Industrial and Labor Relations Review articles from April 1997

Industrial and Labor Relations Review archives from April 1997

Wage changes and intrafirm job mobility over the business cycle: two case studies.
April 1, 1997... Wage stickiness is a key feature of many models of the business cycle. But what is the empirical basis for the common belief that wages are inflexible? Some of the most compelling evidence comes from casual observation. We know that union wage...

The Puzzle of Strikes: Class and State Strategies in Postwar Italy.
April 1, 1997... If this book were as dry as its title might lead readers to suppose, it would easily lend itself to summary. Franzosi's study is anything but dry, however, and the reviewer's task is anything but simple. The Puzzle of Strikes, like a well-wrought...

Strategic Negotiations: A Theory of Change in Labor-Management Relations.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1997... Strategic Negotiations makes a significant contribution to the literature on strategic choice (the explicit structuring by management and labor of business and bargaining strategies that use the economic and political environment as a framework...

Unions and Workplace Change in Canada.
April 1, 1997... Some leading unions in Canada are notable for the diversity of their responses to workplace change. These unions' policies and strategies, which range from the Steelworkers' (USWA) bold experiment in employee ownership and co-determination at...

Labor Agreement in Negotiation and Arbitration, 2d ed.
April 1, 1997... The second edition of this volume by two prominent labor arbitrators is largely an expansion of the first edition, with very little of the original material deleted or changed. Although the authors allude in the preface to a different orientation...

Broken Promise: The Subversion of U.S. Labor Relations Policy, 1947-1994.
April 1, 1997... This book describes the transformation of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) from a law "intended to democratize vast numbers of American workplaces so that workers could participate in the employment decisions that most directly affected...

In Defense of Affirmative Action.
April 1, 1997... Disparities in earnings and occupations by race and sex have long been documented and are not in dispute. Nor does anyone question that discrimination did at one time play a part in causing these disparities, for there is no denying that long...

Pension Schemes and Pension Funds in the United Kingdom.
April 1, 1997... This book gives a comprehensive account of social security programs for the elderly and private pension schemes in the United Kingdom, updated to late 1994. Not surprisingly, given the author's background in finance, the bulk of the book concerns...

Markets and Mortality: Economics, Dangerous Work, and the Value of Human Life.
April 1, 1997... The majority view among economists is that (1) workers in dangerous jobs receive compensating wages (CW), (2) most studies showing CW exist are reliable, and (3) estimates of these wages can be used to estimate the value of human life. Peter...

Sizing Down: Chronicle of a Plant Closing.
April 1, 1997... The position occupied by managers during a layoff is paradoxical. Managers involved in a downsizing function both as change agents, responsible for carrying out the practical steps in a restructuring, and as change recipients, affected like...

Fighting for Jobs: Case Studies of Labor-Community Coalitions Confronting Plant Closings.
April 1, 1997... In Fighting for Jobs, Bruce Nissen offers more detail and a more comprehensive analysis than is usually found in discussions of plant closings. Most of the book is taken up with well-composed case studies of closings or threatened partial...

Assessing Educational Practices: The Contribution of Economics.
April 1, 1997... As the title suggests, this collection of essays concentrates on education issues at the pre-college level from an economist's point of view. The contributors address such questions as the appropriate organizational structure of schools, the...

The Wage Curve.
April 1, 1997... Few books in economics are as ambitious as this one. David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald set out "to document the existence of an empirical 'law' of economics" based upon data "on approximately three and a half million people, from twelve...

The Youth Labour Market in Britain: The Role of Intervention.
April 1, 1997... The youth labor market in Great Britain has experienced much the same turmoil as it has in the United States. Young people leaving school have suffered from low skills, high unemployment, and low wages. As in the United States, the government has...

Does Training for the Disadvantaged Work? Evidence from the National JTPA Study.
April 1, 1997... Although the explicit objective of this study is to assess the effects of the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) of 1982 on the labor market outcomes of its economically disadvantaged participants, there is also an implicit goal that - for all...

Half a Job: Bad and Good Part-Time Jobs in a Changing Labor Market.
April 1, 1997... Part-time work has long been with us, and it is usually taken for granted that part-time jobs, which are predominantly held by women, are low-status and low-paid. In recent years, however, labor economists have been puzzled by what seems to be a...

On the Line at Subaru-Isuzu: The Japanese Model and the American Worker.
April 1, 1997... Laurie Graham has provided an important service for academics and practitioners interested in the implications of "lean production," or Japanese models of production organization, for workers in the United States and elsewhere. She has gone...

The Management of Human Resources in Chinese Industry.
April 1, 1997... Ever since China opened its gates in the early 1980s, observers have paid increasing attention to its economic and managerial systems. This book is the third by Malcolm Warner on that subject (the two others are Management Reforms in China...

Employment Relations in a Changing World Economy.
April 1, 1997... The focus of this book is the changes in employment relations in eleven OECD countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, and Japan. The volume is the first product of an...

Poverty, Inequality, and the Future of Social Policy: Western States in the New World Order.
April 1, 1997... This book starts from the notion that both the U.S. minimalist welfare state and the most ambitious and encompassing of the European approaches to welfare policy, the social democratic model, are facing severe challenges from structural changes...

New Deals: Business, Labor, and Politics in America, 1920-1935.
April 1, 1997... For more than fifty years historians have variously characterized the New Deal as (1) a triumph of liberalism over the business-oriented political order, (2) an attempt to revitalize capitalism by smoothing its rough edges, (3) a weak and...

A Muted Fury: Populists, Progressives, and Labor Unions Confront the Courts, 1890-1937.
April 1, 1997... From 1890 to 1937 the U.S. Supreme Court's adherence to constitutional interpretations that put it at odds with progressive legislation and with the activities of trade unions spawned a sustained progressive critique of the Court and a series of...