Economic-union Books

This book is a terrific history of the Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD), an autonomous "department" of the AFL-CIO. It is the oldest of the labor federation's so-called "departments" (which are really just federations of unions in a specific industry, affiliated with the AFL-CIO). Author Grace Palladino is an editor of the Samuel Gompers Papers. As such, she has knowledge of, and access to, the critical documents in the founding of the BCTD.

Roughly two-thirds of the book covers the BCTD's first 50 years, giving slightly short-shrift to the department's second half-century. In part, this may be forgiven because those were the BCTD's most interesting decades. But it also reflects Palladino's background, the materials she has access to, and the political nature of the American labor movement (which treats its recent history as if it were a state secret, and if it got into the hands of the Russians we ALL BE DEAD...).

The book goes to great lengths to situate the reader within the hothouse environment of the construction trades, which is a major help to the reader not familiar with how construction and construction trade unions function. It does a very good job, too, at outlining the changes in construction technology, and how this drove the jurisdictional battles among and growth of the construction trade unions.

To her credit, Palladino also manages to include brief biographies of many of the people critical to the history of the BCTD. This is not an easy task, yet these are integreated nearly seemlessly into the text. Many of these individuals are nearly forgotten, and most left behind no memoirs, recollections or even biographical sketches. The reader practically needs a scorecard, because there are so many names and the individuals are so unfamiliar. But Palladino makes this work.

It's a bit worrisome to see Palladino rely on just a few sources for the early history of the BCTD and construction unions. Notably, she leans very heavily on William Haber's "Industrial Relations in the Building Industry," Richard Schneirov and Thomas Suhrbur's "Union Brotherhood, Union Town" (a history of the Carpenter's union), and some mainstream labor and newspaper articles by notoriously self-serving authors such as William English Walling.

The record gets even thinner as history marches on. Little scholarly attention has been paid to construction unions in the post-war period, and a great deal of the reference materials relies on first-person interviews with key leaders of the BCTD and construction unions. While such interviews are critical and extremely valuable, the interviewees are also notoriously political and worried about their legacies. I wish more supporting material had been included.

Too, the book contains digressions on the thoughts and policies of Gompers, some of which don't seem terribly relevant.

But such shortcomings can be forgiven. The historical and scholarly literature regarding the BCTD and building unions is extremely thin, and Palladino has done yeoman's work in digging out what few primary-source documents and publications remain available.

The book is eminently readable, contains superb endnotes (listed by the page the note appeared on, which is a major help to the reader), and manages to evoke a strong sense of the times and people which concern the rise, growth and retrenchment of the construction and building trades. This is a major historical step forward for labor history and our understanding of the construction and building industry in the United States.

Duina does well by going in-depth to explain how specific products' trade status is affected by Mercosur. Mercosur - the less discussed of the modern customs unions / trade blocks.

Excellent collection of essays which deal with the chaos and order dealing with turbulence of the early five year plan. For all scholars of the period these essays are must. The approach is that of working a history from below. Missing from the essays however is a chronology or keyword reference for less knowledgable readers. Most interesting is Lewin's essay on class which avoids much of the vulgar Marxist and narrow Weberian definitions of class. Highlighting the political and cultural definitions of class and the process in which they are transformed from the proletariat into Soviet workers. Otherwise, a class in power into a statistical catagory. And the transformations wrought from the new peasant "immigrants" set against the established worker.

K. Woody has done a masterful job of explaining the two banking systems of mature capitalism and changing socialism. She relates them to each other in a way that allows the reader to understand each in the context of the other. It is interesting and well written. The book is a must for those attempting to understand where mature and transforming economies juxtapose. Readers, including investors in Russia, need to read the book to understand the mindset of the transforming economies in their relating to their new "market" economies. Some transforming economies have done better than others. Some are becoming full market economies, some are hybrids and some may revert to old systems. This book is important for those who are dealing in any of the transforming economies because it will tell you what to look for in underlying operation principles and mentality.

This book is full of surprises.Don't be misled by the title "for beginners".I am sure most Soviet history gurus will learn some new details about the foundation period of the Soviet Russia.The uunbeliavable accuracy of every saying and the detailed sketches make the book a treasure for the reader.A "must" for an average Soviet-era reader.

I was impressed by the scholarship and analysis. Having met Jim Noren, I can attest to the depth behind the words. I can't recommend it enough.

Nove details the pre-reform and reform process of the Soviet economy, mostly focusing on 1950s-1970s. It isn't an economic analysis in the sense of theory and mathematical proof, but it is instead a straightforward discussion of (in detail) why the attempts at reform were not fixing the underlying problems of the Soviet approach.

