The Polish crisis in the early 1980s provoked a great deal of reaction in the West. Not only governments, but social movements were also touched by the establishment of the Independent Trade Union Solidarnosc in the summer of 1980, the proclamation of martial law in December 1981, and Solidarnosc's underground activity in the subsequent years. In many countries, campaigns were set up in order to spread information, raise funds, and provide the Polish opposition with humanitarian relief and technical assistance. Labor movements especially stepped into the limelight. A number of Western European unions were concerned about the new international tension following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the new hard-line policy of the US and saw Solidarnosc as a political instrument of clerical and neo-conservative cold warriors. This book analyzes reaction to Solidarnosc in nine Western European countries and within the international trade union confederations. It argues that Western solidarity with Solidarnosc was highly determined by its instrumental value within the national context. Trade unions openly sided with Solidarnosc when they had an interest in doing so, namely when Solidarnosc could strengthen their own program or position. But this book also reveals that reaction in allegedly reluctant countries was massive, albeit discreet, pragmatic, and humanitarian, rather than vocal, emotional, and political.

This volume deals with the history of organized labor in all of the countries of the English-speaking West Indies. It is the fourth in a series of histories of the organized labor movement in Latin America and the Caribbean. Alexander traces the countries' origins, early struggles, experiences with collective bargaining, and the key roles in the politics of their respective countries, particularly their participation in the struggle for self-government and independence. He also examines the international organizations of trade unions in the West Indian area, and their association with the hemisphere and worldwide labor groups.

This work is based on the author's personal contacts with these labor movements and their leaders, as well as on printed material, including collective contracts, histories of some of the labor groups and other similar sources. Scholars and students of labor relations, economic and social development, and those interested in the history of the West Indies and Latin America will enjoy this book.

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 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.

The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor was the most ambitious and significant labor organization of the Gilded Age. As the charismatic leader of this group, Terence Powderly was America's first nationally known labor leader, the first to achieve a high degree of recognition from working people, industrialists, and politicians across the continent. To most Americans, Powderly "was" the Knights of Labor. Based on an exhaustive examination of Powderly's voluminous correspondence, this book offers a critical analysis of Powderly's efforts to oversee the most spectacular experiment in class-wide solidarity ever undertaken.

Phelan paints a sympathetic and probing portrait of a complex figure caught up in the whirlwind of local and national events. He details the challenges and pressures of labor leadership at a time when industrialization was convulsing the nation, and when the labor movement was struggling to build a viable national institution capable of creating a more egalitarian society. The national focus of this study helps to synthesize the numerous community studies written on the Knights in recent years and offers fresh perspectives on the ultimate meaning of the organization. It is the first detailed examination of the Knights' leadership since the Powderly and Hayes Papers have become available.

Drawing on Marxism and engaging with theorists such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Gilles Deleuze, and Slavoj i ek, John Michael Roberts argues that a new expressive ideology has coalesced within the contemporary workplace around the theme of 'competence'. The 'competence' agenda encourages management and workers to build networks of trust, cooperation and dialogue between one another. By examining the competent public sphere as it appears in the global economy, the author takes to task the competence agenda, relates this agenda to the hegemony of global finance and to the fetishism of the new economy, exposes the dilemmas and contradictions of the competence agenda, and through everyday examples from the UK and USA illustrates how competence is played out and resisted in the contemporary workplace. This bookprovides a fascinating critical account of how the way we work today is debated and discussed by management and workers.

Covering the role of trades unions and labour organizations in industrial relations, Industry's Democratic Revolution contains case studies from Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and USA. Each chapter is authored by a president or secretary general of one of the largest industrial unions from that particular country, which gives an unparalleled insight into the workings of unions and their participation in the key issues of industrial relations such as: productivity factors; guaranteed wages; union participation in management decision-making; de-centralization of industrial power; and policy research.

This comparative study of industrial relations provides an analysis of a wide range of phenomena, with a view to uncovering the origins of national diversity. It takes into account the notion of strategic choice, set within a series of constraints of environment, organizational and institutional conditions and power relationships. The book: covers a wide range of examples from the UK, USA, France, Germany Italy, Sweden, Eastern Europe, Latin America, India and Japan; includes a comprehensive analysis of management and employers' associations, labour and trades unions; and examines the role of the state in comparative perspective.

This book examines the escalation of an organizational conflict to one of the most talked about industrial crises of the past decade: the demise of Eastern Airlines. Through an analysis of the messages exchanged by some of its key participants--the representatives of the pilots and management of Eastern--this study attempts to explain how and why some 4,000 men and women walked away from high-paying glamour jobs and toppled an institution. The book is not an evaluation of the economic climate or financial events that put Eastern into a critical bind; instead, it is an analysis of the human cost of an organizational tragedy that might possibly have been avoided.

