In this new work, political theorist Michael J. Thompson argues that modern societies are witnessing a decline in one of the core building blocks of modernity: the autonomous self. Far from being an illusion of the Enlightenment, Thompson contends that the individual is a defining feature of the project to build a modern democratic culture and polity. One of the central reasons for its demise in recent decades has been the emergence of what he calls the "cybernetic society," a cohesive totalization of the social logics of the institutional spheres of economy, culture and polity. These logics have been progressively defined by the imperatives of economic growth and technical-administrative management of labor and consumption, routinizing patterns of life, practices, and consciousness throughout the culture. Evolving out of the neoliberal transformation of economy and society since the 1980s, the cybernetic society has transformed how that the individual is articulated in contemporary society. Thompson examines the various pathologies of the self and consciousness that result from this form of socialization—such as hyper-reification, alienated moral cognition, false consciousness, and the withered ego—in new ways to demonstrate the extent of deformation of modern selfhood. Only with a more robust, more socially embedded concept of autonomy as critical agency can we begin to reconstruct the principles of democratic individuality and community.

The members of the Domestic Workers United (DWU) organization-immigrant women of color employed as nannies, caregivers, and housekeepers in New York City-formed to fight for dignity and respect and to "bring meaningful change" to their work. Alana Lee Glaser examines the process of how these domestic workers organized against precarity, isolation, and exploitation to help pass the 2010 New York State Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, the first labor law in the United States protecting in-home workers. Solidarity & Care examines the political mobilization of diverse care workers who joined together and supported one another through education, protests, lobbying, and storytelling. Domestic work activists used narrative and emotional appeals to build a coalition of religious communities, employers of domestic workers, labor union members, and politicians to first pass and then to enforce the new law. Through oral history interviews, as well as ethnographic observation during DWU meetings and protest actions, Glaser chronicles how these women fought (and continue to fight) to improve working conditions. She also illustrates how they endure racism, punitive immigration laws, on-the-job indignities, and unemployment that can result in eviction and food insecurity. The lessons from Solidarity & Care along with the DWU's precedent-setting legislative success have applications to workers across industries. All royalties will go directly to the Domestic Workers United

Recognized as an authoritative treatment of an important subject area, and presented in a conversational and straightforward style, Industrial Hygiene Simplified, Second Edition is an updated edition of the original, well-received textbook. Industrial Hygiene Simplified is valuable and accessible for use by those involved in such disciplines as industrial technology, manufacturing technology, industrial engineering technology, occupational safety, management, and supervision. This book is ideal for those needing a refresh on industrial hygiene concepts and practices they may not use regularly, as well as those practitioners preparing for the Certified Industry Hygiene (CIH) exam. Because it is a dynamic discipline, there is no question about the field of industrial hygiene having undergone significant change over the past four decades. Some of the reasons for this change include technological innovations that have introduced new hazards in the workplace, increased pressure from regulatory agencies, realization by industrial executives that a safe and healthy workplace is typically a more productive and litigious-free workplace, skyrocketing health care and worker's compensation costs, and increased pressure from environmental groups and the public. These factors have created a need for an up-to-date and user-friendly book in industrial hygiene that contains the latest information for those who practice this profession in the age of high technology and escalating on-the-job injuries with accompanying increased health care costs. New features in the second edition of Industrial Hygiene Simplified include: *Presentation in lesson format *End-of-chapter review questions *"Did You Know" pertinent facts *Applicable and important math operations

The seventh of a new, well-received, and highly acclaimed series on critical infrastructure and homeland security, Transportation Protection and Homeland Security is a valuable reference source. The book was fashioned in response to the critical needs of transportation production managers, transportation engineers, security professionals (physical and cyber-security), students, and for anyone with a general interest in the security of transportation infrastructure systems. In Transportation Protection and Homeland Security, the reader will gain an understanding of the challenge of domestic preparedness-that is, an immediate need for a heightened state of awareness of the present threat facing the transportation sector as a potential terrorist target. Moreover, the reader will gain knowledge of security principles and measures that can be implemented-adding a critical component not only to your professional knowledge but also give you the tools needed to combat terrorism in the homeland-our homeland, both by outsiders and insiders.

"This is micro-historical writing at its best."--Walden Bello, author of "Dilemmas of Domination"

"Brilliant."--Ken Loach

The stories in this book come to life through the voices of remarkable individuals: child laborers in Dickensian England, visionary women on Parisian barricades, gun-toting railway strikers in America's Wild West, and beer-swilling German metalworkers who tried to stop World War I.

