In this volume, Alexander sketches the history of organized labor in the countries of Uruguay and Paraguay. He covers such topics as the role of organized labor in the economics and politics of these two countries and their relations with the international labor movement. It is based on extensive personal contacts of the author with the labor movements over almost half a century. It may seem unusual at first to have both of these countries in one volume because there does not exist anywhere else in Latin America such historical political disparity between neighboring countries as that between Uruguay and Paraguay. However, in spite of the political contrasts, there are certain similarities in the history of the labor movements of these two republics. In both Uruguay and Paraguay, the earliest organizations to be founded by the workers were mutual benefit societies, rather than trade unions. But in both countries, trade unions which sought to protect their members against employers began to appear. By the early years of the 20th century, these unions began to demand that employers negotiate with them, and there were an increasing number of strikes, attempting to make these demands effective. There were soon efforts to bring together the various trade unions into broader local, national, and international labor organizations.

This volume argues that while labour market reforms may be necessary in some specific cases, by no means are labour market policies the main explanation for the widespread increase in unemployment and underemployment across Asia and country specific studies undermine the case for across-the-board labour market reforms.

This book examines the impact of globalization on employment, income distribution and poverty reduction in developing countries using the five country studies of Ghana, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Nepal, and Vietnam. Market failures, possible displacement of previously sheltered economic activities, disparities in the initial levels of human capital and technological transfer associated with skill biased technological change may imply both an increasing within-country income inequality and an uneven process of job creation and poverty alleviation. This evidence paves the way for targeted economic and social policies both at national and international levels.

This edited collection provides the first in-depth analysis of social policies and the risks faced by young people. The book explores the effects of both the economic crisis and austerity policies on the lives of young Europeans, examining both the precarity of youth transitions, and the function of welfare state policies.

The manufacture of apparel is an exemplar of global production. Since the 1970s, multinational brands have increasingly outsourced their manufacturing activities to lower cost production locations in developing countries. The low entry barriers and minimal investments needed in apparel led to booming employment in apparel factories in regions where formal employment was limited and where new opportunities were created especially for young, unskilled women and migrant workers who had access to waged labour for the first time. While this translated into higher labour force participation rates and new empowerment opportunities for these previously marginalised groups, it also appeared increasingly clear that workers were often exploited in order to keep production costs competitive in the global marketplace. This volume provides solutions-oriented approaches for promoting improved working conditions and labour rights in the apparel industry, by analysing how workers, governments and business can strive to collaborate in order to confront some of the key opportunities and challenges pertaining to labour in global apparel value chains.

This book investigates why networks, some with joined-up governance remits, appeared ineffective in handling neighbourhood unemployment even in periods when the national unemployment levels dropped. It deploys a multi-theoretical and methodological framework to investigate this empirical puzzle, and to test and analyse the causal factors influencing network outcomes. Chapters examine network concepts, network theories, outcome indicators, the historical infrastructure and management of unemployment policy, and governing network trends in post-war urban regeneration interventions. Comparative network case studies offer empirical evidence and a high degree of local variation. Mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative approaches), including social network analysis, uncover formal and informal networks, and eighty-six interviews in two English local authorities with persistent unemployment, give voice to network practitioner experiences. Findings explain why sub-optimal network outcomes prevail and operational difficulties persist on the ground. Students and academics, professionals and activists can use the results to challenge network governance theories and the policy status-quo.

Europe's notoriously high level of unemployment is one of the big puzzles of empirical macroeconomics. In recent years the unemployment rate has fallen in The Netherlands, but the overall level in OECD Europe remains high. An investigation into why Dutch economic policy has been relatively effective could be useful for the unemployment debate in Europe. This book contributes to this investigation with its empirical analysis covering three important topics.

The first part of the book investigates whether (macro) economic policies could be effective in reducing unemployment in the short run. This depends on the cause of unemployment: is it due to lack of demand for goods, or is it due to a shortage of capacity. Another question is whether macroeconomic policies can be directed to one side of the market.

The high rate of unemployment among low-skilled workers is the topic of the second part of this book. How important is the impact of wage inflexibility at the lower tail of the income distribution due to institutional factors? To what extent is it caused by skill-biased technological change? A central issue is, again, how economic policy could contribute to reducing unemployment among low-skilled workers?

The persistence of unemployment is investigated in the third part. Since the early eighties, Dutch policymakers have employed wage moderation as a remedy for unemployment in The Netherlands. Substantial cutbacks were made in the social security programme. This had a moderating effect on wages, which is thought to have contributed to employment growth. However, unemployment remained rather high up to 1997. Why didn't unemployment fall morequickly?

