What is the future shape of the American workplace? This question is the focus of a national debate as the country strives to find a system that provides a good standard of living for workers while allowing U.S. businesses to succeed at home and compete abroad. In this book, David Levine uses case studies and extensive evidence to show that greater employee involvement in the workplace can significantly increase both productivity and worker satisfaction. Employee involvement has many labels, including high-performance workplaces, continuous improvement, or total quality management. The strongest underlying theme is that frontline employees who are actually performing the work will always have insights about how to improve their tasks. Employee involvement includes a range of policies that, at the minimal end, permit workers to suggest improvement, and at the substantive end, create an integrated strategy to give all employees the ability, motivation, and authority to constantly improve the organization's operations. Despite the evidence of its benefits, substantive employee involvement remains the exception in the U.S. work force. Levine explores the obstacles to its spread, which include legal barriers, capital markets that discourage investment in people, organizational inertia, and the costs of implementation. Levine concludes with specific public policy recommendations for increasing the extent of employee involvement, including changes in government regulation of capital and labor markets to encourage long-term investment and labor-management cooperation. He recommends macroeconomic policies to sustain high employment, less regulation for high-involvement workplaces, and trainingin schools and on the job to teach high-involvement practices. He also suggests new roles for unions and provides a checklist for employers to assess their progress in implementing employee involvement. David I. Levine was on the staff of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and an associate professor in the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Selected as a Noteworthy Book in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics by the Firestone Library, Princeton University

Know how and when to intervene in a functioning group
Finally, a functional guide that focuses on putting the concept of group-process consultation into actual practice You'll learn how and under what circumstances a process consultant should intervene to make a group's work more effective. Plus, this guide shows you how to help groups identify, diagnose, and resolve problems as they occur Be an effective process consultant?this handbook helps you:
* Determine the appropriate type and depth of an intervention
* Realize the competencies required of the group-process consultant
* View the role, future, and ethical considerations of group-process consultation

You'll get many real-world examples of how to make critical group concepts work. And you'll get responses to commonly asked questions from working group-process consultants. Intervention Skills is a much-needed guide for the professional consultant, as well as a useful resource for anyone who plays a role in the workings of a small group.
Find out why the first printing ot this classic sold out in two weeks Read this book and make your next group intervention more potent and effective

This volume presents selected extracts from International Labour Conventions and Recommendations, and from relevant resolutions and conclusions of various ILO conferences and bodies, relating to labour law and labour relations. Topics covered include: freedom of association; dispute settlement; enterprise-level labour relations; labour relations in the public service; tripartism; employment security; remuneration; and collective bargaining.

The presence of Japan Inc. looms larger than ever for millions of American managers and workers, as hundreds of Japanese companies open plants and offices in local communities across the United States. What is it like to work for the Japanese? Can Americans, with their strong tradition of individualism, adjust to a Japanese "team system" that emphasizes harmony and close cooperation? How do Americans and Japanese resolve the misunderstandings that arise from differences in language and culture? Journalists Joseph and Suzy Fucini sought the answers by studying relations between Americans and Japanese at the Mazda plant in Flat Rock, Michigan, the first wholly-owned Japanese auto plant to employ a unionized American workforce. For three years, the Fucinis followed events at the plant, interviewing more than one hundred workers, managers and outside suppliers. The authors conclude that for all its strengths, the team system requires the sacrifice of individual interests to the good of the group, and that no matter how hard an individual tries to become part of the Mazda team, advancement for both managers and workers will be limited by the fact that they are not Japanese.

Deep-sea fishing has always been a hazardous occupation, with crews facing gale-force winds, huge waves and swells, and unrelenting rain and snow. For those New England and British fishermen whose voyages took them hundreds of miles from the coastline, life was punctuated by strenuous work, grave danger, and frequent fear. Unsurprisingly, every fishing port across the world has memorials to those lost at sea. During the 1960s and 1970s, these seafaring workers experienced new hardships. As modern fleets from many nations intensified their hunt for fish, they found themselves in increasing competition for disappearing prey. Colin J. Davis details the unfolding drama as New England and British fishermen and their wives, partners, and families reacted to this competition. Rather than acting as bystanders to these crises, the men and women chronicled in Contested and Dangerous Seas became fierce advocates for the health of the Atlantic Ocean fisheries and for their families' livelihoods.

Israel's 1977 political election resulted in a dramatic defeat for the ruling Labor movement, which had enjoyed more than four decades of economic, political, and cultural dominance. The government passed into the hands of the rightwing nationalist movement, marking a tumultuous episode in the history of both Israel and Jewish people at the start of the twenty-first century. Elmaliach chronicles the fascinating story of Israel's political transformation between the 1950s and the 1970s, exploring the roots of the Labor movement's historic collapse. Elmaliach focuses on Mapam and its allied Kibbutz movement, Hakibbutz Ha'artzi, a segment of the Israeli Labor movement that was most committed to the synthesis of socialism and Zionism. Although Mapam and Hakibbutz Ha'artzi were not the largest factions in the Israeli Labor movement, their ability to combine an economic organization, a political party, and cultural institutions gave them a strong foundation on which to build their power. Conversely, the Labor movement's crisis was, in large part, due to the economic upward mobility of the middle class, the emergence of new political orientations among supporters of the working-class parties, and the rise of cultural protests, which opposed the traditional workers' parties. Offering an innovative analysis, Elmaliach argues that, ultimately, the sources of the Labor movement's strength were also the causes of its weakness.

