"A Living Wage", the rallying cry of activists, has a revealing history, here documented by Lawrence B. Glickman. The labor movement's response to wages shows how American workers negotiated the transition from artisan to consumer, opening up new political possibilities for organized workers and creating contradictions that continue to haunt the labor movement today.

Nineteenth-century workers hoped to become self-employed artisans, rather than permanent "wage slaves". After the Civil War, however, unions redefined working-class identity in consumerist terms, and demanded a wage that would reward workers commensurate with their needs as consumers. This consumerist turn in labor ideology also led workers to struggle for shorter hours and union labels.

First articulated in the 1870s, the demand for a living wage was voiced increasingly by labor leaders and reformers at the turn of the century. Glickman explores the racial, ethnic, and gender implications, as white male workers defined themselves in contrast to African Americans, women, Asians, and recent European immigrants. He shows how a historical perspective on the concept of a living wage can inform our understanding of current controversies.

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 Habermas, the book argues that whether workers fight against, tolerate or willingly accept the web of relationships that constitutes the organization depends on the interplay between three empirically variable factors: the objective day-to-day experience of incentives, constraints and obligations at work; the subjective understanding of work as a social relationship; and the formal institutional structure of policies, rules and practices by which relationships at work are governed.

The rise in standards of living throughout the U. S. in the wake of World War II brought significant changes to the lives of southern textile workers. Mill workers' wages rose, their purchasing power grew, and their economic expectations increased--with little help from the unions. Timothy Minchin argues that the reasons behind the failure of textile unions in the postwar South lie not in stereotypical assumptions of mill workers' passivity or anti-union hostility but in these large-scale social changes. Minchin addresses the challenges faced by the TWUA--competition from nonunion mills that matched or exceeded union wages, charges of racism and radicalism within the union, and conflict between its northern and southern branches--and focuses especially on the devastating general strike of 1951. Drawing extensively on oral histories and archival records, he presents a close look at southern textile communities within the context of the larger history of southern labor, linking events in the textile industry to the broader social and economic impact of World War II on American society. |Minchin argues that the reasons behind the failure of textile unions in the postwar South lie not in stereotypical assumptions of mill workers' passivity or antiunion hostility but in large-scale social changes. Drawing extensively on oral histories and archival records, he looks at southern textile communities within the context of the larger history of southern labor, linking events in the textile industry to the broader social and economic impact of World War II on American society.

Daniel Clark demonstrates the dramatic impact unionization made on the lives of textile workers in Henderson, North Carolina, in the decade after World War II. Focusing on the Harriet and Henderson Cotton Mills, he shows that workers valued the Textile Workers Union of America for more than the higher wages and improved benefits it secured for them. Specifically, Clark points to the importance members placed on union-instituted grievance and arbitration procedures, which most labor historians have seen as impediments rather than improvements. From the signing of contracts in 1943 until a devastating strike fifteen years later, the union gave local workers the tools they needed to secure at least some measure of workplace autonomy and respect from their employer. Union-instituted grievance procedures were not without flaws, says Clark, but they were the linchpin of these efforts. When arbitration and grievance agreements collapsed in 1958, the result was the strike that ultimately broke the union. Based on complete access to company archives and transcripts of grievance hearings, this case study recasts our understanding of labor-management relations in the postwar South. |Clark demonstrates the dramatic impact unionization made on the lives of textile workers in Henderson, N.C., in the decade after World War II. Focusing on the Harriet and Henderson Cotton Mills, he shows that workers valued the Textile Workers Union of America for more than the higher wages and improved benefits it secured for them. Members also placed great importance on union-instituted grievance and arbitration procedures, which most labor historians have seen as impediments rather than improvements. Based on complete access to company archives and transcripts of grievance hearings, this case study recasts our understanding of labor-management relations in the postwar South.

