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Articles 1 - 18 of 18
Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations
Corporate Hypocrisy: Violations Of Trade Union Rights By European Multinational Companies In The United States, Lance A. Compa
Corporate Hypocrisy: Violations Of Trade Union Rights By European Multinational Companies In The United States, Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
Many European corporations adopt American management-style attitudes toward trade unions, notwithstanding their publicly-declared support for global norms on workers’ freedom of association. They exploit US labor laws that violate international standards and interfere with trade union formation. Case studies examine several examples of this anti-union hypocrisy on the part of European firms. At the same time, some European companies have chosen to respect workers’ organizing rights in the United States. The conclusion contains recommendations for securing multinational companies’ respect for workers’ freedom of association in the United States, including application of ILO core standards, UN Guiding Principles, OECD Guidelines, and …
Business Union Vs. Business Union? Understanding The Split In The Us Labour Movement, Ian Greer
Business Union Vs. Business Union? Understanding The Split In The Us Labour Movement, Ian Greer
Ian Greer
In summer 2005, the trade union movement formalised its split into two rival confederations. The split was precipitated by the 2001 disaffiliation of the carpenters’ union, the Republican electoral victory of 2004, and the decline in union membership. Seven unions, accounting for forty per cent of the membership of the AFL-CIO formed Change to Win as a response to that federation’s ineffectiveness. This article concludes that the split may lead to new techniques for campaigning, but that it will not affect the fortunes or the social vision of the trade union movement.
Labor And Regional Development In The U.S.A.: Building A High Road Infrastructure In Buffalo, New York, Ian Greer, Lou Jean Fleron
Labor And Regional Development In The U.S.A.: Building A High Road Infrastructure In Buffalo, New York, Ian Greer, Lou Jean Fleron
Ian Greer
[Excerpt] In a country where worker representatives lack broadly institutionalized roles as "social partners," how can they play a constructive role in solving the problems of regional development? In Buffalo, New York, regularized, labor-inclusive procedures of problem solving involving multiple coalition partners – what we call a high-road social infrastructure – has emerged. Socially engaged researchers and educators have played a role in spreading lessons and organizing dialogue. Despite the emergence of regional cooperation, however, successful development politics are hampered by many of the same problems seen in European regions, including uncertainty about the best union strategy, hostility from business …
Industrial Relations, Migration, And Neoliberal Politics: The Case Of The European Construction Sector, Nathan Lillie, Ian Greer
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.
Review: John S. Ahlquist And Margaret Levi, 'In The Interest Of Others: Organizations And Social Activism" (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013), Rowan Cahill
Rowan Cahill
Review of the comparative study of trade union organizational behaviour by John S. Ahlquist and Margaret Levi, 'In the Interest of Others: Organizations and Social Activism" (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013), which involves a target group of US and Australian trade unions.
Regional Integration And Transnational Labor Strategies Under Nafta, Maria Cook
Regional Integration And Transnational Labor Strategies Under Nafta, Maria Cook
Maria Lorena Cook
[Excerpt] This paper argues that while the internationalization of the economy has tended to weaken national labor movements, the internationalization of domestic politics may expand the traditional arenas for strategic action for labor unions. In particular, the North American Free Trade Agreement has been portrayed by some of its many critics as representing the consolidation of a neoconservative or neoliberal project that will not only shape the future economic development of the region, but also constrain its social policies and limit its political options (Grinspun and Cameron 1993: Chapter 1). However, these same critics have also noted that the debate …
National Labor Strategies In Changing Environments: Perspectives From Mexico, Maria Lorena Cook
National Labor Strategies In Changing Environments: Perspectives From Mexico, Maria Lorena Cook
Maria Lorena Cook
[Excerpt] This essay will look at the evolution of Mexican trade unions' strategies in response to changes in their political-economic environment over a period of nearly twenty-five years. The purpose of the essay is to determine which factors proved most important in shaping trade union responses to environmental changes over time, and to note how the recent economic opening and regional integration represented by NAFTA have thus far affected and are likely to affect in the future labor unions' capacity to respond to such challenges. The Mexican case is of special importance in the Latin American context due to the …
The Union Wage Effect In Late Nineteenth Century Britain, Timothy J. Hatton, George R. Boyer, Roy E. Bailey
The Union Wage Effect In Late Nineteenth Century Britain, Timothy J. Hatton, George R. Boyer, Roy E. Bailey
George R. Boyer
[Excerpt] This paper offers an historical dimension to the impact of trade unions on earnings by estimating the union wage effect in Britain in 1889-90 using data from the US Commissioner of Labor survey conducted at that time. The determinants of union status are also investigated in terms of a probit estimation using individual characteristics which may be correlated with union membership. The results of this first step are used in the computation of selectivity corrected estimates of the union wage effect. It is found that the effect of union membership on earnings at this time was of the order …
The Evolution Of Unemployment Relief In Great Britain, George R. Boyer
The Evolution Of Unemployment Relief In Great Britain, George R. Boyer
George R. Boyer
[Excerpt] Relatively little has been written about unemployment relief during the period between the passage of the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834 and the adoption of national unemployment insurance in 1911. This study is an attempt to help fill the gap in the literature. It examines the changing roles played by poor relief, private charity, trade unions, and public employment in the lives of the urban unemployed during cyclical downturns from 1834 to 1911. The story that emerges offers no support for a "Whig theory of welfare." Public assistance for the unemployed was more generous, and more certain, from …
What Did Unions Do In Nineteenth-Century Britain?, George R. Boyer
What Did Unions Do In Nineteenth-Century Britain?, George R. Boyer
George R. Boyer
The article examines the development of the insurance function of trade unions. It analyzes how such policies worked, and why union benefit packages differed across occupations. It also addresses the impact of insurance policies on union organization. Insurance benefits increased the ability of unions to attract and retain members. They did not, however, significantly increase the power of union leaders relative to employers or union rank and file.
