Journal articles on the topic 'Blue collar unions'

This study examines whether the norms and values of labor unions contradict public service motivation (PSM). Using Perry and Wise’s conceptualization of (PSM) this article tests four hypotheses by analyzing both quantitative data drawn from the employees of a large metropolitan city and qualitative data drawn from semistructured interviews conducted in two large Midwestern cities. I expect that as employees become socialized into union membership, they will increasingly identify with rational, affective, and normative union motives. The quantitative findings suggest that union socialization is associated with lower compassion, higher self-sacrifice, and greater commitment to the public interest. Union socialization is unrelated to attraction to policy making. This study supports the hypotheses that unions shape members’ motives through the socialization process. I rebut the argument that public sector union members are solely self-interested, but the findings suggest that union socialization can undermine one’s feelings of compassion.

This article discusses the changes in workers’ identity as blue-collar or salaried staff with respect to changing work content due to new models of industrial systems. Within these new industrial models, traditional blue-collar work is moving into areas of work previously held solely by salaried staff. This article argues that the merging of work content will cause a process of identity-mergers, a process calling for increased collaboration between blue-collar unions on the one hand, and salaried staff unions on the other. Reporting on four company cases, the authors argue that this process is caused both by labour unions’ efforts to increase workers’ motivation in work, as well as by market demands generating new models of industrial production. The authors conclude that the models of industrial relations must change so as to encompass cross-union collaboration and the diversity of professions.

This paper examines the determinants of National Labor Relations Board certification election outcomes in individual election units between 1972 and 1980. Particular emphasis is given to the role of national union characteristics in determining union success or failure. The authors find that union success in organizing both blue- and white-collar workers is influenced positively by union size and internal democracy and negatively by strike activity and the centralization of its decision making. Benefits provided directly to members by unions significantly increase, and higher dues significantly reduce, white-collar organizing success, whereas the same factors have no significant effect on blue-collar organizing.

This study investigates the influence of blue-collar unions on the wages and fringe benefits of white-collar workers employed in the same establishment. The author uses establishment data on employee compensation in 1974, the last year such data were collected, to estimate these wage and fringe spillovers in the two-digit industries in the manufacturing sector. Wage spillovers appear in only three of 16 industries, with the effect ranging from 10 to 19 percent. For fringes, however, significant spillovers are evident in 12 industries, with effects ranging from 15 to 52 percent. Although the models estimated also allow for the influence of white-collar unions on white-collar wages and fringes, no such effects were observed.

Despite the disenfranchisement of blacks in South Africa, the state's refusal to officially recognize black unions until 1980, and police repression of the union movement, this analysis of data for 1985 shows that black unions in South Africa had by that year made wage gains similar to those of unions in more developed countries. The union effect on wages for black blue-collar workers was 24%, which is in the range of effects found in studies of U.S. unions and above the range of effects found for European unions. Another finding is that black unions compressed wages across skill levels, an effect probably owing to black unions' primary emphasis on improving the lot of unskilled workers.

Using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data for 1979–91, the authors analyze the effect of union representation on the likelihood that individuals eligible for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits actually received those benefits. They find that unions had no statistically significant effect on the probability of benefit receipt among white-collar workers, but among eligible blue-collar workers, those who were laid off from union jobs were roughly 23% more likely than comparable nonunion workers to receive UI benefits. Although the analysis does not identify the reasons for this difference, two factors it appears to rule out as determinants are union-negotiated supplemental unemployment benefit plans and differences between union and nonunion workers in expected unemployment duration.

The Swedish industrial relations system has undergone significant changes in the past decade, as employers have vigorously pursued a strategy to decentralise the collective bargaining process. Issues of co-worker agreements and pay equity dominated the 1993 bargaining round, with employers seeking to limit the unions' role to the enterprise level. Union membership levels, however, have remained high and there has been greater cooperation between blue and white collar union groups. The return of a Social Democratic led Government may see greater support for national agreements and representative forms of participation.

This article on social movement unionism in Japan examines the particular ways in which labor unions form coalitions when undertaking disputes that concern the dismissal of blue-collar temporary agency workers. The triangular employment arrangement nullified the right of labor unions that represent the temporary agency workers to bargain with the user corporations. Against this predicament, labor unions formed alliances by flexibly negotiating the divisions that exist among labor. Labor unions in Japan are largely grouped under national labor federations and by their ties to political parties. Labor unions formed coalitions within the federation boundaries but also found creative ways to bridge across federation membership in an effort to rebuild its associational power. Civil society groups served as a glue that drew in unions across national federation memberships.

This article investigates the politics of reforming mature, pay-as-you-go pensions in the context of austerity. In both Sweden and Germany the Social Democratic party leadership advocated reform in response to similar financial and demographic pressures, but the Swedish reform was more successful in correcting perceived program weaknesses and in defending social democratic values. To explain this difference in outcomes, we focus on policy legacies and the organizational and political capacities of labor movements. We argue that existing pension policies in Germany were more constraining than in Sweden, narrowing the range of politically feasible strategies. By contrast, in Sweden, existing pension policy provided opportunities for turning vices into virtues and financing the transition to a new system. In addition, the narrow interests of German unions and the absence of institutionalized cooperation with the Social Democratic Party hindered reform. By contrast, the Swedish Social Democrats' bargaining position in pension reform negotiations with non-socialist parties was formulated with blue collar union interests in mind. The encompassing interests of Swedish unions and their close links with the Social Democrats facilitated a reform compromise.

This article discusses some alternative or critical theoretical contributions regarding globalization and labor. The main question in this discussion is if there are changes in direction of a possible revitalization of labor movements and if international solidarity can increase due to globalization. This question also relates to discussions of changes in division of work, the concept of work, working class, commodification, decommodification, and new centers of global production—all related to different paradigms or new concepts. The reason or need for reconceptualizing comes from the great transformation of capitalism in forms of neoliberal globalization, in a different direction than predicted by Polanyi. That is, instead of increased public sector decommodification (not profit- or market-oriented production) and national regulation, embedding capitalist markets, as seen after 1945, the last three decades have witnessed a countertransformation and large-scale recommodification by privatizing, disembedding, and deregulating global markets. As a consequence, inequality in income and working life conditions has increased in most countries and been used to press trade unions. Western industrial unions have been declining as many industries and labor-intensive, low-paid jobs moved to developing countries. Most blue-collar jobs are now in Asia, especially China, with about one-third of its employment blue collars. Is the center of global capital-labor contradictions and dynamics moving to the South, with a possibility of a new revitalization of labor and international solidarity? We discuss different optimistic and pessimistic views on a possible international revitalization of labor.

The article deals with the declining union density and shrinking coverage of collective agreements in most EU/EES countries, in particular in Eastern Europe and Greece. In many countries, international organizations pushed through “structural reforms” weakening trade unions. The result is declining union density and decreased capacity to conclude sectoral collective agreements and avoid downwards derogations at company level. Even in some core eurozone countries have governments without much of social dialogue carried through “internal devaluation” to restore competitiveness. High union density (Finland) or high union mobilization capacity (France) could not prevent this development. The economic performance of a country and degree of globalization, including the absence of a national currency, appear to be more important. The Swedish (and Nordic) model of self-regulation, resting on negotiations between the labour market parties, contrasts sharply to French state regulation with its high frequency of state extension of collective agreements and minimum wages set by the state. Union density in Sweden is still among the highest in the world but has declined considerably the last twenty years, in particular among the rapidly growing share of foreign-born blue-collar workers. As a small, strongly export-dependent country dominated by large transnational groups, Swedish economy is very influenced by globalization. This has shifted the balance of power to the advantage of employers, and by that circumscribed the unions’ efforts to achieve developing jobs and improved working environment.

