A group of distinguished authors review the economic, socio-psychological, and legal aspects of women in traditional and non-traditional jobs.

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

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

Volume 15 of Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations (AILR) contains ten papers, four of which deal with human resource management and six of which deal with unionization. Six of the papers were originally presented in Best Papers sessions at the 57th and 58th annual meetings of the Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA). In keeping with AILRs global perspective and global sourcing of leading research, the studies contained in these papers draw on data from the United Kingdom, France, Asia, Canada and the United States.
*Contains 10 papers that address human resource management and unionization
*Global perspective with data from the UK, France, Asia, Canada, and the US
*Six of the 10 papers were "Best Papers' from the 57th and 58th annual meetings of the LERA

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

When it first appeared in hardcover, Which Side Are You On? received widespread critical accolades, and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. In this new paperback edition, Thomas Geoghegan has updated his eloquent plea for the relevance of organized labor in America with an afterword covering the labor movement through the 1990s. A funny, sharp, unsentimental career memoir, Which Side Are You On? pairs a compelling history of the rise and near-fall of labor in the United States with an idealist's disgruntled exercise in self-evaluation. Writing with the honesty of an embattled veteran still hoping for the best, Geoghegan offers an entertaining, accessible, and literary introduction to the labor movement, as well as an indispensable touchstone for anyone whose hopes have run up against the unaccommodating facts on the ground. Wry and inspiring, Which Side Are You On? is the ideal book for anyone who has ever woken up and realized, "You must change your life."

Unlike other labor law and management books, Blackard's comprehensive new work not only examines legal, strategic human resources management, change management, and related labor/management relations issues, but also offers easily grasped and applied methods for addressing all of these issues. Labor relations should be a fully integrated part of a systemic approach to human resource management, argues Blackard. He challenges the feasibility of ad hoc programs and labor/management partnerships, but encourages collaboration within the context of both parties' interests and roles. His book provides a philosophy and set of practices to manage change and improve the labor/management relationship in the unionized workplace.

Companies with poor union relationships rarely have union problems; they have management problems. The crux is that managing change is a special challenge. To help executives address the challenge, Blackard first reviews the state of labor relations and discusses key differences between managing change in union and non-union settings. He presents a philosophy based on collaboration of countervailing interests and an integrated model for change management that is uniquely applicable in unionized workplaces. He then discusses the application of management practices based on such concepts as organizational learning, systems theory, trust, power, mutual gains negotiations, and supplemental teams that support the countervailing collaboration concept. By seeing labor relations as part of a broader human resource management system, one can identify and better understand many of the questions that inevitably rise when faced with the need for rapid and often drastic change.

This book is divided into six chapters: a review of theory and research; diagnosing situational characteristics; measuring performance; estabiling pay increases; pay system administration; and pay system evolution.

This text examines the impact of public sector reforms and reorganisations on the experiences of the UK public sector's six million workers and those employed in the private sector but providing public services. Chapters bring long-standing topics up-to-date, such as worker representation and reward.

A comparative study of how the current industrial relations systems come to be and of changes in such systems in non-industrialized countries since the 1980s. After an introduction, six essays look at the delusion of the Molotov cocktail in South African industrial relations, colonialism and industrial relations in India, from ostensible voluntarism to interventionism in Malaysia, corporatism and nationalism in Mexico, and colonialism and labor relations in Hong Kong.

Labor-Management Cooperation in a Public Service Industry outlines the historical aspects of labor-management cooperation and the characteristics of the transit industry which made it conducive to this cooperation. The second chapter discusses different cooperative programs such as employee input programs, safety programs, performance incentive programs, and training programs. Administrative considerations are examined in chapter three, along with the potential difficulties and calculating cost benefits. The two appendices offer a case study analysis format and quantitative assessment of four quality circles. This book contains extensive interviews with nearly seventy mass transit practitioners.

