In August 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) called an illegal strike. The new president, Ronald Reagan, fired the strikers, establishing a reputation for both decisiveness and hostility to organized labor. As Joseph A. McCartin writes, the strike was the culmination of two decades of escalating conflict between controllers and the government that stemmed from the high-pressure nature of the job and the controllers' inability to negotiate with their employer over vital issues. PATCO's fall not only ushered in a long period of labor decline; it also served as a harbinger of the campaign against public sector unions that now roils American politics.
Now available in paperback, Collision Course sets the strike within a vivid panorama of the rise of the world's busiest air-traffic control system. It begins with an arresting account of the 1960 midair collision over New York that cost 134 lives and exposed the weaknesses of an overburdened system. Through the stories of controllers like Mike Rock and Jack Maher, who were galvanized into action by that disaster and went on to found PATCO, it describes the efforts of those who sought to make the airways safer and fought to win a secure place in the American middle class. It climaxes with the story of Reagan and the controllers, who surprisingly endorsed the Republican on the promise that he would address their grievances. That brief, fateful alliance triggered devastating miscalculations that changed America, forging patterns that still govern the nation's labor politics.
Written with an eye for detail and a grasp of the vast consequences of the PATCO conflict for both air travel and America's working class, Collision Course is a stunning achievement.

This volume contains thirteen new and original chapters on topics relating to worker well-being. It deals directly with how economic institutions affect individual and family earnings distributions. Topics covered include job training, worker and firm mobility, unions, collective bargaining, minimum wages, unemployment insurance and schooling. Among the questions answered are: To what extent do greater work hours of women mitigate the widening of the family earnings distribution? To what extent does the decline in unionization widen the distribution of earnings? To what extent do computers expand the earnings distribution? To what extent does the Russian wage distribution change if one accounted for wage arrears? To what extent does business relocation bring about job creation and job destruction? To what extent does maternal education increase childrens education? To what extent do job skills matter for low-income workers? And finally, why do minimum wage increases often fail to lead to increases in unemployment?
*Thirteen new and original chapters containing research on aspects of worker well-being.
*Includes job training, worker and firm mobility, unions, collective bargaining, minimum wages, unemployment insurance and schooling.
*Each chapter written by experts in the field.

This book addresses distributive justice across generations. How should the welfare of the present generation be traded off against the welfare of future generations? Contributions are from distinguished economists who specialize in this area and provide original theories on intergenerational equity, efficiency and rationality, discussing policies on social security, pensions, and environmental degradation, as examples of policies of the present generation which impact upon future generations.

While there are many analyses of capital-labor relations in oligopoly industries, such as auto and steel, very little work has been written on competitive-sector industries, such as textiles. Truchil has written the only systematic case study in book form on the textile industry covering the post-World War II era. This book reveals the profound transformations the textile industry has undergone.

This book takes a fresh look at the issue of job quality, analyzing employer behaviour and discussing the agenda for policy intervention. Between 1997 and 2002, more than twelve million new jobs were created in the European Union and labour market participation increased by more than eight million. Whilst a good deal of these new jobs have been created in high-tech and/or knowledge-intensive sectors providing workers with decent pay, job security, training and career development prospects, a significant share of jobs, particularly in labour-intensive service sector industries fail to do so. This volume provides new perspectives on this highly debated and policy relevant issue.

While the question to why work beyond sixty has now become obvious, the how and for whom questions are the real topic of this new study by one of the best European specialists in the area. Work after sixty - if it is to be feasible and widespread - has to be on a part-time basis to meet the wishes and needs of workers and companies. This book provides an in-depth analysis of the growing importance of work beyond sixty and a comparative discussion of new policies in several EU Member States as well as of company practice.

Christian Ragacs develops new contributions to the theory of minimum wages, while taking rationing and spill-over effects on markets other than the labour market into account. Following an introduction into the theory of minimum wages and a discussion of methodological problems, four new theoretical models are developed; two of them comparative static in nature and two models of endogenous growth. The results are contradictory--partly supporting the "textbook" theory and partly yielding unorthodox results, such as no change in the steady state rates of growth and employment.