This guide has been prepared with a view to helping developing countries in their effort to promote the orderly settlement of industrial disputes through conciliation. Its aim is to meet the needs not only of professional or full-time conciliators but also of industrial relations officers, labour officers or labour inspectors, if conciliation is among their duties, by suggesting forms of behaviour, approaches and attitudes that will enable them to carry out their functions more effectively. The guide is intended to be of use to conciliators working in different countries and under different national conditions, and is based on contribution prepared by high-level mediators and conciliators from the United Kingdom and the United States as well as on information derived by the ILO from the findings of a number of regional seminars and from more immediate sources. The book is primarily designed for use as teaching material for the training of newly appointed conciliators and as a guide for working conciliators who have not had previous training.

The crucible of North American neo-liberal transformation is heating up, but its outcome is far from clear. Continental Crucible examines the clash between the corporate offensive and the forces of resistance from both a pan-continental and a class struggle perspective. This book also illustrates the ways in which the capitalist classes in Canada, Mexico and the United States used free trade agreements to consolidate their agendas and organize themselves continentally. The failure of traditional labour responses to stop the continental offensive being waged by big business has led workers and unions to explore new strategies of struggle and organization, pointing to the beginnings of a continental labour movement across North America. The battle for the future of North America has begun.

One of the important objectives of the ASEAN Programme on Industrial Relations for Development (a joint project ILO/UNDP/ASEAN) was to promote the study and analysis of basic issues in labour relations and labour laws within the ASEAN countries. To meet this objective a number of national experts have been invited under the Project to prepare country studies on the following issues: the problem of union recognition; the administration and enforcement of collective agreements; the voluntary and compulsory arbitration of labour disputes; the right to strike and lockout. These studies, which have now been completed and published, are aimed to provide an opportunity for students, practitioners, policy-makers to acquire valuable insights based on the experience of the ASEAN countries. It is hoped that these materials will promote comparative studies in labour relations and labour laws which in turn could lead to cross-fertilisation of ideas and concepts and even to desirable reforms.

An ILO Symposium on Collective Bargaining in Industrialized Market Economy Countries (Geneva, 2-6 November 1987) Industrial relations in industrialized market economies are currently evolving in a particularly difficult context. Economic constraints, technological progress and changes, not only in the composition of the labour force but also in the attitudes of workers, have caused workers' and employers' organizations to take a fresh look at their role in the process of collective bargaining. A symposium convened by the ILO in November 1987 provided a forum in which participants from government, employer, worker and academic circles, together with observers from a number of international bodies, could exchange views on recent trends and problems in collective bargaining. Papers by the ILO highlighting significant issues and a selection of the documents submitted by the participants in English are contained in this volume.

When I went to work for Lockheed-Georgia Company in September of 1952 I had no idea that this would end up being my life's work." With these words, Harry Hudson, the first African American supervisor at Lockheed Aircraft's Georgia facility, begins his account of a thirty-six-year career that spanned the postwar civil rights movement and the Cold War. Hudson was not a civil rights activist, yet he knew he was helping to break down racial barriers that had long confined African Americans to lower-skilled, nonsupervisory jobs. His previously unpublished memoir is an inside account of both the racial integration of corporate America and the struggles common to anyone climbing the postwar corporate ladder. At Lockheed-Georgia, Hudson went on to become the first black supervisor to manage an integrated crew and then the first black purchasing agent. There were other "firsts" along the path to these achievements, and Working for Equality is rich in details of Hudson's work on the assembly line and in the back office. In both circumstances, he contended with being not only a black man but a light-skinned black man as he dealt with production goals, personnel disputes, and other workday challenges. Randall Patton's introduction places Hudson's story within the broader struggle of workplace desegregation in America. Although Hudson is frank about his experiences in a predominantly white workforce, Patton notes that he remained "an organization man" who "expressed pride in his contributions to Lockheed [and] the nation's defense effort.

Throughout the coal industry's two-hundred-year history, labor issues have dominated its economics and politics. Curtis Seltzer has written a comprehensive historical- analysis of labor relations in the American coal industry-the first since the 1930s.

