Industrial and Labor Relations Review articles from July 1991

Industrial and Labor Relations Review archives from July 1991

The social charter of the European Community: evolution and controversies.
July 1, 1991... In October 1989 Jacques Delors, the President of the European Commission, presented a "compromise text" of a draft Community Charter of Fundamental Social Rights of Workers, or "Social Charter," to the European Council of Ministers. The...

The Social Charter of the European Community: a defeat for European Labor.
July 1, 1991... When the nations of Europe began in the latter half of the 1980s to recast the series of internal and external bargains that established the European Community (EC), concerns began to intensify within union circles over the implications of the...

The evolution of unjust-dismissal legislation in the United States.
July 1, 1991... For the past 100 years, job security in the United States has been governed by the common law "employment-at-will" doctrine. Under this doctrine, an employer can legally dismiss an employee for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all,...

Worker representation on boards of directors: a study of competing roles.
July 1, 1991... In the United States, worker representation on corporate boards of directors is a relatively recent development and has usually resulted from employee purchase of company stock or union concessions during collective bargaining (or both). In...

The impact of advance notice of plant closings on earnings and the probability of unemployment.
July 1, 1991... Increased foreign competition, technological changes, and structural changes in industry have left many states with numerous plant closings that have resulted in large numbers of displaced workers. In response to these closings, several states...

When married men lose jobs: income replacement within the family.
July 1, 1991... OWING to a combination of market forces and macroeconomic policies, over ten million U.S. workers were displaced from their jobs between January 1981 and January 1986 (Seitchik 1991). Of these, one-third were not re-employed in January 1986....

New evidence on unions and layoff rates.
July 1, 1991... It has been argued that unionized firms are more likely than nonunionized firms to respond to slack product demand by temporarily laying off workers. In an important early test of this proposition, Medoff (1979), using yearly industry-level...

Productivity effects of strikes in struck and nonstruck industries.
July 1, 1991... In the long run, unions can have both positive and negative effects on labor productivity. On the one hand, unions tend to reduce productivity through their influence on work rules and the organizational structure of production, but on the...

Changing the social security rules for work after 65.
July 1, 1991... The U.S. social security rules contain a provision for an earnings test by which current benefits are reduced if recipients continue to work and earn more than a certain amount. The justification for this provision was originally that social...

Male-female differences in hourly wages: the role of human capital, working conditions, and housework.
July 1, 1991... TWENTY years of research on gender differences in earnings have failed to explain the entire wage gap as a consequence of measured differences between male and female workers. Some researchers view the unexplained residual as evidence of...

Industrial Relations in Japan: The Peripheral Workforce.
July 1, 1991... More than half of the Japanese labor force works in enterprises with fewer than 100 employees, but virtually all of the English language literature on industrial relations in Japan is concerned with much larger firms. Norma Chalmers's study of...

Mediation Research: The Process and Effectiveness of Third-Party Intervention.
July 1, 1991... Twenty-five years ago mediation was the least-studied of the several neutral roles commonly used to resolve social conflict. The fortunate results of the time and money spent in the last generation to remedy this dearth of research are...

A Guide to Organizing Unions.
July 1, 1991... A Guide to Organizing Unions offers the reader exactly what its title indicates: a detailed manual for union organizers engaged in organizing workplaces. Although the book is restricted in scope to the laws governing British Columbia...

Collective Bargaining and the Public Interest: A Welfare Economics Assessment.
July 1, 1991... This book provides a well-thought-out economic rationale for a public policy (with particular application to Canada) that uses interest arbitration for the settlement of labor disputes. The author applies a welfare economics approach to...

Individual Employment Law and Litigation, 2 vols.
July 1, 1991... The vastness and complexity of employment law forces authors to make difficult choices between coverage and depth. In these volumes, Specter and Finkin opt for moderate coverage at moderate depth. As a result, they have produced a work that...

Governing the Workplace: The Future of Labor and Employment Law.
July 1, 1991... During the 1980s, Paul Weiler published several thoughtful and provocative law review articles exploring various aspects of the American industrial relations system. In his new book, Governing the Workplace, he draws upon much of his previous...

Passing the Torch: The Influence of Economic Incentives on Work and Retirement.
July 1, 1991... In the late 1970s, the literature on retirement from the labor force was in its infancy. In 1977 and 1979, two seminal papers appeared that became oft-cited references in a burgeoning literature. One, by Joseph Quinn, was among the first...

Medicare's New Hospital Payment System: Is It Working?
July 1, 1991... Ronald Coase's famous article on social costs advanced the proposition that many of the problems that government is asked to solve are the result of previous government interventions in the market. ("The Problem of Social Cost," Journal of Law...

Economics of Employment and Earnings.
July 1, 1991... This introductory labor economics textbook is aimed at upper year undergraduate students, who typically have only a single basics course in economics. The author incorporates Canadian studies and institutional information throughout the...

A Future of Lousy Jobs? The Changing Structure of U.S. Wages.
July 1, 1991... Since the mid-1983s, economists' interest in earnings inequality has increased dramatically, resulting in an outpouring of papers, a number of documented findings, and one major puzzle. Those who want a sound, literate introduction to the...

The Microeconomic Issues in Labour Economics: New Approaches.
July 1, 1991... The nine essays in this book cover a wide range of topics, including efficiency wages, discrimination, displaced workers, and union behavior. Indeed, the book's greatest flaw is that it lacks a common thread to unite the contributions by its...

Men, Management and Morality: Toward a New Organizational Ethic.
July 1, 1991... The place of moral values in organizational life and social scientific research is a hotly debated issue. Golembiewski takes it head on, starting from a premise that "[i]t is in organizations . . . that our values will be achieved, that...

International Handbook of Participation in Organizations, vol. 1, Organizational Democracy: Taking Stock.
July 1, 1991... This book is the first in a new series of handbooks on participation in organizations. The editors' aim is to evaluate recent trends in various forms of participation and likely future developments. The series is based on international...

Mintzberg on Management: Inside Our Strange World of Organizations.
July 1, 1991... Henry Mintzberg -- what a shame we don't have more like him!--believes that many general readers would like to understand organizations; that we already possess much basic knowledge about organizations; and that what is therefore needed is a...

A Century of Human Capital.
July 1, 1991... The stated purpose of the volume is to explore "the role of education and training in raising the quality of the American labor force" and to offer "a systematic review and analysis of programs in the past century." Composed of three...

Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women.
July 1, 1991... This book is concerned with the economic history of American women, with special reference to the labor market, from the birth of the republic to the present day. Its relevance to current issues is direct and immediate. It should be of great...

Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America's Bloody Coal Industry.
July 1, 1991... Historians have long been fascinated by coal miners, coal unions, and the relationship between labor and management in the coal industry. Consequently, the literature on this industry is rich and relatively comprehensive. Long, in her very...

Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia's Past.
July 1, 1991... According to the publisher's "blurb," this book offers "a radical new interpretation of Australia's convict past." In fact, the data on which the study is based refer to one Australian state--New South Wales (NSW). Just as the ancient Chinese...