Series Information:
Routledge Studies in Employment Relations

A history of the twentieth-century feminists who fought for the rights of women, workers, and the poor, both in the United States and abroad For the Many presents an inspiring look at how US women and their global allies pushed the nation and the world toward justice and greater equality for all. Reclaiming social democracy as one of the central threads of American feminism, Dorothy Sue Cobble offers a bold rewriting of twentieth-century feminist history and documents how forces, peoples, and ideas worldwide shaped American politics. Cobble follows egalitarian women's activism from the explosion of democracy movements before World War I to the establishment of the New Deal, through the upheavals in rights and social citizenship at midcentury, to the reassertion of conservatism and the revival of female-led movements today. Cobble brings to life the women who crossed borders of class, race, and nation to build grassroots campaigns, found international institutions, and enact policies dedicated to raising standards of life for everyone. Readers encounter famous figures, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Frances Perkins, and Mary McLeod Bethune, together with less well-known leaders, such as Rose Schneiderman, Maida Springer Kemp, and Esther Peterson. Multiple generations partnered to expand social and economic rights, and despite setbacks, the fight for the many persists, as twenty-first-century activists urgently demand a more caring, inclusive world. Putting women at the center of US political history, For the Many reveals the powerful currents of democratic equality that spurred American feminists to seek a better life for all.

The book opens with a concise account of modern Japanese economic history and the essence of postwar macroeconomic issues and policy. Then, the nature of the Japanese corporation, labour relations and technological innovations, as well as the Japanese experience in structural adjustments are discussed. Three chapters are devoted to Japan's international economic relations, in which emphasis is placed on Japan's trade surplus, conflicts with Western powers and Japan's overseas investments. The final section contains chapters dealing with the service sector (including distribution, health and education) and with Japan's quality of life (relating to matters such as pollution and urbanisation).

This collection of papers from the 1993 BSA `Research Imaginations' conference explores the interpenetration of the public and private spheres. The book comprises two sections, one dealing with aspects of employment and finance, the other with domesticity and intimacy. Topics covered include the changing emotional geography of workplace and home, the gendering of aspects of employment and organisation, marital finance and gendered inheritance, the management of food and domestic labour, researching the emotions, and understanding intimate violence.

This collection of papers from the 1993 BSA `Research Imaginations' conference explores the interpenetration of the public and private spheres. The book comprises two sections, one dealing with aspects of employment and finance, the other with domesticity and intimacy. Topics covered include the changing emotional geography of workplace and home, the gendering of aspects of employment and organisation, marital finance and gendered inheritance, the management of food and domestic labour, researching the emotions, and understanding intimate violence.

In this short and accessible book, Len McCluskey, General Secretary of Unite the Union, presents the case for joining a trade union. Drawing on anecdotes from his own long involvement in unions, he looks at the history of trade unions, what they do and how they give a voice to working people, as democratic organisations. He considers the changing world of work, the challenges and opportunities of automation and why being trade unionists can enable us to help shape the future. He sets out why being a trade unionist is as much a political role as it is an industrial one and why the historic links between the labour movement and the Labour Party matter. Ultimately, McCluskey explains how being a trade unionist means putting equality at work and in society front and centre, fighting for an end to discrimination, and to inequality in wages and power.

In 2009, cabin crew in the BASSA union embarked on a historic, two-year battle against British Airways which was seeking to impose reduced crew levels and to transform working conditions. In the face of employer hostility, legal obstruction, government opposition and adverse media coverage, this workforce, diverse in terms of gender, sexuality, race and nationality undertook determined resistance against this offensive. Notably, their action included twenty-two days of strike action that saw mass participation in rallies and on picket lines. The dispute cost British Airways 150 million in lost revenue and its main outcome was the cabin crew's successful defence of their union and core conditions. Here, in their own words, Cabin Crew Conflict tells the strikers' story, focusing on cabin crew responses, perceptions of events, and their lived experiences of taking industrial action in a hostile climate. Foregrounding questions of class, gender and identity, and how these were manifest in the course of the dispute, the authors highlight the strike's significance for contemporary employment relations in and beyond the aviation industry. Lively and insightful, Cabin Crew Conflict explores the organisational and ideological role of the trade union, and shows how a 'non-traditional' workforce can organise and take effective action.

