Copyright (c) 2009 Cornell University ILR School All rights reserved. http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books Recent documents in Book Samples en-us Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:53:12 PDT 3600 http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/54 http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/54 Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:58:49 PDT [Excerpt] This collection is an attempt to restore and revitalize interest in a largely forgotten American theatrical genre, the workers' theatre movement. "Workers' theatre" is a term that is used broadly to define theatre from the working class or theatre about working-class people. Here it refers to a unique and specific movement in the American theatre of the 1920s and 1930s to employ the stage to address issues concerning the worker and the workers' movement. A simple definition was given by Hollace Ransdell of the Affiliated Schools for Workers in 1936: a workers' theatre play "deals truthfully with the lives and problems of the masses of the people, directly or suggestively, in a way that workers can understand and appreciate". These plays need not be written by workers themselves, and, in fact, many were written by figures sympathetic to the labor movement. The plays themselves are a series of fascinating, moving, occasionally frustrating dramas that often passionately explore the possibilities of the workers' movement. Even during the Great Depression, these plays never displayed the pessimistic images of the future as reflected in the contemporary fiction of Steinbeck and Dos Passos. Instead, the plays of the American workers' theatre clung tightly to stirring, Utopian visions, as was hoped for in the early writings that formed a basis for the movement. Lee Papa (Ed.) http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/53 http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/53 Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:14:19 PDT [Excerpt] This book explores some of the main ideas which the ILO has seized, developed and applied, examines their history and tells how they were pursued in different geographical and historical settings. And, since the ILO revolves around ideas, that helps us understand why the ILO has sometimes thrived, sometimes suffered, but always survived and persisted to pursue its goals through the political and economic upheavals of the last 90 years. Gerry Rodgers http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/52 http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/52 Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:01:21 PDT [Excerpt] This volume is intended to collect the best current scholarship in the new and growing field of labor rights and human rights. We hope it will serve as a resource for researchers and practitioners as well as for teachers and students in university-level labor and human rights courses. The animating idea for the volume is the proposition that workers' rights are human rights. But we recognize that this must be more than a slogan. Promoting labor rights as human rights requires drawing on theoretical work in labor studies and in human rights scholarship and developing closely reasoned arguments based on what is happening in the real world. Citing labor clauses in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is one thing; relating them to the real world where workers seek to exercise their rights is something else. The contributors to this volume provide a firm theoretical foundation grounded in the reality of labor activism and advocacy in a market-driven global economy. James A. Gross (Ed.) http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/51 http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/51 Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:55:26 PDT [Excerpt] What might the striking convergence in the trajectories of the South Korean and U.S. labor movements mean for the dynamics of change taking place for labor on a global scale? To what extent does the embrace of marginalized groups of workers such as immigrants and women by previously exclusionary labor movements signal the development of more inclusive and democratic forms of labor politics? How can workers subject to overlapping forms of social, economic, and political marginality actually transform the unequal relations of power and domination that underpin downgraded forms of employment? The answers to these questions constitute the heart of this book. What unfolds is a story about a sea change in the dynamics of labor politics and organization. South Korea and the United States have two different paths of industrial development, histories of class formation, and positions in the larger world economic system, yet both labor movements are experiencing profound shifts in who the "working class" is and how to build collective power under processes of globalization. Jennifer Jihye Chun http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/50 http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/50 Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:55:09 PDT Dr. Dani Filc delves into Israel's health care system and provides numerous insights on how a private health care system undermines the principle of caring for the poor. Dr. Filc stresses that blind commitment to a for-profit health care system leads to wasted money and increased social inequity. Dani Filc http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/49 http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/49 Mon, 11 May 2009 13:16:14 PDT [Excerpt] In the chapters that follow, we explore the competitive strategies and employment-relations strategies found in the United States (chapter 2) and in a range of other countries (chapter 3), before and after deregulation. In chapter 4 we analyze recent trends in quality, productivity, and costs, as well as employee outcomes. In chapter 5 we look more closely at selected new-entrant airlines and find a wide range of competitive and employment-relations strategies being used in this segment of the industry. In chapter 6, we examine several legacy airlines and identify the distinct strategies they have adopted to respond to competitive pressures from new-entrant airlines. These chapters each focus on selected U.S. airlines and those based in some other countries. In chapter 7, we summarize the strategies of new-entrant and legacy airlines, and offer lessons about how airlines can and do change their strategies over time in their efforts to compete more effectively. We offer recommendations, using our historical and comparative analyses to discuss whether a path forward can be identified that can provide a better balance in stakeholder outcomes. We end on a positive note, arguing that if the parties learn from their experiences and from each other, in the United States and other countries, there is a path that deals with the pressures building up in the airline industry, offering hope for a better balance between investor, employee, customer, and societal interests. Key questions are whether and from where the leadership will come to get the industry moving down this path or