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Books > Business & Economics > Industry & industrial studies > Industrial relations & safety > General
This important book contains case studies with substantive analysis of Chinese workers in a variety of settings: state enterprises, urban collectives, township and village enterprises, domestic private enterprises, and foreign funded enterprises. The cases include urban workers migrant workers from the countryside, and workers who are sent to work outside of China. The analytical framework for these case studies lays out why labor rights violations have been occurring in China and highlights the contex in which these violations operate and the extent to which these selected cases are not isolated incidents. Moreover, the dilemma of Chinese workers is put into international perspective: the context of the international labor market, the setting of competitive minimum wages in Asia, and the concern for Chinese workers' rights taken up by the International Labor Organization (ILO). This book debunks the conventional wisdom that Chinese workers are thriving because the Chinese economy is booming. Indeed the wage structures of these enterprises of different ownership types contribute to widening income disparities in China. The book uncovers what exactly overseas Chinese entrepreneurship (Taiwan and Hong Kong), means at the factory level. And it calls for a new approach to scrutinizing the phenomena of the so-called Chinese economic miracle and it's repercussions on other economies and labor markets.
Care activism challenges the stereotype of downtrodden migrant caregivers by showing that care workers have distinct ways of caring for themselves, for each other, and for the larger transnational community of care workers and their families. Ethel Tungohan illuminates how the goals and desires of migrant care worker activists goes beyond political considerations like policy changes and overturning power structures. Through practices of subversive friendships and being there for each other, care activism acts as an extension of the daily work that caregivers do, oftentimes also instilling practices of resistance and critical hope among care workers. At the same time, the communities created by care activism help migrant caregivers survive and even thrive in the face of arduous working and living conditions and the pains surrounding family separation. As Tungohan shows, care activism also unifies caregivers to resist society’s legal and economic devaluations of care and domestic work by reaffirming a belief that they, and what they do, are important and necessary.
In the early twentieth century so many dead bodies surfaced in the rivers around Aberdeen, Washington, that they were nicknamed the "floater fleet." When Billy Gohl (1873-1927), a powerful union official, was arrested for murder, local newspapers were quick to suggest that he was responsible for many of those deaths, perhaps even dozens-thus launching the legend of the Ghoul of Grays Harbor. More than a true-crime tale, The Port of Missing Men sheds light on the lives of workers who died tragically, illuminating the dehumanizing treatment of sailors and lumber workers and the heated clashes between pro- and anti-union forces. Goings investigates the creation of the myth, exploring how so many people were willing to believe such extraordinary stories about Gohl. He shares the story of a charismatic labor leader-the one man who could shut down the highly profitable Grays Harbor lumber trade-and provides an equally intriguing analysis of the human costs of the Pacific Northwest's early extraction economy.
Dynamic Risk Analysis in the Chemical and Petroleum Industry focuses on bridging the gap between research and industry by responding to the following questions: What are the most relevant developments of risk analysis? How can these studies help industry in the prevention of major accidents? Paltrinieri and Khan provide support for professionals who plan to improve risk analysis by introducing innovative techniques and exploiting the potential of data share and process technologies. This concrete reference within an ever-growing variety of innovations will be most helpful to process safety managers, HSE managers, safety engineers and safety engineering students. This book is divided into four parts. The Introduction provides an overview of the state-of-the-art risk analysis methods and the most up-to-date popular definitions of accident scenarios. The second section on Dynamic Risk Analysis shows the dynamic evolution of risk analysis and covers Hazard Identification, Frequency Analysis, Consequence Analysis and Establishing the Risk Picture. The third section on Interaction with Parallel Disciplines illustrates the interaction between risk analysis and other disciplines from parallel fields, such as the nuclear, the economic and the financial sectors. The final section on Dynamic Risk Management addresses risk management, which may dynamically learn from itself and improve in a spiral process leading to a resilient system.
