Modern capitalism and political freedom rest on concepts of conscience and morality, and abhor concentrations of unbridled power. In America, that economic and political system developed mechanisms designed to check and balance such power. Despite those mechanisms, corporate America developed too many imperial chief executives who abused their power by engaging in a fraudulent and self-serving pursuit of wealth and perquisites. This edition deals with how this happened, how the system responded, and actions that could minimize the danger of its recurrence. The text analyzes those who either support or keep quiet for miscreant chief executives, and how these participants became involved in corporate fraud. The investigation is completed by a look at the results of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the law enacted as the corrective response to corporate corruption, and the increasingly intense pressure to ease the expense and other burdens associated with its vigorous enforcement. Hopefully, the insights gained by the analysis will contribute to a revived confidence in the integrity of corporate accounts, and thereby sustain the vitality of America's capital markets, which are essential to our future economic well-being.

First published in 1968, the main purpose of this study is to present an account of the Russian Labour Movement, based mainly on original Russian sources. The Labour Movement differed greatly from those of the chief European countries from its inception to the final stage. This text investigates the main trends of the m; to analyse the origins and nature of soviets; and to describe the scope and character of the Russian Labour organization.

Vicente Lombardo Toledano was the founder of numerous labour union organisations in Mexico and Latin America between the 1920s and the 1960s. He was not only an organiser but also a broker between the unions, the government, and business leaders—an almost singular figure able to disentangle difficult, seemingly irreconcilable conflicts. He cooperated closely with the governments of Mexico and other Latin American nations and worked with the representatives of the Soviet Union when he considered it useful. This willingness to work across ideological divides meant that he was alternately seen as a government stooge or a communist, even though he was never a member of the Communist Party nor of any Mexican government administration. Daniela Spenser's rousing new biography of Lombardo Toledano is the first to be based on his extensive private papers. In addition to this unprecedented access, Spenser also draws on primary sources from European, Mexican and American archives, and on extensive personal interviews. Her even-keeled portrayal of the man counters both previous hagiographies and vilifications that have come before it.

The legend of IWW activist and songwriter Joe Hill, brought to life through his letters, songs and writings. Radical songwriter and organiser Joe Hill was murdered by the capitalist state in 1915, but his songs continue to inspire working-class activists and musicians. In The Letters of Joe Hill, assembled by radical historian Philip Foner with new material by Alexis Buss, readers are provided a window into the political reflections and personal struggles behind Hill's legend.

This volume seeks to re-energise the paradigm of the New International Labour Studies by detailing how struggles over the construction, reproduction, utilisation and restructuring of labour forces are the contested social foundations upon which the global economy stands. Through a combination of theoretical works and a series of case studies, the volume highlights the cutting edge of international labour studies. Its expands on three pivotal areas of study within the discipline:1) the social construction of new labour forces across an expanding international division of labour; 2) the self-organising potential of workers, particularly within non-traditional sectors; and 3) the possibilities for transborder labour movements to help address the asymmetrical power relationships between globalised capital and localised labour. In addressing these themes, the volume helps explain not only how the contemporary international division of labour is produced and reproduced, but also the strengths and limits to current attempts to overcome its unequal and divisive nature. This book was published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

This volume contains distinctive papers that explore important aspects of contemporary employment relationships, some on micro level in orientation, whereas others are more macro oriented. Some papers contain extensive quantitative analysis, while others feature deep qualitative analysis, all shedding new light on their chosen topics. Contributors provide evidence and examples from the USA, the UK, Canada, and the Netherlands, dealing with topics such as: the dual alignment of industrial relations activity in terms of strategic choice and mutual gains; evidence from Canada about first contract arbitration and its implications for the proposed USA Employee Free Choice Act; the search for an integrated model of worker participation and organizational performance at the level of the firm; the impact of employee well-being policies and sickness absence on workplace performance; the role of participation in decision making in reducing work-life conflict; an institutional analysis of union engagement in Western New York State economic development; and, the International Labor Organization's enforcement of labor standards in the global maritime industry.

This book gives a comprehensive survey of the field of Industrial Relations, focusing on general principles and problems. Illustrations are drawn from the practices adopted in many parts of the world such as Australia, France, Germany and the USA. Contents include chapters on the following: * Personnel Management * Training * Methods of Wage Payment * Job Evaluation * Profit-Sharing and Co-partnership * Trade Unionism * Employers' Organizations * Collective Bargaining * Wage Bases * Equal Opportunities * Conciliation and Arbitration

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.

