This work provides a thorough overview and analysis of the increasing gap between the Americans at the top and bottom of the economic scale. Rich and Poor in America: A Reference Handbook provides an in-depth analysis of—and possible solutions for—the growing disparity between those at the top of the economic ladder and everyone else, a disparity that has reached its highest level since the 1920s. Expertly researched and written, Rich and Poor in America explores a wide range of explanations for the trend that undercuts the U.S.'s "Land of Opportunity" image, including heavy immigration, weakening labor unions, globalization, and technological change. Separate chapters look at the issue chronologically and from a global perspective, while biographical sketches provide fascinating portraits of some of the "winners" in our winner-take-all society, as well as leading scholars and activists working on this issue. copywriter rewrite: Rich and Poor in America: A Reference Handbook provides an in-depth analysis of the widening income gap in the United States—a situation where, over nearly three decades, fewer and fewer Americans have made significant financial strides while more and more have seen their real incomes remain the same or decrease. Objective, expertly researched and clearly written, Rich and Poor in America looks at a wide range of explanations for the income gap, including heavy immigration, weakening labor unions, globalization, and technological change. Separate chapters examine the trend as it has evolved over time and from a global perspective, while biographical sketches provide fascinating portraits of some of notable successful individuals as well as leading scholars and activists working on this issue.

In this thought-provoking and innovative book, Kendra Coulter examines the diversity of work done with, by, and for animals. Interweaving human-animal studies, labor theories and research, and feminist political economy, Coulter develops a unique analysis of the accomplishments, complexities, problems, and possibilities of multispecies and interspecies labor. She fosters a nuanced, multi-faceted approach to labor that takes human and animal well-being seriously, and that challenges readers to not only think deeply and differently about animals and work, but to reflect on the potential for interspecies solidarity. The result is an engaging, expansive, and path-making text.

This exciting new WMU book series' volume features the first attempt to include detailed experiences of women in the maritime sector at a global level. It highlights the achievement of women in the maritime sector, in particular, women's leadership and service to the sustainable development of the maritime industry. The volume contains contemporary studies on maritime women and follows an inter-disciplinary approach. It offers an overview of women's integration into the maritime sector since the late 1980s as well as benchmarking its impact on various levels, such as policy, employment, education, leadership and sustainability. Even 20 years after the Beijing Declaration, gender-related challenges at work still remain in the maritime sector, for example, lack of gender policy, difficulty in work-life balance, access to education, and leadership opportunities. The book addresses a series of recommendations that may further help the integration of women into the maritime sector.

Make human resources work for you! The third edition of Strategic Human Resources Management offers a truly innovative, integrative framework that examines the traditional functional human resource areas from a strategic perspective. The author undertakes a comprehensive discussion of current issues, practices, and theories while maintaining a coherent and consistent emphasis on strategy. Most human resource textbooks give you the theories without showing you the connections to real life. This textbook lets you see both sides of human resources: the theory and the application. Current examples and references integrated throughout the text and chapter introductions help put human resources into a real-world context.

What kinds of work will be available in the 1980s? For whom? When should a person retire? Should a retiree find a part-time job? The authors answer such questions by examining a multitude of factors that will affect work decisions in the coming decade. Their findings will alert decision-makers in both private organizations and the government to the employment issues that dominate the 1980s.

Wage-Led Growth examines the causes and consequences associated with the falling wage share and rising inequality in income distribution, relating to both aggregate demand and labour productivity. It presents new empirical and econometric evidence regarding the economic causes and potential impact of changing income distribution. The volume also analyses the policy implications and strategies for a wage-led recovery that would alleviate the global problems associated with the rising household debt needed to sustain consumption expenditures and with new mercantilist policies based on wage moderation. In turn, it provides an overarching framework that will prove invaluable to present and future researchers and policy-makers.

This volume examines the economics of aquatic sports. Covering topics ranging from youth participation, collegiate level amateurism, and professional performance issues, to the history of Olympic level swim and water polo programs, the chapters illuminate economic motivations behind the behavior and performance characteristics of this industry. Labor-related themes regarding compensation, exploitation and discrimination are examined. The volume is also especially timely, including discussions of the impacts of technological change, the hot hand effect, confirmation bias, and doping. By answering questions about these key issues in sport, this book hopes to shed light on behaviors outside of sport and provide an enhanced understanding of individual, group, and industry decision making and performance under conditions of scarcity and uncertainty. This book will be of interest to those studying sports economics, sports management, or applied microeconomic theory as well as professionals in the sports field: sports managers, agents, media experts, coaches, athletic directors and development leaders.