Extensively updated for the second edition, this handy guide covers the safety engineering of ship-shaped offshore installations at every stage of design, construction, operation, lifetime healthcare and decommissioning. New sections cover additional types of offshore structures, including offshore power plants, as well as cutting-edge technologies and all the latest advances in the field. The text focuses on minimising accidents and the effects of extreme conditions, with new chapters covering earthquakes, hurricanes and terrorist attacks, as well as traditional types of accidental events such as hull girder collapse, collisions, fires and explosions. This is an invaluable resource for students who will be approaching the subject for the first time as well as practising engineers and researchers.
The Laboring of Communication examines the transformation of work and of worker organizations in today's Information Society. The book focuses on how traditional trade unions and new worker associations growing out of social movements are coming together to address the crisis of organized labor. It concentrates on the creative responses of the technical and cultural workers in the mass media, telecommunications, and information technology industries. Concentrating on political economy, labor process, and feminist theory, it proceeds to offer several ways of thinking about communication workers and the nature of the society in which they work. Drawing on interviews and the documentary record, the book offers case studies of successful and unsuccessful efforts among both traditional and alternative worker organizations in the United States and Canada. It concludes by addressing the thorny issue of outsourcing, describing how global labor federations and nascent worker organizations in the developing world are coming together to develop creative solutions.
Includes articles which offer a mix of theoretical analysis, case history and empirical research, interspersed with good, practical advice from those who have sat long hours at the bargaining table.
From the 1880s through the 1940s, tens of thousands of first- and second-generation immigrants embraced the anarchist cause after arriving on American shores. Kenyon Zimmer explores why these migrants turned to anarchism, and how their adoption of its ideology shaped their identities, experiences, and actions.  Zimmer focuses on Italians and Eastern European Jews in San Francisco, New York City, and Paterson, New Jersey. Tracing the movement's changing fortunes from the pre–World War I era through the Spanish Civil War, Zimmer argues that anarchists, opposed to both American and Old World nationalism, severed all attachments to their nations of origin but also resisted assimilation into their host society. Their radical cosmopolitan outlook and identity instead embraced diversity and extended solidarity across national, ethnic, and racial divides. Though ultimately unable to withstand the onslaught of Americanism and other nationalisms, the anarchist movement nonetheless provided a shining example of a transnational collective identity delinked from the nation-state and racial hierarchies.
This book combines empirical research and theoretical discussions to demonstrate that the civil society paradigm as a western concept could be applicable to the study of state-society relations in contemporary China. However, the growth of Chinese civil society does not necessarily present an adversarial or confrontational relationship between state and society, but rather it is a cooperative relationship based on common interests and mutual benefits between industrial associations and local governments. The findings of this research confirm that, in contrast to the conventional civil society model in Western and Eastern Europe, where civic organizations are independent of the state, challenging the state hegemony, Chinese civic organizations, however, still lack autonomy and even remain closely linked to the state, but they are growing and expanding their public space and important role in public affairs through active participation. This non-western path for civil society development is a precise reflection of reality that is profoundly shaped and constrained by Chinese institutional, sociological, and cultural context. Through close investigation into the industrial, organizational, and social governance of industrial associations in Wenzhou and in-depth analysis of their challenges and developments within the institutional context, this book provides fresh empirical evidence and insightful analysis of how industrial associations have actively participated in local industrial governance and conduct of public affairs, gained greater space for their development, and become indispensable partners of local government in social governance.
Big Bob-six-feet-four Robert McEllrath's waterfront handle-was heralded for his powerful speaking style, charisma, unifying vision, and negotiating prowess. President of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) for twelve eventful years, McEllrath retired in 2018 after nearly forty years as a union officer. More than just a telling of a storied career, Labor under Siege explores how the influential union persisted in an era when the US labor movement was under attack and seemingly in retreat. In the face of grave dangers since the 1980s, including threats from corporations, government authorities, law enforcement agents, and even other labor unions, the ILWU has persevered and retained its vibrancy. Offering insight into Big Bob's leadership and a close-up view of how decision-making and policy were carried out to ensure the union's survival, Labor under Siege shows how union officers and rank-and-file members shaped ILWU strategy and furthered the union's legacy of advocating for workers' rights, democracy, and justice.