The results of the study support communication theory that predicts that when an agitative group bearing the characteristics of the pilots of Eastern Airlines conflicts with an establishment such as Eastern's management under Frank Lorenzo, the establishment can always successfully avoid or suppress agitative movements. This work will be of interest to scholars and practitioners in industrial relations, labor-management studies, corporate communication, and American industrial history.

The study of European labor relations has traditionally been divided between two major theoretical perspectives. Descriptive nation-studies and case studies of specific developments have dominated the European continent. In contrast, the Anglo-Saxon approach has been more explicitly comparative and theoretical in its orientation. As a consequence of their unique advantages and common disadvantage of a focus on national developments to the exclusion of general trends, Europe remains a patchwork of different nations with respect to labor relations. Hans Slomp offers this book as an effort to complement this national perspective with a European view. He provides a general introduction to European labor relations, offering comparative material from a range of countries. Each chapter covers a specific period; the division into periods is based on important changes in economic and political conditions common to most of Europe. In accordance with the continental approach, attention is devoted not just to the form, but also to the content of labor relations. The survey covers the issues of labor relations as practiced by employers or employers' associations and trade unions rather than as an academic discipline. For the general reader, Slomp's work provides a much-needed survey of European labor relations. For the labor relations scholar, it facilitates the distinction between what is truly specific for one country and what is a variation from a European trend.

Founded in 1893, the National League of the Blind was the first nationwide self-represented group of visually impaired people in Britain. This book explores its campaign to make the state solely responsible for providing training, employment and assistance for the visually impaired as a right, and its fight to abolish all charitable aid for them.

This book aims to fill some of the gaps in historical narrative about labor unions, Nigerian leftists, and decolonization during the twentieth century. It emphasizes the significance of labor union education in British decolonization, labor unionism, and British efforts at modernizing the human resources of Nigeria.

In his heyday, Carlo Tresca ranked among the most important radicals and labour activists in the United States, often sharing the spotlight with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, 'Big Bill' Haywood, and Emma Goldman. A charismatic Italian anarchist who became a folk hero to immigrant and native-born workers alike, Tresca was described by comrades as a 'freelance revolutionary' because of his independent spirit and militant activism. During his wild and adventurous career spanning nearly forty years (1904-1943), Tresca pursued a range of activities unmatched by any of his radical contemporaries: independent newspaper editor, labour agitator and organizer, civil libertarian, foremost leader of the Italian American anti-fascist resistance, and an indomitable foe of Stalinism. Culminating over a decade of research, this fast-paced and vivid biography brings to life the volatile world of radical politics in early twentieth-century America through one of its foremost figures.

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.

This book is a comprehensive treatment of worker participation in the United States and its relation to the legal system. The purpose of the study is to analyze the meaning and practice of industrial democracy and to propose statutory reforms that would benefit both management and labor. It is unique in its interdisciplinary approach, which combines research from the fields of history, law, industrial relations, sociology, and organizational behavior.

Labor-management cooperation and worker participation are subjects of vigorous debate. This work examines the arguments concerning the benefits and deficiencies of involvement programs, their impact on union relationships, and their function as techniques to enhance productivity and competitiveness in the workplace. The study traces the history of participation from its inception in the 1870s through the 1980s, surveying the case law from 1934 to 1991, and provides a political and economic context for the analysis of participation. The book will be of interest to scholars and professionals in industrial relations, industrial sociology, labor law, and labor studies.

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.

Strike-action has long been a notable phenomenon in Israeli society, despite forces that have weakened its recurrence, such as the Arab-Jewish conflict, the decline of organized labor, and the increasing precariousness of employment. While the impact of strikes was not always immense, they are deeply rooted in Israel's past during the Ottoman Empire and Mandate Palestine. Workers persist in using them for material improvement and to gain power in both the private and public sectors, reproducing a vibrant social practice whose codes have withstood the test of time. This book unravels the trajectory of the strikes as a rich source for the social-historical analysis of an otherwise nation-oriented and highly politicized history.

This volume examines attempted changes to industrial relations in Britain during 1948 1990, designed to promote institutional reforms of management and trade unions. Specific focus is given to the Donovan Commission and other trade union reforms, and incomes policies to connect pay more tightly with productivity. International initiatives of the AACP, BPC, and EPA are also included. MARKET 1: Undergraduates and postgraduates studying Economic History; British Economic History of the Twentieth-Century.

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.

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.