This book describes and analyses the 2003 British Airways (BA) Customer Service Agents' (CSA) 24-hour unofficial strike. It examines the lead up to the dispute, in which negotiations failed to reach an agreement over the launch of BA's Automatic Time Recording and Integrated Airport Resource Management systems, before focusing on the dispute itself and its eventual resolution. Central to the book is the question: why did a group of union members, the majority of whom were young women, become so incensed at an imposed change to their working practices that they took unofficial strike action? This they did in the knowledge that they could all have been legally dismissed. In analysing the strike, the book explores why BA's management imposed such a controversial change to working practices on the company's busiest weekend of the year. A decision which, allegedly, cost the company two-hundred-million pounds, tarnished its reputation, and saw numerous senior managers lose their jobs. How and why the CSAs' three trade unions (the GMB Union, the Transport and General Workers Union and Amicus) reacted in such different ways to the unofficial strike, and then behaved so differently in the subsequent negotiations, is also central to this study.

The story of a union organizer who found a second career in community organizing and helped a Jim Crow city become a better place. Ernest Thompson dedicated his life to organizing the powerless. This lively, illustrated personal narrative of his work shows the great contribution that people's coalitions can make to the struggle for equality and freedom. Thompson cut his teeth organizing one of the great industrial unions, the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America, and brought his organizing skills and commitment to coalition building to Orange, New Jersey. He built a strong organization and skillfully led fights for school desegregation, black political representation, and strong government in a city he initially thought of as a "dirty Jim Crow town going nowhere." Thompson came to love the City of Orange and its caring citizens, seeing in its struggles a microcosm of America. This story of people's power is meant for all who struggle for human rights, economic opportunity, decent housing, effective education, and a chance for children to have a better life. Ernest Thompson (1906-1971) grew up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, on a farm that had been given to his family at the end of the Civil War. The family was very poor and oppressed by racist practices. Thompson was determined to get away and to obtain power. He migrated to Jersey City, where he became part of the union organizing movement that built the Congress of Industrial Unions (CIO). He became the first African American to hold a fulltime organizing position with his union, the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). He eventually headed UE's innovative Fair Employment Practices program and fought for equal rights and pay for women and minority workers. Thompson also helped build the National Negro Labor Council, 1951-1956, and served as its director of organizing. In 1956, under the onslaught of the McCarthy era, UE was split in two, and Thompson lost his job. His wife, Margaret Thompson, brought the local school segregation to his attention. Ernie "Home" Thompson organized to desegregate the regional schools, building strong coalitions and political power for the black community that ultimately served all the people of Orange.

This book explores how power operates in workplace settings at local, national and transnational levels. It argues that how people are valued in and out of work is a political dynamic, which reflects and shapes how societies treat their citizens. Offering vital resources for activists and students on labour rights, employment issues and trade unions, this book argues that the influence workers can exert is changing dramatically and future challenges for change can be positive and progressive. This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 8, Decent work and economic growth -- .

This book provides thoughtful insights into the development in work, organisations and employment relations in the last 50 years. In a semi-autobiographical approach, the author reflects on important contributions by other scholars, practitioners, and policy makers to work and employment relations. The book covers a variety of themes which have been the subject of research undertaken by the author over his career and explores these themes over a period of time with examples drawn from various countries. It also emphasises that countries and regions cannot be understood in isolation from each other. The author seeks to convey the importance of crossing disciplinary boundaries in the social sciences in order to interpret changes in work, organisations and employment relations. Drawing on the author's rich experience and research, the book is engaging and accessible to anyone who wishes to learn more about the rapidly changing workplace and employment relations.

Bringing together international authors, this edited collection addresses the need for greater inclusivity within organizational policy and practice, in order to tackle both visible and invisible inequalities amongst employees. Volume II reflects the shift in thinking around organizations' responsibility to recognize and value diversity and equality, and examines the wider implications for employment relations and working conditions. Providing strategic insight into diversity management, the authors aim to advance our understanding of informal discrimination in the workplace, offering practical suggestions for better leadership and allocation of resources. A useful guide for practitioners, policy-makers and scholars of HRM and organization, this book presents solutions to inequality issues in the workplace, with the goal to building stronger employment relations.

The Steelworkers' Retirement Security System: A Worker-based Model for Community Investment articulates a new model for economic security based upon steelworkers' pension provisions and labor politics after World War II. Labor's collective bargaining agreements created interdependent commitments that sustained jobs and stabilized communities. The evidence in The Steelworkers' Retirement Security System includes an empirical analysis of United States steel towns and case studies of Weirton, West Virginia, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Johnstown, Pennsylvania. By understanding the politics that bound firms and workers together and adapting these commitments to the post-industrial economy, The Steelworkers' Retirement Security System offers a new means by which communities can provide workers security and economic growth. This new model, the Guaranteed Pension and Community Investment plan, provide workers with lifetime retirement annuities and communities with reliable investment capital.