"an invaluable reference tool for the serious scholar of labor history. . . . Essential for most academic and research libraries." Library Journal

This book addresses work performance research undertaken to enhance individual and group productivity. Comprehensive in scope, it includes an unprecedented consolidation of theory, methodology, and application of human performance outcomes and research findings. It explores the relationship between human productivity and performance from a systems perspective, projects future research needs and applications of findings, and covers unique multidisciplinary research. The contributors to this volume have either participated in, contributed to, or had access to the latest empirical research data developed in government labs, academia, and industry.

This book examines the form and character of the internationalization of employee relations in the automobile industry. It goes onto examine the impact of the new forms of regionalization and their impact on employment relations within firms. Case studies are used to examine the transformation of employment standards, including General Motors, Toyota, Renault, FIAT and Peugeot. The book also assesses the significance of the emergence of regional integration processes in the form of regional economic spaces (EC, Nafta, Mercusor and ASEAN).

For most countries, women's labor force participation and hours of work has risen while men's have fallen. Concomitantly, men's and women's wages and occupational structures have been converging. This volume contains new and innovative research on issues related to gender convergence in the labor market. Topics include patterns in lifetime work, earnings and human capital investment, the gender wage gap, gender complementarities, career progression, the gender composition of top management and the role of parental leave policies. Among the questions answered are: Do the levels of and returns to human capital change over the last 50 years in the US? Can the shorter fecundity horizon for females (a biological constraint) explain the division of labor in the home and the resulting wage gap? Does skill-biased technological change favor women's wages more than men's? Do care sector jobs incur a wage penalty? What impact does this have on firm and employee outcomes? Does the glass-ceiling faced by women in top management relate to fertility and parental leave policies and having children? And finally, are men and women complements or substitutes in the labor market?

This book provides an understanding of the processes in which unions engage with young people, and views and opinions young people hold relating to collective representation. It features a selection of specific national cases of high relevance to contemporary debates of precariousness, trade union revitalization strategies and austerity policies.

Promises, Promises examines from a libertarian perspective, the differing methods and levels of success of adapting contract law in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and especially Russia in the wake of political change. The author analyses the roles of government power and policy, opportunism and private regulatory mechanisms within the pattern of change.

During the past two centuries, major technological breakthroughs such as the steam engine and electricity have acted as the catalysts for growth and have resulted in a marked increase in material well-being. The dominant technology today - information and communication technology (ICT) - does not seem to drive growth as effectively and has coincided with an apparent increase in wage inequality. This book provides explanations of these two characteristics of modern economies and analyses them from both an individual and integrated perspective. Richard Nahuis explores and combines the seemingly separate phenomena of wage inequality between high-skilled and low-skilled workers, and the relatively low productivity growth experienced by most countries. The author provides a number of alternative theories for the increase in wage inequality as a result of new technologies, combined with an extensive review of the associated literature. He goes on to detail the technological revolution, describe why this does not necessarily result in high productivity growth and outline the best methods to measure productivity in the new economy. This exhaustive exploration of productivity growth and wage inequality between high-skilled and low-skilled workers in the knowledge economy will be welcomed by economists and policymakers interested in the complex relationships between labour markets, innovation and technical change.

This book presents an empirical investigation into the relationship between companies' short-term response to capital and labor market frictions and performance. Two different kinds of performance measures are considered, namely innovation performance and firm performance. The author focuses on two major topics: first, on the relation between innovation performance and the use of trade credit. Second, on the relation between firm performance and the use of temporary employment. The use of in-depth firm-level data and state-of-the-art microeconometric methods provide the scientific rigor to this important investigation to answer the questions currently being confronted by many companies in different economies.

