Business Commons^™

The Unionization Of Clerical, Technical, And Professional Employees In Higher Education: Threat Or Opportunity, Richard W. Hurd

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] Union organizing among non-teaching white collar employees of colleges and universities persists. To the discomfort of many university administrators, high visibility union successes at Yale, Columbia, Harvard, the University of Cincinnati, and the University of Illinois were not isolated instances but part of a trend.

Professional, technical, and clerical employees' desire for a more effective voice, has combined with the economic insecurity associated with stubborn budgetary pressures, to encourage these workers to pursue union representation. Unions have responded to this opportunity with enthusiasm, experimenting with innovative organizing and bargaining strategies in the relatively open environment offered by institutions of …

[Review Of The Book The Mismanagement Of Talent: Employability And Jobs In The Knowledge Economy], Bradford S. Bell

Bradford S Bell

[Excerpt] In The Mismanagement of Talent, Brown and Hesketh argue that rooted within the dominant discourse of the "war for talent" are several core assumptions that have shaped our perspective on employability in the KBE. The most central of these is that there is a limited pool of talent capable of rising to senior managerial positions, which creates fierce competition to recruit the best and brightest. The perception of talent as a limited commodity is seen as driving organizations to diversify their talent pools and adopt more rigorous recruitment and selection tools in an effort to get the right people, …

...And The Twain Shall Meet?, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] No country or company should gain a commercial edge in international trade by jailing or killing union organizers, crushing independent union movements, or banning strikes. Gaining an advantage in labor costs should not depend on exploiting child labor or forced labor, or discriminating against women or oppressed ethnic groups. Deliberately exposing workers to life-threatening safety and health hazards, or holding wages and benefits below livable levels should not be permissible corporate strategies. But these are exactly the abuses that happen all too often in a rapidly globalized world trading system based on "free trade."

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 …

Corporate Social Responsibility And Workers’ Rights (Chinese), Lance Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] Corporate social responsibility (CSR) brings an important dimension to the global economy. CSR can enhance human rights, labor rights, and labor standards in the workplace by joining consumer power and socially responsible business leadership—not just leadership in Nike headquarters in Oregon or Levi Strauss headquarters in California, but leadership in trading house headquarters in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and leadership at the factory level in Dongguan and Shenzhen. Ten years ago, I would not have said this. I viewed corporate social responsibility and corporate codes of conduct as public relations maneuvers to pacify concerned consumers. Behind a facade of …

Free Trade, Fair Trade, And The Battle For Labor Rights, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] Labor rights advocacy is the most direct challenge to the primacy of a marketplace ideology in which efficiency and profit are the highest values. Labor rights advocates promote values of fairness, justice, and solidarity in global commerce. The battle to achieve enforceable hard law that protects workers' rights in the global economy is an important contribution to the labor movement's revitalization. Can a beleaguered movement take on multinational companies and the governments that appease them on these varied international grounds when there is so much still to do on organizing, collective bargaining, and domestic political action? There really is …

Works In Progress: Constructing The Social Dimension Of Trade In The Americas, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] This paper reviews labor rights in the trade arrangements of four regional and binational settings in the Americas: • the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among Canada, Mexico and the United States; • the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) among Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay; • the Canada-Chile Free Trade Agreement (CCFTA); and • the Caribbean Community (Caricom) embracing several island nations in a common market. The labor rights agreements, charters and declarations examined here are at different levels of development and experience. They are "works in progress," just beginning to experiment with the central challenge of …

El Acuerdo De Cooperación Laboral Del Tratado De Libre Comercio De América Del Norte: ¿Dimensión Social O Decepción Social?, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] En este país los sindicatos continúan criticando los puntos débiles del Acuerdo, especialmente la exclusión de asuntos referentes a la sindicalización, la negociación y las huelgas, los mecanismos de solución de controversias, y la carencia de soluciones ejecutorias bajo el ACL. Al mismo tiempo, se han dado cuenta de que resulta un foro muy útil para exponer casos de violaciones de los derechos de los trabajadores por parte de corporaciones multinacionales que operan en el marco del TLC. Con ello intentan promover una presión popular dirigida a detener la ampliación del TLC a Chile y el resto de América …

[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

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

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.