From the early twentieth century until the 1960s, Maine led the nation in paper production. The state could have earned a reputation as the Detroit of paper production, however, the industry eventually slid toward failure. What happened? Shredding Paper unwraps the changing US political economy since 1960, uncovers how the paper industry defined and interacted with labor relations, and peels away the layers of history that encompassed the rise and fall of Maine's mighty paper industry. Michael G. Hillard deconstructs the paper industry's unusual technological and economic histories. For a century, the story of the nation's most widely read glossy magazines and card stock was one of capitalism, work, accommodation, and struggle. Local paper companies in Maine dominated the political landscape, controlling economic, workplace, land use, and water use policies. Hillard examines the many contributing factors surrounding how Maine became a paper powerhouse and then shows how it lost that position to changing times and foreign interests. Through a retelling of labor relations and worker experiences from the late nineteenth century up until the late 1990s, Hillard highlights how national conglomerates began absorbing family-owned companies over time, which were subject to Wall Street demands for greater short-term profits after 1980. This new political economy impacted the economy of the entire state and destroyed Maine's once-vaunted paper industry. Shredding Paper truthfully and transparently tells the great and grim story of blue-collar workers and their families and analyzes how paper workers formulated a "folk" version of capitalism's history in their industry. Ultimately, Hillard offers a telling example of the demise of big industry in the United States.
Why do some European welfare states protect unemployed and inadequately employed workers ("outsiders") from economic uncertainty better than others? Philip Rathgeb's study of labor market policy change in three somewhat-similar small states-Austria, Denmark, and Sweden-explores this fundamental question. He does so by examining the distribution of power between trade unions and political parties, attempting to bridge these two lines of research-trade unions and party politics-that, with few exceptions, have advanced without a mutual exchange. Inclusive trade unions have high political stakes in the protection of outsiders, because they incorporate workers at risk of unemployment into their representational outlook. Yet, the impact of union preferences has declined over time, with a shift in the balance of class power from labor to capital across the Western world. National governments have accordingly prioritized flexibility for employers over the social protection of outsiders. As a result, organized labor can only protect outsiders when governments are reliant on union consent for successful consensus mobilization. When governments have a united majority of seats, on the other hand, they are strong enough to exclude unions. Strong Governments, Precarious Workers calls into question the electoral responsiveness of national governments-and thus political parties-to the social needs of an increasingly numerous group of precarious workers. In the end, Rathgeb concludes that the weaker the government, the stronger the capacity of organized labor to enhance the social protection of precarious workers.
Indian Diaspora in the United States takes a new perspective on the topic of brain drain, departing from the traditional literature to include discussions on brain gain and brain circulation using Indian migration to the United States as a case study. Sahay acknowledges that host country policies create the necessary conditions for brain drain to take place, but argues that source countries may also benefit from out-migration of their workers and students. These benefits are measured as remittances, investments, and savings associated with return, and social networking that links expatriates with their country of origin. Through success and visibility in host societies, diaspora workers further influence economic and political benefits for their home countries. This type of brain gain becomes an element of soft power for the source country in the long term. Indian Diaspora in the United States is a ground-breaking work that intersects economic and political issues to the dimension of migration and the concerns over brain drain. With its rigorous, connectionist approach, this book is a valuable contribution to the fields of diaspora, labor, globalization, and Indian studies.
As the United States transformed into an industrial superpower, American socialists faced the vexing question of how to approach race. Lorenzo Costaguta balances intellectual and institutional history to illuminate the clash between two major points of view. On one side, white supremacists believed labor should accept and apply the ascendant tenets of scientific theories of race. But others stood with International Workingmen’s Association leaders J. P. McDonnell and F. A. Sorge in rejecting the idea that racial and ethnic division influenced worker-employer relations, arguing instead that class played the preeminent role. Costaguta charts the socialist movement’s journey through the conflict and down a path that ultimately abandoned scientific racism in favor of an internationalist class-focused and racial-conscious American socialism. As he shows, the shift relied on a strong immigrant influence personified by the cosmopolitan Marxist thinker and future IWW cofounder Daniel De Leon. The class-focused movement that emerged became American socialism’s most common approach to race in the twentieth century and beyond.