Market forces have victimized coal suppliers and their workers for most of this century as demand shifted to other fuels. Coal producers responded to poor sales and excess production capacity with policies that led to strikes, inefficiency, and turmoil. Since its founding in 1890, the United Mine Workers of America has represented most coal miners, and management has traditionally taken one of two positions toward the UMWA: break it or use it. From 1950 to 1972, the major coal operators and the union formed an industrial partnership whose purpose was to survive a protracted slump in demand by controlling labor costs, increasing productivity, and limiting competition. This partnership eventually led to a rebellion within the UMWA that demanded democratic reform, better contracts, and improved health and safety in the workplace. For the last decade, the UMWA has been reworking its relationship with management, a process marked by conflict and stress.

n the years ahead, substantial environmental problems associated with coal combustion may drastically limit coal's growth. New mining technologies may cut labor requirements to the bone. As the shift to renewable energy occurs, coal may experience a transitional period of expansion followed by a rapid decline. These trends will have enormoussocial and economic consequences.

Fire in the Hole is a story that captures the people of coal as well as the broad clash of social forces.

This book begins with a historical review of how authority in the Canadian workplace has changed over the past century. It proceeds to outline a theory of organization which provides a broad conceptual framework for the empirical analysis which follows. This theory is based on five concepts: the values of organizational members; the administrative structure of the organization; the interpersonal and intergroup processes; the reactions and adjustments of organization members; the social, political, economic, and cultural environments of the organization.A sample of 20 industrial organizations was selected to examine the effects of significant employee participation and to test the theory. They are matched pairs: ten permit some form of participation, and ten--similar in size, location, industry, union/non-union status, and work technology--follow conventional hierarchical design.The resulting data demonstrate that greater productivity results from employee participation in decisions relating to their work, in productivity bonuses, and in profit sharing and employee share-ownership plans.

The history of the north-shore railways provides a case study in the complexities of industrial development in nineteenth-century Quebec. Constructed in the fifteen years following Confederation, the North Shore and the Montreal Colonization Railways reinforced Quebec's integration into a transcontinental unit. Yet bankruptcy of both companies in 1875 forced the provincial government to assume ownership of the railways and to shoulder a financial burden that kept the province preoccupied, weak, and subservient to Ottawa. Diverse political, clerical, and business interests united to construct the railways and to manoeuvre them from private companies into a public venture and ultimately into the Canadian Pacific system. The two railways brought new concentrations of capital and power that cut across French and English ethnic lines and sharpened regional rivalries. Along the south short of the St. Lawrence both French- and English-speaking inhabitants protested against the province's commitments to its north-shore railways. By the late 1870s Quebec City's English community was lobbying hard against the growing power of their English-speaking counterparts in Montreal. The north-shore railways plagued a generation of Quebec politicians, and their construction bared incompatible regional aspirations. By 1885 years of negotiation, scandal, and political blackmail culminated in the incorporation of the two north-shore railways into the Canadian Pacific system. As this study so clearly demonstrates, Quebec paid a high price in making its contribution to linking Canada by steel a mari usque ad mare.

As the twentieth century draws to an end, the changing role of women appears as one of the dominant features of the era. In "Now Hiring, " historian Julia Blackwelder traces the century-long evolution of the American occupational structure and the ensuing rise in demand for female workers through the closing episodes of the Industrial Revolution and the advent of postindustrialism. Decade by decade, she adroitly traces the main lines of the development of the female work force and its interactions with education, family life, and social convention while developing a nuanced analysis of the differential patterns for various ethnic, racial, age, and socioeconomic groups.
Through vignettes of individual women, given context by statistical data that place them within larger patterns of work and family life, Blackwelder presents her arguments "with flesh on them." She offers a pioneering consideration of non-paid employment as part of the picture of women and work and incorporates an intriguing case study of the evolution of the Girl Scout organization. Her consideration of the interaction of race, class, gender, and economic forces in the evolving roles of working women--particularly since she weaves these issues into every discussion, rather than isolating them as afterthoughts--also makes an intellectual contribution to the field of women's studies. In her conclusion, Blackwelder summarizes the effects of a century of change in women's employment and delineates the social and economic challenges that will confront women and families of the twenty-first century.
Blackwelder portrays the larger economy as the premier driving force for patterns of female work. She demonstrates that the reconfiguration of the women's labor market followed the shift of the leading sector, from agriculture in the nineteenth century to manufacturing and eventually to service industries. In addition, she shows how changes in the labor market redirected female education and transformed family structures in the United States and how these changes in turn contributed to the further restructuring of job opportunities and salary structures.
Blackwelder analyzes how gender conventions have affected the employment of women: what industries would hire them, what positions they were considered for, what pay was considered appropriate. Considering how the shift in the national economy and the growing female permeation of the labor force changed the dynamics and economics of family life, she shows that although wage-earning wives gained more authority within marriage, they also assumed heavier responsibilities for the financial support of their families. As rising rates of separation and divorce further burdened mothers (who generally had child custody), women's economic advances paradoxically worsened their overall financial well-being.
This survey of U.S. women and work introduces students and general readers alike to these important topics, and the distinctiveness of Blackwelder's approach, blending quantitative data and oral history materials, as well as the cogency of her underlying arguments, give the book importance to scholars of labor and economic history and women's studies.