It is a story of urban slums, self-help cooperatives, choirs and brass bands, free love, and self-education by candlelight. And, as the author shows, in the developing industrial economies of the world, it is still with us. "Live Working or Die Fighting" celebrates a common history of defiance, idealism, and self-sacrifice, one as alive and active today as it was two hundred years ago. It is a unique and inspirational book.

Paul Mason is an award-winning journalist who reports regularly on labor rights and social justice stories as economics editor for "BBC World News America" and BBC "Newsnight." In addition to "Live Working or Die Fighting," which was shortlisted as a 2007 "Guardian" First Book Award, Mason is the author of "Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed" (Verso Books).

First published in 1921, Industrial Fatigue and Efficiency aims to provide a fairly complete overview of industrial fatigue and its influence on efficiency. It brings crucial themes like fatigue and its measurement; output in relation to weekly hours of work; output and hours of work in various industries; the six- hours day and multiple shifts; work spells and rest periods; limitation of output; lost time and its causation; sickness and mortality; industrial accidents and their causation; the prevention of industrial accidents; and adoption of healthy factory conditions, to showcase the importance of adequate lighting, heating and ventilation, washing facilities, cloak rooms, ambulance room and a well found canteen as basic requirements in factories. This book is an important historical document for scholars and researchers of labour studies, labour economics, industrial studies, and political economy.

With growing concern about the conditions facing low wage workers and new challenges to traditional forms of labor market protection, this book offers a timely analysis of the purpose and effectiveness of minimum wages in different European countries. Building on original industry case studies, the analysis goes beyond general debates about the relative merits of labor market regulation to reveal important national differences in the functioning of minimum wage systems and their integration within national models of industrial relations. There is no universal position on minimum wage policy followed by governments and social partners. Nor is it true that trade unions consistently support minimum wages and employers oppose them. The evidence in this book shows that interests and objectives change over time and differ across industries and countries. Investigating the pay bargaining strategies of unions and employers in cleaning, security, retail, and construction, this book's industry case studies show how minimum wage policy interacts with collective bargaining to produce different types of pay equity effects. The analysis provides new findings of 'ripple effects' shaped by trade union strategies and identifies key components of an 'egalitarian pay bargaining approach' in social dialogue. The lessons for policy are to embrace an inter-disciplinary approach to minimum wage analysis, to be mindful of the interconnections with the changing national systems of industrial relations, and to interrogate the pay equity effects.

Understanding and applying the principles of ergonomics consistently in an organization not only reduces the risk of employee injuries, but it also reduces an organization's costs and increases productivity. This newly updated handbook examines 17 new workplace factors 50 in all to consider when implementing an ergonomics program. Organized alphabetically by factor, each section includes a descriptive checklist, allowing managers to quickly assess each factor's status and level of conformance with safety, quality, and productivity considerations. The author, an internationally recognized expert and public speaker, will show you why ergonomics is a business solution and not a business problem, how to create cost-effective ergonomics programs, which step-by-step procedures to use for evaluating a workplace environment and implementing ergonomic changes, how to accommodate the needs of aging and disabled workers, and how to use ergonomics to increase productivity. A glossary of ergonomic terms and a listing of sources of additional information are included.