This study examines two widely researched attitudes of union members—satisfaction with and commitment to their union—using 1987–88 data on 1,675 union members in professional occupations in Sweden and 476 blue- and white-collar union members in Canada. The authors find, first, that union commitment and union satisfaction are theoretically and empirically different constructs. Second, tests of a theoretical model of union attitude formation indicate that different (though overlapping) sets of factors influence union commitment and union satisfaction. One finding is that activities and processes that provide members with greater information about the union, such as new member orientation programs, newsletters sent to members' homes, and participation in union activities, effectively promote union commitment, but not union satisfaction. The results are very similar across the two samples, suggesting that they have cross-cultural generalizability.

Purpose. To explore sociopolitical and organizational issues in worksite alcohol health promotion. Few such programs are reported in the literature. Design. Qualitative data were gathered during the development and implementation phases of a program through focus groups, key informant interviews, and observations made by the research team. Settings and Subjects. One hundred and ninety-nine blue-collar workers from a private company (a group which was also involved in a randomized controlled trial) and 123 workers from four other organizations (nontrial groups) received the intervention. The nontrial groups were used to pilot-test the intervention and in a post-trial assessment. All companies were located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Intervention. Two worksite health promotion sessions on responsible drinking were given to small groups of workers. Measures. The reactions of workers, unions, and employers to the program and to the evaluation trial were observed. The viewpoints of key informants were solicited through semi-structured interviews. Analysis was accomplished through several cycles of memo writing. Results. Alcohol is a sensitive subject when discussed in worksite group settings. Our data suggest that there are alcohol problems in the workplace of which coworkers are clearly cognizant. In one setting the intervention led to the development of organizational rules regarding workers who reported to work inebriated, where this behavior had been previously tolerated. The sessions were better received when disease concepts were avoided. Evaluation research on alcohol requires particular care with confidentiality and ongoing communication with all stakeholders, especially unions. Conclusions. Worksite health promotion regarding alcohol is feasible. The complex process of negotiating, implementing, and evaluating a worksite alcohol health promotion program is discussed. More research on the sociopolitical aspects of such programs is needed.

Summary: Previous research has identified instrumentality and ideology as important aspects of member attachment to labor unions. The present study evaluated the construct validity of a scale designed to reflect the two dimensions of instrumental and ideological union commitment using a sample of 1170 Swedish blue-collar union members. Longitudinal data were used to test seven propositions referring to the dimensionality, internal consistency reliability, and temporal stability of the scale as well as postulated group differences in union participation to which the scale should be sensitive. Support for the hypothesized factor structure of the scale and for adequate reliabilities of the dimensions was obtained and was also replicated 18 months later. Tests for equality of measurement model parameters and test-retest correlations indicated support for the temporal stability of the scale. In addition, the results were consistent with most of the predicted differences between groups characterized by different patterns of change/stability in union participation status. The study provides strong support for the construct validity of the scale and indicates that it can be used in future theory testing on instrumental and ideological union commitment.

AbstractThis essay examines the response of Catholics—both the institutional church and blue-collar laity—to the turmoil of the late 1930s and the rise of the United Automobile Workers in Detroit. It critiques an influential line of scholarship that holds that the ethnic working class was effectively secularized by the rise of mass culture, the welfare state, and industrial unions. Instead, the essay argues that religion—like class, gender, or race/ethnicity—might fruitfully be analyzed as a “consciousness” and, as such, remains fluid, malleable, and protean in the face of historical change. During the Depression years, blue-collar Catholics (especially Catholic men) experienced a re-creation of their religious consciousness to conform to the new world of industrial unionism. While Detroit’s “labor priests” established the Archdiocesan Labor Institute (ALI) and hosted labor schools in parishes across the city, lay people, spurred by the movement for “Catholic Action,” founded the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists (ACTU) to strengthen working-class faith and “Christianize the UAW.” More important, the ALI and ACTU collectively provided a new religious template within which working-class Catholics might reconcile—even intertwine—their class, gender, and religious identities. While the changes of the 1930s did assimilate ethnic Catholics more fully into the secular sphere, this essay demonstrates that such a process did not result in a “decline” in religious significance for many Catholic workers; more precisely, it meant a “re-making” of religious consciousness.

Low fertility rates and an aging society, growing long-term care needs, and workforce shortages in professional, industrial, and care sectors are emerging issues in South Korea and Taiwan. Both governments have pursued economic/industrial growth as productive welfare capitalism and enacted preferred selective migration policies to recruit white-collar migrant workers (MWs) as mobile elites, but they have also adopted regulations and limitations on blue-collar MWs through unfree labor relations, precarious employment, and temporary legal status to provide supplemental labor. In order to demonstrate how multiple policy regulations from a national level affect MWs’ precarity of labor in their receiving countries, which in turn affect MWs’ im/mobilities, this article presents the growing trends of transnational MWs, regardless of them being high- or low-skilled MWs, and it evaluates four dimensions of labor migration policies—MWs’ working and employment conditions, social protection, union rights and political participation, and access to permanent residency in both countries. We found that the rights and working conditions of low-skilled MWs in Korea and Taiwan are improving slowly, but still lag behind those of high-skilled MWs which also affects their public health and well-being. The significant difference identified here is that MWs in Taiwan can organize labor unions, which is strictly prohibited in Korea; pension protection also differs between the nations. Additionally, an application for permanent residency is easier for high-skilled migrant workers compared with low-skilled MWs and both the Korean and Taiwanese immigration policies differentiate the entry and resident status for low-skilled and professional MWs from dissimilar class backgrounds. Policy recommendations for both countries are also discussed.

This article describes and explains the movement of female relative wages in Sweden from 1920 to 1995. During this period the aggregate gender wage gap shrunk from 41 to 15%. The bulk of the change took place in two periods: 1920 to 1940 and 1960 to 1980. With regard to determining factors, the analysis distinguishes between the period before 1960, when the rise in the female relative wage was the result of employment shifts, and after 1960, when wage structure change was the prime determinant. In the interwar period, women moved from low-paid to better-paid jobs, notably in trade and commerce and public services, as legal and administrative reforms opened up the public sector to women and educational reforms raised the educational level of the female labor force. The most rapid change in the gender wage gap occurred at a time when the solidaristic wage policy doctrine was embraced by the blue-collar trade unions and formed the basis of claims in wage negotiations. This study suggests, however, that excess demand for female labor rather than egalitarian ambitions of strong trade unions was the decisive factor behind the rapid reduction of the gender gap. Likewise, supply and demand shifts may well explain why the female relative wage stagnated from the late 1970s. These observations add up to the somewhat unorthodox conclusion that institutions were of primary importance for female relative wage development in the interwar period, while market forces played the leading role after 1960.