Strikes have been part of American labor relations from colonial days to the present, reflecting the widespread class conflict that has run throughout the nation's history. Against employers and their goons, against the police, the National Guard, local, state, and national officials, against racist vigilantes, against their union leaders, and against each other, American workers have walked off the job for higher wages, better benefits, bargaining rights, legislation, job control, and just plain dignity. At times, their actions have motivated groundbreaking legislation, defining new rights for all citizens; at other times they have led to loss of workers' lives. This comprehensive encyclopedia is the first detailed collection of historical research on strikes in America. To provide the analytical tools for understanding strikes, the volume includes two types of essays - those focused on an industry or economic sector, and those focused on a theme. Each industry essay introduces a group of workers and their employers and places them in their economic, political, and community contexts. The essay then describes the industry's various strikes, including the main issues involved and outcomes achieved, and assesses the impact of the strikes on the industry over time. Thematic essays address questions that can only be answered by looking at a variety of strikes across industries, groups of workers, and time, such as, why the number of strikes has declined since the 1970s, or why there was a strike wave in 1946. The contributors include historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers, as well as current and past activists from unions and other social movement organizations. Photos, a Topic Finder, a bibliography, and name and subject indexes add to the works appeal.

This book examines the status of trade unions in contemporary China, exploring the degree to which trade unions have been reformed as China is increasingly integrated into the global economy, and discussing the key question of how autonomous China's trade unions are. Based on an extensive, grass-roots survey of local trade union chairpersons, the book reveals that although trade unions in foreign owned firms and in firms dealing with foreign firms are beginning to resemble trade unions in the West, in the majority of firms a state corporatist model of trade unions continues, with chairmen appointed by the party, with many of them occupying simultaneously party and trade union positions, and thinking it right to do so, and having power bases and networks in both the party and the trade union, with initiatives for protecting workers? interests coming from the top down, rather than the bottom up, and with collective negotiation and democratic participation in union affairs continuing to be a mere formality. The book shows how the state - wishing to maintain political stability - continues to regard itself, legitimated by the concepts of "socialism" and "proletarian dictatorship," as the sole arbiter of and protector of workers? rights, with no place for workers protecting their own interests themselves in the harsh environment of the new market economy. The book concludes, however, that because the different model of industrial relations which prevails in foreign owned firms is formally part of the government system, there is the possibility that this new more Western model will in time spread more widely.

First Published in 2017. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor and Francis, an Informa company.

Teachers and Teacher Unions in a Globalised World asks a series of pressing questions of teacher educators, teachers and teacher unions worldwide in this era of global capitalism. As governments around the world support austerity politics in the face of financial meltdowns, social inequalities, terrorist threats, climate catastrophe, wars and mass migrations, the book questions whether practitioners in teaching and teacher education are succumbing to pressures to dismantle their nation-state systems of education. The authors present a clearly argued case in Ireland for teachers and teacher educators organising to realise their moral and social responsibilities of free and fair schooling for all when it is most needed, as well as insisting on policy debates about a free publicly funded school system. At a time when teachers are feeling overwhelmed with workload and frustrated by the visible turning of events away from the historical record, the book emphasises the importance of practitioner research in informing decisions about a strategic and democratic way forward for education around the globe. Teachers and Teacher Unions in a Globalised World will be of great interest to academics and researchers in the field of education, as well as teacher educators, practitioners and policymakers.

Japan's national identity associates the 'Japanese people' with the Japanese land, making the farmer the backbone of the nation. Others in Japanese Agriculture challenges this mythology, revealing the changing faces of Japanese farmers during the colonial and post-war eras. First, it traces the tangled trail of Koreans brought into farming villages as a result of war mobilization and capitalist development. Second, it discusses the plight of those who evacuated from cities as they attempted to eke out a living on marginal land. Third, it points out that settlers repatriated from the colonies were met with hostility from villagers and indifference from authorities. Finally, it explores how those who were encouraged to emigrate for 'the good of the nation' in post-war Japan, found themselves victims of agrarian reforms, which severed their ties. In sum, despite being lauded as the 'backbone of the nation' Japanese farmers have been repeatedly marginalized and othered.