U.S. Workers’ Rights Are Being Abused, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] The 200-page Human Rights Watch report is based on case studies across a range of industries, occupations and regions of the United States. The report recognizes that U.S. workers generally do not confront gross human rights violations where death squads assassinate union activists or collective bargaining is outlawed. But the absence of systematic government repression does not mean that workers have effective exercise of the right to freedom of association. The case studies in the Human Rights Watch report uncover a distressing pattern of threats, harassment, spying, firings and other reprisals against worker activists and a labor law system …

Labor’S Weight Beyond Its Numbers, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] Beyond numbers, what unions are doing on the ground reflects their vitality. Unions are allying with new grass-roots support groups in creative public advocacy for workers' rights generally, not just for their own members. Unions are also experimenting with new forms of social bargaining, using leverage such as pension fund investments and shareholder resolutions. They do this for their own organizational goals, but also for public goals such as transparent corporate governance and honest corporate accounting.

To Cure Labor’S Ills Bigger Unions, Fewer Of Them, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] Only big, coordinated unions can stop employers from playing off one group of workers against another. Only strong national union organizations that prove they can stand up to the power of the big corporations will attract unorganized workers to the labor movement.

So We Have More Jobs – Low-Paid, Part-Time Ones, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] Granted, there have been complaints about the validity of the unemployment number in the past. Liberals have charged that it ignores people who quit looking for work, while conservatives argued that it misses those who are working "off the books" in cash-only transactions ranging from house-cleaning to illegal drugs. But the real problem with the unemployment rate is that we've devalued American employment in order to have more of it. While corporate stock prices soar to new highs, the working class is paying for this situation.

[Review Of The Book Advancing Theory In Labour Law And Industrial Relations In A Global Context], Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] The ideas and insights in Advancing Theory are an important contribution to the on-the-ground social justice movement challenging corporate rule in the global economy. It can even help rescue labor law and industrial relations as intellectual disciplines and career trajectories for a new generation of students and practitioners excited about thinking globally and acting locally.

A World Without Work? [Review Of The Books The End Of Work And The Jobless Future], Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] These two books take different routes to the same conclusion: This Time It's For Real. The end of work is now upon us, and the jobless future beckons. This was portended in the past--by the development of steam-powered machinery, then electrical power, then by mid-twentieth century automation reflected in numerically-controlled machine tools, and even by the first and second generations of computers--but never realized as new outlets for employment took shape. Those days are done now. Advanced computers and software are bringing into being what Jeremy Rifkin calls a "near-workerless economy."

Job Blackmail [Review Of The Book Fear At Work: Job Blackmail, Labor, And The Environment], Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] Ever since the establishment of environmental and workplace protections in the early 1970s, private employers have resisted further curbs on corporate conduct by threatening job destruction. The refrain has been that occupational health and safety standards wipe out existing jobs and make new ones impossible. In Fear at Work, Richard Kazis and Richard L. Grossman detail the use of this job blackmail to split trade unionists from environmentalists, making unnatural enemies of those who should be allies.

Breaking Ranks: On Military Spending, Unions Hear A Different Drummer, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] What remains to be seen is whether the labor movement's study of military spending will uncover the unions' material self-interest in reducing it, and in conveying that interest to the membership. For besides its general damage to the economy, which is now recognized even by many conservatives, the big, endless military buildup also threatens to inflict fatal damage on the trade union movement and its individual unions—not just indirectly but directly and concretely, in the form of fewer members, fewer contracts, fewer organizing victories, and less political power for working people. In effect, the Reagan Administration's plan to boost …

Another Look At Nafta, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

"Weak," "toothless," "worthless" and "a farce"—these were some of the epithets applied to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) labor side accord negotiated by the United States, Mexico, and Canada in 1993. Trade unionists and labor rights supporters were upset, first by the text of the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) when it appeared, then by early experiences after it went into effect on January 1, 1994. But those wanting progress on labor rights and standards in international trade should be careful of making some idealized “best” the enemy of the good.

Introduction: Institutional Change And Labor Market Segmentation In European Call Centers, Virginia Doellgast, Rosemary Batt, Ole H. Sorensen

Rosemary Batt

This article examines the dynamics of workplace change in European call centers. Survey data and case studies from Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain show large national and sectoral differences in institutional inclusiveness and labor market segmentation. These reflect variation in the institutional constraints and resources available to employers and unions as they adjust to market changes. However, union strategies to organize new groups and close gaps in existing regulations are becoming increasingly important as restructuring undermines traditional forms of bargaining power.