In this article the spread of demonstrations - a political activity that situates itself in the middle on the scale of conventional - unconventional political action - is studied. The rare survey of the effective participation in demonstrations in Belgium shows that it is rather high. An extensive minority of some 20 to 25% ofthe Belgians declares to have participated in a demonstration. These figures modify the image of the passive, indifferent citizen that research of conventional political participation has shown. The spread of the participation in demonstrations according to age and professional activity, moreover, differs from the pattern found in conventional participation. Demonstrating is typical behaviour of the younger age-categories and therefore of students, but also of farmers, blue collar workers and lower-ranked white collar workers.From this survey follow a number of results connected to the use of demonstrations and the number of demonstrators during the period 1953-74. Related statistics indicate that the number of demonstrations and demonstrators increases, the latter not to the same extent as the farmer however. Furthermore it appears that students, labor unions and agricultural organizations have often come to the streets to enforce their demands. Thematically speaking, particularly problems related to traditional cleavages in Belgian polities have been theobject of demonstrations: ideological, socio-economic and linguistic issues. Organizations active in the area of this cleavages are able to mobilize a great number ofdemonstrators. These organizations are for the most part pillarized and structurally well-developed. Nevertheless the division between issues and organizations during the period 1953-74 has become less unequal. During the sixties and the early seventies the share of traditional cleavages in the number of demonstrations and demonstrators is becoming smaller. New organizations areusing demonstrations more and more to put new issues (environment, foreign policy, quality ofdemocracy, etc.) on the political agenda. They have, however, not the same power to mobilise as do the pillarized organizations.

Purpose. The study examines associations of five healthy workplace attributes with trade unionism and nine other industrial and sociodemographic factors. The aims were to illustrate the measurement of workplace health promotion indicators in Western Australia and to identify associations leading to a better understanding of determinants of the healthy workplace. Design. Personal and telephone cross-sectional surveys were performed using population-based sampling frames. The overall response rate was 72%. Setting. Workplaces in Western Australia. Subjects. Random samples of household respondents aged 16 to 69 years in 1992 (n = 1310) and 1994 (n = 1113). Measures. Measures of association between healthy workplace attributes and trade unionism were adjusted for workplace location, size, sector, and industrial classification. Results. Trade unionism was strongly associated with healthy catering practices (adjusted OR 2.05; 95% CI 1.30 to 3.23), sun protection practices (2.66; 1.69 to 4.17), disability access (1.47; 1.10 to 1.95), and worksite health promotion programs (2.56; 2.07 to 3.17). A weak and nonsignificant association was observed with restrictive smoking policies (1.21; .95 to 1.55). Generally, healthy workplace attributes were reported less often by respondents working in rural locations, in the private sector, and at small worksites. There was no consistent relationship with sociodemographic factors, including an index of social disadvantage, but members of blue-collar occupations experienced a low prevalence of restrictive smoking policies. Conclusions. The study raises the hypothesis, but cannot confirm, that trade unions could provide a means for employees to pursue the creation of a health-promoting workplace. Small business represents an excellent target for health promotion activities.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the factors affecting the return to work (RTW) of injured workers in an institutional setting where workers’ earnings are fully compensated during the disability period. Design/methodology/approach – The authors use a unique data set matching employer-employee panel data with Italian workers’ compensation records. The authors estimate survival models accounting for workers’ unobserved heterogeneity. Findings – Workers with higher wage growth, higher relative wages and from firms with better histories of stable employment, RTW sooner. More vulnerable workers – immigrants, females, members of smaller firms – also tend to return sooner. But even when we control for such measures of commitment, status, and job security, high-wage workers RTW sooner. Research limitations/implications – The authors use proxies as measures of commitment and status. The authors study blue-collar workers without finer job qualifications. The authors estimate a reduced form model. Practical implications – In an institutional environment where the immediate cost of workers’ compensation benefits falls largely on firms, employers seem to pressure those workers whose time off is more costly, i.e., high-wage workers. The lack of evidence of ex post moral hazard behavior also demands for a better understanding of the relationship between benefits and RTW. Social implications – Workers who are induced to RTW before full recovery jeopardize their long- term health and employability. Firms that put such pressure on employees might generate social costs that can be particularity high in the case of high productivity workers. Originality/value – The paper offers the first quantitative analysis of an institutional setting where injured workers face 100 percent benefits replacement rate and have job security. This allows focus on other workers’ or employers’ reasons to speed RTW. It is one of very few economics studies on this topic in the European context, providing implications for human resource managers, state regulators, and unions.

How has Turkey’s working-class movement adapted to the new conditions of capitalism? What alternative forms of struggle have emerged to address precarization under neoliberalism? Providing a bottom-up account of social-union activism based on interviews with union activists, we argue that neoliberal capitalism structurally incapacitates working-class organizing in Turkey through a process of precarization, strongly expressed in the flexibilization of labor and further amplified by sociogeographical unevenness and cultural identities. These challenges are addressed through innovatory methods of bottomup organizing such as white-collar forums of exchange, internet activism, the accentuation of the emotional and gendered dynamics of class struggle, solidarity actions with blue collars, and various forms of street activism.

This paper evaluates the applicability of the different factor structures of union commitment identified in previous studies to the Australian case. Confirmatory factor analysis results using LISREL VII suggest that union commitment is best represented by four distinct factors, 'union loyalty; 'responsibility to the union; 'willingness to work for the union', and 'belief in unionism' in this sample of Australian workers. OLS regression results indicate that the four factors are differentially related to a set of common predictor variables. White-collar workers reported higher levels of commit ment than blue-collar workers. Participation in leadership positions and previous ex perience with union handling of grievances significantly increased commitment to the union. The results suggest support for the generalizability of the factor structure of union commitment to Australia. Implications for future research are discussed.

Union density remains very high in Sweden. The significantly raised fees for union unemployment funds in January 2007 were followed by an unprecedented decline in the number of union members in modern Swedish history. In the course of two years union density dropped by 6 percentage points: from 77% in 2006 to 71% in 2008. As a result, the density of employers' associations today is much higher than union density. The article below describes and analyzes union decline among different groups of workers and why it was not difficult to foresee this development when the center-right government sharply raised membership contributions to finance the state-subsidized Swedish unemployment insurance. From July 2008 the government more closely linked fund fees to the unemployment rate for each fund, thus differentiating fund fees between different groups of employees. Since the subsequent economic crisis hit private sector blue-collar workers harder than other employees, the differentiation of fees was further widened. As a consequence, total union fees (including fund fees) also varied more by time and between different categories of workers, which in turn was reflected in the development of union density. From 2006 to 2010 blue-collar density fell by 8 percentage points compared to the 4-point decline among white-collar workers. In contrast to the depression of the 1990s, union density did not increase when unemployment increased rapidly from 2008 to 2009. The article also discusses why the government failed to achieve its main goal of changing the financing system of unemployment insurance: to influence wage formation.

AbstractIf any group of American blue-collar workers has benefited from the growth of trade it is the unionized dockworkers along the US West Coast. Nevertheless, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) representing these workers is vocally opposed to trade liberalization. We examine several competing explanations for this puzzle and evaluate them by tracing the union's stance on trade over several decades. We also use an original survey to compare ILWU affiliates' attitudes on trade with those of nonmembers with otherwise similar characteristics. Consistent with a model of organizational socialization, the data support the hypothesis that ILWU membership affects the members' revealed political opinions; the data are difficult to reconcile with standard theories of international trade. Our findings indicate that the political support for trade depends not just on voters' structural positions in the economy but also on the organizations and networks in which they are embedded.