Drawing from experience internationally, on recent and important developments in regulatory theory, and upon models and approaches constructed during the author's empirical research, this book addresses the question: how can law influence the internal self-regulation of organisations in order to make them more responsive to occupational health and safety concerns? In this context, it is argued that Occupational Health and Safety management systems have the potential to stimulate models of self-organisation within firms in such a way as to make them self-reflective and to encourage informal self-critical reflection about their occupational health and safety performance. This book argues for a two track system of regulation under which enterprises are offered a choice between a continuation of traditional forms of regulation and the adoption of a safety management system-based approach on the other. The book concludes with a discussion of the use of criminal and administrative sanctions to provide organisations with incentives to adopt effective Occupational Health and Safety management systems. The book proposes a wider range of criminal sanctions and sentencing guidelines to ensure employers receive sentencing discounts where they have introduced effective management systems.

The eight volumes of British Trade Unions 1707-1918 reproduce in facsimile the many significant pamphlets, essays, articles and letters on this theme from this important period in British history. Presented chronologically, the texts re-map the history of the trade union, contextualising its development from inception through to the Twentieth Century. Drawing from a wide variety of libraries and archives, the collection brings together extremely rare material to illustrate the history of the development of trade unionism and industrial relations. Each volume is organized into broad themes such as trade societies, structures, ideologies, employers and employees, friends and enemies, and union among the unions. Making much of developments in industrial relations, various strikes and general unrest, the collection spans the period from the early journeymen's trade societies as they emerged in the Eighteenth Century through to the end of the First World War, when trade unions were challenging the way in which industry was organised.

Since its inception, Development Studies has tended to restrict its critical enquiries to nations in the 'Third World.' The field's important studies of labour markets, who circulates within them, and the controversies such issues generate, have hitherto been confined 'lesser developed' societies. In this important collection, drawing from key texts over the course Tom Brass's career, these concerns are deftly deployed to examine how these same phenomena affect metropolitan capitalist countries.

A recurring theme in the history of modern Britain in the twentieth-century has been the failure of its manufacturing industry and the record of disorder and conflict in the industrial workplace. This image was reinforced by the evidence of national strikes from the 1960s until 1984. This emphasis on decline and disorder in British manufacturing has distorted our understanding of workplace relationships and cultures in the post-war years. This volume provides a fresh assessment of the diverse and complex world of the workplace and Britain's production cultures during the long boom. Essays investigate the public and private sectors, and both manufacturing and service industries. The volume begins with a comparison of labour management in the post-war automobile industry, exploring the role of the foreman in the management of shop floor labour in Britain and the USA. The following two essays are concerned with relations between management and workers in the publicly-owned corporations. The first examines negotiations over pay and effort at the Swindon locomotive works, including the cultural values which informed the behaviour of the bargainers. The second investigates managerial responses to technical change in the British gas industry. We then move into the service sector, with an essay on the management of clerical staff in banks, including a discussion of the different roles available to male and female workers, and the incorporation of automated technologies. The final essay looks at the involvement of the unions in workplace productivity and the extent to which Labour politics informed union behaviour. The essays in this volume shed new light on the reasons for Britain's economic performance and opens up earlier interpretations of national decline and adversarial workplace cultures for further debate.

Globalisation is shaping a new system of international economic relations - be it in the fields of investment, production, trade, finance or technology. This book deals with the currently relevant subject of globalisation and its impact on labour market institutions, process, workers. This study is a survey of realising the aspirations of ordinary working people entrepreneurs, both the organised and the unorganised, the protected and unprotected, through joint action to ensure a better future for all.

This edited collection provides an understanding of the range of learning that is enabled by trade unions, and the agendas around that learning. It comes at an important time as, in the UK, recent years have seen significant new opportunities for unions' involvement in the government's learning and skills policy. At the same time, trade unions have had to cope with declining membership and changing employment patterns, and thus have a keen interest in defining their role in contemporary employment relations and in pursuing strategies for union renewal. Therefore, in order to explore these dynamics, a strong feature of the book is its drawing together of informed, research-based contributions from the fields of training, skills and education, and of industrial relations. International and historical perspectives are included in order to better understand the contemporary issues. There are important conclusions for policy-makers, practitioners and researchers.

