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Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations

How To Probe For Settlements On Grievances, Ken Margolies Mar 2013

How To Probe For Settlements On Grievances, Ken Margolies

Ken Margolies

[Excerpt] Experienced stewards know that sometimes you have to ask management a lot of questions if you want to reach your goal. There may be a way for both sides to come out satisfied, but you have to know how to determine if that's possible, and you can only do that by posing the right questions.


Introduction To Eugene V. Debs: Citizen And Socialist, Nick Salvatore Mar 2013

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 …


Deeply Within: Catholicism, Faith And History, Nick Salvatore Mar 2013

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 …


The Effectiveness Of Reinstatement As A Public Policy Remedy: The Kohler Case, John Drotning, David Lipsky Mar 2013

The Effectiveness Of Reinstatement As A Public Policy Remedy: The Kohler Case, John Drotning, David Lipsky

David B Lipsky

This article is concerned with two aspects of the NLRB reinstatement remedy as applied in the famous Kohler case: (1) how effective the remedy was, particularly in terms of the number of employees who returned to Kohler under its protection, and (2) what factors, in order of significance, affected a worker's decision to return. The authors find the remedy was effective, since about 40 percent of those workers who received reinstatement offers accepted them. Regression and discriminant analyses of the variables affecting the decision to return confirm the thinking of labor market economists that the most disadvantaged worker (lower paid, …


Interplant Transfer And Terminated Workers: A Case Study, David Lipsky Mar 2013

Interplant Transfer And Terminated Workers: A Case Study, David Lipsky

David B Lipsky

Following its decision to close four plants and transfer their operations to a new location, the General Foods Corporation offered jobs in the new plant to all 1,800 affected employees and payment of their transfer expenses. To those electing not to transfer, the Corporation offered severance pay. Less than a fourth of employees transferred to the new location. This study analyzes in detail the characteristics of the movers and nonmovers and the subsequent employment experience of the latter. It concludes that those workers who most needed the job and income protection offered by the transfer plan were least likely to …


Regional Integration And Transnational Labor Strategies Under Nafta, Maria Cook Jan 2013

Regional Integration And Transnational Labor Strategies Under Nafta, Maria Cook

Maria Lorena Cook

[Excerpt] This paper argues that while the internationalization of the economy has tended to weaken national labor movements, the internationalization of domestic politics may expand the traditional arenas for strategic action for labor unions. In particular, the North American Free Trade Agreement has been portrayed by some of its many critics as representing the consolidation of a neoconservative or neoliberal project that will not only shape the future economic development of the region, but also constrain its social policies and limit its political options (Grinspun and Cameron 1993: Chapter 1). However, these same critics have also noted that the debate …


The Advocate’S Dilemma: Framing Migrant Rights In National Settings, Maria Cook Jan 2013

The Advocate’S Dilemma: Framing Migrant Rights In National Settings, Maria Cook

Maria Lorena Cook

This article identifies and explores the dilemma of migrant advocacy in advanced industrial democracies, focusing specifically on the contemporary United States. On the one hand, universal norms such as human rights, which are theoretically well suited to advancing migrants’ claims, may have little resonance within national settings. On the other hand, the debates around which immigration arguments typically turn, and the terrain on which advocates must fight, derive their values and assumptions from a nation-state framework that is self-limiting. The article analyzes the limits of human rights arguments, discusses the pitfalls of engaging in national policy debates, and details the …


Unauthorized Migration And Border “Control”: Three Regional Views, Maria Cook Jan 2013

Unauthorized Migration And Border “Control”: Three Regional Views, Maria Cook

Maria Lorena Cook

This is a revised transcript of a talk given at the Latin American and Iberian Institute at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, on February 29, 2008.


Reviving The American Labor Movement: Institutions And Mobilization, Richard Hurd, Ruth Milkman, Lowell Turner Jan 2013

Reviving The American Labor Movement: Institutions And Mobilization, Richard Hurd, Ruth Milkman, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt] The reawakening of the American labor movement under new leadership with new strategic orientations is a remarkable chapter in late 20thcentury American economic and political history. Given up for dead by so many at home and abroad, under relentless attack from American employers and with government supports disappearing, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFLCIO) and a core of key member unions have re-emerged since the mid-1990s as prominent workplace, community and political actors. With both strategic reorientation and new local mobilization, these unions have fought to reverse decline and re-energize the movement. While the …