To answer these questions, economists have developed different structural macroeconometric models. The Netherlands has a rich tradition in using macroeconomic models for policy analysis. This tradition originates in the work of Jan Tinbergen, Nobel laureate in economics, and the first director of CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis. This book, which builds on CPB's broad experience with macroeconomic modelling, makes an important contribution to this fine Dutch tradition.

Work and Idleness develops the view that redistributing employment is a feasible capitalist' solution, not just to the unemployment which particular groups suffer, but also to the work that others have to contend with, including many women. Putting the redistribution of employment on the policy agenda opens up debate on how to ensure a more equitable and fulfilling relationship between the ways we gain our livelihoods and the lives we lead. Growing insecurity in labour markets and changing patterns in the commodification of labour have led to a redistribution of paid and unpaid labour time as the structure of power relations, the gender order, discrimination, and state regulation have been modified. The first main trend affecting insecurity is mass unemployment and the growth of workless households. A second notable trend is a gender-based redistribution of hours worked. The third major trend is a shift from full-time waged work to full-time self-employment. Part I of this book presents the main economic theories driving the continuing divide between the intensification of work and the extension of idleness. Part II documents the ways in which the shift to mass idleness in advanced industrial countries has hit some groups particularly hard: the youngest and oldest age groups and other groups, including disabled workers, have traditionally been subject to discrimination in the labor markets. Part III provides a set of policy prescriptions.

This compelling book provides concrete examples and practical guidelines for addressing the most serious economic challenge facing the United States and every community in the nation: growing good jobs and enabling people to function effectively in these occupations. Each year, U.S. cities and states spend billions of dollars on incentives intended to create jobs. Are the strategies being implemented outdated? Is there a better way to create jobs? Rather than focusing on individual aspects of economic development such as entrepreneurship and start-up companies or workforce development, this book provides a comprehensive systems perspective for economic development that identifies how the new model of economic development for America is both a top-down and a bottom-up process that requires effective engagement with the community. The book begins with a broad explanation of why economic development strategy and practices need to change, and then discusses and critiques current practices using the state of Maryland as a case example. Two in-depth case studies at the city level follow, detailing leading practices that support the proposed values-based economic development model. The final section presents a framework that policymakers can use to assess and improve their current strategies and practices along with guidelines for implementing these improvements to make them more efficient, effective, and sustainable.

An expert guide to women's quest for fairness in the workplace, marking the great legal and social advances as well as continuing inequalities. Women and Equality in the Workplace: A Reference Handbook is an expert overview of the issues of gender equity in the workplace as they have evolved from World War II to the present. Focusing primarily on the United States, while drawing broad contrasts with nations around the world, the book describes the practical impact of laws and social policies developed to combat the many forms of sex discrimination, as well as the legal remedies of equal pay law, affirmative action, and comparable worth. Women and Equality in the Workplace also reviews current sociological and economic theories as to why, despite the notable progress, men continue to have better pay and benefits, higher status, and more opportunities, while working women are still all too often harassed, stigmatized, and overlooked. A detailed chronology, statistics and legal cases, list of relevant organizations, bibliography, and nonprint resources A timeline of major developments, biographies of women pioneers, and information about organizations and academic programs devoted to women's studies and equal rights

Flexibility has become a key concept in discourses on developments in working life. However, it is an ambiguous concept in several ways, and theoretical clarity is lacking. Further, large parts of the literature are prescriptive and ideological rather than empirical and analytical. This book contributes both theoretically and empirically to expound the importance of clearer concepts in the national and international debates on economic systems, labour markets, work organisations, and experiences of work.

This volume provides a Europe-wide comparative analysis of the role of civil society organizations active in the field of unemployment and precarity. It illustrates how crucial civil society organizations are for the inclusion of the young unemployed, mainly in two ways: by delivering services and by advocating policy.

'A convincing and comprehensive account of the success and ultimate failure of Keynesianism in Australia ... Essential reading, not only for other doughty fighters but for skeptics and critics as well' - G.C. Harcourt This analysis proposes a political explanation for the breakdown of Keynesian full employment in Australia. It taps into the current literature that examines the role of economic interests, ideas, and institutions, and, by taking issue with the arguments of anti-Keynesian economists, the book carries the argument that there was and is nothing inherently contradictory about Keynesian theory or much of its practice. Keynesianism, its imperfections notwithstanding, was overturned because of a powerful alliance of interests and ideas.

This book examines racial and ethnic discrimination in the labour markets and workplaces of western Europe. Scholars from ten different countries set out the experience and implications of this exclusion for two main groups: the more established second and third generations of postwar migrant descent, and the 'new' migrants, including seasonal and undocumented workers and refugees, who are vulnerable to extreme exploitation and unregulated working environments. The book finishes by addressing the implications of these issues for trade unions and employers in Europe.

