the best efforts of free trade ideologues to chase it away. In looming congressional debates about "fast track" negotiating authority, the Bush administration and Congress confront powerful demands from workers, trade unionists and a wider public for rules protecting human rights and labor rights, not just corporate investments, in trade agreements.


Letter To The Editor, New Labor Forum, Jeffrey Grabelsky Apr 2009

Letter To The Editor, New Labor Forum, Jeffrey Grabelsky

Jeffrey Grabelsky

[Excerpt] Bill Fletcher and Rick Hurd have shined a critical light on a vital issue facing the labor movement. They have asked, but not yet answered, how the AFL-ClO's "Organizing for Change, Changing to Organize" program will help us build vibrant and democratic unions committed to inclusion and ready to grapple with the tough issues of race and gender. If their essay provides an excuse for some unions to avoid the challenge of organizing while debating these issues, it would be most unfortunate. But if their piece provokes a more serious and candid dialogue about external organizing and internal transformation, …


It Takes More Than House Calls: Organizing To Win With A Comprehensive Union-Building Strategy, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Tom Juravich Dec 2008

It Takes More Than House Calls: Organizing To Win With A Comprehensive Union-Building Strategy, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Tom Juravich

Kate Bronfenbrenner

[Excerpt] Until recently, some national and local union leaders still argued that labor should circle the wagons and take care of existing members rather than spend scarce resources on organizing nonunion workers. Today those voices have largely been silenced by the hard numbers of labor's dramatic decline. As expressed in the platform of the new AFL-CIO leadership slate, the American labor movement must "organize at an unprecedented pace and scale." The question unions face today is no longer whether to make organizing a priority but how that can best be achieved.


The Evolution Of Strategic And Coordinated Bargaining Campaigns In The 1990s: The Steelworkers’ Experience, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Tom Juravich Dec 2008

The Evolution Of Strategic And Coordinated Bargaining Campaigns In The 1990s: The Steelworkers’ Experience, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Tom Juravich

Kate Bronfenbrenner

"With the refocusing of attention of the labor movement on organizing, an increasing number of scholars have been directing their research toward the nature and practice of current union organizing efforts. These scholars have begun updating a literature that had grown sorely out of touch with the organizing experience of America’s unions and have provided the foundation for a more sophisticated understanding of the organizing process. While we applaud this resurgence in organizing research, there has not been a comparable resurgence in research on collective bargaining…"


...And The Twain Shall Meet?, Lance A. Compa Dec 2008

...And The Twain Shall Meet?, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] No country or company should gain a commercial edge in international trade by jailing or killing union organizers, crushing independent union movements, or banning strikes. Gaining an advantage in labor costs should not depend on exploiting child labor or forced labor, or discriminating against women or oppressed ethnic groups. Deliberately exposing workers to life-threatening safety and health hazards, or holding wages and benefits below livable levels should not be permissible corporate strategies. But these are exactly the abuses that happen all too often in a rapidly globalized world trading system based on "free trade."


Industrialization Strategy And Industrial Relations Policy In Malaysia, Sarosh C. Kuruvilla Sep 2008

Industrialization Strategy And Industrial Relations Policy In Malaysia, Sarosh C. Kuruvilla

Sarosh Kuruvilla

[Excerpt] In this chapter, a different view is taken of the relationship between industrialization strategies and industrial relations policy and practice. I argue that it is not the logic of industrialism or the levels of industrialization per se but the choice of an industrialization strategy and the shifts between such strategies that influence changes in industrial relations policies.


International Labor Standards, Soft Regulation, And National Government Roles, Sarosh C. Kuruvilla, Anil Verma Sep 2008

International Labor Standards, Soft Regulation, And National Government Roles, Sarosh C. Kuruvilla, Anil Verma

Sarosh Kuruvilla

[Excerpt] In this article, we briefly describe the different approaches to the regulation of international labor standards, and then argue for a new role for national governments based on soft rather than hard regulation approaches. We argue that this new role shows potential for significantly enhancing progress in international labor standards, since it enables governments to articulate a position without having to deal with the enforcement issues that hard regulation mandates. We justify this new role for governments based on the increasing use of soft regulation in the international arena. Of course, this approach is not without its own problems, …


Linkages Between Industrialization Strategies And Industrial Relations/Human Resource Policies: Singapore, Malaysia, The Philippines, And India, Sarosh Kuruvilla Sep 2008

Linkages Between Industrialization Strategies And Industrial Relations/Human Resource Policies: Singapore, Malaysia, The Philippines, And India, Sarosh Kuruvilla

Sarosh Kuruvilla

The case studies of Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and India presented in this paper support the author's contention that a country's industrialization strategy for economic development profoundly influences its industrial relations (IR) and human resources (HR) policy goals. The author finds that import substitution industrialization was associated with IR/HR policy goals of pluralism and stability, while a low-cost export-oriented industrialization strategy was associated with IR/HR policy goals of cost containment and union suppression. In countries that moved from a low-cost export-oriented strategy to a higher value added export-oriented strategy, the focus of IR/HR policy goals shifted from cost containment to …


The Steward’S Role In Bargaining, Ken Margolies Apr 2008

The Steward’S Role In Bargaining, Ken Margolies

Ken Margolies

[Excerpt] Bargaining a new contract is one of the biggest events in the life of a union, and one that offers stewards many opportunities to build a stronger organization. For many stewards, though, the bargaining process consists of responding the three big questions from the members.


Working It Out, Ken Margolies Apr 2008

Working It Out, Ken Margolies

Ken Margolies

[Excerpt] Every steward knows that it’s almost always better to work out problems with management informally, without having to resort to filing a grievance. And ever steward knows that if you do have to file a grievance, it’s better to win it at the first step than have to go through the headaches that come with moving higher up the food chain, or, even worse, risk leaving things in the hands of an arbitrator.


Time Management For Stewards, Ken Margolies Apr 2008

Time Management For Stewards, Ken Margolies

Ken Margolies

[Excerpt] Too much to do? Too little time to do it? Stewards face that problem every day – and the smart ones do something about it. It’s called time management.


A Study Of Regulatory Intervention In Labor-Management Relations: School Desegregation In Los Angeles, Dade County, And Boston, Harry C. Katz Apr 2008

A Study Of Regulatory Intervention In Labor-Management Relations: School Desegregation In Los Angeles, Dade County, And Boston, Harry C. Katz

Harry C Katz

"This article analyzes the interaction between public school desegregation and labor relations in Los Angeles, Dade County, and Boston. First enumerating the ways in which desegregation led to specific changes in either personnel policies or collective bargaining agreements in the three school systems, then providing an evaluation of the performance of the court’s regulatory intervention within labor management relations in the three school systems. After comparing regulatory performance, the factors that influence the observed variations in performance are assessed. A distinction is found between those causal factors that are ‘environmental’ and those that are under the direct control of the …


Building And Construction Trades Unions: Are They Built To Win?, Jeff Grabelsky Jan 2008

Building And Construction Trades Unions: Are They Built To Win?, Jeff Grabelsky

Jeffrey Grabelsky

[Excerpt] The evidence of labor's declining power in the economic and political arenas is increasingly clear. Despite the tenacious efforts of talented leaders over the past ten years, the labor movement has still failed to turn the proverbial cornet. Some labor leaders now believe that a dramatic change in strategic direction may be necessary to revitalize labor's fortunes. The emerging debate about labor's future touches every sector of the movement. The building and construction trades are no exception.