Labor Relations Commons^™

Reflections On The Metamorphosis At Robben Island: The Role Of Institutional Work And Positive Psychological Capital, Wayne F. Cascio, Fred Luthans

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners from South Africa were imprisoned on notorious Robben Island from the mid-1960s until the end of the apartheid regime in 1991. The stark conditions and abusive treatment of these prisoners has been widely publicized. However, upon reflection and in retrospect, over the years, a type of metamorphosis occurred. Primarily drawing from firsthand accounts of the former prisoners and guards, it seems that Robben Island morphed from the traditional oppressive prison paradigm to one where the positively oriented prisoners disrupted the institution with a resulting climate of learning and transformation that eventually led to freedom …

Employee Choice Over Pay Mix, Kevin F. Hallock

Economics Faculty Publications

Suppose the company set the level of pay and then let employees choose the fractions they wanted as guaranteed salary, stock options and at-risk bonus. The fraction in at-risk bonus was capped at 20% of total pay and the payout was between 0 and 2.5 times the amount put at-risk and was a function of individual and group performance. This is not a theoretical example; it's real. And, it is interesting for a variety of reasons, including that it is so extreme and because the organization invited some researchers inside to study the fascinating choices made by employees. They were …

Welfare Reform: The View From New Hampshire And Massachusetts, Richard W. Hurd, Allen Thompson

Richard W Hurd

As he promised during his election campaign, President Carter has proposed a major overhaul of the welfare system. Under the Better Jobs and Income Act, unveiled in August 1977, the major components of the current welfare system would be replaced by a program combining cash assistance and job opportunities. This paper evaluates the Carter proposal based on the experience under existing employment, training and welfare programs and then assesses its potential impact on the states of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. In the course of the discussion, we deal with the following questions: (1) Does the proposal effectively address the weaknesses …

Strategic Diversity In Union Political Action: Implications For The 1992 House Elections, Richard W. Hurd, Jeffrey E. Sohl

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] The purpose of this paper is to explore labor's strategic options in the 1992 elections. We will focus on House races because the diversity in political strategies among unions is most apparent there. However, our conclusions will have broader implications for union activity in elections at all levels of government. In evaluating the situation we will consider the impact of redistricting on labor's alternatives. We should note that recent developments have made many union political operatives more optimistic. The upset victory by populist Democrat Harris Wofford in the special Senate election in Pennsylvania, the eventual compromises on civil rights …

An Analysis Of Safety Culture & Safety Training: Comparing The Impact Of Union, Non-Union, And Right To Work Construction Venues, Harry Miller Csp, Tara Hill, Kris Mason, John S. Gaal Edd

Online Journal for Workforce Education and Development

The construction industry is one of the most dangerous sectors of the US economy. As such, the safety attitudes and climate within small (residential) contracting firms may play a role in providing a safe culture and working environment. The intent of this practitioner-based research study is to compare and determine if there is a difference in safety practices—based on documented field inspections and their related original number of violations observed by OSHA—between union residential carpentry contractors in the St. Louis area and:

1) non-union residential carpentry contractors in the St. Louis area;

2) non-union residential carpentry contractors across Missouri; and …

Women In The Workforce: An In-Depth Analysis Of Gender Roles And Compensation Inequity In The Modern Workplace, Rebecca L. Ziman

Honors Theses and Capstones

This paper explores the increase in participation and education of American women in the workforce with a special focus on women in business and accounting roles. The paper then goes on to discuss the wage gap between genders, how to remedy inequality in the workplace, and highlights several reasons why pursing a solution to gender inequality is beneficial for both the employee and the company.

A Km-Based Strategic, Global Current Awareness Service, Stuart Basefsky

Stuart Basefsky

This presentation focuses on a global current awareness service designed to meet the knowledge needs of the institution from which it originates. In so doing, it also meets the needs of journalists, researchers, faculty, students, professional practitioners, and policymakers concerned with the same issues globally. It provides the institutional links between partnering institutions that sustain the relationships for the future. This serves as a model for how libraries can become supporting pillars of their organizations by tapping into and meeting KM needs.

Labor Force Migration, Unemployment And Job Turnover, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] In this paper, we show how labor turnover considerations can be integrated into the human investment theory of migration and demonstrate that such a model provides a much better explanation for migration rates into major metropolitan areas than the conventionally-used unemployment rate. The method used here may be of interest as well to researchers working on other human investment problems that also have a multi-period dimension.

Do Mlb Hitters Boost Performance In Their Contract Year?, Heather M. O'Neill

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

This study focuses on 256 MLB free agent hitters playing under the 2006-2011 CBA to determine whether they boost their offensive performance in their contract year. Prior studies’ results are mixed, depending on the econometric technique used and the choice of the offensive performance measure.