Women banana workers in Latin America have organised themselves and gained increasing control over their unions, their workplaces and their lives. Highly accessible and narrative in style, Bananeras recounts the history and growth of this vital movement and shows how Latin American women workers are shaping and broadly reimagining the possibilities of international labour solidarity.
The labor-climate movement in the U.S. laid the groundwork for the Green New Deal by building a base within labor for supporting climate protection as a vehicle for good jobs. But as we confront the climate crisis and seek environmental justice, a "jobs vs. environment" discourse often pits workers against climate activists. How can we make a "just transition" moving away from fossil fuels, while also compensating for the human cost when jobs are lost or displaced? In his timely book, Clean Air and Good Jobs, Todd Vachon examines the labor-climate movement and demonstrates what can be envisioned and accomplished when climate justice is on labor's agenda and unions work together with other social movements to formulate bold solutions to the climate crisis. Vachon profiles the workers and union leaders who have been waging a slow, but steadily growing revolution within their unions to make labor as a whole an active and progressive champion for both workers and the environment. Clean Air and Good Jobs examines the "movement within the movement" offering useful solutions to the dual crises of climate and inequality.
The history of unemployment and concepts surrounding it remain a mystery to many Americans. Frank Stricker believes we need to understand this essential thread in our shared past. American Unemployment is an introduction for everyone that takes aim at misinformation, willful deceptions, and popular myths to set the record straight: Workers do not normally choose to be unemployed. In our current system, persistent unemployment is not an aberration. It is much more common than full employment, and the outcome of elite policy choices. Labor surpluses propped up by flawed unemployment numbers have helped to keep real wages stagnant for more than forty years. Prior to the New Deal and the era of big government, laissez-faire policies repeatedly led to depressions with heavy, even catastrophic, job losses. Undercounting the unemployed sabotages the creation of government job programs that can lead to more high-paying jobs and full employment. Written for non-economists, American Unemployment is a history and primer on vital economic topics that also provides a roadmap to better jobs and economic security.
Francois Ewald's landmark The Birth of Solidarity-first published in French in 1986, revised in 1996, with the revised edition appearing here in English for the first time-is one of the most important historical and philosophical studies of the rise of the welfare state. Theorizing the origins of social insurance, Ewald shows how the growing problem of industrial accidents in France throughout the nineteenth century tested the limits of classical liberalism and its notions of individual responsibility. As workers and capitalists confronted each other over the problem of workplace accidents, they transformed the older practice of commercial insurance into an instrument of state intervention, thereby creating an entirely new conception of law, the state, and social solidarity. What emerged was a new system of social insurance guaranteed by the state. The Birth of Solidarity is a classic work of social and political theory that will appeal to all those interested in labor power, the making and dismantling of the welfare state, and Foucauldian notions of governmentality, security, risk, and the limits of liberalism.
Every place has its quirky attributes, cultural reputation, and distinctive flair. But when we travel across America, do we also experience distinct gender norms and expectations? In his groundbreaking Gendered Places, William Scarborough examines metropolitan commuting zones to see how each region's local culture reflects gender roles and gender equity. He uses surveys and social media data to measure multiple dimensions of gender norms, including expectations toward women in leadership, attitudes toward working mothers, as well as the division of household labor. Gendered Places reveals that different locations, even within the same region of the country, such as Milwaukee and Madison Wisconsin, have distinct gender norms and highly influential cultural environments. Scarboroughshows how these local norms shape the attitudes and behaviors of residents with implications on patterns of inequality such as the gender wage gap. His findings offer valuable insight for community leaders and organizers making efforts to promote equality in their region. Scarboroughrecognizes local culture as not value-neutral, but highly crucial to the gender structure that perpetuates, or challenges, gender inequality. Gendered Places questions how these gender norms are sustained and their social consequences.