The planning agencies and the hierarchy of centralization are discussed a length (though I would have liked more details on the internal workings of the Gosplan myself), "centralized pluralism" and problems of decentralization are discussed, you'll learn about normed net profit and other approaches to tracking planned output, also investment, wages and differences between industry and agriculture, inflation, choice and of course incentives and calculation problems in each of these areas are all discussed at great length. Finally future options are discussed - as this was pre-collapse.

The best thing about this text is the detailed analysis of why incentive structures have failed in socialist experimentation and why all myriad of reforms undertaken did not help. The data and anecdote from the real world experience is compelling. This unbiased accounting of the issues is priceless.

To give one quick gem from the book: one of the earliest reforms was a slight decentralization, since central planners could not determine exactly what each firm could produce. Ministries were set up with local level planners and what amounted to big public firms which could decide exactly how to fulfill a more general plan or target. Planning, rather than profit-maximization, means that Soviet firms must reach a target, and incentives put in place so that workers and managers will work toward fulfillment (be they monetary or otherwise) will encourage those who make decisions on how to reach the target attempt to produce the most at the least cost to themselves (in terms of labor, for example).

So, planners provide a target - and it tends not to be in money terms (since prices of inputs will be set by planners and may not be cost effective for the other firm to use, etc, but you'll see it doesn't matter). So, they will choose a target such as 100 tons of boots. The firm will then have to choose how to reach this target. So, they find the most heavy material to use for boots. They produce much less than expected, often making a horrible final product, but follow the letter of the plan and cannot be punished.

So, the planners change the target. Instead they ask for a certain number of boots. The next batch are made from the flimsiest of materials, made appreciably smaller or all in the same size, run through the machine at the least cost, making it faster and cheaper to produce in hopes of squeezing some extra funds out of savings or shortening the work-day.

So, then the planners to to combine requests, but the process continues. You cannot tell them exactly the size, color, weight, dimensions, materials -- because the central planners cannot know what inputs exactly and demands exactly that you must work with. That is why the Soviets were trying to decentralize in the first place!

So, pipe firms were told to make x number of tons and used the heaviest of metals - but when it was changed to meters, they produced light cheap pipes that were unusable and everyone agreed that they must switch back. They used tons for everything even plastic dolls! Monetary aggregate measures also would lead to bad mixtures of inputs, no single measure was impossible (or even difficult) to use to advanatge. Cloth was planned in linear meters and led to long thin strips of cloth being made; if square meters were used they would be made too thin, while they needed to be sturdy and durable.

One transortation firm was told to carry so many hundreds of tons of materials so many kilometers per year, in hopes that they would spend the day hauling the materials between the other firms in order than inputs were brought to the firms which needed them. They succeeeded in encouraging the trucking firm to drive in circles all day!!

They even drove empty, in order to clock more kilometers with which to multiply the number of tons hauled... yes and geologists also fulfilled planning targets of "number of meters dug" so that the old adage of digging holes and filling them up again was never truer.

This book is, once again, a classic. It is the best extant survey of Soviet wartime production and its raw data is -alone- worth its (very high) price. It demonstrates quite clearly the immense scale of the effort made by the Soviet Union in its desperate struggle with Nazi Germany and shows how, by employing mass production methods influenced directly by American procedures and by disdaining every frill or amenity which did not contribute directly to increase the war-fighting potential of its equipment, the Soviet Union was able to out-produce Germany, despite its much smaller industrial base. Equally useful is the analysis of Lend-Lease, showing how vital it was for the Soviet war effort, not so much in terms of frontline equipment, but in terms of raw materials and logistical support.

The style, however, is atrocious, unless you like repetitions of entire sentences in different parts of the book.

I bought this wonderful book a month ago,read it carefully.It's a small,compact, up to date book with all the basic information regarding common skin disorders.
It is quite informative,pictures are clear and nice,sections,diagrams and Illustrations are well arranged.I recommend this book to all dermatologists,medical students and health professionals.

An excellently documented analysis of Stalin's campaign to cut wages and degrade the living conditions of Soviet industrial workers, and of how they adapted. Explains how shoddy production was workers' inevitable response to the unrealistic speed-up of the Five Year Plans, and why huge Stalinist production gains tend to disappear when evaluated for quality. Written primarily for a scholarly audience, but is quite readable for the general public. Prof. Filtzer, possibly of Left-wing Anarchist sympathies, wrote favorably of Russia's 1917 Communist revolution, but considers Stalinism a betrayal of that revolution. --Hugo S. Cunningham