Reviving The Labor Movement: A Comparative Perspective, Lowell Turner Jan 2013

Reviving The Labor Movement: A Comparative Perspective, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt] In recent years, the long-declining U.S. labor movement has refocused in new and promising ways on rank-and-file mobilization, in organizing drives, collective bargaining conflicts and political campaigns. Such efforts are widely viewed as the best hope for revitalizing the labor movement: breathing new life into tired old unions, winning organizing drives and raising membership levels, increasing political influence, pushing toward the power necessary to reform labor law and ineffective labor institutions. The stakes are high and the goals ambitious: to close the "representation gap" at the workplace, reverse growing economic and social inequality, and build new coalitions for expanded …


Paths To Global Social Regulation – What Can Americans Learn From The European Union, Lance Compa, Lowell Turner Jan 2013

Paths To Global Social Regulation – What Can Americans Learn From The European Union, Lance Compa, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt] For American proponents of global justice, social Europe appears distant yet inspirational, with all its weaknesses still a "vanguard" model for the social regulation of the global economy. We believe that a great deal can be learned by other countries, regions and the global economy as a whole from the ongoing experience of European economic and social integration. We also believe, however, that American experiences with NAFTA as well as with contemporary labor movement revitalization and coalition building offer positive lessons for Europeans and other actors in the global North and South. As much as we admire the European …


Contemporary Issues In Employment Relations—A Roundtable, David Lewin, Adrienne Eaton, Thomas Kochan, David Lipsky, Daniel Mitchell, Paula Voos Jan 2013

Contemporary Issues In Employment Relations—A Roundtable, David Lewin, Adrienne Eaton, Thomas Kochan, David Lipsky, Daniel Mitchell, Paula Voos

David Lewin

For the 2006 LERA research volume, leading scholars were assembled in a roundtable for the purpose of eliciting their views on key contemporary industrial relations issues. The roundtable members were Adrienne E. Eaton, professor and director of labor extension in the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations; Thomas A. Kochan, the George M. Bunker Professor of Management and director of the Institute for Work and Employment Research in the MIT Sloan School of Management; David B. Lipsky, the Anne Evans Estabrook Professor of Dispute Resolution and former dean of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University; …


Reaching For The Brass Ring: The U.S. News & World Report Rankings And Competition, Ronald Ehrenberg Nov 2012

Reaching For The Brass Ring: The U.S. News & World Report Rankings And Competition, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] The behavior of academic institutions, including the extent to which they collaborate on academic and nonacademic matters, is shaped by many factors. This paper focuses on one of these factors, the U.S. News & World Report (USNWR) annual ranking of the nation’s colleges and universities as undergraduate institutions, exploring how this ranking exacerbates the competitiveness among American higher education institutions. After presenting some evidence on the importance of the USNWR rankings to both public and private institutions at all levels along the selectivity spectrum, I describe how the rankings actually are calculated, then discuss how academic institutions alter their …


The 1995 Nrc Ratings Of Doctoral Programs: A Hedonic Model, Ronald Ehrenberg, Peter Hurst Nov 2012

The 1995 Nrc Ratings Of Doctoral Programs: A Hedonic Model, Ronald Ehrenberg, Peter Hurst

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

We describe how one can use multivariate regression models and data collected by the National Research Council as part of its recent ranking of doctoral programs (Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States: Continuity and Change) to analyze how measures of program size, faculty seniority, faculty research productivity, and faculty productivity in producing doctoral degrees influence subjective ratings of doctoral programs in 35 academic fields. Using data for one of the fields, economics, we illustrate how university administrators can use the models to compute the impact of changing the number of faculty positions they allocate to the field on …


Advance Notice Provisions In Plant Closing Legislation: Do They Matter?, Ronald Ehrenberg, George Jakubson Nov 2012

Advance Notice Provisions In Plant Closing Legislation: Do They Matter?, Ronald Ehrenberg, George Jakubson

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

This paper evaluates the cases for and against plant closing legislation. In spite of the growth of legislative efforts in the area, there has been surprisingly little effort devoted to analyzing what the effects are of existing plant closing legislation, of provisions in privately negotiated collective bargaining agreements that provide for advance notice in case of plant shutdowns and/or layoffs, and of voluntary employer provision of advance notice. The paper summarizes the results of previous research, and our own empirical analyses that used the January 1984 Bureau of Labor Statistics Survey of Displaced Workers, on the effects of advance notice …


Did Teachers’ Race And Verbal Ability Matter In The 1960’S? Coleman Revisited, Ronald Ehrenberg, Dominic Brewer Nov 2012

Did Teachers’ Race And Verbal Ability Matter In The 1960’S? Coleman Revisited, Ronald Ehrenberg, Dominic Brewer

