Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> Labor & Industrial Relations

Will higher pay provide an incentive for better work? Can productivity be increased by changing the way workers are compensated? In response to the urgent need to improve productivity performance in American industry, leading economists examine alternative compensation schemes to assess their efficiency in raising productivity.

Over the years a number of suggestions have been made for improving labor productivity by changing the manner in which laborers are compensated for their efforts. The ideas presented and analyzed in this volume have all been put into practice, in modified form or...

With growing international competition, American firms have been gaced with increasing pressures to produce better products, cut costs, and improve efficiency. As a result, American employers have changed many of their long-standing labor priorities. Work-force stability has become less important; long-term commitments have become less attractive; and labor costs, especially fringe benefits, have come under increased scrutiny. With this large reorganization of work forces and priorities, Americans are again faced with the significant questions of what rights workers haveand should havein...

Many of the rules that govern labor markets in Latin America (and elsewhere) raise labor costs, create barriers to entry, and introduce rigidities in the employment structure. These include the exceedingly restrictive regulations on hiring and firing practices, as well as burdensome social insurance schemes. Such labor market regulations contribute to an over-expansion of precarious forms of employment and to rural poverty, and hinder countries from responding rapidly to new challenges from increased foreign competition.

At the same time, other norms can reduce costs and raise...

In the first book-length history of the Italian American syndicalist movement--the Italian Socialist Federation--Michael Miller Topp presents a new way of understanding the Progressive Era labor movement in relation to migration, transnationalism, gender, and class identity. Those without a Country demonstrates that characterizations of "old" (pre-1960s) social movements as predominantly class-based are vastly oversimplified--and contribute to current debates about the implications of identity politics for the American Left and American culture generally.

Topp traces...

"Servants of the State" traces the halting rise of a pluralistic attitude in hiring and promotion procedures within the federal government. Ranging from the Great Depression to World War II to the early days of both the civil rights movement and the Cold War, Margaret Rung reveals how circumstances in each of these eras shaped how federal managers conceptualized merit for female and African American workers. At the same time, Rung shows how labor relations, as practiced by the nation's most prominent employer, reflected and fostered broader social and cultural debates concerning American...

By digging through subpoenaed documents of strike-bound companies, their mercenaries, and the testimony of executive officers and rank-and-file strikebreakers, Robert Smith examines the inner workings of the...