"Structural Models of Wage and Employment Dynamics" contains selected papers from a conference held in honour of Professor Dale T. Mortensen upon the occasion of his 65th birthday. The papers are on some of Professor Dale T. Mortensen's current research topics: The development of equilibrium dynamic models designed to account for wage dispersion and the time series behaviour of job and worker flows. The conference is the sixth in a series. From the beginning there has been a close interplay among economic theorists, econometricians, and applied economists. This book also has a section with theoretical papers as well as sections wtih micro- and macro-econometric papers. These conferences have had significant influence on how we think about public policy in the labour market, and what kinds of data would be needed to answer questions about these policies.
*Contributions to Economic Analysis was established in 1952
*The series purpose is to stimulate the international exchange of scientific information
*The series includes books from all areas of macroeconomics and microeconomics

Estlund and Wachter have assembled a feast on the economic analysis of issues in labor and employment law for scholars and policy-makers. The volume begins with foundational discussions of the economic analysis of the individual employment relationship and collective bargaining. It then progresses to discussions of the theoretical and empirical work on a wide range of important labor and employment law topics including: union organizing and employee choice, the impact of unions on firm and economic performance, the impact of unions on the enforcement of legal rights, just cause for dismissal, covenants not to compete and employment discrimination. Anyone who wants to study what economists have to say on these topics would do well to begin with this collection.' - Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt, Indiana University Bloomington School of Law, USThis Research Handbook assembles the original work of leading legal and economic scholars, working in a variety of traditions and methodologies, on the economic analysis of labor and employment law. In addition to surveying the current state of the art on the economics of labor markets and employment relations, the volume's 16 chapters assess aspects of traditional labor law and union organizing, the law governing the employment contract and termination of employment, employment discrimination and other employer mandates, restrictions on employee mobility, and the forum and remedies for labor and employment claims. Comprising a variety of approaches, the Research Handbook on the Economics of Labor and Employment Law will appeal to legal scholars in labor and employment law, industrial relations scholars and labor economists. Contributors: R. Arnow-Richman, S. Deakin, Z.J. Eigen, R.A. Epstein, C.L. Estlund, S. Estreicher, B.T. Hirsch, A. Hyde, S. Issacharoff, C. Jolls, B.E. Kaufman, M.M. Kleiner, B.I. Sachs, E. Scharff, S.J. Schwab, M.L. Wachter, D. Weil

The first scholarly work to focus exclusively on the roles of pan-regional and worldwide labor organizations in the labor movements across the nations of the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. With a career that covers over a half century, Robert J. Alexander is perhaps our foremost authority on Latin American history and politics. In International Labor Organizations and Organized Labor in Latin America and the Caribbean: A History, Alexander explores one of the most fascinating and often overlooked aspects of the Latin American labor scene he has so meticulously chronicled: the relationships between labor unions within specific nations, region wide organizations, and organized labor around the world. Alexander has written many of the cornerstone works on labor movements within the nations of Latin America, and this is his first volume to focus on the impact of international unions on Latin American labor issues. Coverage includes the AFL-offshoot Pan American Federation of Labor and the CIA-backed AIFLD; the role of the Russian Union, Profintern; European-based unions like the anti-Communist/anti-Fascist Postal Telegraph and Telephone International; and intraregional organizations like the Confederacion de Trabajadores de America Latina (CTAL)-the first attempt to form a multinational labor organization exclusively for the region. Numerous original documents from the various organizations covered in the book Wide-ranging bibliographic materials, including original interviews by the author with numerous people who participated in the various institutions that are written about in this volume

Amarjit Kaur examines wage labor's role in economic growth and change in Southeast Asia since the mid-nineteenth century, its focus is on globalization; the old and new international division of labor and how transnational economic processes shaped and continue to shape labor systems. There are five main themes--the labor process and labor systems in plantation, mining and manufacturing production; labor migration; labor in the urban sector; labor standard - wages, working conditions and labor rights, and labor organization.

Based on the author's first-hand research and experience in Saudi Arabia, this monograph presents a highly readable account of the internationalization of the Middle East's labor force during and after the oil boom of 1973-83. Written from the perspective of an active participant rather than that of an academic observer, "Oil and Labor in the Middle East" analyzes the expatriate workers' world and the multinational companies employing them. It will prove particularly valuable to readers -- business executives, workers, government representatives, and labor leaders -- involved in the exchange of labor across national borders..