Safety and Security at Sea is concerned with the safe operation of ships and consequently with preventing errors and oversights. This book contributes to safety where it is most effective - right at the site of work, on board the ship itself. It is here, indisputably, that it will prevent accidents and save lives. It translates theory into practice besides covering several new and current topics. This book is aimed at every deck officer - at every rank and on all ships. The book also attends to other manifest needs and discusses piracy, stowaways, management of crew on board and several other new and current topics in the interest of safety. All deck officers will find, when preparing for professional examinations, that the area which the oral section of these examinations at any level (Class One, Two or Three) cover - safety - is the one in which this book specialises. It will be an invaluable aid in passing these exams. By discussing essential details in every part of a voyage, parts that form different subjects in the theoretical section, it becomes an excellent reference book for them. In addition, it will also asist the staff of shipping companies in compiling ship operation manuals. This book includes the advice of various notices from the Marine Safety Agency and of guidelines from the International Maritime Organisation. It explains their requirements - International safety management code, emergency pollution control plans and others. In order to deal with ship board work thoroughly, this book takes an entire voyage into account. That is the reason for the sequence of its chapters to correspond to the progress of an actual voyage. The book begins with a ship embarking on a voyage and, in succession, conveys its message in a comfortable language. The last chapter leaves the reader at the beginning of another, but a safer, voyage. A summary is included at the end of each chapter.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) remains one of the best examples of a labor union that traces its origins to radical anti-racist principles. Today, very few mainstream unions remain that were founded on militant, radical, and "anti-racist" principles. The ILWU remains the strongest port union in the United States, and its members are among the highest paid blue-collar union workers in the world. Drawing on in-depth interviews, archival oral histories research, and ethnographic observation, Solidarity Forever? highlights the struggle of a key group of Black and women leaders who fought for racial and gender equality in the ports of Southern California. The book argues that institutional and cultural forms of racial and gender inequality are embedded within US trade union locals leading to the following deleterious consequences for unions: (1) a proliferation of internal discrimination lawsuits within unions, which can cost the union International, or union local, potentially millions of dollars in legal fees and financial settlements thereby redistributing precious financial resources that could be spent on key activities related to making unions stronger from outside attacks; (2) an erosion of trust and solidarity among workers, the key values of any successful union, which ultimately undermines the radical democratic potential of unions and rank-and-file participation in union politics; and (3) the undermining of workers of color and women workers as full and equal participants in the labor movement. The future of organized labor in the United States could very well be determined by the ability of the labor movement, and labor unions in particular, to listen to those workers who have been relegated to the margins of the global economy-workers of color, immigrant workers, women workers, and all workers in the Global South.

As robots are used more and more to perform a variety of tasks in a range of fields, it is imperative to make the robots as reliable and safe as possible. Yet no book currently covers robot reliability and safety within one framework. Robot System Reliability and Safety: A Modern Approach presents up-to-date information on robot reliability, safety, and related areas in a single volume, eliminating the need to consult diverse sources. After introducing historical, mathematical, and introductory aspects, the book presents methods for analyzing robot system reliability and safety. It next focuses on topics related to robot reliability, including classifications of robot failures and their causes and hydraulic and electric robots' reliability analysis. The book then explains the analysis of robot-related safety and accidents, covers key elements of robot maintenance and robotics applications in maintenance and repair, and addresses human factors and safety considerations in robotics workplaces. The book concludes with chapters on robot testing, costing, and failure data as well as six mathematical models for reliability and safety analysis. Written by a well-known expert in reliability engineering, this book will be useful to system, design, reliability, and safety engineers along with other engineering professionals working in the area of robotics. It can also be used in courses on system engineering, reliability engineering, and safety engineering.

Studies in the US suggest that about 4% of hospital patients are unintentionally harmed by treatment. These many thousands of "accidents" have received little research attention.
This book assumes that medicine may benefit and learn from approaches to safety in other areas and will be a core resource for this topic. The role of new technologies, both as hazards and in improving safety, is an essential new challenge which the book addresses.
The chapters are ordered to accord with their principal emphasis, beginning with conceptual foundations and moving towards safety management.
The first chapter gives an overview of approaches to safety in the psychological and organisational literature and provides essential background information for readers who may not be familiar with the safety literature. The next chapters demonstrate the need to take a long, temporal perspective. Finally, two chapters reflect on the nature of safety management and its particular application in healthcare.

Financial incentives have long been used to try to influence professional values and practices. Recent events including the global financial crisis and the BP Texas City refinery disaster have been linked to such incentives, with commentators calling for a critical look at these systems given the catastrophic outcomes. Risky Rewards engages with this debate, particularly in the context of the present and potential role of incentives to manage major accident risk in hazardous industries. It examines the extent to which people respond to financial incentives, the potential for perverse consequences, and approaches that most appropriately focus attention on major hazard risk. The book is based in part on an empirical study of bonus arrangements in eleven companies operating in hazardous industries, including oil, gas, chemical and mining.

In the mid-twentieth century, corporations consolidated control over agriculture on the backs of Mexican migrant laborers through a guestworker system called the Bracero Program. The National Agricultural Workers Union (NAWU) attempted to organize these workers but met with utter indifference from the AFL-CIO. Andrew J. Hazelton examines the NAWU's opposition to the Bracero Program against the backdrop of Mexican migration and the transformation of North American agriculture. His analysis details growers' abuse of the program to undercut organizing efforts, the NAWU's subsequent mobilization of reformers concerned by those abuses, and grower opposition to any restrictions on worker control. Though the union's organizing efforts failed, it nonetheless created effective strategies for pressuring growers and defending workers' rights. These strategies contributed to the abandonment of the Bracero Program in 1964 and set the stage for victories by the United Farm Workers and other movements in the years to come.