In cross-sectional data, the positive association between seniority and earnings is typically much stronger for nonunion workers than for union workers, a finding that seems inconsistent with the generalization that seniority is more important in the union sector than in the nonunion sector. The authors of this paper show that standard estimates of the return to seniority are likely to be biased upward due to unmeasured worker heterogeneity, job heterogeneity, or both, and they argue that this bias is likely to be larger in the nonunion sector than in the union sector. When they correct for this problem in analyzing data on male blue-collar workers for the years 1968–80, they find a larger return to seniority in the union sector than in the nonunion sector.

This study examines the behavioral commitment ( intent to stay) of a sample of blue-collar employees from a manufacturing firm in Australia. The purpose was to test an integrated causal model of behavioral commitment based on four general classes of variables: structural, pre-entry, environmental, and employee orientations. The LISREL results indicate that variables rank ordered in terms of importance for their total causal effects on the decision process of employees to stay or leave an organization is as follows: job search, job satisfaction, job security, attitudinal commitment, union participation, environmental opportunity, physical conditions, job hazards, met expectations, equity, family responsibility, centraliza tion, supervisory support, and work group cohesion.

Purpose – With a particular focus on cultural understandings and the concepts behind welfare policies, the purpose of this paper is to analyse commonalities and dissimilarities in the patterns of social policy, and more precisely youth unemployment policies, in Sweden and Germany. Design/methodology/approach – A document analysis of Swedish and German youth unemployment policies was conducted with regard to how the two welfare regimes’ policies define the underlying problem, the instruments through which this problem is tackled, and the aim of youth activation policies. Findings – The findings show congruency concerning the definitions of the problem of youth unemployment, in which the unemployed are regarded as lacking in discipline, as well as in the policies through which the problem is tackled: through conditionality and pastoral power as policy tools. The solution of the problem on the other hand, found in the notion of the ideal worker to be produced, diverges between active entrepreneurs in one country, and blue-collar workers in the other. The authors conclude that the introduction of supranational policy concepts is not a matter of mere implementation, and that concepts like activation are reinterpreted according to differing cultural ideologies and accommodated into the context of particular welfare states. Originality/value – This paper provides an innovative framework for the understanding of the influence of cultural understandings on policy making, but also on challenges facing activation governance on the one hand and European Union policy initiatives and transnational policy diffusion on the other.

Objective. Compelling reasons exist for labor and public health to collaborate. For example, compared to white-collar workers, blue-collar and service workers are much more likely to be targeted by the tobacco industry and become smokers. The purpose of this descriptive study was to assess if there were ways public health and labor could collaborate to document the health attitudes and needs of hospitality industry workers. Methods. Eligible union members were identified through an electronic enrollment file consisting of 3,659 names maintained by the union. The mail survey instrument covered exposure to secondhand smoke, exposure to hazardous chemicals and materials, time pressure and job demands, and work-related pain/disability. Additional questions related to age, gender, race/ethnicity, level of education, employment history, English proficiency, and self-reported health status. Results. Study results demonstrated that important health information could be successfully collected on unionized workers. Survey data showed that union members were a very diverse group who were exposed to secondhand smoke and supported working in clean-air settings. Workers, especially housekeeping staff, characterized their work as being chaotic and demanding, while almost half of workers reported work-related pain. Conclusions. Key to the successful collaboration was establishing trust between the parties and emphasizing data collection that served the information needs of both organizations. Opportunities exist to improve the health and working conditions of this population. Health interventions need to be designed to take into consideration the very diverse, mostly female, and limited English proficiency of this group of workers.

The concept of “social contract” is useful in understanding the process of reform currently under way in the Soviet Union. The social contract “concluded” by Khrushchev and Brezhnev provided the population with economic guarantees but deprived it of any political power. Their contract was geared primarily toward less educated, blue-collar workers. During the past seventy years Soviet society has become industrialized, urbanized, and educated. Gorbachev has understood that the well-being of the Soviet economy will in the future rest on the labor and know-how of skilled and educated professionals. He must therefore conclude a new contract that will be advantageous to this sector of society in order to ensure its participation in his efforts to reform the economy.

AbstractObjectiveTo examine the impact of a 6-month participatory and empowerment-based intervention study on employees’ dietary habits and on changes in the canteen nutrition environment.DesignWorksites were stratified by company type and by the presence or absence of an in-house canteen, and randomly allocated to either an intervention group (five worksites) or a minimum intervention control group (three worksites). The study was carried out in partnership with a trade union and guided by an ecological framework targeting both individual and environment levels. Outcome measures included: (i) changes in employees’ dietary habits derived from 4 d pre-coded food diaries of a group of employees at the worksites (paired-data structure); and (ii) the canteen nutrition environment as identified by aggregating chemical nutritional analysis of individual canteen lunches (different participants at baseline and at endpoint).SettingEight blue-collar worksites (five of these with canteens).SubjectsEmployees.ResultsIn the intervention group (n102), several significant positive nutritional effects were observed among employees, including a median daily decrease in intake of fat (−2·2 %E,P= 0·002) and cake and sweets (−18 g/10 MJ,P= 0·002) and a median increase in intake of dietary fibre (3 g/10 MJ,P< 0·001) and fruit (55 g/d,P= 0·007 and 74 g/10 MJ,P= 0·009). With regard to the canteen nutrition environment, a significant reduction in the percentage of energy obtained from fat was found in the intervention group (median difference 11 %E,P< 0·001,n144).ConclusionsThe present study shows that moderate positive changes in dietary patterns can be achieved among employees in blue-collar worksites.

Strategic Information Warfare (SIW) has recently begun to garner significant interest among the military and strategic defence communities. While nebulous and difficult to define, the basic object of SIW is to render an adversary's information systems inoperative or to cause them to malfunction. While information is the key, the means, and the target of SIW, real world damage is the intention and effect. It is, nonetheless, an area which has been almost completely ignored by positive international law. The purpose of the present article is to begin to resolve this lacuna by analysing the applicability to, and effect of, international humanitarian law (IHL) on SIW. The author makes recommendations as to possible alterations and improvements to IHL to resolve this lacuna. [In] 1956 when Khrushchev said: “We will bury the West.” What he was really saying was that the military industrial complex of the Soviet Union would win out over the military industrial complex of the West – and note that it's industrial. What Khrushchev didn't understand was that 1956 was the first year in the United States that white-collar and service employees outnumbered blue-collar workers. […] The industrial complex, military or not, was at its end point.Alvin Toffler, Novelist and Social Theorist

AbstractThis paper analyses the significance of the Botswana High Court and Court of Appeal judgments of a case in which the Manual Worker Union, a blue-collar public sector union, challenged the Botswana Government to reinstate dismissed workers with all their past benefits. I examine the role of public ethics and morality in Botswana as reflected in key notions used by High Court judges, such as “the duty to act fairly” and “legitimate expectations,” and argue that legal anthropologists have neglected such ideas, despite their having become a bedrock of contemporary judicial reasoning. While anthropology has shown a renewed interest in ethics, issues of public ethics and morality remain relatively unexplored in contemporary legal anthropological debates. One has to go back to the work of Max Gluckman on reasonableness in judicial decision-making among the Barotse to find foundational anthropological insights into the morality and ethics of law in non-Western societies. In the legally plural context of Botswana, notions of equity and fairness, this paper argues, “permeate” the legal landscape.