Telling the powerful story of the West Virginia coal mining rebellions of the early 20th century, this book collects material from the leaders, the miners, and the journalists sent to report on the 1912 and 1921 West Virginia mine wars--explosive examples of strikes and union battles. Featured in the text are articles, speeches, and discussions between union leaders such as Samuel Gompers, Frank Keeney, Fred Mooney, Bill Blizzard, and Mother Jones. Also included are U.S. Senate committee testimonies from miners and their family members describing life and work in the coal camps and explaining their participation in the violence. These facts clearly portray the human cost of industry and present the hard choices of a rebellious and often politically radical populace who refuses to be beleaguered under any circumstances.

This pathbreaking book offers the first in-depth study of Chinese labor activism during the momentous upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. The authors explore three distinctive forms of working-class protest: rebellion, conservatism, and economism. Labor, they argue, was working at cross-purposes through these three modes of militancy promoted by different types of leaders with differing agendas and motivations. Drawing upon a wealth of heretofore inaccessible archival sources, the authors probe the divergent political, psychocultural, and socioeconomic strains within the Shanghai labor movement. As they convincingly illustrate, the multiplicity of worker responses to the Cultural Revolution cautions against a one-dimensional portrait of working-class politics in contemporary China.

Philadelphia exploded in violence in 1910. The general strike that year was a notable point, but not a unique one, in a generations-long history of conflict between the workers and management at one of the nation's largest privately owned transit systems. In Running the Rails, James Wolfinger uses the history of Philadelphia's sprawling public transportation system to explore how labor relations shifted from the 1880s to the 1960s. As transit workers adapted to fast-paced technological innovation to keep the city's people and commerce on the move, management sought to limit its employees' rights. Raw violence, welfare capitalism, race-baiting, and smear campaigns against unions were among the strategies managers used to control the company's labor force and enhance corporate profits, often at the expense of the workers' and the city's well-being. Public service workers and their unions come under frequent attack for being a "special interest" or a hindrance to the smooth functioning of society. This book offers readers a different, historically grounded way of thinking about the people who keep their cities running. Working in public transit is a difficult job now, as it was a century ago. The benefits and decent wages Philadelphia public transit workers secured-advances that were hard-won and well deserved-came as a result of fighting for decades against their exploitation. Given capital's great power in American society and management's enduring quest to control its workforce, it is remarkable to see how much Philadelphia's transit workers achieved.

"Griswold del Castillo and Garcia have written a biography of Chavez, but it is also a history of the Mexican American labor movement and the Mexican American struggle for civil rights.... T]his is a fine book."--- Choice " D]eserves to be read not only by persons studying the Mexican American experience but also by those interested in labor studies, U.S.-Mexican relations, and U.S. civilization in the 1960s and 1970s, including politics and society."--- Western Historical Quarterly "Intended for scholars and general readers alike, the fascinating life story reads like a novel.... T]his sorely needed biography updates all the others."--- Multicultural Review When farm worker and labor organizer Cesar Chavez burst upon America's national scene in 1965, U.S. readers and viewers were witnessing the emergence of a new Mexican American, or Chicano, movement. This biography of Chavez by Richard Griswold del Castillo and Richard A. Garcia is the first to approach Chavez's life-his courageous acts, his turning points, his many perceived personas-in the context of Chicano and American history. It reveals a shy, quiet man who was launched by events into a maelstrom of campesino strikes, religious fervor, and nonviolent battles for justice. Among his friends and supporters he counted Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and millions across America who rallied to his cause. In Griswold del Castillo and Garcia's biography, Chavez's life mirrors major events in Mexican American history: Mexican immigration during the 1920s; forced repatriation in the 1930s; segregation in public schools; Mexican American contributions during World War II; the Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles; formation of Mexican American organizations to advance civil and political rights; the Chicano movement of the 1960s and early 1970s; the emergence of a conservative political backlash in the 1980s; and, finally, the "new immigration" in the 1990s. Cesar Chavez was touched by all these events, and his story is both private and part of a collective experience. Ultimately the authors see Chavez's significance as moral. In an age notable for its confusion about-if not lack of moral values, Cesar Chavez stands as proof that America still has people of rare courage and conviction who devote their lives to a righteous cause, to self sacrifice and nonviolent struggle against overwhelming odds. Chavez consistently respected all ethnic and religious groups, rejected materialism, and, above all, fought for justice. Griswold del Castillo and Garcia's biography tells the inspiring story of a man who lived a simple life and preached a simple guiding dictum: Si Se Puede-Yes, it can be done. Richard Griswold del Castillo was born and raised in Santa Ana California; his father was born in Minneapolis Minnesota and his mother was born in Mexico City, Mexico. He graduated from Santa Ana High school in 1960, went on study at UC Berkeley and the University of Dijon, France before receiving his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from UCLA . In 1992 he was a Fulbright Scholar in Mexico City, he was a visiting professor at UC Berkeley in 1994, and he became Professor Emeritus at San Diego State University in 2005. Richard A. Garcia, Professor of Ethnic Studies at California State University-Hayward, is the author of The Rise of the Mexican American Middle Class: San Antonio, 1929-1941.