Woodward demonstrates that the treatments influx of foreign workers into the Middle East during the oil boom created a complex supranational world of people and corporations -- and an inevitable clash of cultural, economic, and political perspectives. He explores facets of the expatriate experience that have received little treatment elsewhere: the labor pyramid, the relationship between expatriate and host country labor force, the commercial/industrial environment, bargaining position and risk, and the governments of countries sending labor overseas. Finally, Woodward examines individual considerations critical to the decision to become an expatriate worker: personal motivation, living conditions, cultural differences, salaries, and the value of savings.

A pervasive disconnect exists between the job/career culture and the present economic reality in America. This book offers powerful strategies for stemming the employment crisis and proposes comprehensive solutions for businesses, government, and job seekers alike. More than 30 million Americans are unemployed, underemployed, or have given up on looking for a job. Undoubtedly, the massive economic downturn after the financial crisis of 2007-2008 is a key factor in this situation. But the U.S. job market has stalled because our nation is failing to produce workers with the right skills, not because we cannot create enough jobs for the workers. Future Jobs: Solving the Employment and Skills Crisis offers an economic and historical perspective on the evolution of jobs and careers, explains how technology has permanently altered the U.S. job/labor market, and provides practical information for businesses seeking qualified workers, educators preparing students for careers, unemployed or underemployed individuals, and those interested in changing careers. The book examines the problem of the mismatch between individuals' skills and employers' job needs from the perspectives of both employers and employees or prospective employees, offering comprehensive regional solutions to the issues each group faces. The author reveals the most promising jobs and careers of the next decade for early-career job seekers and workers with established careers looking to change their path, and provides potential solutions to the jobs and skills disconnect in America, including education reform, business and government policy changes, and regional public-private partnerships. Explains how the current job skills crisis stems from a broad structural failure of the education-to-employment system and has sweeping societal and economic consequences Identifies the "hot jobs" of the current decade and the requisite skills and educational preparation needed to obtain them Describes how digital technology has permanently altered the nature of the U.S. and global job/labor market Provides information critical to a wide audience: businesses seeking to fill vacant jobs, community organizations and governments trying to attract new enterprises and retain current businesses, educators preparing students for careers, and students and parents concerned about job and career options

Economic globalization, the adoption of export-oriented industrialism strategies and the global restructuring of manufacturing have resulted in the increased participation of women in the manufacturing sector in Asia. This collection, edited by Armajit Kaur, is an important comparative study that covers the major East, South and Southeast Asian countries. It explores the diversity of women's work in factory and small-batch production and home-based work. It also focuses on women's employment and health conditions in the context of internationally accepted core labor standards.

Paul G. Buchanan and Kate Nicholls explore the political and economic fortunes of organized labor in five small open democracies between 1975 and 2000. Of particular interest is the role of labor market institutions, organizational histories, and trade union ideologies in shaping outcomes under conditions of economic liberalization. The book includes a theoretical and methodological introduction, followed by individual discussions of Australia and Chile, and New Zealand and Uruguay, grouped a cross-regional pairs, and Ireland as an extra-regional and atypical case.

This is the first full length history of the National Federation of Women Workers - a pioneering, all-female trade union operating from 1906 to 1921. It centres on the leaders, organisers, activists and members throughout the regions of Britain who built and sustained the union. By focusing on strikes, disputes and branch life, Hunt provides vital details of the working lives of thousands of women workers in the early twentieth century. The Federation, led by the charismatic Mary Macarthur, was influential out of all proportion to its size and attracted brilliant women activists to its campaigns, many of whom became well known in British Labour politics. By highlighting grassroots activism as well as national leadership, this work brings fresh perspectives to trade union history, deepening our knowledge of women who, whilst living through the political and social upheavals of the First World War, knew the realities of women's work that was too often dominated by low pay, poor conditions and inequality.