This book is the first piece of extensive research in studying employment relations in ethnic Chinese small businesses in Britain. It contributes to existing knowledge in three respects. Empirically, it examines the nature of employment relations in the ethnic Chinese restaurant sector in the UK context, a hitherto under-explored area. The study adds new knowledge to the study of employment relations in ethnic minority small firms. Theoretically, it draws out the concept of 'ethnic twist', which denotes how the conflict between different group members from the same ethnicity shapes patterns of shop floor behaviours, revealing the heterogeneity of people from the same ethnic origins. Methodologically, the research demonstrates the continued importance of the ethnographic approach in studying workplace relations. Additionally, we see lots of literature discussing overseas Chinese businesses in terms of cultural resources, business development, level of integration and structural constraints. Surprisingly little is published on interpretations of small firm workplace relations. This book might illuminate future studies to explore management practices and employment relationships in ethnic Chinese small businesses in different national environments and industry sectors. It will be of interest to researchers, academics and students in the fields of employment relations, human resource management and organisational behavior.

A key element in the development and competitiveness of businesses rest on the management and enhancement of 'human resource'. Although it is a subject very much in vogue, the organisation of human resources is too rarely grounded in the relevant historical and comparative contexts which shape their practice. Furthermore, there is a need to counter the over-simplistic 'one best way' views and management exhortation so common to this topic, and historical comparisons offer insight into the nature, scale and long-term impact of trends, whilst uncovering the complex interaction of differing circumstance and 'optimum practice'.This important new two volume set presents key reading in paternalism and industrial welfare; employee relations and the professionalisation of management; Taylorism and flexibility: technological change and the division of labour; industrial training and skills; and labour and politics are covered in a theoretically informed and critical fashion.

This book analyses the revival of the French economy at the end of the twentieth century and shows how large firms took the lead in that process becoming the drivers of economic adjustment. Hancké provides the reader with a critique of neo-institutionalist perspectives on firms. By demonstrating how large firms in France changed their institutional environment to fit their own needs, he offers an important new perspective on the political economy of industrial and economic change.

The emergence of industrial policy as a central issue among not just policy makers but the intellectual community as well reflects not only concerns about the international competitiveness of firms and nations but also unemployment and growth. Scholarship on industrial policy has been scattered across a wide range of disciplines and subjects, rendering it difficult to grasp the state of knowledge on the subject. The purpose of this three volume series is to provide the classic articles forming the building blocks of scholarship on industrial policy and present them in an integrated framework. These classic contributions span a number of subjects within economics, such as international trade, industrial economics, labour economics, economic development and technological change, as well as a number of different academic disciplines, including political science, sociology, international relations, and international management. The first volume focuses on The Mandate for Industrial Policy, the second on Instruments and Targets, and the third on Industry and Country Studies.

This report examines the fundamental link between Mexico's economic performance and migration to the United States, with a particular focus on the post-NAFTA time period. Also examined is the dramatic decline of Mexican migration to the United States since the 2008 financial crisis and its implications for immigration reform in the United States. Finally, the report discusses the growing flows of unauthorized migrants from Central America and what regional governments can do to address the issue.

The Global Perspective of Urban Labor in Mexico City, 1910-1929 examines the global entanglement of the Mexican labor movement during the Mexican Revolution. It describes how global influences made their entry into labor culture through the cinema, the theater, and labor festivals as well as into the development of consumption patterns and advertisement. It further shows how the young labor movement constituted its discourse and invented its tradition at meetings and in the columns of newspapers. The local conditions constitute the framework for the examination of Mexican labor's perspectives on and engagement with contemporary events of global significance. Thereby, this book demonstrates how workers turned to the global context in search of guidance and role models, embracing global developments and narratives. It also reveals the differentiations from this context in order to create a unique local identity. This approach allows new perspectives on the role of a neglected revolutionary actor and on the influence of global developments in a revolution that has been predominantly interpreted from a national point of view. It shows the way global ideas were brought to life in the framework of revolutionary Mexico City - providing new insights into the grand-narratives of Globalization and Revolution.

William Hal Gorby's study of Wheeling's Polish community weaves together stories of immigrating, working, and creating a distinctly Polish-American community, or Polonia, in the heart of the upper Ohio Valley steel industry. It addresses major topics in the history of the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, while shifting from urban historians' traditional focus on large cities to a case study in a smaller Appalachian setting. Wheeling was a centre of West Virginia's labour movement, and Polish immigrants became a crucial element within the city's active working-class culture. Arriving at what was also the centre of the state's Roman Catholic Diocese, Poles built religious and fraternal institutions to support new arrivals and to seek solace in times of economic strain and family hardship. The city's history of crime and organised vice also affected new immigrants, who often lived in neighbourhoods targeted for selective enforcement of Prohibition. At once a deeply textured evocation of the city's ethnic institutions and an engagement with large questions about belonging, change and justice, Wheeling's Polonia us an inspiring account of a diverse working-class culture and the immigrants who built it.