Drawing from a variety of libraries and archives, this collection brings together material to illustrate the history of the development of trade unionism and industrial relations. It spans the period from the early journeymen's trade societies as they emerged in the 18th-Century through to the end of the First World War.

Why has there been no viable, independent labor party in the United States? Many people assert "American exceptionalist" arguments, which state a lack of class-consciousness and union tradition among American workers is to blame. While the racial, ethnic, and gender divisions within the American working class have created organizational challenges for the working class, Moody uses archival research to argue that despite their divisions, workers of all ethnic and racial groups in the Gilded Age often displayed high levels of class consciousness and political radicalism. In place of "American exceptionalism," Moody contends that high levels of internal migration during the late 1800's created instability in the union and political organizations of workers. Because of the tumultuous conditions brought on by the uneven industrialization of early American capitalism, millions of workers became migrants, moving from state to state and city to city. The organizational weakness that resulted undermined efforts by American workers to build independent labor-based parties in the 1880s and 1890s. Using detailed research and primary sources; Moody traces how it was that 'pure-and-simple' unionism would triumph by the end of the century despite the existence of a significant socialist minority in organized labor at that time. Kim Moody was a founder of Labor Notes and is the author of On New Terrain (Haymarket Books, 2017).

Despite widespread interest in the trade union movement and its history, it has never been easy to trace the development of individual unions, especially those now defunct, or where name changes or mergers have confused the trail. In this respect the standard histories and industrial studies tend to stimulate curiosity rather than satisfy it. When was a union founded? When did it merge or dissolve itself, or simply disappear? What records survive and where can further details of its history be found? These are the kinds of question the Directory sets out to answer. Each entry is arranged according to a standard plan, as follows: 1. Name of union; 2. Foundation date: Name changes (if any) and relevant dates. Any amalgamation or transfer of engagements. Cessation, winding up or disappearance, with date and reasons where appropriate and available; 3. Characteristics of: membership, leadership, policy, outstanding events, membership (numbers). 4. Sources of information: books, articles, minutes etc; location of documentation.

Exploring Employee Relations is a straightforward and accessible text that is aimed at students who are taking the subject for the first time. The structure is clear and logical, leading the newcomer through the topics in a way to maximise comprehension. Key issues are highlighted and supported by a small case or example from business. Chapters are structured to enable progressive learning with a logical development of the content. Each chapter ends with a summary of the key points met in the text and these are further reinforced by review and discussion questions, with answers and feedback on the activities included at the end of the book. The chapters are grouped thematically into parts and longer case studies are included that are suitable for assignment and seminar work. The text has also been written to cover the new CIPD employee relations syllabus.Its features include: a clear introductory text covering the CIPD Employee Relations syllabus; revised and updated throughout with new material on the European Union, the role and impact of government and demography, bargaining power and ways of securing employee commitment; and a student friendly resource providing self check activities, mini case studies and Question and Answer sections.

Management & Workplace Culture Book of the Year, 2020 Porchlight Business Book Awards A Publishers Weekly Fall 2020 Big Indie Book The dark side of the gig economy (Uber, Airbnb, etc.) and how to make it equitable for the users and workers most exploited. When the "sharing economy" launched a decade ago, proponents claimed that it would transform the experience of work-giving earners flexibility, autonomy, and a decent income. It was touted as a cure for social isolation and rampant ecological degradation. But this novel form of work soon sprouted a dark side: exploited Uber drivers, neighborhoods ruined by Airbnb, racial discrimination, and rising carbon emissions. Several of the most prominent platforms are now faced with existential crises as they prioritize growth over fairness and long-term viability. Nevertheless, the basic model-a peer-to-peer structure augmented by digital tech-holds the potential to meet its original promises. Based on nearly a decade of pioneering research, After the Gig dives into what went wrong with this contemporary reimagining of labor. The book examines multiple types of data from thirteen cases to identify the unique features and potential of sharing platforms that prior research has failed to pinpoint. Juliet B. Schor presents a compelling argument that we can engineer a reboot: through regulatory reforms and cooperative platforms owned and controlled by users, an equitable and truly shared economy is still possible.

The story of the great 1934 general strike in San Francisco. A classic of working-class journalism.