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Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations
Telecommunications: Collective Bargaining In An Era Of Industry Reconsolidation, Jeffrey Keefe, Rosemary Batt
Telecommunications: Collective Bargaining In An Era Of Industry Reconsolidation, Jeffrey Keefe, Rosemary Batt
Rosemary Batt
[Excerpt] In this paper, we examine the reconsolidation of the industry, between 1995 and 2001, focusing on the merger, acquisition, and business strategies of the major corporate players; union responses to those strategies; and the resulting evolution of union-management relations and collective bargaining outcomes. We argue that the nature of the industry and technology, coupled with its institutional legacy, provides incentives for consolidation and recentralization of the ownership structure. In this process over the last decade, former Bell affiliates have sought union support before regulatory commissions, and the unions have leveraged their political power to make important gains in collective …
Labor Market Institutions And Restructuring In U.S. Deregulated Telecommunications Services, Rosemary Batt
Labor Market Institutions And Restructuring In U.S. Deregulated Telecommunications Services, Rosemary Batt
Rosemary Batt
[Excerpt] This chapter summarizes some of the recent literature concerning the changing nature of markets, technology, and employment relations in deregulated telecommunications services in the United States. It draws on arguments and evidence from a series of studies over the last five years, most of which were undertaken by researchers at Cornell, MIT, and Rutgers universities in the United States. The research focuses on the relationship between market deregulation and technology change on the one hand, and changing business strategy, organizational structure, union relations, and work organization on the other. This chapter focuses on the extent to which labor market …
Review Of The Book The Chinese Worker After Socialism, Eli D. Friedman
Review Of The Book The Chinese Worker After Socialism, Eli D. Friedman
Eli D Friedman
In The Chinese Worker after Socialism, William Hurst employs subnational comparison to explain different outcomes for workers in the process of reform of state-owned industry in China. In particular, Hurst provides in-depth analysis of regional variation of the sequencing and volume of layoffs, how the local state attempted to handle unemployment, actual outcomes in re-employment, and the dynamics of worker protest. By taking subnational regions as the unit of analysis, we see that the process of "smashing the iron rice bowl" has not been a unified and coherent project but rather one that has been messy, uneven, and subject to …
China Since Tiananmen: The Labor Movement, Ching Kwan Lee, Eli D. Friedman
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 …
Remaking The World Of Chinese Labour: A 30-Year Retrospective, Eli D. Friedman, Ching Kwan Lee
Remaking The World Of Chinese Labour: A 30-Year Retrospective, Eli D. Friedman, Ching Kwan Lee
Eli D Friedman
Over the past 30 years, labour relations, and, indeed, the entirety of working class politics in China, have been dramatically altered by economic reforms. In this review, we focus on the two key processes of commodification and casualization and their implications for workers. On the one hand, these processes have resulted in the destruction of the old social contract and the emergence of marketized employment relations. This has implied a loss of the job security and generous benefits enjoyed by workers in the planned economy. On the other hand, commodification and casualization have produced significant but localized resistance from the …
Collective Bargaining In American Industry: A Synthesis, Clifford B. Donn, David B. Lipsky
Collective Bargaining In American Industry: A Synthesis, Clifford B. Donn, David B. Lipsky
David B Lipsky
The preceding eight chapters deal with the current status of collective bargaining in eight U.S. industries. The differences between collective bargaining for police officers and auto workers or between professional athletes and college professors are obvious and illustrate the richness and variety of contemporary collective bargaining. Despite that diversity, however, the eight industries exhibit important similarities in collective bargaining. The common themes that link most, if not all, of the industries examined in this volume are perhaps less obvious, but a careful reading of the preceding chapters reveals that there have been a number of common factors affecting collective bargaining …
Collective Bargaining As An Institution - A Long View: Discussion, David B. Lipsky
Collective Bargaining As An Institution - A Long View: Discussion, David B. Lipsky
David B Lipsky
[Excerpt] Professor Barbash states that "pluralistic capitalism of the North American and Western European variety provides the most favorable environment for power-based collective bargaining." I would only point out that the economic systems that go under the label "capitalism" differ widely in their characteristics, including the proportion of enterprise that is state-owned. Collective bargaining, after all, had its roots in 19th century capitalism but continues to thrive in the vastly different environment of the modern welfare state. It seems to me that there is nothing necessarily incompatible between collective bargaining and democratic socialism, but that collective bargaining cannot survive under …
Collective Bargaining And The Quality Of Work: The Views Of Local Union Activists, Thomas A. Kochan, David B. Lipsky, Lee Dyer
Collective Bargaining And The Quality Of Work: The Views Of Local Union Activists, Thomas A. Kochan, David B. Lipsky, Lee Dyer
David B Lipsky
[Excerpt] The purpose of the present study was to assess the views of local union officers and activists on these matters. Specifically, the study was designed to answer the following questions: Do local union leaders and members see so-called quality of work issues as equal in importance to the more traditional issues of collective bargaining? Do they tend to agree or disagree on these ratings of importance? Do they see quality of work issues as more integrative; that is, as those on which the goals of management and the union are pretty much the same? Is the collective bargaining process …
Introduction To [Collective Bargaining In American Industry: Contemporary Perspectives And Future Directions], David B. Lipsky, Clifford B. Donn
Introduction To [Collective Bargaining In American Industry: Contemporary Perspectives And Future Directions], David B. Lipsky, Clifford B. Donn
David B Lipsky
[Excerpt] Of course, collective bargaining in this country has always been an institution rich in diversity. The nature of each collective bargaining relationship came about through a variety of influences both internal and external to the bargaining process. The internal factors include such things as the ideology of labor and management, the way the unions and employers were organized, and the history of the relationship between the parties. The external factors include the state of the economy and the nature of the laws and court decisions that regulate bargaining practices. Nonetheless, this diversity has never been more in evidence than …
Do International Freedom Of Association Standards Apply To Public Sector Labor Relations In The United States?, Lance A. Compa
Do International Freedom Of Association Standards Apply To Public Sector Labor Relations In The United States?, Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] After November 2010 elections in the United States, human rights aspects of labor policy suddenly emerged at sub-federal levels. Elections in many states brought a sharp turn to conservative Republican rule. In this new climate, conflicts over workers’ rights took shape not at the ozone layer of high international policy, but at the oozing landfill level of local labor politics. Governors and legislatures in Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, Michigan, and other states moved to strip public employees of collective bargaining rights, blaming their wages and benefits for budget shortfalls. A vindictive North Carolina legislature made it unlawful for public school …
Public Sector Collective Bargaining And The Imperative For Service Delivery: An Overview, Jonathan Brock, David B. Lipsky
Public Sector Collective Bargaining And The Imperative For Service Delivery: An Overview, Jonathan Brock, David B. Lipsky
David B Lipsky
[Excerpt] When public sector officials and union leaders are willing to enter into cooperative arrangements, the evidence in this volume and elsewhere suggests they usually find that cooperation results in improvements in both the delivery of public services and the quality of work life. Certainly there have been instances when cooperation has failed to produce desirable results, but this volume includes ample testimony to its potential beneficial effects and depicts successful experiences with cooperation at the federal government level, in a number of state governments, in Indianapolis, and elsewhere. Also, we know that in places such as Los Angeles; Phoenix; …