When Congress enacted Social Secuirty in 1935, with the age of retirement set at age 65, average life expectancy was 62 years. By the time Medicare was enacted 30 years later, life expectancy had risen to age 70. Since the enactment of Medicare, life expectancy has risen to age 76 today and may be expected to increase further in the decades to come. Clearly, the increase in post-retirement life expectancy has significant implications for the level of national expenditures attributable to an aging population. One of the approaches suggested as a solution to the so-called income transfer problem is to redefine old age, that is, to push retirement and its associated benefits off to a later age. This would effectively increase the size of the workforce, with older workers continuing to contribute their payroll taxes for an extended period of time. The critical question Sicker poses is, will there be enough appropriate employment opportunities for a growing number of older workers in the workforce of the future? The evidence for a positive response is far from clear or compelling.

Sicker examines the prospective place of the aging worker in the employment environment of the 21st century in light of the restructuring of American business and the world of work in the final decades of the last century. In doing so, he raises serious concerns about the validity and utility of some of the neoclassical economic ideas and assumptions that have become part of the conventional wisdom of our time. Sicker contends that these dubious propositions have unwittingly contributed signficantly to the problem through their manifestation in public policy. However, the principal focus of his analysis is not on economic theory as such, but on the realities and uncertainties that an aging American workforce will face in the decades to come. This book is significant reading for scholars, researchers, and the general public interested in labor force and aging policy issues.

This open access book provides an evidence-based roadmap for revitalising Indian agriculture while ensuring that the growth process is efficient, inclusive, and sustainable, and results in sustained growth of farmers' incomes. The book, instead of looking for global best practices and evaluating them to assess the possibility of replicating these domestically, looks inward at the best practices and experiences within Indian states, to answer questions such as -- how the agricultural growth process can be speeded up and made more inclusive, and financially viable; are there any best practices that can be studied and replicated to bring about faster growth in agriculture; does the prior hypothesis that rapid agricultural growth can alleviate poverty faster, reduce malnutrition, and augment farmers' incomes stand? To answer these questions, the book follows four broad threads -- i) Linkage between agricultural performance, poverty and malnutrition; ii) Analysing the historical growth performance of agricultural sector in selected Indian states; iii) Will higher agricultural GDP necessarily result in higher incomes for farmers; iv) Analysing the current agricultural policy environment to evaluate its efficiency and efficacy, and consolidate all analysis to create a roadmap. These are discussed in 12 chapters, which provide a building block for the concluding chapter that presents a roadmap for revitalising Indian agriculture while ensuring growth in farmers' incomes.

This book takes stock of major and recent developments in welfare policy in the UK and Germany. Concentrating on trends since the 1990s it compares the similarities and differences between the two countries and analyses the degree to which social attitudes towards welfare provision, fairness, and social justice have changed. It focuses on the policy areas that have been particularly affected in recent years and examines change and possible convergence across three public policy domains: family policy, pensions and policies aimed at social and labour market integration. The book covers both public provision as well as the role of company-based social protection. Based on new empirical survey research as well as focus group interviews, the contributions analyse the ways in which social policies have adapted to common and country-specific challenges, and provide an understanding of the changing welfare landscapes in the UK and Germany.

This book aims to tackle the issues that are central to understanding and addressing one of the most important employment policy problems facing governments in the UK and beyond: the high number of people of working age claiming 'disability' or 'incapacity' benefits. Gathering evidence from leading UK scholars, alongside comparative contributions on Sweden, Germany, New Zealand and the Netherlands, the book considers a number of questions including, how do health problems and other barriers work to combine to limit opportunities for labour market participation among claimants of IBs?; How do different local and regional economic conditions shape these individuals' opportunities and experiences of labour market exclusion?; What processes lead to transitions onto IBs and what could be done to retain people with health problems in employment?; How appropriate are the rationale, content and governance of active labour market policies that seek to promote transitions from IBs into work?; and what works in helping people claiming IBs to cope with health problems and/or make progress towards work?