Extreme events such as accidents, crises and disasters occur in organizations of all types. Sometimes these hit the headlines, but they also occur regularly beyond the public gaze. What follows is normally an investigation in which 'lessons will be learned' and the event 'must never happen again'. These produce recommendations to limit the damage from a future event, or to prevent it altogether. In many cases, this doesn't happen, and the changes are not implemented. Why should this be the case? Containing a unique collection of cross-sector and international case studies, this book investigates the conditions and processes that encourage or inhibit change after an extreme event. There are nine research-based cases including: a re-examination of change in Haringey Social Services in the aftermath of the deaths of Victoria Climbie and 'Baby P'; a leak at Sellafield Nuclear reprocessing plant; an explosion on an offshore gas platform operated by Centrica Storage, and the multi-agency response to bush fires in Australia. In providing a comprehensive analysis of organizational change and crisis management, the book identifies a common event sequence and recurrent issues, themes and mechanisms. The cross-case analysis provides both unique insights into organizational change following extreme events and realistic guidance for improving change implementation. The result is a resource that will be vital reading for advanced students, researchers and managers involved with organizational studies and crisis management.

Capitalism has proven much more resilient than Marx anticipated, and the working class has hardly lived up to his hopes. What might a critique of the political economy of labour look like that critically reviews the experiences of the past 500 years while moving beyond Eurocentrism? In Beyond Marx, 22 authors offer their thoughts on this question, both from a historical and theoretical perspective.

First published in 1991, this book investigates not only the processes of industrial relations themselves but also the climate in which they work. As well as studying union behaviour, it views the topic from the wider perspective of human resource management and integrates theories of industrial relations and organizational analysis. The extensive empirical evidence presented, which draws on manufacturing and service industries in Canada, is used to examine such areas as cooperation between union and management, employee perceptions and corporate culture. This interesting reissue will be of importance to all those studying the dynamics of organizations and industrial relations processes, and ways in which a productive climate can be established and maintained.

South Korea's triumphant development has catapulted the country's economy to the eleventh largest in the world. Large family-owned conglomerates, or chaebols, such as Samsung, Hyundai, and LG, have become globally preeminent manufacturing brands. Yet Korea's highly disciplined, technologically competent skilled workers who built these brands have become known only for their successful labor-union militancy, which in recent decades has been criticized as collective "selfishness" that has allowed them to prosper at the expense of other workers. Hyung-A Kim tells the story of Korea's first generation of skilled workers in the heavy and chemical industries sector, following their dramatic transition from 1970s-era "industrial warriors" to labor-union militant "Goliat Warriors," and ultimately to a "labor aristocracy" with guaranteed job security, superior wages, and even job inheritance for their children. By contrast, millions of Korea's non-regular employees, especially young people, struggle in precarious and insecure employment. This richly documented account demonstrates that industrial workers' most enduring goal has been their own economic advancement, not a wider socialist revolution, and shows how these individuals' paths embody the consequences of rapid development.

Leading to Occupational Health and Safety brings together prominent researchers to explore the pervasive roles that leaders play in determining the health, safety and mental well-being of employees in organizations. * The first text to directly link organizational leadership behaviours with health and safety outcomes, covering theory, research and evidence-based best practice * Argues that a leader s impact can be far more far-reaching than is commonly realized, and examines the effects of leadership on safety, physical wellness and wellbeing, and psychological wellbeing * Explores the theoretical underpinnings of effective leadership styles and behaviors, and advances both research and practice in order to encourage better leadership and healthier, safer organizations * Features contributions from internationally known and respected researchers including Sharon Clarke, Kara Arnold, Fred Luthans, Stale Einarsen, Julian Barling, and Emma Donaldson-Feilder

Transforming Management in Central and Eastern Europe analyses changes in enterprises in seven European countries since 1989 - Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Slovakia. Economic trends have differed vastly between these countries, but nevertheless, there are common objectives, common problems, and significant similarities in developments. This book shows the continuities, as well as the discontinuities, between the Socialist and the post-Socialist periods. It argues that Central and Eastern European countries are developing a distinctive, hybrid form of post-Socialist economic system, largely dominated by enterprise managers in alliance with state administrations-politicized managerial capitalism. Privatization has not transformed management practices, competition has.

