New Additions to the Wirtz Labor Library Collection September 2006 (with publisher descriptions)
LABOR HALL OF FAME
Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America
Schiff, Karenna Gore (Miramax, 2006)
CT3260 .S35
Schiff, who is most notably Al Gore's oldest daughter and a lawyer and journalist, has put together a collective biography of nine outstanding American women of the 20th century—some unjustly little known. The more celebrated are Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862–1931), an African-American journalist who brought the horrors of lynching to public attention; Mother Jones (c. 1837–1930), an Irish immigrant and lifelong crusader for workers' rights; and Frances Perkins (1882–1965), the first woman Cabinet member, appointed by FDR. Several of the subjects are still alive, like Dolores Huerta, cofounder with César Chávez of the United Farm Workers, and Gretchen Buchenholz, who established the Association to Benefit Children.
LABOR HISTORY
Schools of Democracy: A Political History of the American Labor Movement
Sinyai, Clayton (ILR Press, 2006)
HD8066 .S53
In tracing the course of the American labor movement from the founding of the Knights of Labor in the 1870s to the 1968 presidential election and its aftermath, Sinyai explores the political dimensions of collective bargaining, the structures of unions and businesses, and labor’s relationships with political parties and other social movements. Schools of Democracy analyzes how labor activists wrestled with fundamental aspects of political philosophy and the development of American democracy including majority rule versus individual liberty, the rule of law, and the qualifications required of citizens of a democracy.
If the Workers Took a Notion: The Right to Strike and American Political Development
Lambert, Josiah Bartlett (ILR Press, 2005)
HD8072.5 .L357
Once a fundamental civic right, strikes are now constrained and contested. In an unusual and thought-provoking history, Josiah Bartlett Lambert shows how the ability to strike was transformed from a fundamental right that made the citizenship of working people possible into a conditional and commercialized function. Arguing that the executive branch, rather than the judicial branch, was initially responsible for the shift in attitudes about the necessity for strikes and that the rise of liberalism has contributed to the erosion of strikers’ rights, Lambert analyzes this transformation in relation to American political thought.
IMMIGRANT LABOR
Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream
Fine, Janice (ILR Press, 2006)
HD8081.A5 F56
In this pathbreaking book, Janice Fine identifies 137 worker centers in more than eighty cities, suburbs, and rural areas in thirty-one states. These centers, which attract workers in industries that are difficult to organize, have emerged as especially useful components of any program intended to assist immigrants and low-wage workers of color. Worker centers serve not only as organizing laboratories but also as places where immigrants and other low-wage workers can participate in civil society, tell their stories to the larger community, resist racism and anti-immigrant sentiment, and work to improve their political and economic standing.
Labor Movement: How Migration Regulates Labor Markets
Bauder, Harald (Oxford University Press, 2006)
HD6300 .B38
Throughout the industrialized world, international migrants serve as nannies, construction workers, gardeners and small-business entrepreneurs. Labor Movement suggests that the international migration of workers is necessary for the survival of industrialized economies. The book thus turns the conventional view of international migration on its head: it investigates how migration regulates labor markets, rather than labor markets shaping migration flows. Assuming a critical view of orthodox economic theory, the book illustrates how different legal, social and cultural strategies towards international migrants are deployed and coordinated within the wider neo-liberal project to render migrants and immigrants vulnerable, pushing them into performing distinct economic roles and into subordinate labor market situations.
Managing Labor Migration in the Twenty-first Century
Martin, Philip; Abella, Manolo; Kuptsch, Christiane ( Yale University Press, 2006)
HD6300 .M345
Why have ninety million workers around the globe left their homes for employment in other countries? What can be done to ensure that international labor migration is a force for global betterment? This groundbreaking book presents the most comprehensive analysis of the causes and effects of labor migration available, and it recommends sensible, sustainable migration policies that are fair to migrants and to the countries that open their doors to them. The authors survey recent trends in international migration for employment and demonstrate that the flow of authorized and illegal workers over borders presents a formidable challenge in countries and regions throughout the world.
LABOR RIGHTS
Differences That Matter: Social Policy and the Working Poor in the United States and Canada
Zuberi, Dan (ILR Press, 2006)
HC110.P6 Z83
This book shines a spotlight on the causes and consequences of working poverty, revealing how the lives of low-wage workers are affected by differences in health care, labor, and social welfare policy in the United States and Canada. Dan Zuberi’s conclusions are based on survey data, eighteen months of participant observation fieldwork, and in-depth interviews with seventy-seven hotel employees working in parallel jobs on both sides of the border. Zuberi shows exactly where and how the social policies that distinguish the Canadian welfare state from the U.S. version make a difference in protecting Canadian workers from the hardships that burden low-wage workers in the United States.
Taking Back the Workers’ Law: How to Fight the Assault on Labor Rights
Dannin, Ellen; Bonior, David E. (ILR Press, 2006)
KF3369 .D36
Prolabor critics often question the effectiveness of the National Labor Relations Board. Some go so far as to call the Board labor’s enemy number one. In a daring book that is sure to be controversial, Ellen Dannin argues that the blame actually lies with judicial decisions that have radically "rewritten" the National Labor Relations Act. But rather than simply bemoan this problem, Dannin offers concrete solutions for change.
Justice on the Job: Perspectives on the Erosion of Collective Bargaining in the United States
Block, Richard N., et al (Upjohn Institute, 2006)
HD6508.J87
This volume presents an influential group of researchers who examine the current state of workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain collectively. All of the researchers present empirical evidence to support their innovative ideas for advancing workers' rights. The papers were originally presented at a conference co-sponsored by the School of Labor and Industrial Relations at Michigan State University and the AFL-CIO that was held in October 2002.
EDUCATION
Does Education Really Help?: Skill, Work and Inequality
Wolff, Edward N. (Oxford University Press, 2006)
HD5724 .W6254
This book challenges the conventional wisdom that greater schooling and skill improvement leads to higher wages, that income inequality falls with wider access to schooling, and that the Information Technology revolution will re-ignite worker pay. Indeed, the econometric results provide no evidence that the growth of skills or educational attainment has any statistically significant relation to earnings growth or that greater equality in schooling has led to a decline in income inequality.
Job Training That Gets Results: Ten Principles of Effective Employment Programs
Bernick, Michael S. (Upjohn Institute, 2005)
HD5715.2 .B474
Recognizing that training programs can’t be all things to all people, Michael Bernick, a former director of California’s Employment Development Department (EDD), sets out to show the types of training programs that do work and to describe for whom they work. He identifies ways to improve performance among Workforce Investment Act (WIA) contractors while exploring the best uses for state discretionary WIA funds. He also describes what it takes to make an effective career ladder program, how postemployment welfare retention or skill advancement programs can succeed, and the type of training that workers with disabilities must go through to get and retain jobs.
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