Abstract Assuming that differences in the cost of using various job search methods are negligible, the authors suggest that the job searcher makes use of specific combinations of complementary methods, and that the composition of these combinations reflects relevant personal characteristics of the job searcher (the structure of labour supply) and the searcher's perception of the characteristics of vacancies (the structure of labor demand). This hypothesis is analysed with the help of data collected by a questionnaire mailed to 1100 blue- and white-collar workers laid off from a Montreal aeronautical firm from January 1970 to March 1971. Components analysis is used to identify four combinations of job-search methods: 1) ex-employer, trade union or employees' association, special placement service (FD1); 2) private agencies, newspaper advertisements, manpower centres (FD2); 3) parents or friends, manpower centres, newspaper advertisements (FD3); personal initiatives (FD4). An analysis of these results suggests two new concepts: standard methods, i.e. those widely and habitually used by job searchers in general; supplementary methods, i.e. those used when standard methods fail to provide what the job searcher considers a satisfactory chance of getting a job. Combination FDI is interpreted as one of supplementary methods. The second part of the article relates 64 variables, reduced to 21 factors representing various characteristics of job searchers (personal, occupational, financial, labour market behavior), to the four combinations of search methods, in an attempt to explain part of the method selection process. It is found that users of FD2 are relatively qualified, English-speaking, mobile and interested in training, and are likely to have found a job. Users of FD3 are characterized by their youth and their flexibility in terms of jobs and mobility. FD1, by contrast, appears to have been used by older workers with family responsibilities, who are likely to have remained continually unemployed after lay-off. This is seen as supporting the interpretation of FD1 as a combination of supplementary methods. Finally, the results indicate that the difference in behaviour between white- and blue-collar workers may not be as clear-out as is suggested in the literature; the demarcation appears to rest on the level of skill in either group, rather than on the collar-status itself. It is concluded that the data analysed lend some support to the hypothesis formulated. Combinations of search methods detected by components analysis do appear to be related to identifiable categories of job searchers. The skill level is seen as a particularly important determinant of the selection process. Moreover, it is suggested that the concept of supplementary methods is sufficiently sustained by the data to warrant further study.

Employing data from three surveys of mass opinion conducted in Lithuania, Ukraine and European Russia during 1990, 1991 and 1992, we examine three prominent but competing hypotheses about the source of political values in the post-Soviet societies: historically derived political culture, regime indoctrination and the effects of societal modernization. The literature on Soviet political culture argues that Russian mass values are distinguished by authoritarianism and love of order, values which will be largely shared by Ukrainians, especially East Ukrainians, whereas Lithuanian society would not evince this pattern. Our data do not support this hypothesis. We then examine acceptance of Soviet era norms, both political and economic. We do not find support for the argument that regime indoctrination during the Soviet period produced a set of ideologically derived values throughout the former Soviet Union and across a series of generations. The third hypothesis – that industrialization, urbanization, war and changing educational opportunities shaped the formative experiences of succeeding generations in the Soviet societies and, therefore, their citizens' values – receives the most support: in each of the three societies, differences in political values across age groups, places of residence and levels of education are noteworthy. The variations in political values we find across demographic groupings help us to understand the level of pro-democratic values in each society. We find that in Russia and Ukraine more support for democracy can be found among urban, better educated respondents than among other groups. In Lithuania, the urban and better educated respondents evince pro-democratic values at about the same level as their counterparts in Russia and Ukraine, but Lithuanian farmers and blue-collar workers support democracy at a level closer to urban, white-collar Lithuanians than to their Russian and Ukrainian counterparts. In all three societies, those citizens most likely to hold values supportive of democracy are those who are less favourable to Soviet-era values and less convinced of the primacy of the need for social and political ‘order’. Those who desire strong leadership, however, tend to have more democratic values, not more authoritarian ones.

Introduction: Transit workers are a blue-collar occupational group with elevated rates of smoking despite access to free or low-cost cessation services available through their health insurance as a union-negotiated employee benefit. Little is known about the influences on cessation participation in this workforce.Aims: The purpose of this study is to analyse the factors associated with past-year cessation activities amongst a multiethnic sample of transit workers.Methods: Cross-sectional tobacco surveys were completed by 935 workers at an Oakland, California, USA-based public transit agency. Data from 190 current smokers (68% African American; 46% female) were analysed. Adjusted odds ratios were calculated to identify factors associated with past-year cessation activity.Results: Approximately 55% of smokers stopped smoking for one day or longer during the past year in order to quit. Nearly half reported that the most common barrier to quitting was, ‘Not mentally ready to quit because I like smoking’. Workers in the contemplation/precontemplation stage for intention to quit were less likely to have engaged in cessation activities than those in the action/preparation stage (AOR = 0.34). Frequency of coworker encouragement for quitting was positively associated with past-year cessation activities (AOR = 3.25). Frequency of insomnia symptoms was negatively associated with cessation activity participation (AOR = 0.34).Conclusions: Most transit workers who smoke made a past-year quit attempt. Gaining insight into factors associated with participation in cessation activities can aid worksite efforts to promote cessation and reduce tobacco-related disparities.

Article presents jewelry findings from Pravi Solontsi in the Lower Dnieper. The assemblage belongs to the circle of Dnieper early medieval hoards of first chronological group by O. A. Shcheglova or Martynivka type. The complex comprises 20 whole and fragmented metal items and 1 glass bead. All jewelry is represented by elements of women’s attire: details of collar (chain with link of «snake head», tubular beads Volodarets-Urbanovich / type 1, trapezoidal pendants ornamented with two / three punches circles in mid and blue bead) and bracelets (Rodinkova / type 5, subtype 3 and 2, Rodinkova / type 2, subtype of ornamented). The items existed in the Middle Dnieper region and the Dnieper left bank starting from the end of the 6th / turn of the 6th—7th cc. to the middle / third quarter of the 7th c. We have three explanations for the reasons for the appearance of the Slavic complex of Martynivka type in the Lower Dnieper. The first is connected with the relations between Slavs and nomads. The owner of the Pravi Solontsi complex could be in depending or in marital relations with a representative of the nomadic tribal union. Other variants are a trade or migration from the Middle Dnieper to the Crimea. Their confirmation is the jewelry of the Dnieper origin in the Crimea and the Pre-Caucasus. In addition, a series of things of Crimean origin is known in the Middle Dnieper and Left Bank Dnieper. Near the town Oleshky (next to the village of Pravi Solontsi), was find а small bronze fibula without ornament — brooch of the Danube circle (Joachim Werner’s class IH). V. Ye. Rodinkova believes that this find belongs to type Pergamon-Tai-zee, subtype undecorated according to I. O. Gavritukhin and is already a local modification. Thus, the treasure from the Right Solonets is already the second Slavic finds of the early Middle Ages from this micro-region.