whether the main parties might not take such action before there is a "perfect storm." Greg J. Bamber http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/48 http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/48 Mon, 11 May 2009 13:06:06 PDT [Excerpt] Three significant events have happened since 2005 when this book was first published. (1) Starting in 2004, die city of New York began advancing the Taxi Technology Enhancement Program (TTE), which would require every yellow taxi in NYC to be fitted with a non-navigational Global Positioning System-based tracking system. Driver opposition to this system grew over the next three years, leading up to a series of strikes in September and October 2007. Even as we go to press, this battle continues. (2) In early 2007, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) became the first independent labor union to become a full member of the New York State Central Labor Council, a historic development with tremendous significance for the labor movement. (3) Finally, based on burgeoning interest and several taxi- organizing initiatives emerging throughout the United States, NYTWA along with the Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania organized a founding meeting of the Taxi Workers International (TWI) in March 2007. All three dramatic events promise long-term effects. In many ways die intertwined nature of these events has given me a more complete understanding of the challenges the contemporary labor movement faces. Accordingly, this Cornell edition carries a new epilogue that not only describes these events arid the actions that surrounded them but also attempts to synthesize them theoretically. The result, I hope, is a compelling conclusion to the book that will open up fresh debates within the labor movement. Biju Mathew http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/47 http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/47 Mon, 11 May 2009 12:49:54 PDT [Excerpt] In the popular media, economic experts will endlessly debate the dynamics and causes of the current downturn. They will parse the minutia of the data, with some claiming the worst is over while others argue it is yet to come. Sadly, most of these debates will likely have very little to do with the real economic challenges facing working families today. The men and women of the American workforce have worked harder and smarter to make the United States a world-class economy. In particular, when considering the 2000s, the U.S. workforce has chalked up some of the most impressive productivity growth rates in decades. And the mantra among economists and policy makers is that, as grows productivity, so shall living standards improve. Would it were so. The results highlighted in this volume regarding the income of middle-class families, the poverty of low-income families, and the historically off-the-charts measures of inequality tell a very different story. That is, they describe a different story. The story behind these unsettling trends--the chain of events and policy changes that brought them about--is more complex than the tale told by a few tables and graphs. Lawrence Mishel http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/46 http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/46 Mon, 11 May 2009 12:40:26 PDT [Excerpt] The Campbell experience demonstrates that many strategies of late twentieth-century capitalism had precursors earlier in the century. Many components of Campbell's strategy, surprisingly, are as typical of today's neoliberal globalizing economy as was RCA's escape to a Mexican export-processing zone. The Campbell Soup Company made heavy use of contingent labor, increasing its workforce by 50 percent during tomato harvest season, then laying these workers off eight weeks later, just as multinational corporations today hire various types of nonstandard workers to handle specific tasks and add to flexibility. Campbell Soup was an eager advocate of transnational labor migration, importing thousands of workers from Puerto Rico, Mexico, and the English-speaking Caribbean to fill certain functions, just as immigrants fill niches in today's "global cities." The corporation used immigrants in another way, similar to today's clothing retailers who deny any responsibility for the working conditions of sweatshop laborers officially employed by subcontractors. The firm paid suppliers prices that left them little choice but to exploit largely immigrant farm laborers to the furthest limits possible. The company constantly revolutionized production methods, employing technology and "scientific management" techniques to replace workers and lower costs, and even experimented with practices remarkably similar to many of the features of today's "lean production." Over time, Campbell implemented a few limited paternalistic elements to its dealings with its workers but mostly resorted to an adversarial position toward the unions they organized. The firm had a reputation, especially from the 1930s through the 1960s, as the most antiunion of Camden's "Big Three" employers, foreshadowing the "get-tough" policies toward unions common in the 1980s and 1990s. Finally, when structural changes in the food supply system finally made it possible, Campbell joined RCA in abandoning Camden as a production site, over a century after Joseph Campbell began the company in that city, the last act in the deindustrialization of Camden. The fact that it resisted relocating production for so long makes Campbell Soup an excellent case for studying the other techniques available to corporations, and its long history may hold important lessons about the consequences of such strategies. Daniel Sidorick http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/45 http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/books/45 Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:08:50 PDT [Excerpt] I have drawn on several qualitative research projects to compose an account of what the training and education industry for allied health care workers is, and what political (perhaps even ethical) dilemmas it poses. The evidence in the book is drawn from several research projects in which I was involved from 1999 to 2003, each of which examined work in health care, life in the sub-baccalaureate labor market, and the genesis and significance of a health care workforce training industry, albeit from different angles. First was a study of occupational change in three subacute care facilities (essentially a level of care between that of an acute care unit and a nursing home), with the aim of identifying where workers might need training. Second was an evaluation of a communication skills training program at a midsize teaching hospital in the center of one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. The third study focused directly on individual workers and the emergence of the industry to train them, for which I conducted in-depth interviews and observed several sessions of two additional training seminars--a customer service training program at a public hospital and an in-service on communication at one of the city's largest home health care agencies. Ariel Ducey