The Art Of Ignoring Impatient Elephants, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] Migrant labour was the elephant in the room when American, Mexican and Canadian negotiators hammered out the North American Free Trade Agreement last year. The elephant is still in the room, as negotiators now try to work out a "side agreement" on labour rights and labour standards to fulfill a campaign promise by President Bill Clinton. They never mention migrant worker rights, the single biggest issue affecting labour standards and labour conditions on the North American continent.

Social Dialogue And Worker Representation In Eu2020: Underappreciated And Underplayed, Aline Conchon, Stefan Clauwaert, Romuald Jagodzinski, Isabelle Schömann, Michael Stollt, Kurt Vandaele, Sigurt Vitols

Kurt Vandaele

No abstract provided.

The Secret Weapon Of Globalization: China's Activites In Sub-Saharan Africa, Kehbuma Langmia

Kehbuma Langmia

Workplace Consequences Of Electronic Exhibitionism And Voyeurism, William A. Herbert

William A. Herbert

The popularity of email, blogging and social networking raises important issues for employers, employees and labor unions. This article will explore contemporary workplace issues resulting from the related social phenomena of electronic exhibitionism and voyeurism. It will begin with a discussion of the international social phenomenon of individuals electronically distributing their personal thoughts, opinions, and activities to a potential worldwide audience while at the same time retaining a subjective sense of privacy. The temptation toward such exhibitionism has been substantially enhanced by the advent of Web 2.0. The article then turns to the legal implications of electronic voyeurism including employer …

Beyond Competing Theories Of The Hidden Economy, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Purpose – This paper aims to evaluate critically the validity of rival theorisations of the hidden economy that variously read this sphere as a leftover from a previous era, a by-product of a new emergent form of capitalism, a complement to formal employment or an alternative to the formal economy. Until now, the common tendency among economic theorists has been to either universally privilege one theorisation over others, or to represent each theory as valid in different places. Design/methodology/approach – To evaluate their validity to the city of Moscow, a survey is reported involving 313 face-to-face interviews with inhabitants conducted …

Evaluating The Nature Of The Relationship Between Informal Entrepreneurship And The Formal Economy In Rural Communities, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

This paper evaluates critically the different theorizations of the nature of the relationship between informal entrepreneurship and the formal economy, which variously depict informal entrepreneurship as a leftover from a previous era, a survival practice for those excluded from the formal economy, and a complement or an alternative to participation in the formal economy. Reporting evidence from 350 face-to-face interviews in English rural communities, no single theorization is found to be universally applicable. Instead, all are shown to be valid in relation to different forms of informal entrepreneurship, and only by combining them is it feasible to achieve a finer-grained, …

The Illusion Of Capitalism In Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa: A Case Study Of The Gambia, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Purpose – This paper aims to evaluate critically the meta-narrative that there is no alternative to capitalism. Building upon an emerging body of post-structuralist thought that has begun deconstructing this discourse in relation to western economies and post-Soviet societies, this paper further extends this critique to Sub-Saharan Africa by investigating the degree to which people in the Gambia rely on the capitalist market economy for their livelihood. Reporting the results of 80 household face-to-face interviews (involving over 500 people), the finding is that only a small minority of households in contemporary Gambian society rely on the formal market economy alone …

Rethinking The Nature Of Community Economies: Some Lessons From Post-Soviet Ukraine, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

This paper contributes to a small but growing body of thought that has questioned the hegemony of capitalism by revealing the persistence of multifarious economic practices in everyday community economies. To further advance this school of thought, first, a conceptual framework is developed to map the diverse economic practices used by communities and second, this is applied through a survey of 600 households in Ukraine. The outcome is to reveal that just as multifarious economic practices prevailed under state socialism, the same applies in societies in transition to capitalism, suggesting that there are alternative futures for community economies beyond market …

Women Entrepreneurs In The Indian Informal Sector, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Purpose – Studies on women entrepreneurs either view women through a structuralist lens, as marginalised populations engaged in low-quality work, or through a neo-liberal lens, as engaged in relatively higher quality endeavour more as a rational choice. The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically these explanations in relation to women entrepreneurs in the informal sector in India. Design/methodology/approach – To evaluate the contrasting explanations of structuralist and new liberal approaches, questionnaire surveys were conducted in two phases, namely 2007 and 2010, over a period of several months. The sample design was stratified random and the sample was taken …