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Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations

The Economic Pay-Offs To Informal Training: Evidence From Routine Service Work, Rosemary Batt Sep 2007

The Economic Pay-Offs To Informal Training: Evidence From Routine Service Work, Rosemary Batt

Rosemary Batt

This study examines the relationship between informal training and job performance among 2,803 telephone operators in a large unionized U.S. telecommunications company. The authors analyze individual-level data on monthly training hours and job performance over a five-month period in 2001 as provided by the company's electronic monitoring system. The results indicate that the receipt of informal training was associated with higher productivity over time, when unobserved individual heterogeneity is taken into account. Workers with lower pre-training proficiency showed greater improvements over time than did those with higher pre-training proficiency. Finally, whether the trainer was a supervisor or a peer also …


Global Competition’S Perfect Storm: Why Business And Labor Cannot Solve Their Problems Alone, Denise M. Rousseau, Rosemary Batt Dec 2006

Global Competition’S Perfect Storm: Why Business And Labor Cannot Solve Their Problems Alone, Denise M. Rousseau, Rosemary Batt

Rosemary Batt

A perfect storm is a conjoining of forces that intensifies effects. This commentary addresses the economic perfect storm that the United States and many other developed countries face as they attempt to become globally competitive. Its forces conflate strategic change with the erosion of employment and income security as firms shed labor and old institutional arrangements, in turn degrading quality of work and family life for workers as well as the futures of retirees. We evaluate the responses of our commentators—Louis Uchitelle, J.T. Battenberg III, and Thomas Kochan—who assess the current crisis and possible solutions to it. Their responses and …