For the past few decades, the U.S. anti-sweatshop movement was bolstered by actions from American college students. United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) effectively advanced the cause of workers' rights in sweatshops around the world. Strategizing against Sweatshops chronicles the evolution of student activism and presents an innovative model of how college campuses are a critical site for the advancement of global social justice. Matthew Williams shows how USAS targeted apparel companies outsourcing production to sweatshop factories with weak or non-existent unions. USAS did so by developing a campaign that would support workers organizing by leveraging their college's partnerships with global apparel firms like Nike and Adidas to abide by pro-labor codes of conduct. Strategizing against Sweatshops exemplifies how organizations and actors cooperate across a movement to formulate a coherent strategy responsive to the conditions in their social environment. Williams also provides a model of political opportunity structure to show how social context shapes the chances of a movement's success-and how movements can change that political opportunity structure in turn. Ultimately, he shows why progressive student activism remains important.
Robber Barons and Wretched Refuse explores the connection between the so-called robber barons who led American big businesses during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and the immigrants who composed many of their workforces. As Robert F. Zeidel argues, attribution of industrial-era class conflict to an "alien" presence supplements nativism-a sociocultural negativity toward foreign-born residents-as a reason for Americans' dislike and distrust of immigrants. And in the era of American industrialization, employers both relied on immigrants to meet their growing labor needs and blamed them for the frequently violent workplace contentions of the time. Through a sweeping narrative, Zeidel uncovers the connection of immigrants to radical "isms" that gave rise to widespread notions of alien subversives whose presence threatened America's domestic tranquility and the well-being of its residents. Employers, rather than looking at their own practices for causes of workplace conflict, wontedly attributed strikes and other unrest to aliens who either spread pernicious "foreign" doctrines or fell victim to their siren messages. These characterizations transcended nationality or ethnic group, applying at different times to all foreign-born workers. Zeidel concludes that, ironically, stigmatizing immigrants as subversives contributed to the passage of the Quota Acts, which effectively stemmed the flow of wanted foreign workers. Post-war employers argued for preserving America's traditional open door, but the negativity that they had assigned to foreign workers contributed to its closing.
As the percentage of people working in the service economy continues to rise, there is a need to examine workplace harm within low-paid, insecure, flexible and short-term forms of 'affective labour'. This is the first book to discuss harm through an ultra-realist lens and examines the connection between individuals, their working conditions and management culture. Using data from a long-term ethnographic study of the service economy, it investigates the reorganisation of labour markets and the shift from security to flexibility, a central function of consumer capitalism. It highlights working conditions and organisational practices which employees experience as normal and routine but within which multiple harms occur. Challenging current thinking within sociology and policy analysis, it reconnects ideology and political economy with workplace studies and uses examples of legal and illegal activity to demonstrate the multiple harms within the service economy.
From spectacular deaths in a drag musical to competing futures in a call center, Filipino Time examines how contracted service labor performed by Filipinos in the Philippines, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States generates vital affects, multiple networks, and other lifeworlds as much as it disrupts and dislocates human relations. Affective labor and time are re-articulated in a capacious archive of storytelling about the Filipino labor diaspora in fiction, musical performance, ethnography, and documentary film. Exploring these cultural practices, Filipino Time traces other ways of sensing, making sense of, and feeling time with others, by weaving narratives of place and belonging out of the hostile but habitable textures of labortime. Migrant subjects harness time and the imagination in their creative, life making capacities to make communal worlds out of one steeped in the temporalities and logics of capital.
Transforming Management in Central and Eastern Europe provides an overview of the changing business environment in seven Central and Eastern European countries, linking macro and micro developments, exploring the differing institutional and regional contexts, and the changing role of western companies and their management practices. The book will be an important resource for students on the growing number of MBA and graduate programmes now covering developments in Central and Eastern Europe. |
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