Within the labor relations paradigm, employee voice is broadly defined as the ways and means through which employees 'have a say' and influence organizational issues at work. Whilst we know much about employee voice in the Anglo-American (developed) world, we know much less about how employee voice operates in emerging economies. This volume explores the nature of employee voice in four emerging economies: Argentina, China, India and South Korea. The volume brings together an internationally renowned group of contributors who are experts in their field and an authority on their countries, to combine cutting edge research and theory in this essential exploration of voice in emerging economies. This volume identifies, inter alia, novel forms and channels of employee voice, new institutional and informal actors, new challenges to social dialogue and representation in emerging economies, and, the importance of cultural norms in predicting employee voice behaviors. The volume therefore provides a timely challenge to the predominant assumptions that underline the nature, operation and effectiveness of employee voice in the Western world.

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.

Industrial Relations in Sub-Saharan Africa provides an overview on the state and nature of industrial relations in tropical and southern Africa, encompassing theoretical and comparative perspectives and country studies. Contributors include some of the leading experts in the field, many based at African universities. They provide insights into the underlying causes of both individual national traditions and practices, and continent-wide trends.

Reflecting the perspectives of disciplines ranging from labor economics to organizational sociology to industrial psychology, the papers included in volume 9 constitute a rich mix of new and unusual research approaches to and findings about important contemporary industrial relations and workplace topics. Among the topics represented in these papers are the evolution of worker attitudes at Mitsubishi Motors, pay satisfaction and skill acquisition under skilled-based pay systems, new payment systems for British telephony personnel, and dual and unilateral employee loyalty. Other papers in this volume conceptually and empirically explore comparative institutional approaches to the firm and labor-management relations, the philosophies of American and Canadian unions, a sequential investment-bargaining model of striker replacement legislation, and the ideology of wildcat strikes and shop floor governance. Four of these papers were winners of the 2nd Annual Industrial Relations Research Association/Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations paper competition.

This book focuses on the relationship between health sector and industrial relations reforms and the impact these have had on employment relations in Australia since 1990. The book adds to the international literature on New Public Management with a distinctively Australian focus and synthesizes the impact of health sector and industrial relations reforms on health care management and work practices. It illustrates that New Public Management practices have been implemented creatively at both macro and micro levels. The book provides context to the changing work practices in the health care sector.

According to Chermesh, the Israeli industrial relations system has developed as a state within a state, having, by the mid-1980s, gained a high level of autonomy and detachment from political and economic constraints. At the heart of the system is the Histadrut, the General Federation of Labor, which Chermesh asserts must be radically reshaped in order to bring about political and economic control of the system. By tracing the evolution of the system from the mid-1960s, Chermesh demonstrates the limits of economic and legal perspectives as analytical tools in the field of collective industrial relations. Instead he stresses the importance of the institutional setting for planning and implementing sound industrial relations policy. By constructing an analytical laboratory for industrial relations research. Chermesh's study merits the attention of students and scholars involved in comparative industrial relations and the sociology of organizations as well as those studying contemporary Israeli society and economic life.

In Combating Injustice, Jon Falsarella Dawson approaches American literary naturalism as a means of social criticism, exploring the powerful economic arguments and commentaries on labor struggles presented in novels by Frank Norris, Jack London, and John Steinbeck. Making use of extensive archival research, Dawson considers many of the original periodical sources that fueled books from McTeague to The Grapes of Wrath, as Norris, London, and Steinbeck transformed contemporary materials into illustrations of the socioeconomic forces that shape American life. By depicting the operations of powerful individuals and institutions, these naturalist writers offered audiences a greater awareness of the plight of labor so that readers might find the inspiration to become agents of change. Works such as The Octopus, The Iron Heel, Martin Eden, and In Dubious Battle illuminate many of the central economic issues at play in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including the rise of commodity culture, labor disputes involving industrial and agricultural workers, widespread poverty, extreme inequality, and the concentration of resources and land ownership. Norris, London, and Steinbeck highlighted the dangers of these developments by charting their impact on central characters whose fates result from the predatory tactics of corporate monopolies, wealthy individuals, and large financial establishments. Dawson's lucid analysis shows how all three writers, drawing on contemporary events, accentuated the need for reform and stressed the potential for change by human action. Each author took inspiration from notable events in California, ranging from the Mussel Slough tragedy of 1880 to the agricultural strikes in the Central Valley during the 1930s, presenting the state as a microcosm for conditions throughout the nation during a period of tremendous upheaval. Combating Injustice: The Naturalism of Frank Norris, Jack London, and John Steinbeck provides carefully contextualized readings of three major writers whose works express both the necessity for and the possibility of creating a more egalitarian society.