To fully grasp Marx's theory of the labor movement, Lapides supplies a deeper insight into the economic analysis underlying it. This book presents Marx's theory of wages and wage labor, previously scattered throughout his writings, in its entirety for the first time. The author places the theory in its historical context, locating the sources of Marx's wage theory, its intellectual antecedents, and the roots of later controversies, but the primary focus of the work is the actual development of Marx's theory in the words in which he expressed it. In order to reveal the true nature and rich texture of Marx's thought, the author has assembled Marx's own formulations, scattered throughout his numerous works and buried beneath mountains of commentary and criticism. The book provides a faithful record of the complete evolutionary progress of Marx's theory.

This book provides a focus on some of the main markers and challenges that are at the core of the study of structural transformations in contemporary capitalism and their implications for labour in the Global South. It examines the diverse perspectives and regional and social variations that characterise labour relations as a result of the uneven development which is an important facet of the intensification of capitalist accumulation.. The book provides important insights into the impact of the crises of capitalism on the wellbeing of labour at different historical junctures. Some of the issues covered by it include the conditions of work, and the changing composition of laboring classes and/or working people. The chapters also throw light on the multiple trajectories in the development of labour relations and employment in the Global South, especially after the ascendancy and domination of neoliberal finance capitalism. Some of the major aspects considered by the essays include the decentering of production and development of global value systems, crisis of social reproduction, and the rising informalisation of work.

The United States is becoming an information-based, service economy with fewer middle-income jobs than in an industrial economy. How does increasing service sector employment affect community income and thus social well-being? This well-documented study assesses the impact of changing levels of employment in the service and manufacturing sectors on the level and distribution of community income. The study includes both analyses of low-wage and high-wage service and manufacturing sectors and analyses of major segments of the service sector, including business services and retail trade. Measures of social well-being include changes in community aggregate income, aggregate wages and salaries, distribution of income within the community, and the community's position in the regional hierarchy. Particular attention is given to differences in impact on rural and urban communities. The book will be of interest to those concerned with rural economic development and issues related to inequality and economic and industrial change.

The one-job wage earner, for so many generations a bulwark of industrialized society, has all but passed away. We perceive this as contemporary reality, yet it has not been easy to cite the facts and figures necessary to build a stable foundation for the social security of tomorrow's population. Now the European Institute of Social Security, a leading multidisciplinary research group dedicated to exploring the frontiers of social security, has taken the crucial first steps with an in-depth examination of the new and atypical work relations that are emerging. The research and conclusions in this book should help policymakers to identify the areas in which existing social security systems can meaningfully accommodate the new realities of work. The volume records the proceedings of the 1999 Conference of the EISS, held at Limassol in Cyprus, to consider the relations of atypical work patterns and social protection. Among the important issues raised are: the real extent of the atypical work phenomenon; difficulties relating to the assessment of the incomes of the self-employed; social protection of farmers in Europe; and the shortcomings of existing social security systems vis-a-vis self-employment and part-time work. The analysis of trends presented in this book should be useful and informative for anyone - whether in government, business or academia - concerned with the development and future of social protection systems, not only in Europe but throughout the world.

This book demonstrates how rethinking and adapting basic employment services into labor intermediation services can help address the many labor market disconnections of developing country economies. It addresses how scarce resources required to escape poverty - good jobs, schools, and training - more often go to the privileged and well-connected than to those who need them most. With jobs now at the top of development debates, this is a rare book on how to practically adapt one key labor market policy to very different developing and emerging country markets. It shows through examples how developing countries can build in stages from basic employment services to diverse labor intermediation services - opening up job listings, stimulating public-private partnerships, and making job connections for those who don't have a "cousin Vinny who knows a guy". This book is for policy practitioners, development organizations, and academics who are ready to think differently about one of the policies that needs to change so that developing economies can better meet the employment and higher skill challenges of the global age.