The inclusion of computers in working life with the developing technologies has accelerated the transfer of commercial activities to electronic environments. The widespread use of the Internet accelerates communication with cross-border geographies and adds a digital dimension to commercial activities carried out in traditional working life. Today, it is an undeniable reality that electronic commerce has a significant share in the trade volumes of nation states. As a matter of fact, due to the Covid-19 global epidemic, which started at the end of 2019 and whose effect has continued to the present day, working life has moved to electronic environments to a large extent throughout the world, and the termination of face-to-face jobs due to the pandemic has caused a significant part of the traditional workforce to be unemployed. The aim of this study is to clarify how the digitalized working life due to the internet, which has a widespread use in cross-border geographies, will affect the workforce and social transformation, and how the electronic working life, which has emerged by creating a revolutionary effect in traditional working life, will rise in the light of sociological modern views. The blue-collar workforce, which came to the forefront with the Industrial Revolution and succeeded in gaining union power, started to lose its dominance in the working life with the implementation of neoliberal policies by the states since the 1970s. With the transfer of working life to electronic environments, it is expected that the existing workforce will gain technological competencies, so new generation jobs emerge. In this study, social class inequalities, new identity determining factors, possible cultural polarizations as a result of the rise of the white-collar workforce due to electronic working life are examined. In addition, how technology should be used in the new working life, where individuality comes to the fore, and the evolution of entrepreneurship and unionization are also discussed. It is thought that this study will contribute to the literature in terms of evaluating the sociological problems that may be encountered in electronic working life. ​Extended English summary is in the end of Full Text PDF (TURKISH) file. Özet Teknolojik gelişmeler sonucu bilgisayarların çalışma hayatına dâhil edilmesi, ticari faaliyetlerin elektronik ortamlara taşınmasını hızlandırmıştır. İnternet kullanımının yaygın hale gelmesi, sınır ötesi coğrafyalar ile iletişimi kolaylaştırmakla birlikte, geleneksel çalışma hayatında sürdürülen ticari faaliyetlere de dijital bir nitelik kazandırmıştır. Günümüzde elektronik ticaretin, ulus devletlerin ticaret hacimlerinde yıldan yıla artarak önemli bir paya sahip olduğu görülmektedir. Nitekim günümüzdeki çalışma hayatı; 2019 yılı sonlarında başlayan ve etkisinin hala devam ettiği Covid-19 küresel salgının da etkisiyle, dünya genelinde önemli ölçüde elektronik ortamlara taşınmıştır. Elektronik çalışma hayatı, geleneksel çalışma hayatında devrim etkisi yaratarak önemli bir yükseliş kaydetmiştir. Pandemi nedeniyle yüz yüze yapılmak zorunda olunan işlere son verilmesi, geleneksel iş gücünün büyük bir çoğunluğunun işsiz kalmasına sebep olmuştur. Bu çalışmanın amacı; sınır ötesi coğrafyaları kapsayarak yaygın kullanım ağına sahip olan internetin, geleneksel çalışma hayatını, iş gücünü ve toplumsal dönüşümü nasıl etkileyeceğine, sosyolojik açıdan modern görüşler ışığında açıklık getirmektir. Sanayi Devrimi ile ön plana çıkan ve sendikal güce sahip olmayı başaran mavi yakalı iş gücü, 1970’ li yıllardan itibaren, devletlerin Neoliberal politikaları uygulamaya geçirmesiyle, çalışma hayatındaki hükümdarlığını giderek kaybetmeye başlamıştır. Yıllar içerisinde çalışma hayatının elektronik ortamlara aktarılmasıyla, mevcut iş gücünden teknolojik yetkinlikler kazanması beklenilmekte ve hızla yeni nesil işler ortaya çıkmaktadır. Bu çalışmada elektronik çalışma hayatında yer alan beyaz yakalı iş gücü kesiminin yükselişi sonucu ortaya çıkan toplumsal sınıf eşitsizlikleri, yeni kimliğin belirleyici faktörleri ve olası kültürel kutuplaşmaları irdelenmektedir. Ayrıca bireyselliğin ön plana çıktığı yeni çalışma hayatında; teknolojinin nasıl kullanılması gerektiği, girişimcilik ve sendikalaşmanın evrildiği yönler de ele alınmaktadır. Bu çalışmanın, elektronik çalışma hayatında karşılaşılabilecek sosyolojik sorunların değerlendirilmesi bakımından literatüre katkı sağlayacağı düşünülmektedir.