The business world is in the midst of a radical transformation. The turbulent 90s have made fast responses, innovation, adaptability and customer orientation key behaviours of tomorrow's successful organization. These capabilities depend on a radical change in the form and character of all aspects of business organization and management. In Managing for the Future the author details the essential organizing concepts and patterns that will characterise tomorrow's successful organization. The book examines the emerging and alternative approaches to: the business process, the customer, the management of people, organizational design, the uses of information technologies, organizational culture, the management of the business, and life in the Tomorrow's Organization. This book is essential reading for those executives and managers who are passionately concerned with what has to be done today to re-shape their businesses to succeed in the turbulent 90s. It is an important guide to the characteristics of the successful organizations of the 1990s and beyond, and on the transformations that are required to bring it about. It is perhaps above all a participants guide to the future that is rushing towards us all.

Strategic Public Relations has been produced as a core book for what will become a series of second generation books treating public relations as a new, and separate discipline which has strategic implications for the whole business. Written primarily for senior executives and PR practitioners, Strategic Public Relations also serves students and young executives, covering such topics as: corporate goals and strategies; marketing communications; financial public relations; employee and local community relations; parliamentary and EU relations; building an international reputation; corporate advertising; sponsorship and media relations; communications research and corporate responsibility. All of the 16 contributors to this book, in addition to being recognised authorities in their fields, are senior practitioners. They will broaden your business horizons by showing you that corporate relations, if done properly, will lead to improved efficiency, improved competitive performance and, ultimately, to greater profit.

Although the health of the trade union movement may rest on its ability to include women in membership and leadership, little attention has been paid to women-only labour education. This original collection contains vibrant example of labour education events and the women involved who develop, implement, research, evaluate and facilitate at them. All the contributors speak from first-hand experience with women-only programs in unions across Canada, the United States and the world. They identify the methods used in pursuit of learner empowerment and transformation, and frankly discuss the outcomes. These real-life examples offer practical guidance and inspiration for all who create and support activist learning within unions and other social-justice organizations.

In this book Christina Gringeri investigates the effects of homeworking on workers--mainly women--and their families and explores the role of the state in subsidizing the development of homeworking jobs that depend on gender as an organizing principle. She focuses on two Midwestern communities--Riverton, Wisconsin and Prairie Hills, Iowa--where more than 80 families have supplemented their incomes since 1986 as home-based contractors of small auto parts for The Middle Company, a Fortune 500 manufacturer and subcontractor of General Motors.

Gringeri looks at rural development from the perspective of local and state officials as well as that of the workers. Through the use of extensive personal interviews, she shows how the advantage of homework for women--being able to stay home with their families--is outweighed by the disadvantages--piecework pay far below minimum wage, long hours, unstable contracts, and lack of company benefits.

Instead of providing the hoped-for financial panacea for rural families, Gringeri argues, industrial homework reinforces the unequal position of women as low-wage workers and holds families and communities below or near poverty level.