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Our paper reanalyzes data from the classic 1966 study Equality of Educational Opportunity, or Coleman Report. It addresses whether teacher characteristics, including race and verbal ability, influenced "synthetic gain scores" of students (mean test scores of upper grade students in a school minus mean test scores of lower grade students in a school), in the context of an econometric model that allows for the possibility that teacher characteristics in a school are endogenously determined. We find that verbal aptitude scores of teachers influenced synthetic gain scores for both black and white students. Verbal aptitude mattered as much for black teachers …


Making Transnational Collaboration Work, Michael Gordon, Lowell Turner Oct 2012

Making Transnational Collaboration Work, Michael Gordon, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt] The need for transnational collaboration among unions across the world is great and growing in the global economy. Case studies presented in this book demonstrate the active fermentation in cross-border relations and a variety of different approaches, goals, and targets. Yet the barriers to successful collaboration among unions in different countries remain immense: from differences in union structure, ideology, and culture to conflicting interests and differing levels of economic development. What unions have accomplished by operating internationally is important, indeed much more substantial today than ever before. Yet these efforts remain a drop in the bucket compared to the …


Conclusion: Uncertain Outcomes Of Conflict And Negotiation, Lowell Turner Oct 2012

Conclusion: Uncertain Outcomes Of Conflict And Negotiation, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt] To elaborate on each of these points, the findings presented in this book can be summarized as follows. First of all, the German model, that is, a social partnership approach to the negotiation of terms and conditions for the organization of an advanced market economy has worked in the past. We believe, on the basis of extensive collective research on different aspects of the political economy of the Federal Republic, both before and after unification, that the preservation of a reformed social partnership in Germany is highly desirable as an alternative to less regulated forms of capitalism in the …


Revitalizing Labor In Today's World Markets, Lowell Turner Oct 2012

Revitalizing Labor In Today's World Markets, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt] Competitiveness for firms is possible via the high road or low road, or some combination of the two. For a nation, however, if competitiveness means the ability of a country's firms to sell on world markets while contributing to rising average incomes and living standards at home, then only the high road will do, especially for advanced industrial societies such as Germany and the United States. The tragedy of today's touted "American model" is that it is based too much on the low road, and as a result includes growing income polarization and a deep "representation gap." American workers, …


Codetermination In Comparative Perspective, Kathleen Thelen, Lowell Turner Oct 2012

Codetermination In Comparative Perspective, Kathleen Thelen, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

The trend of western industrialised societies is towards decentralization of collective bargaining and the active participation of the workforce in productivity and efficiency improvements. How well does the German model of co-determination perform in competition with liberal market economies? Compared with other countries, how adaptable is it?


Generation X: Redefining The Norms Of The Academy, Ronald Ehrenberg Oct 2012

Generation X: Redefining The Norms Of The Academy, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] The members of Generation X are the young faculty members of today and the immediate future. The panelists at this session of the conference were asked to discuss the effects of this generation on academic norms and institutional governance and the types of new models that may be emerging for academia as a result of them. More specifically, they were asked if the attitudes and loyalties of these young faculty members really do differ from that of the Baby Boom Generation, how their attitudes and behavior affect graduate programs, what academic institutions will need to do to attract the …


Unequal Progress: The Annual Report On The Economic Status Of The Profession 2002-03, Ronald Ehrenberg Sep 2012

Unequal Progress: The Annual Report On The Economic Status Of The Profession 2002-03, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Most colleges and universities adopted budgets for the 2002-03 academic year in the spring and early summer of 2002. At that time, a pessimist might have cited several factors – negative rates of return from institutional endowments, a rising unemployment rate, an economic recession, and large increases in college and university enrollments, for example - to predict that faculty members would not see their earnings increase substantially in real terms in the coming year. The good news is that, overall and on average, the pessimists' worst fears proved incorrect. The bad news is that the overall aver-ages don't tell …


The Changing Distributions Of New Ph.D. Economists And Their Employment: Implications For The Future, Ronald Ehrenberg Aug 2012

The Changing Distributions Of New Ph.D. Economists And Their Employment: Implications For The Future, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Academic careers are no longer the be-all and end-all for economics Ph.D. students, and the findings and background provided by Siegfried and Stock help to explain why this is so. The median age at which individuals receive economics Ph.D.'s in the Siegfried and Stock sample is 32. While they are somewhat surprised at this finding, it parallels the experiences of many other fields. Increasingly, students are working before proceeding to doctoral studies. Often Ph.D. students in economics enter their programs after having spent several years working for government agencies or research consulting companies—work that has whetted their appetites for …


Do Economics Departments With Lower Tenure Probabilities Pay Higher Faculty Salaries?, Ronald Ehrenberg, Paul Pieper, Rachel Willis Aug 2012