This book reappraises the Japanese employment system, characterized by such practices as the periodic recruiting of new graduates, lifetime employment and seniority-based wages, which were praised as sources of high productivity and flexibility for Japanese firms during the period of high economic growth from the middle of the 1950s until the burst of bubbles in the early 1990s. The prolonged stagnation after the bubble burst induced an increasing number of people to criticize the Japanese employment system as a barrier to the structural changes needed to allow the economy to adjust to the new environment, with detractors suggesting that such a system only serves to protect the vested interests of incumbent workers and firms. By investigating what caused the long stagnation of the Japanese economy, this book examines the validity of this currently dominant view about the Japanese employment system. The rigorous theoretical and empirical analyses presented in this book provide readers with deep insights into the nature of the current Japanese labor market and its macroeconomic impacts.

This volume explores the work environment in multinational corporations. To do so, it integrates studies on the organizational sciences, cross-cultural management, positive psychology and sociology within a single comprehensive framework. Twenty-two authors from six countries identify the challenges in multicultural workplaces, the positives of interactions, cultural clashes and their organizational preconditions. They add inter-organizational, institutional and critical perspectives to the analysis within the framework of multinationals and complex, hybrid cultural environments. The book addresses the needs of researchers in the areas of intercultural management, and those of practitioners in international human resource management.

Friday is the New Saturday makes a compelling, provocative and timely case for societal change. Drawing on an eclectic range of economic theory, history and data, Dr Pedro Gomes argues that a four-day working week will bring about a powerful economic renewal for the benefit of all society. It will stimulate demand, productivity, innovation and wages, whilst reducing unemployment and crushing populist movements. The arguments come from both the left and right of the political spectrum to show that a polarised society can still find common ground. In the 1800s, people in the West worked six days each week, resting on Sundays. In the 1900s, firms began to give workers Saturdays off as well, realising that a two-day weekend helped the economy. In the 2000s, Friday will become the new Saturday, and we will never look back.

This book is based on research extending from 1957 to 1963 and emphasizes the rights of management from a legalistic point of view. The author has probed such elements as internal worker protests, the management decision process, and the problems that evolve between management and unions.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, German cultural attitudes of paternalism and partriarchy heavily influenced the entrance of women into the labor force. To make German working women visible in their nation's economic and social history, Franzoi examines the relationship between female labor and the production process. This book focuses on women at the intersection of work and family and discusses their work choices during a time of rapid economic development.

The Rebirth of the Greek Labor Market provides evidence of the macroeconomic evolution of the Greek economy, as well as current conditions in the labor market, to suggest potential areas of growth following the crisis. The contributors of this collection focus on three main issues that make the overall volume distinctive. Firstly, the authors develop a macro-econometric model for the Greek economy, which is flexible in terms of policy analysis and provides reasonable forecasts for the period between 2014-2020, under three scenarios. Secondly, the authors analyze the dynamism in the Greek economy, as well as the problematic Greek labor market. Lastly, using the estimations provided by the macro-econometric model developed, an input-output analysis is conducted - for every one of the three scenarios - in order to investigate and quantify the impact of the economic crisis, not only to the total employment but also in the number of employees by occupation, for all productive sectors of the economy. Using this structure, this indispensable new volume identifies the occupations, professions, and sectors with the greatest losses, as well as those showing a positive momentum, up to 2020.

When contrasted with the miners' dramatic strike victories in 1972 and 1974, the shattering industrial defeat suffered by British miners in 1985 has been seen as evidence of the further weakening of working-class solidarity. Undertaken with complete unity, the strikes of 1972 and 1974 brought the miners substantial material gains, contributed to the downfall of a government, and reinforced the National Union of Mineworkers' position at the core of the British labour movement. In contrast, the strike in Britain in 1984/85 was marked by internal division and by the miners' attempt to resist the pit closure programme of the Thatcher government, and it ended in bitter defeat.

This book examines gender- and integration-specific needs of women migrants by using a unique analytic framework, covering both qualitative and quantitative methods and techniques. Case studies from Sweden and Germany are presented, investigating how the gender and integration-neutral or integration-blind nature of the reviewed legislation can disadvantage migrant women in the labor market. The book contributes to the discourses of liberal and post-colonial feminism through new methodological and empirical insights. It, therefore, is a must-read for everybody interested in a better understanding of migrant women's chances to enter the labor market, as well as gender and integration studies in general.