Having multiple year observations per player, one can incorporate the unobserved traits of the players (ability, risk aversion, work ethic, etc.) by using Fixed Effects (FE) estimation. Since these unmeasured player traits are likely to be correlated with observed predictors of performance (games played, playoff contention, age, etc.), traditionally used Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and …

Do Major League Baseball Hitters Engage In Opportunistic Behavior?, Heather M. O'Neill

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

This study focuses on 256 Major League Baseball free agent hitters playing under the 2006–2011 collective bargaining agreement to determine whether players engage in opportunistic behavior in their contract year, i.e., the last year of their current guaranteed contracts. Past studies of professional baseball yield conflicting results depending on the econometric technique applied and choice of performance measure. When testing whether players’ offensive performances increase during their contract year, the omitted variable bias associated with OLS and pooled OLS estimation leads to contrary results compared to fixed effects modeling. Fixed effects regression results suggest players increase their offensive performance subject …

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 …

Three Essays In Labor Economics, Benjamin Jack Van Kammen

Theses and Dissertations

There are three chapters in this dissertation, each of which consists of a journal-length article. They are on the following subjects.

The first chapter uses ordinances in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. to measure the effects of mandated paid sick leave on employment and wages. Using the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, an employment increase is observed in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. relative to places without an ordinance. This evidence suggests that sick leave mandates correct a market failure of under-provision of benefits.

The second chapter uses a novel measure of distance based on the O*Net Content Model …

Conclusion: Looking To The Future, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] A number of important themes emerge from the chapters in Governing Academia. First, decentralization gives individual units—be they university campuses within a state system, colleges within a university, or departments within a college—an incentive to act in their own best interests, but less of an incentive to work toward the common good. As Heller points out, at the level of a state system, decentralization of control may lead to wasteful overlap between campuses. As Wilson shows, decentralized budgeting in the form of responsibility center management models may cause units not to maximize the quality of the education they are …

Evaluation Research And National Social Policy: An Academic Practitioner's Perspective, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Society has limited resources and many competing uses for them. I therefore take it as being an almost obvious proposition that at any point in time policy makers should strive to maximize the social benefits produced by the available funds they have to spend. This proposition implies that evaluation research should be undertaken either by or for government agencies. Policy makers need to know what benefits are being produced by each social program and the resource costs involved. They need to know which aspects of which programs are working and which programs need to be replaced.

Dead-End Jobs And Youth Unemployment: Comment, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Charles Brown has very ambitiously attempted to analyze whether the existence of "dead-end jobs" contributes to the youth unemployment problem. He assumes that the average rate of wage growth of individuals initially employed in an occupation and the proportion of these individuals who remain employed in the same industry for five years are both inversely related to the probability that individuals initially employed in the occupation find themselves in dead end-jobs. His basic methodological approach involves using data from the 1/100 sample of the 1970 Census of Population to calculate both of these variables for each three-digit occupation, merging …

Who Pays For Pensions In The State And Local Sector: Workers Or Employers?, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert S. Smith

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] In 1974 Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). This complex piece of legislation, which applies only to private-sector pension plans, contains several provisions which tend to increase employers' costs of providing pensions. These include liberalized vesting rules, stringent funding requirements, and increased fiduciary responsibility and accountability. The analysis in this paper will focus on the likely effect of these provisions if they are applied to state and local government employee retirement systems. Although a public-sector variant of ERISA has yet to be passed, public employee retirement systems have recently become subject to scrutiny by various governmental …

Work Injuries And Wage Losses For Partially Disabled California Workers: Discussion, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Wayne Vroman's paper is a modest preliminary report, which is derived from an ongoing research project concerned with permanent partial disabilities and workers' compensation. The larger project will develop and implement methods for projecting postinjury earnings losses, compare actual compensation measures to these projected losses, and draw conclusions as to the adequacy and equity of workers' compensation benefits. One cannot question the usefulness of the larger project and the profession should be indebted to Vroman and his collaborators for undertaking it. One should stress, however, that the key to the success of the project will lie in their ability …

Introduction To The Book Governing Academia, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] During recent decades tuition for undergraduate students has risen at rates substantially higher than the rate of inflation at both public and private colleges and universities in the United States. These high rates of tuition increases led Congress to establish the National Commission on the Costs of Higher Education in 1997 to conduct a comprehensive review of college costs and prices and to make recommendations on how to hold tuition increases down. Parents of college students, taxpayers, and government officials all wanted to know why academic institutions can't behave more like businesses—cut their costs, increase their efficiency, and thus …