Constant demand for new naval and commercial vessels has created special conditions for the Government-owned Soviet shipbuilding industry, which practically has not been affected by the world shipbuilding crisis. On the other hand, such chronic diseases of the centralized economy as lack of incentive, material shortage and poor workmanship cause specific problems for ship construction. Being technically and financially unable to rapidly improve the overall technology level and performance of the entire industry, the Soviets concentrate their efforts on certain important areas and have achieved significant results, especially in welding and cutting titanium and aluminum alloys, modular production methods, standardization, etc. All productivity improvement efforts are supported by an army of highly educated engineers and scientists at shipyards, in multiple scientific, research and design institutions. Discussion Edwin J. Petersen, Todd Pacific Shipyards Three years ago I addressed the Ship Production Symposium as chairman of the Ship Production Committee and outlined some major factors which had contributed to the U.S. shipbuilding industry's remarkable achievements in building and maintaining the world's largest naval and merchant fleets during the five-year period starting just before World War II. The factors were as follows:There was a national commitment to get the job done. The shipbuilding industry was recognized as a needed national resource. There was a dependable workload. Standardization was extensively and effectively utilized. Shipbuilding work was effectively organized. Although these lessons appear to have been lost by our Government since World War II, the paper indicates that the Soviet Union has picked up these principles and has applied them very well to its current shipbuilding program. The paper also gives testimony to the observation that the Soviet Government recognizes the strategic and economic importance of a strong merchant fleet as well as a powerful naval fleet. In reviewing the paper, I found great similarity between the Soviet shipbuilding productivity improvement efforts and our own efforts or goals under the National Shipbuilding Research Program in the following areas:welding technology, flexible automation (robotics), application of group technology, standardization, facilities development, and education and training. In some areas, the Soviet Union appears to be well ahead of the United States in improving the shipbuilding process. Most noteworthy among these is the stable long-and medium-range planning that is possible by virtue of the use and adherence to the "Table of Vessel Classes." It will be obvious to most who hear and read these comments what a vast and significant improvement in shipbuilding costs and schedules could be achieved with a relatively dependable 15year master ship procurement plan for the U.S. naval and merchant fleets. Another area where the Soviet Union appears to lead the United States is in the integration of ship component suppliers into the shipbuilding process. This has been recognized as a vital step by the National Shipbuilding Research Program, but so far we have not made significant progress. A necessary prerequisite for this "supplier integration" is extensive standardization of ship components, yet another area in which the Soviets have achieved significantly greater progress than we have. Additional areas of Soviet advantage are the presence of a multilevel research and development infrastructure well supported by highly educated scientists, engineering and technical personnel; and better integration of formally educated engineering and technical personnel into the ship production process. In his conclusion, the author lists a number of problems facing the Soviet economy that adversely affect shipbuilding productivity. Perhaps behind this listing we can delve out some potential U.S. shipbuilding advantages. First, production systems in U.S. shipyards (with the possible exception of naval shipyards) are probably more flexible and adjustable to meet new circumstances as a consequence of not being constrained by a burdensome centralized bureaucracy, as is the case with Soviet shipyards. Next, such initiatives as the Ship Production Committee's "Human Resources Innovation" projects stand a better chance of achieving product-oriented "production team" relationship among labor, management, and technical personnel than the more rigid Soviet system, especially in view of the ability of U.S. shipyard management to offer meaningful financial incentives without the kind of bureaucratic constraints imposed in the Soviet system. Finally, the current U.S. Navy/shipbuilding industry cooperative effort to develop a common engineering database should lead to a highly integrated and disciplined ship design, construction, operation, and maintenance system for naval ships (and subsequently for commercial ships) that will ultimately restore the U.S. shipbuilding process to a leadership position in the world marketplace (additional references [16] and [17]).On that tentatively positive note, it seems fitting to close this discussion with a question: Is the author aware of any similar Soviet effort to develop an integrated computer-aided design, production and logistics support system? The author is to be congratulated on an excellent, comprehensive insight into the Soviet shipbuilding process and productivity improvement efforts that should give us all adequate cause not to be complacent in our own efforts. Peter M. Palermo, Naval Sea Systems Command The author presents an interesting paper that unfortunately leaves this reader with a number of unanswered questions. The paper is a paradox. It depicts a system consisting of a highly educated work force, advanced fabrication processes including the use of standardized hull modules, sophisticated materials and welding processes, and yet in the author's words they suffer from "low productivity, poor product quality, . . . and the rigid production systems which resists the introduction of new ideas." Is it possible that incentive, motivation, and morale play an equally significant role in achieving quality and producibility advances? Can the author discuss underlying reasons for quality problems in particular—or can we assume that the learning curves of Figs. 5 and Fig. 6 are representative of quality improvement curves? It has been my general impression that quality will improve with application of high-tech fabrication procedures, enclosed fabrication ways, availability of highly educated welding engineers on the building ways, and that productivity would improve with the implementation of modular or zone outfitting techniques coupled with the quality improvements. Can the author give his impressions of the impact of these innovations in the U.S. shipbuilding industry vis-a-vis the Soviet industry? Many of the welding processes cited in the paper are also familiar to the free world, with certain notable exceptions concerning application in Navy shipbuilding. For example, (1) electroslag welding is generally confined to single-pass welding of heavy plates; application to thinner plates—l1/4 in. and less when certified—would permit its use in more applications than heretofore. (2) Electron beam welding is generally restricted to high-technology machinery parts; vacuum chamber size restricts its use for larger components (thus it must be assumed that the Soviets have solved the vacuum chamber problem or have much larger chambers). (3) Likewise, laser welding has had limited use in U.S. shipbuilding. An interesting theme that runs throughout the paper, but is not explicitly addressed, is the quality of Soviet ship fitting. The use of high-tech welding processes and the mention of "remote controlled tooling for welding and X-ray testing the butt, and for following painting" imply significant ship fitting capabilities for fitting and positioning. This is particularly true if modules are built in one facility, outfitted and assembled elsewhere depending on the type of ship required. Any comments concerning Soviet ship fitting capabilities would be appreciated. The discussion on modular construction seems to indicate that the Soviets have a "standard hull module" that is used for different types of vessels, and if the use of these hull modules permit increasing hull length without changes to the fore and aft ends, it can be assumed that they are based on a standard structural design. That being the case, the midship structure will be overdesigned for many applications and optimally designed for very few. Recognizing that the initial additional cost for such a piece of hull structure is relatively minimal, it cannot be forgotten that the lifecycle costs for transporting unnecessary hull weight around can have significant fuel cost impacts. If I perceived the modular construction approach correctly, then I am truly intrigued concerning the methods for handling the distributive systems. In particular, during conversion when the ship is lengthened, how are the electrical, fluid, communications, and other distributive systems broken down, reassembled and tested? "Quick connect couplings" for these type systems at the module breaks is one particular area where economies can be achieved when zone construction methods become the order of the day in U.S. Navy ships. The author's comments in this regard would be most welcome. The design process as presented is somewhat different than U.S. Navy practice. In U.S. practice, Preliminary and Contract design are developed by the Navy. Detail design, the development of the working drawings, is conducted by the lead shipbuilder. While the detail design drawings can be used by follow shipbuilders, flexibility is permitted to facilitate unique shipbuilding or outfitting procedures. Even the contract drawings supplied by the Navy can be modified— upon Navy approval—to permit application of unique shipbuilder capabilities. The large number of college-trained personnel entering the Soviet shipbuilding and allied fields annually is mind-boggling. According to the author's estimation, a minimum of about 6500 college graduates—5000 of which have M.S. degrees—enter these fields each year. It would be most interesting to see a breakdown of these figures—in particular, how many naval architects and welding engineers are included in these figures? These are disciplines with relatively few personnel entering the Navy design and shipbuilding field today. For example, in 1985 in all U.S. colleges and universities, there were only 928 graduates (B.S., M.S. and Ph.D.) in marine, naval architecture and ocean engineering and only 1872 graduates in materials and metallurgy. The number of these graduates that entered the U.S. shipbuilding field is unknown. Again, the author is to be congratulated for providing a very thought-provoking paper. Frank J. Long, Win/Win Strategies This paper serves not only as a chronicle of some of the productivity improvement efforts in Soviet shipbuilding but also as an important reminder of the fruits of those efforts. While most Americans have an appreciation of the strengths of the Russian Navy, this paper serves to bring into clearer focus the Russians' entire maritime might in its naval, commercial, and fishing fleets. Indeed, no other nation on earth has a greater maritime capability. It is generally acknowledged that the Soviet Navy is the largest in the world. When considering the fact that the commercial and fishing fleets are, in many military respects, arms of the naval fleet, we can more fully appreciate how awesome Soviet maritime power truly is. The expansion of its maritime capabilities is simply another but highly significant aspect of Soviet worldwide ambitions. The development and updating of "Setka Typov Su dov" (Table of Vessel Classes), which the author describes is a classic example of the Soviet planning process. As the author states, "A mighty fishing and commercial fleet was built in accordance with a 'Setka' which was originally developed in the 1960's. And an even more impressive example is the rapid expansion of the Soviet Navy." In my opinion it is not mere coincidence that the Russians embarked on this course in the 1960's. That was the beginning of the coldest of cold war periods—Francis Gary Power's U-2 plane was downed by the Russians on May 1, 1960; the mid-May 1960 Four Power Geneva Summit was a bust; the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 and, in 1962, we had the Cuban Missile Crisis. The United States maritime embargo capability in that crisis undoubtedly influenced the Soviet's planning process. It is a natural and normal function of a state-controlled economy with its state-controlled industries to act to bring about the controlled productivity improvement developments in exactly the key areas discussed in the author's paper. As the author states, "All innovations at Soviet shipyards have originated at two main sources:domestic development andadaptation of new ideas introduced by leading foreign yards, or most likely a combination of both. Soviet shipbuilders are very fast learners; moreover, their own experience is quite substantial." The Ship Production Committee of SNAME has organized its panels to conduct research in many of these same areas for productivity improvement purposes. For example, addressing the areas of technology and equipment are Panels SP-1 and 3, Shipbuilding Facilities and Environmental Effects, and Panel SP-7, Shipbuilding Welding. Shipbuilding methods are the province of SP-2; outfitting and production aids and engineering and scientific support are the province of SP-4, Design Production Integration. As I read through the descriptions of the processes that led to the productivity improvements, I was hoping to learn more about the organizational structure of Soviet shipyards, the managerial hierarchy and how work is organized by function or by craft in the shipyard. (I would assume that for all intents and purposes, all Russian yards are organized in the same way.) American shipyard management is wedded to the notion that American shipbuilding suffers immeasurably from a productivity standpoint because of limitations on management's ability to assign workers across craft lines. It is unlikely that this limitation exists in Soviet shipyards. If it does not, how is the unfettered right of assignment optimized? What are the tangible, measurable results? I believe it would have been helpful, also, for the author to have dedicated some of the paper to one of the most important factors in improvement in the labor-intensive shipbuilding industry—the shipyard worker. There are several references to worker problems—absenteeism, labor shortage, poor workmanship, and labor discipline. The reader is left with the impression that the Russians believe that either those are unsolvable problems or have a priority ranking significantly inferior to the organizational, technical, and design efforts discussed. As a case in point, the author devotes a complete section to engineering education and professional training but makes no mention of education or training programs for blue-collar workers. It would seem that a paper on productivity improvement efforts in Soviet shipbuilding would address this most important element. My guess is that the Russians have considerable such efforts underway and it would be beneficial for us to learn of them.