Do Economics Departments With Lower Tenure Probabilities Pay Higher Faculty Salaries?, Ronald Ehrenberg, Paul Pieper, Rachel Willis

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

The simplest competitive labor market model asserts that if tenure is a desirable job characteristic for professors, they should be willing to pay for it by accepting lower salaries. Conversely, if an institution unilaterally reduces the probability that its assistant professors receive tenure, it will have to pay higher salaries to attract new faculty. Our paper tests this theory using data on salary offers accepted by new assistant professors at economics departments in the United States during the 1974-75 to 1980-81 period, along with data on the proportion of new Ph.D.s hired by each department between 1970 and 1980 that …


The Impact Of Retirement Policies On Employment And Unemployment, Ronald Ehrenberg Aug 2012

The Impact Of Retirement Policies On Employment And Unemployment, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] This paper has focused on the impact of retirement policies on the level and distribution of employment and unemployment. All of the policies discussed, except for early retirement provisions in privately negotiated collective bargaining contracts were seen to have adverse effects on the level and distribution of employment. Hence, the paper illustrates the more general point that policies designed to promote one social goal may well detract from achieving other goals and suggests that more explicit attention should be given to the employment effects of social programs and legislation prior to their adoption.


How Would Universities Respond To Increased Federal Support For Graduate Students?, Ronald Ehrenberg, Daniel Rees, Dominic Brewer Aug 2012

How Would Universities Respond To Increased Federal Support For Graduate Students?, Ronald Ehrenberg, Daniel Rees, Dominic Brewer

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] This paper has demonstrated that doctorate-producing universities respond to changes in the number of FTSEG students supported on external funds by altering the number of FTSEG students that they support on institutional funds. While institutional adjustment to changes in external support levels appears to be quite rapid, in the aggregate the magnitude of these responses is quite small. A increase of 100 in the number of FTSEG students supported by external funds is estimated to reduce the number supported on institutional funds by 22 to 23. Since some of the institutional funds that are "saved" may be redirected to …


Institutional Responses To Increased External Support For Graduate Students, Ronald Ehrenberg, Daniel Rees, Dominic Brewer Aug 2012

Institutional Responses To Increased External Support For Graduate Students, Ronald Ehrenberg, Daniel Rees, Dominic Brewer

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

This paper uses institutionally based data to estimate how universities would respond to increased federal support for graduate students. It demonstrates that doctorate-producing universities do respond to changes in the number of full-time science and engineering students supported on external funds by altering the number of students that they support on institutional funds. Institutional adjustment to changes in external support levels appears to be quite rapid. However, in the aggregate, the magnitude of these responses is quite small.


Two Tales Of A City: Nineteenth-Century Black Philadelphia, Nick Salvatore Aug 2012

Two Tales Of A City: Nineteenth-Century Black Philadelphia, Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

[Excerpt] In the tension between Forging Freedom and Roots of Violence certain themes present themselves for further research and thought. Neither volume successfully analyzes the historical roots of the African-American class structure. This is especially evident in each book's treatment of the black middling orders. While neither defines the category with clarity, their basic assumption that small shopkeepers and regularly employed workers were critical to the community's ability to withstand some of the worst shocks of racism is important. The clash between these books also raises questions concerning the role of pre-industrial cultural values in the transition to industrial capitalism. …


Black Youth Nonemployment: Duration And Job Search: Comment, Ronald Ehrenberg Aug 2012

Black Youth Nonemployment: Duration And Job Search: Comment, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Holzer's paper has a number of attributes that I find very appealing. It focuses on an important topic and uses two different data bases to test the robustness of its findings. It uses alternative specifications of the variable of interest (reservation wages), examines the sensitivity of the results to alternative sets of control variables, uses a variety of statistical methods to confront a number of statistical issues, and honestly reports cases in which any of the above leads to differences in results. Finally, the paper does not claim more than the evidence warrants—a feature not present in enough academic …


Do Tournaments Have Incentive Effects?, Ronald Ehrenberg, Michael Bognanno Aug 2012

Do Tournaments Have Incentive Effects?, Ronald Ehrenberg, Michael Bognanno

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Much attention has been devoted to studying models of tournaments or situations in which an individual's payment depends only on his or her output or rank relative to that of other competitors. Academic interest derives from the fact that under certain sets of assumptions, tournaments have desirable normative properties because of the incentive structures they provide. Our paper uses nonexperimental data to test whether tournaments actually elicit effort responses. We focus on professional golf tournaments because information on the incentive structure (prize distribution) and measures of individual output (players' scores) are both available. We find strong support for the proposition …