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 …

Collective Bargaining In American Higher Education, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Daniel B. Klaff, Adam T. Kezbom, Matthew P. Nagowski

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] No discussion of governance in higher education would be complete without a consideration of the role of collective bargaining. Historically, most researchers interested in the subject have directed their attention to the unionization of faculty members. Given several recent decisions by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that leave open the possibility that unionization of faculty in private colleges and universities may increase in the future, we discuss collective bargaining for faculty in the first section (Leatherman 2000, A16). Recently, however, attention has been also directed at the unionization of two other groups in the higher education workforce. Activists …

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 …

The State Of Representation And Segregation Among African American Women At The U.S. Department Of Commerce: An Examination Of The Intersection Of Strategic Planning With Race And Gender, Sesha Joi Moon

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

The intent of this dissertation is to examine the state of representation and segregation among African American women across the workforce at the United States Department of Commerce. This study employs a triangulated research design to examine the relationship between elements of strategic planning and the employment patterns of African American women. This study's qualitative analysis includes a content analysis of 13 agency-specific strategic documents published between FY 1994 through FY 2010. This data is supplemented with a longitudinal trend analysis of personnel data for fulltime, permanent employees retrieved from the National Finance Center for the same time period. The …

New Minimum Wage Research: Symposium Introduction, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] The passage of the 1989 FLSA amendments stimulated a new wave of research on the effects of minimum wage legislation, and five of the resulting papers are gathered together in this symposium. Four of these are revisions of papers that were presented at the ILR-Cornell Institute for Labor Market Policies/Princeton University Industrial Relations Section Conference, "New Minimum Wage Research," which was held at Cornell University on November 15, 1991. These papers, as well as the fifth paper, which was contributed by one of the conference participants after the conference was concluded, have all been subject to a refereeing process. …

Do Indirect Cost Rates Matter?, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Jaroslava K. Mykula

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

This study addresses the relationship between a university's indirect cost rate and its level of federal research funding. Both direct and indirect cost funding are examined. The data used in the analyses include unpublished institutional level data for all doctoral and research universities on funding and indirect cost rates obtained from the National Science Foundation for the fiscal years 1988 to 1997 period. Our major finding is that higher indirect cost rates are associated with higher levels of direct and indirect cost funding for institutions that initially are among the largest recipients of federal funding. In contrast, for universities initially …

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 …

Merit Pay For School Superintendents?, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Richard P. Chaykowski, Randy A. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Given the important role that school district administrators play in the educational process, one might expect their 'performance" to be of fundamental importance in determining both how much students learn and the cost of public education to taxpayers. Yet, while public debate has considered the issue of merit pay plans for teachers, virtually no attention has been directed to the methods by which school administrators are compensated. This paper provides evidence on whether school superintendents are explicitly or implicitly rewarded for their "performance" by higher compensation and/or greater opportunities for mobility. We analyze panel data from over 700 school districts …

The Effect Of Tax Limitation Legislation On Public Sector Labor Markets: A Comment, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] This brief comment presents my views about the current relative economic status of state and local government employees and the growth of collective bargaining and influence of unions in the public sector. With these remarks as background, I then discuss the likely effects of tax limitation legislation on public sector labor markets.

Review Of The Book The Davis-Bacon Act, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Armand J. Thieblot's monograph is not the first study of the administration and impact of the Davis-Bacon Act; however, it certainly is the most comprehensive. Successive chapters of the book consider the history of the act, definitions and interpretations of key words in the legislation, its current administrative organization and enforcement, experience under it (including improper wage determinations), and its costs and inflationary impact. A set of case studies are then presented to document the existence of improper and excessive wage determinations. Finally, the book concludes with a discussion of the original rationale of the Davis-Bacon Act and its …

Review Of The Book Nonmonetary Eligibility In State Unemployment Insurance Programs: Law And Practice, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] This monograph focuses on a relatively under-researched topic, namely, the effects of nonmonetary eligibility rules for both initial receipt of benefits and continued receipt once benefits are granted on the rates at which UI benefits are denied to applicants. The authors very competently employ both econometric and case study research methods to address these issues. Their econometric work utilizes quarterly state-level data between 1964 and 1981 and a fixed-effects framework to isolate those parameters of state unemployment insurance laws that influence denial rates. To supplement these analyses, they conduct interviews with key state and local program officials in six …

Review Of The Book An Incentives Approach To Improving The Unemployment Compensation System, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] This volume is the result of over two decades of research by the author on the unemployment insurance (UI) system. It focuses on the overpayment of UI benefits: payments to individuals that are larger than they should be because of miscalculations of benefit levels by administrative agencies or the failure of individuals to meet initial or continuing eligibility requirements for the receipt of benefits.