Trade Unions And Human Rights, Lance Compa
Trade Unions And Human Rights, Lance Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] In the 1990s the parallel but separate tracks of the labor movement and the human rights movement began to converge. This chapter examines how trade union advocates adopted human rights analyses and arguments in their work, and human rights organizations began including workers' rights in their mandates. The first section, "Looking In," reviews the U.S. labor movement's traditional domestic focus and the historical absence of a rights-based foundation for American workers' collective action. The second section, "Looking Out," covers a corresponding deficit in labor's international perspective and action. The third section, "Labor Rights Through the Side Door," deals with …
Legal Protection Of Workers’ Human Rights: Regulatory Changes And Challenges In The United States, Lance Compa
Legal Protection Of Workers’ Human Rights: Regulatory Changes And Challenges In The United States, Lance Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] In a 2002 study, the US Government Accountability Office reported that more than 32 million workers in the United States lack protection of the right to organise and to bargain collectively. But since then, the situation has worsened. A series of decisions by the federal authorities under President George Bush has stripped many more workers of organising and bargaining rights. The administration took away bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of employees in the new Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Department.18 In the years before the 2009 change of administration, a controlling majority of the five-member National …
[Review Of The Book From Consent To Coercion: The Assault On Trade Union Freedoms], Lance A. Compa
[Review Of The Book From Consent To Coercion: The Assault On Trade Union Freedoms], Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] Even in disagreement with some of its policy prescriptions, I find From Consent to Coercion a strong, meticulously documented, powerfully argued, thought-provoking work that serious scholars and practitioners of trade unionism and labour law should read and engage. We Americans can still look at Canadian labour law and practice as a model compared with our own, but thanks to Panitch and Swartz's work we can see it with eyes open, not eyes wide
Author’S Reply To Wheeler-Getman-Brody Papers, Lance A. Compa
Author’S Reply To Wheeler-Getman-Brody Papers, Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] The contributions of Hoyt Wheeler, Julius Getman and David Brody in the December issue of this journal give important insights into strengths and weaknesses of the Human Rights Watch Report on workers' rights in the United States. Stephen Wood, Sheldon Friedman and the editors are to be commended for advancing a debate on the Report's approach, findings and recommendations. Each of these three major figures in American labour scholarship brings the power of decades of research and analysis on these issues. Together, their critiques stretch the Report backward and forward: back to unstated assumptions that underlie the Report (or …
Globalizíación, Class Actions Y Derecho De Trabajo, Antonio Ojeda Avilés, Lance A. Compa
Globalizíación, Class Actions Y Derecho De Trabajo, Antonio Ojeda Avilés, Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] El objeto principal de este artículo consiste en analizar la larga experiencia acumulada al otro lado del Atlántico, en Estados Unidos, en material de demandas extraterritoriales contra empresas norteamericanas ya desde los años setenta. Realizaremos una síntesis de los rasgos característicos de las class actions en ese país, en primer lugar, seguida por una breve Mirada al context internacional del Derecho del trabajo y la jurisprudencia en EE.UU., de los efectos extraterritoriales del Derecho del trabajo estadounidense, en segundo término, y un análisis pormenorizado de tales litigious en Europa.
Labor’S New Opening To International Human Rights Standards, Lance Compa
Labor’S New Opening To International Human Rights Standards, Lance Compa
Lance A Compa
Most trade unionists were oblivious to international human rights movement in the last half of the twentieth century. For their part, human rights advocates did not include workers’ rights on their agenda. But in the late 1990s, labor and human rights advocates came together to reframe workers’ collective action as a human rights mission rather than a self-interested syndical action. A new labor–human rights alliance built a wide-ranging discourse of workers’ rights as human rights. The expertise and knowledge attributable to human rights actors gave their critique of workers’ rights violations in the U.S. a high measure of authoritativeness compared …
Unions Impose Stability On A Turbulent Construction Industry, Jeffrey Grabelsky
Unions Impose Stability On A Turbulent Construction Industry, Jeffrey Grabelsky
Jeffrey Grabelsky
No abstract provided.
Construction Organizing: A Case Study Of Success, Brian Condit, Tom Davis, Jeffrey Grabelsky, Fred Kotler
Construction Organizing: A Case Study Of Success, Brian Condit, Tom Davis, Jeffrey Grabelsky, Fred Kotler
Jeffrey Grabelsky
[Excerpt] This chapter examines how IBEW Local 611, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, reversed its decline and between 1988 and 1994 reemerged as a dominant force in its jurisdiction. What the local did, how it did it, and what other building trade unions can learn from 611's success are the central points of the discussion.