Managing Electrical Safety provides an overview of electric basics, hazards, and established standards that enables you to understand the hazards you are likely to encounter in your workplace. Focusing on typical industrial environments which utilize voltages much higher than household or office circuits the author identifies the eight key components of an electrical safety program and examines each using a model safety management process. You'll learn how to identify electrical hazards, how to prescribe necessary electrical Personal Protective Equipment, how to ensure that equipment is de-energized, and how to safely plan for work on or around exposed live parts.

With growing concern about the conditions facing low wage workers and new challenges to traditional forms of labor market protection, this book offers a timely analysis of the purpose and effectiveness of minimum wages in different European countries. Building on original industry case studies, the analysis goes beyond general debates about the relative merits of labor market regulation to reveal important national differences in the functioning of minimum wage systems and their integration within national models of industrial relations. There is no universal position on minimum wage policy followed by governments and social partners. Nor is it true that trade unions consistently support minimum wages and employers oppose them. The evidence in this book shows that interests and objectives change over time and differ across industries and countries. Investigating the pay bargaining strategies of unions and employers in cleaning, security, retail, and construction, this book's industry case studies show how minimum wage policy interacts with collective bargaining to produce different types of pay equity effects. The analysis provides new findings of 'ripple effects' shaped by trade union strategies and identifies key components of an 'egalitarian pay bargaining approach' in social dialogue. The lessons for policy are to embrace an inter-disciplinary approach to minimum wage analysis, to be mindful of the interconnections with the changing national systems of industrial relations, and to interrogate the pay equity effects.

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.

As life spans expanded dramatically in the United States after 1900, and employers increasingly demanded the speed and stamina of youth in the workplace, men struggled to sustain identities as workers, breadwinners, and patriarchs-the core ideals of twentieth-century masculinity. Longer life threatened manhood as men confronted age discrimination at work, mandatory retirement, and fixed incomes as recipients of Social Security and workplace pensions. They struggled to somehow sustain manliness in retirement, a new phase of life supposedly defined by the absence of labor. Ironically, retiring men pursued ways to stay "productive": retirees created new daily routines of golf and shuffleboard games, tinkered with tools in garages, attended social club meetings, armed themselves for hunting and fishing excursions, and threw themselves into yard work. Others looked for new jobs or business ventures. Only unending activity could help to ensure that the "golden years" would be good years for older men of the twentieth century.

In the timber plantations in northeastern South Africa, laborers work long hours among tall, swaying lines of eucalypts, on land once theirs. In 2008, at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, timber corporations distributed hot cooked meals as a nutrition intervention to bolster falling productivity and profits. But life and sustenance are about much more than calories and machinic bodies. What is at stake is the nurturing of capacity across all domains of life-physical, relational, cosmological-in the form of amandla. An Nguni word meaning power, strength or capacity, amandla organizes ordinary concerns with one's abilities to earn a wage, to strengthen one's body, and to take care of others; it describes the potency of medicines and sexual vitality; and it captures a history of anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggle for freedom. The ordinary actions coordinated by and directed at amandla do not obscure the wounding effects of plantation labor or the long history of racial oppression, but rather form the basis of what the Algerian artist Kader Attia calls repair. In this captivating ethnography, Cousins examines how amandla, as the primary material of the work of repair, anchors ordinary scenes of living and working in and around the plantations. As a space of exploitation that enables the global paper and packaging industry to extract labor power, the plantation depends on the availability of creative action in ordinary life to capitalize on bodily capacity. The Work of Repair is a fine-grained exploration of the relationships between laborers in the timber plantations of KwaZulu-Natal, and the historical decompositions and reinventions of the milieu of those livelihoods and lives. Offering a fresh approach to the existential, ethical and political stakes of ethnography from and of late liberal South Africa, the book attends to urgent questions of postapartheid life: the fate of employment; the role of the state in providing welfare and access to treatment; the regulation of popular curatives; the queering of kinship; and the future of custom and its territories. Through detailed descriptions, Cousins explicates the important and fragile techniques that constitute the work of repair: the effort to augment one's capacity in a way that draws on, acknowledges, and reimagines the wounds of history, keeping open the possibility of a future through and with others.