This volume challenges the view that unemployment is exclusively determined by structural characteristics of the labour market and the social benefit system. Macroeconomic policies and investment in capital stock are included in the analysis and are shown to have a major role to play. Wage setting in the labour market has no direct impact on employment but nominal wages set in this market affect the price level. Following mainstream recommendations with respect to labour market reforms in an environment of low growth and serious effective demand problems, may contribute to deflationary risks. Unemployment and 'structural reforms' also cause falling labour income shares and more unequal personal income distribution. These developments contribute to slow growth and rising unemployment. This is shown in applying growth models, which rely on the principle of effective demand and which also incorporate the effects of distribution struggle.

Economic growth in Asia over the past half century has led to significant changes in societies, business organization and the nature of work. This has been accompanied by the rise in some countries of trade unions and also of employers' associations. This book explores the nature of employers' associations in the major countries of Asia. It considers how employers' associations have developed in recent decades, how changes in market structures and the profile of economies have affected employers' associations, how employers' associations deal with issues to do with pay and employment conditions, and how they interact with regulation and the state. The book shows how the differing political and institutional contexts of different countries, and different economic conditions, greatly affect the nature of employers' associations and also the wider context of labour markets and trade unions.

Expansion of non-standard employment under globalization is widely observed in all of the newly industrializing countries. This book explores the deregulation of labor markets, social protection for nonstandard workers, and social security reforms in accordance with the transformation of employment.

Zagler investigates the interaction between changes in the level of unemployment and changes in the economic rate of growth. It asks, both in theory and in evidence, whether a change in the growth rate of the economy will affect the level of unemployment which the economy experiences and whether a decline in the level of unemployment will foster or deteriorate the growth performance of the economy. MARKET 1: Postgraduate students and scholars in the field or European economics

The relationship between the number of hours worked and productivity has long fascinated economists and management. It is a central component of the production function that translates inputs to outputs. While increasing the number of hours someone works may increase output, this incisive book demonstrates that there are diminishing returns to long working hours. John Pencavel, of Stanford University, provides an overview of how the length of working hours evolved from the 19th century to today and how the number of working hours affects work performance and other outcomes, including health, well-being, and wages. Diminishing Returns at Work provides a brief history of working hours both in the United States and Britain, including the influence of trade unions pushing for shorter hours of work, the tension with employers who resisted reducing hours, and the influence of legislation and custom. Pencavel discusses various conceptual frameworks for specifying production functions that measure the relationship between inputs and outputs and develops an alternative approach to estimate actual relationships through a reevaluation of classic studies, including the productivity of munitions workers in Britain during the First and Second World Wars, a variety of industries in the United States in the Second World War, and plywood mills in Washington during the 1980s. The book also explores the influence of working hours on the incidence of sickness and injuries and the associations between hours of work and wages. The declining effectiveness of long hours is manifested not only in marketable output but also in a rising probability of ill-health and accidents, and evidence of this has been found both for blue-collar workers and for white-collar workers. In short, shorter hours of work might benefit both firms and workers.

A representation gap has appeared in the British workplace as trade unions have declined. This book presents original research material from the ESRC's Future of Work program to assess current attempts to close the representation gap. Part One examines initiatives to restore the fortunes of the trade union movement through organizing, partnership and the representation of minorities in the workforce. Part Two looks at non-union representation and the role that works councils, voluntary organizations and single-issue campaigns can play in giving British workers a new voice at work.

Originally published between 1951 and 1987, the 8 volumes in this set: Provide a wide-ranging and critical review of both first and second generation theories of inflation (and the related problem of unemployment), including the classical approach to macroeconomics. Examine how inflation as a policy has come about in modern democracies, how it works, how to avoid it and at what cost Reassess the strengths and weaknesses of incomes policies Examine pay control policies in major Western economies and survey developments from 1945, explore the aims of pay policies and discusse the problems of implementation, comparing the different kinds of policies.

This fascinating book illustrates the importance of analyzing sexuality by examining ways in which stepping outside heterosexuality necessitates and facilitates long-term economic independence. Based on a life-history study, the book charts key stages in the lives of non-heterosexual women, including their experiences of gendering in childhood and their responses to 'the culture of romantic heterosexuality'. In particular it documents the impact of 'coming' out on their lives and the way sexuality has affected their approach both to intimate relationships and paid work.

Globalization and unemployment are two phenomena which are amongst the most widely discussed subjects in the economic debate today. Often, globalization is regarded as being responsible for the increase in unemployment, particularly in unskilled labor. This book deals with the correlation between globalization and unemployment under various aspects: historical aspects of globalization, empirical trends and theoretical explanations of unemployment, effects of globalization in general and of European Monetary Union in particular on umemployment, labor market policy in a global economy, the impact of fiscal policy on unemployment in a global economy, as well as the effects of globalization on inflation and national stabilization policy.