Labor Relations Commons^™

Introduction: Speaking Up For Justice, Suffering Injustice: Whistleblower Protection And The Need For Reform, Dana L. Gold

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Solidarity And Rights: Two To Tango: A Response To Joseph A. Mccartin, Lance Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] Thanks to Joseph McCartin for advancing this debate with an insightful critique of the workers’-rights-as-human-rights framework and for his generous treatment of the series of Human Rights Watch reports in which I had a hand. McCartin so fairly presents the human rights case, even while disagreeing with it, that it’s hard to respond without simply borrowing from his framing of my own views. But I’ll try.

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 …

Labor Market Data Needs Relating To Antidiscrimination Activity: Comment, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Barbara Bergmann's background paper divides data needs in the antidiscrimination area into data that would be useful in the formulation of national policy and data that would be useful as an aid in enforcing the laws and executive orders against discrimination. Although the former are likely to be of greatest concern to the commission, she has performed a valuable service by discussing these interrelated needs in one place. I find much to agree with, and very little to disagree with or question, in her paper. The presentation is, in the main, an objective one and she tempers her desire …

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 …

‘Closed Borders And Free Market’: Collective Labour Rights Marginalised, Andrea Iossa

Andrea Iossa

No abstract provided.

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 …

American Workplace Dispute Resolution In The Individual Rights Era, Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

This article presents a theoretical conceptualization of the rise of alternative dispute resolution and its impact on American employment relations in the individual rights era. The idea of an industrial relations system advanced by Dunlop is no longer a plausible general approach for understanding American employment relations given the decline of organized labor. This article examines the question of whether a new individual employment rights-based system of employment relations has replaced it. The old New Deal industrial relations system was based on three pillars: labor contracts that provided a web of rules governing the workplace; economic strikes, actual or threatened, …

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 …

Supporting Employment First: Assisting States In Achieving Improved Employment Outcomes For Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities, Cindy Thomas, Institute For Community Inclusion, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

A membership network of 29 states, the State Employment Leadership Network is a community of practice where members meet to connect, collaborate, and share information and lessons learned across state lines and system boundaries. Participating state agency officials build cross-community support for pressing employment-related issues and policies at state and federal levels. States commit to work together and engage in a series of activities to analyze key elements in their systems to improve the integrated employment outcomes for their citizens with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

A Phenomenological Exploration Of Black Male Law Enforcement Officers' Perspectives Of Racial Profiling And Their Law Enforcement Career Exploration And Commitment, Gregory A. Salters

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This phenomenological study explored Black male law enforcement officers’ perspectives of how racial profiling shaped their decisions to explore and commit to a law enforcement career. Criterion and snow ball sampling was used to obtain the 17 participants for this study. Super’s (1990) archway model was used as the theoretical framework. The archway model “is designed to bring out the segmented but unified and developmental nature of career development, to highlight the segments, and to make their origin clear” (Super, 1990, p. 201).

Interview data were analyzed using inductive, deductive, and comparative analyses. Three themes emerged from the inductive analysis …

Labor, Management And The Right To Work In America, Jack D. Ham Jr.

Georgia State Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Eugene V. Debs: Citizen And Socialist, Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

[Excerpt] This is a social biography of Eugene Victor Debs. It is a traditional biography in that it emphasizes this one individual's personal and public life as far as the evidence allows. But the book is also a piece of social history that assumes individuals do not stand outside the culture and society they grew in and from. I have stressed each aspect of Debs's story in order to present both the importance of the man and a more complete picture of the political and cultural struggles his society engaged in during his lifetime. Neither in his time nor in …

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 …

Deeply Within: Catholicism, Faith And History, Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

[Excerpt] In the decade I spent living with Gene Debs, I thought much about faith's relation to intellect, especially in the political realm. It was not just that a socialist in capitalist America needed faith but rather that Debs's very vision of America's promise was itself a profound act of faith. But with the exception of the last chapter, which I titled, "A Species of Purging," following a phrase in one of Debs's prison letters, overt discussion of any religious sensibility was largely sotto voce, echoes of a private dialogue with myself. Pleased as I was with the book when …

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.

What You Should Know About "Right To Work" Laws, 2013 Update, Bureau Of Labor Education. University Of Maine

Bureau of Labor Education

This is a brief 2013 update to the Bureau of Labor Education’s (BLE) 2011 briefing paper, “The Truth about ‘Right to Work’ Laws.” As documented in the 2011 BLE paper, the term “right-to-work” is highly misleading, and many studies have shown that RTW laws are not helpful to the well-being of working people. “Right-to-work” does not protect against unfair firing, or promote equitable wages and decent working conditions. By undermining unions and the ability of labor and management to bargain freely, right-to-work laws weaken the ability of workers to protect their rights through a union contract. There are two major …

Ohio Sb5 And The Attempt To “Yeshiva” Public University Faculty, Mary Ellen Benedict, Louis M. Benedict

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

In 2011, the introduction of Ohio Senate Bill 5 (SB5) attempted to drastically curtail public sector collective bargaining in Ohio. The bill included a proposed amendment designed by the Inter-University Council of Ohio, an organization of the top administrators of the state universities in Ohio, under the guise of applying the United States Supreme Court’s decision in NLRB v. Yeshiva to faculty at Ohio’s public universities. The avowed intent of the proposed language was to classify all faculty as supervisors or managers and thereby make them ineligible to bargain collectively. After mounting opposition and grass roots efforts, SB5 was ultimately …

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 …