The presence of transaction costs greatly modifies the traditional picture of the allocation of resources through the market. It gives rise to many phenomena inexplicable in the simple market view and to problems of government policy. Oliver Williamson has been a leading figure in this analysis. His interpretations of corporate governance and of the complementarity between internal controls and the market have been the most profound in the literature. It is good that his leading essays are now available in collected form.' - Kenneth J. Arrow, Stanford University, US'Oliver Williamson's contributions to economics are certainly among the most important of the past several decades, and their importance will be increasingly recognized as economists come to grips with all that he has accomplished. This collection provides an unparalleled view of those contributions, and it belongs on the bookshelf of everyone who wants to understand complex economic transactions.' - David Kreps, Stanford University, US 'This book provides a terrific opportunity to have a collection of Oliver Williamson's best papers on transaction cost economics all in one convenient volume.' - Paul L. Joskow, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and MIT 'Williamson's work on transaction cost economics has shaped the thinking of all social scientists about organizations and institutions. This volume reprints many of his seminal papers on the subject, and is valuable both as commemoration and for reference.' - Avinash Dixit, Princeton University, US Transaction cost economics has and continues to be a fruitful area of research. There is still much to be done in the field with past research being used in conjunction with the vast number of contractual phenomena that have yet to be investigated in transaction cost economics terms. New challenges are posed by the need to move beyond the design of new contractual instruments (such as financial derivatives) to include an examination of the lurking hazards that attend contract implementation. This important collection brings together Professor Williamson's key papers on transaction cost economics. It will be of benefit to academics, scholars and practitioners with an interest in this progressive subject.

Social scientists have not helped the working class make strategic deci sions. Unionists need to know how to carry on industrial conflict so as to provide concrete economic benefits for their members. Should unions strike or not strike? Should losses be avoided at all costs, or can unions afford to take chances? Does economism gut the class power of workers or provide a pragmatic strategy for increasing workers' wage gains? We can say with great confidence that workers should join unions; there is now an exhaustive and compelling literature demonstrating that union membership provides a wide variety of economic benefits. We can say that corporatist class compromises lower income but increase job security and overall employment. Beyond that, however, we cannot say much. In particular, we can do little to advise particular unions in partic ular fixed institutional and political environments how they should han dle the microtactics of individual confrontations. The United Farm Work ers do not need a speech about the miracle of the Swedish industrial relations system. They need to know whether they should strike or not strike, and how their tactics should change if rival Teamsters come into the field. Unfortunately, medical research often has to start with rabbits be fore it proceeds to humans, and so it is with research in industrial conflict. The realistic prospects of doing a large sample analysis of con temporary American wage settlements that simultaneously estimates the effects of union tactics and economic factors are poor."

After reviewing the rise and decline of the UK system of industry wide collective bargaining, the authors use five detailed case studies to examine the process of decentralising bargaining from industry to single employer level. In each industry management's reasons for withdrawal, the union response, details of the new structures and the experience of operation of the new system are analysed. Finally, the five industries are compared and contrasted and lessons for employers and unions in other industries are drawn.

This book analyzes how a sizable group of Gennan workers came to support Communism and how they in turn influenced the emergence and development of the German Communist Party (KPD) in its fonnative period as a mass party. It reconstructs the interaction between a party and the constituency to which it appealed within the constraints and opportunities set by social structures, econo mic conditions, and political competitors. This interaction revolved around the elaboration and implementation of a specific concept of revolutionary politics, and this study investigates both the rise of the KPD as a mass party and its failure to set off a socialist revolution in the early 1920s in light of the contradictory ways German workers responded to its revolutionary strategy. When I began to study the KPD in the mid 1970s, scholarly works in the West portrayed a party so out of touch with the realities of German life from 1918 to 1933 that its history was a litany of political mistakes that led from crisis to catastrophe. The KPD was dominated by the foreign policy interests of the Soviet Union, by factional disputes and personal rivalries among the leadership, by an authoritarian, centralized party structure that stifled rank-and-file initiative and imposed a party line determined in Moscow and Berlin, and by a rigid ideology largely irrelevant to trends in German economy, society, and politics with at best compensatory value for a minority of the most impoverished workers."

A critical ER text with an international perspective, designed to map to the CIPD module but just as valuable for non-CIPD students. Completely maps to the CIPD module, Managing Employment Relations Truly integrated international approach, not just through case studies and examples Critical approach, for those wanting to engage with critical debates Academic approach, drawing on the latest research Excellent links between theory and practice Full range of interactive learning features including case studies (at least half will be international), exercises and a glossary of key terms Broad coverage including key developments and current practices Structure split into conceptual debates and functional areas for easy navigation