Alexander examines the history of the labor movement in Brazil during its two key phases. First, he looks at the origins and early development of the movement from the last decades of the 19th century until the Revolution of 1930. Then he analyzes the impact of the corporate state structure that President Getulio Vargas imposed on labor during his first tenure in power, and the continuation of that structure during most of the remainder of the century. Until 1930, the trajectory of the labor movement in Brazil was quite similar to what was happening in most of the rest of Latin America. Most of the early labor organizations were mutual-benefit societies rather than trade unions. This began to change in the early 1900s. From the onset, organized labor in Brazil was involved with politics, and organized labor had to deal not only with the opposition of employers, but also with that of successive conservative governments. All this changed with the ascent of Vargas to power in 1930. He sought to win the support of the urban working class, and with the coming of the "New State" in 1937, the government was deeply involved in the direction of union activities. After 1945, Brazilian labor was once more influenced by a variety of different political currents, and by the 1960s the labor movement began to extend into the rural sector of the economy. The Constitution of 1988 allowed workers to organize without government control and they won the right to strike. By 1990 the Brazilian labor movement had attained the structure and characteristics it would retain into the new century. A major resource for scholars, students, and other researchers involved with Brazilian labor, economic, and politicalaffairs.

This book is a practical guide to the development and use of selection procedures for those who are concerned with human resource management, but who are not necessarily specialists in personnel testing. Dr. Barrett explains how to improve the quality of the work force with the most modern techniques while avoiding unfair discrimination against minorities, women, older workers, and the disabled. He challenges myths that have grown up in the past 30 years which interfere with the use of valid and fair selection procedures. Topics include: historical and legal background, cognitive and non-cognitive selection procedures, validity, and measuring and reducing adverse impact. Although he concentrates on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, there is special treatment of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Age of Discrimination in Employment Act.

Clearly written and informal, this book is every bit as professionally sound as his earlier book, "Fair Employment Strategies in Human Resource Management." It removes part of the mystique about tests with many illustrations of good and bad practice. Besides being useful to human resource executives, it is a valuable supplementary text for graduate and undergraduate courses in personnel management. Attorneys would also find it especially valuable because the author documents its point with citations to important cases and the the "Uniform Guidelines."

Volume 14 of "Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations (AILR)" contains 10 papers dealing, respectively, with HR versus finance in the control of corporate health care decisions; a theory of workplace conflict grounded in U.S. municipal collective bargaining; creative compliance in, or union defiance of, labor regulation in Australia; the extent to which union organizing means determine bargaining ends; the failure of labor-manangement cooperation at two Maine (U.S.) paper mills; the interplay between union and nonunion representation arrangements at Eurotunnel; challenges to and prospects for the industrial relations field in France; an empirical and comparative analysis of the industrial relations field in Germany; the development of the industrial relations field in Canada; and the implications of a decentralized labor market for industrial relations as a field in Australia. Taken together, these papers feature a rich mix of theory and empiricism, quantitative and qualitative analyses, and international perspectives on both industrial relations and human resources. Four of the papers were winners of the 2004 and 2005 AILR/Labor and Employment Relations Association Competitive Papers Competitions, and all papers were subject to double blind anonymous refereeing. The papers in Volume 14 of "AILR" will be of interest to industrial relations and human resource scholars and practitioners worldwide.