The aim is to explain why union density is not only considerably higher in the Ghent country Sweden than in non-Ghent Norway but also why it has declined much more in Sweden, in particular among blue-collar workers. We show how changes to Swedish unemployment insurance in 2007–2013 were followed by a decline in union density and how white-collar unions were more successful than blue-collar unions in developing supplementary income insurance schemes that counteracted membership losses. This type of institutional explanation is nevertheless insufficient. In Norway, too, blue-collar density has decreased while white-collar workers have maintained their density rate. Norwegian data further show that even without unemployment insurance funds, it is possible to achieve a fairly high union density at workplaces with collective agreements. However, without unemployment benefits like we find in Sweden, it is increasingly challenging to establish an institutional foundation for a social custom of unionization.

Rising economic inequality has aggravated long-standing labor market disparities, with one exception: government employment. This article considers the puzzle of black-white wage parity in the American public sector. African Americans are more likely to work in the public than in the private sector, and their wages are higher there. The article builds on prior work emphasizing institutional factors conditioning this outcome to argue that employee mobilization can motor it. As public sector unions gained political influence postwar, their large constituencies of black, blue-collar workers, drawing on both militant and nonviolent tactics of the urbanizing civil rights movement, advocated for improved working conditions. Archival sources confirm this pattern at the federal level. The employment and activism of African Americans in low-skilled federal jobs pivoted union attention to blue-collar issues and directly contributed to the enactment of a transparent, universal wage schedule for the blue-collar federal workforce (the Federal Wage System). The result was greater pay parity for African Americans, as well as for other disadvantaged groups.

Collective bargaining is a dynamic concept. Various types of collective bargaining have been successfully used by both labour and management to respond effectively to the changing demands of workplace functioning and market pressure. Central to the functioning of collective bargaining is the concept of power. At present, there is a definite trend in favour of enterprise bargaining or ever work place bargaining rather than for industry-wide bargaining. The main issue of C.B. in India is (a) the mode of ascertaining the majority status of a trade Union-s (b) grant of exclusive bargaining rights to the majority union. The labour movement is facing the impact of globalisation, automation & changing demand patterns as the nation moves towards a service-oriented economy. Such forces have reduced the number of blue-collar, semi-skilled & unskilled workers & increased the number of white collar, technical & professional employees. The labour movement must device organising & bargining strategies that appeal to these expanding groups. So far unions have generally been unsuccessful in this endeavour. Additionally, the labour movement has to face the growing management opposition to the unions & collective bargaining. To remain competitive in domestic & international market, many companies are taking actions that will either reduce union influence at the work place or even eliminate the need to deal with a Union.

As the Covid-19 pandemic takes its disproportionate toll on African Americans, the historical perspective in this working paper provides insight into the socioeconomic conditions under which President-elect Joe Biden’s campaign promise to “build back better” might actually begin to deliver the equal employment opportunity that was promised by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Far from becoming the Great Society that President Lyndon Johnson promised, the United States has devolved into a greedy society in which economic inequality has run rampant, leaving most African Americans behind. In this installment of our “Fifty Years After” project, we sketch a long-term historical perspective on the Black employment experience from the last decades of the nineteenth century into the 1970s. We follow the transition from the cotton economy of the post-slavery South to the migration that accelerated during World War I as large numbers of Blacks sought employment in mass-production industries in Northern cities such as Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Chicago. For the interwar decades, we focus in particular on the Black employment experience in the Detroit automobile industry. During World War II, especially under pressure from President Roosevelt’s Fair Employment Practices Committee, Blacks experienced tangible upward employment mobility, only to see much of it disappear with demobilization. In the 1960s and into the 1970s, however, supported by the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Blacks made significant advances in employment opportunity, especially by moving up the blue-collar occupational hierarchy into semiskilled and skilled unionized jobs. These employment gains for Blacks occurred within a specific historical context that included a) strong demand for blue-collar and clerical labor in the U.S. mass-production industries, which still dominated in global competition; b) the unquestioned employment norm within major U.S. business corporations of a career with one company, supported at the blue-collar level by mass-production unions that had become accepted institutions in the U.S. business system; c) the upward intergenerational mobility of white households from blue-collar employment requiring no more than a high-school education to white-collar employment requiring a higher education, creating space for Blacks to fill the blue-collar void; and d) a relative absence of an influx of immigrants as labor-market competition to Black employment. As we will document in the remaining papers in this series, from the 1980s these conditions changed dramatically, resulting in erosion of the blue-collar gains that Blacks had achieved in the 1960s and 1970s as the Great Society promise of equal employment opportunity for all Americans disappeared.

In this introduction to our project, “Fifty Years After: Black Employment in the United States Under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,” we outline the socioeconomic forces behind the promising rise and disastrous fall of an African American blue-collar middle class. During the 1960s and 1970s, blacks with no more than high-school educations gained significant access to well-paid unionized employment opportunities, epitomized by semi-skilled operative jobs in the automobile industry, to which they previously had limited access. Anti-discrimination laws under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act with oversight by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission supported this upward mobility for blacks in the context of a growing demand for blue-collar labor. From the late 1970s, however, the impact of global competition and the offshoring of manufacturing combined with the financialization of the corporation to decimate these stable and well-paid blue-collar jobs. Under the seniority provisions of the now beleaguered industrial unions, blacks tended to be last hired and first fired. As U.S.-based blue-collar jobs were permanently lost, U.S. business corporations and government agencies failed to make sufficient investments in the education and skills of the U.S. labor force to usher in a new era of upward socioeconomic mobility. This organizational failure left blacks most vulnerable to downward mobility. Instead of retaining corporate profits and reinvesting in the productive capabilities of employees, major business corporations became increasingly focused on downsizing their labor forces and distributing profits to shareholders in the form of cash dividends and stock buybacks. Legitimizing massive distributions to shareholders was the flawed and pernicious ideology that a company should be run to “maximize shareholder value.” As the U.S. economy transitioned from the Old Economy business model, characterized by a career with one company, to the New Economy business model, characterized by interfirm labor mobility, advanced education and social networks became increasingly important for building careers in well-paid white-collar occupations. Along with non-white Hispanics, blacks found themselves at a distinct disadvantage relative to whites and Asians in accessing these New Economy middle-class employment opportunities. Eventually, the downward socioeconomic mobility experienced by blacks would also extend to devastating loss of well-paid and stable employment for whites who lacked the higher education now needed to enter the American middle class. By the twenty-first century, general downward mobility had become a defining characteristic of American society, irrespective of race, ethnicity, or gender. Since the 1980s, the enemy of equal employment opportunity through upward socioeconomic mobility has been the pervasive and entrenched corporate-governance ideology and practice of maximizing shareholder value (MSV). For most Americans, of whatever race, ethnicity, and gender, MSV is the not-so-invisible hand that has a chokehold on the emergence of the stable and well-paid employment opportunities that are essential for sustainable prosperity.