This seminal work offers a carefully edited collection of Ryuzo Sato's pioneering contributions to the analysis of the theories of production, preference, stability and dynamic symmetry in economics.The author examines production functions and preference functions containing both goods and money and studies the stability of general equilibrium systems and economic conservation laws. The book also includes Professor Sato's groundbreaking work on the application of Lie group theory to the estimation of technical progress. This important book will be welcomed by scholars interested in technical change and progress.

In the last twenty years, Italy has undergone significant changes in the functioning of the labor market and industrial relations. This makes it an excellent case study for evaluating labor market practices and possibilities for reform. This book brings together leading Italian and European scholars to trace the evolution of labor bargaining and industrial relations from both a theoretical and empirical perspective.

Powerful labor movements played a critical role in shaping modern Hawaii, beginning in the 1930s, when International Longshore and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU) representatives were dispatched to the islands to organize plantation and dock laborers. They were stunned by the feudal conditions they found in Hawaii, where the majority of workers-Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino in origin-were routinely subjected to repression and racism at the hands of white bosses. The wartime civil liberties crackdown brought union organizing to a halt; but as the war wound down, Hawaii workers' frustrations boiled over, leading to an explosive success in the forming of unions. During the 1950s, just as the ILWU began a series of successful strikes and organizing drives, the union came under McCarthyite attacks and persecution. In the midst of these allegations, Hawaii's bid for statehood was being challenged by powerful voices in Washington who claimed that admitting Hawaii to the union would be tantamount to giving the Kremlin two votes in the U.S. Senate, while Jim Crow advocates worried that Hawaii's representatives would be enthusiastic supporters of pro-civil rights legislation. Hawaii's extensive social welfare system and the continuing power of unions to shape the state politically are a direct result of those troubled times. Based on exhaustive archival research in Hawaii, California, Washington, and elsewhere, Gerald Horne's gripping story of Hawaii workers' struggle to unionize reads like a suspense novel as it details for the first time how radicalism and racism helped shape Hawaii in the twentieth century.

There have been numerous accounts exploring the relationship between institutions and firm practices. However, much of this literature tends to be located into distinct theoretical-traditional 'silos', such as national business systems, social systems of production, regulation theory, or varieties of capitalism, with limited dialogue between different approaches to enhance understanding of institutional effects. Again, evaluations of the relationship between institutions and employment relations have tended to be of the broad-brushstroke nature, often founded on macro-data, and with only limited attention being accorded to internal diversity and details of actual practice. The Handbook aims to fill this gap by bringing together an assembly of comprehensive and high quality chapters to enable understanding of changes in employment relations since the early 1970s. Theoretically-based chapters attempt to link varieties of capitalism, business systems, and different modes of regulation to the specific practice of employment relations, and offer a truly comparative treatment of the subject, providing frameworks and empirical evidence for understanding trends in employment relations in different parts of the world. Most notably, the Handbook seeks to incorporate at a theoretical level regulationist accounts and recent work that link bounded internal systemic diversity with change, and, at an applied level, a greater emphasis on recent applied evidence, specifically dealing with the employment contract, its implementation, and related questions of work organization. It will be useful to academics and students of industrial relations, political economy, and management.

The neoliberal transformation of welfare state institutions has intensified social inequalities, raising questions of social justice across European varieties of capitalism. In Germany, this transformation occurred with Third Way social democracy and the consequent Hartz reforms. After ten years of reducing unemployment, this 'Hartz Regime' is now cited as a model for reforming other European political economies. Despite this apparent success, it has also received criticism for exacerbating the social injustices of neoliberal capitalism, ultimately leading to the question: how do we know if the German Hartz Regime is socially just? Drawing on the Frankfurt School of critical theory, this study demonstrates not only how to develop a theory of social justice for empirically studying labour market institutions, but also illustrates it through an extensive study of the German case. The result is both unsurprising and reinforces classical social democratic concerns: not only the Hartz Regime, but capitalism itself, is inherently unjust. By accepting this previously recognised conclusion, the book provides a critical framework for the normative evaluation of empirical institutions, effective for studying the varieties of social (in)justice in contemporary capitalism beyond Germany.

* Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year * Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize * 800-CEO-READ Business Book of the Year * A New York Times Notable Book * A Washington Post Notable Book * An NPR Best Book of 2017 * A Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2017 * An Economist Best Book of 2017 * A Business Insider Best Book of 2017 * "A gripping story of psychological defeat and resilience" (Bob Woodward, The Washington Post)-an intimate account of the fallout from the closing of a General Motors assembly plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, and a larger story of the hollowing of the American middle class. This is the story of what happens to an industrial town in the American heartland when its main factory shuts down-but it's not the familiar tale. Most observers record the immediate shock of vanished jobs, but few stay around long enough to notice what happens next when a community with a can-do spirit tries to pick itself up. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Amy Goldstein spent years immersed in Janesville, Wisconsin, where the nation's oldest operating General Motors assembly plant shut down in the midst of the Great Recession. Now, with intelligence, sympathy, and insight into what connects and divides people in an era of economic upheaval, Goldstein shows the consequences of one of America's biggest political issues. Her reporting takes the reader deep into the lives of autoworkers, educators, bankers, politicians, and job re-trainers to show why it's so hard in the twenty-first century to recreate a healthy, prosperous working class. "Moving and magnificently well-researched...Janesville joins a growing family of books about the evisceration of the working class in the United States. What sets it apart is the sophistication of its storytelling and analysis" (Jennifer Senior, The New York Times). "Anyone tempted to generalize about the American working class ought to meet the people in Janesville. The reporting behind this book is extraordinary and the story-a stark, heartbreaking reminder that political ideologies have real consequences-is told with rare sympathy and insight" (Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Soul of a New Machine).

New technology arguably provided the greatest challenge to industrial relations since the formation of unions. The problems raised led to a whole range of responses - from rejection of the new technology to acceptance fo the change with management and workers making new (and sometimes unheard of) agreements. This book, originally published in 1986 and based on extensive original research, examines the changes in industrial relations which the new technology of the 1980s caused, analysing the implications for the workforce and the reactions of the management and trade unions to the challenges.

Most existing theoretical approaches to industrial relations and human resources management (IR/HRM) build their analyses and policy prescriptions on one of two foundational assumptions. They assume either that conflict between workers and employers is the natural and inevitable state of affairs; or that under normal circumstances, cooperation is what employers can and should expect from workers. By contrast, A New Theory of Industrial Relations: People, Markets and Organizations after Neoliberalism proposes a theoretical framework for IR/HRM that treats the existence of conflict or cooperation at work as an outcome that needs to be explained rather than an initial presupposition. By identifying the social and organizational roots of reasoned, positively chosen cooperation at work, this framework shows what is needed to construct a genuinely consensual form of capitalism. In broader terms, the book offers a critical theory of the governance of work under capitalism. 'The governance of work' refers to the structures of incentives and sanctions, authority, accountability and direct and representative participation within and beyond the workplace by which decisions about the content, conditions and remuneration of work are made, applied, challenged and revised. The most basic proposition made in the book is that work will be consensual-and, hence, that employees will actively and willingly cooperate with the implementation of organizational plans and strategies-when the governance of work is substantively legitimate. Although stable configurations of economic and organizational structures are possible in the context of a bare procedural legitimacy, it is only where work relationships are recognized as right and just that positive forms of cooperation will occur. The analytic purpose of the theory is to specify the conditions under which substantive legitimacy will arise. Drawing in particular on the work of Alan Fox, Robert Cox and Jurgen H

The end of the post-World War II 'long boom' in the mid-1970s proved the beginning of a process of political-economic change that has fundamentally transformed labour law, both in Australia and across the developed world more generally. This is a phenomenon with deep ramifications for social justice. The dissolution of productive industry, the fragmentation of employment categories, the rise of profound employment precarity and an increasingly hostile legal environment for trade unionism have been of immense significance for key social justice issues, including income inequality, the rise of a new working-underclass, and the marginalization of organised labour. By combining the concepts of the Parisian Regulation Approach with an explicitly Marxist jurisprudence, this study offers a theoretically rigorous yet empirically sensitive account of legal transition, with key case studies in the metal, food processing and retail sectors. Given the similar development logic of post-World War II capitalism in Western societies, this theory, although operationalised in the Australian context, can be used in the effort to explain labour law change more broadly.

Since the 1980s, the world's governments have decreased state welfare and thus increased the number of unprotected 'informal' or 'precarious' workers. As a result, more and more workers do not receive secure wages or benefits from either employers or the state. This book offers a fresh and provocative look into the alternative social movements informal workers in India are launching. It also offers a unique analysis of the conditions under which these movements succeed or fail. Drawing from 300 interviews with informal workers, government officials and union leaders, Rina Agarwala argues that Indian informal workers are using their power as voters to demand welfare benefits from the state, rather than demanding traditional work benefits from employers. In addition, they are organizing at the neighborhood level, rather than the shop floor, and appealing to 'citizenship', rather than labor rights.