Economic-union Books

as if anyone with open eyes needed any further evidence of hillary's loathsome character, here it is. her two faced self serving nature, her self-perceived superiority, her vindictiveness, her hypocrisy, even anti-semitism........the list goes on and on. hopefully she never realizes her dreams of elected power.

An excellent look at labor organization and how labor affected American society in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Looks at different movements including women's labor and child labor. Good pictures, and excellent text. I will be using this as a reference book in my 8th grade US History library.

The book traces the labourious history of European economic integration. From the tentative early steps in the 1970s of the launching of the European Monetary System. Initially it was just to let the member countries coordinate exchange rate changes. This gave rise to an artificial European Currency Unit. The ECU could not be used to actual transactions, but was a currency averge, akin perhaps to various stock market indices.

From this, Sadeh shows the various costs and benefits it gave rise to. Both in economics and politices. The book is useful in assessing what the Euro has done, and in suggesting whether a future Britain might finally decide to opt in to the Euro, and abandon the pound.

This book highlights the complexity of the decision making process of one of the most 'hot' topics of EU policy. The historical review of the development of the technology programs is very helpfull to understanding the process of their creation.

Well written, readable and full of detail, it provides very useful comparisons between attitudes to and take up of telework in main European countries in the 1990s compared with the 1980s. The survey data for main countries are convincing, the extrapolations to other countries misleading.

The second part of the book comprises a rich collection of case studies.

A book to refer to as well as to read.

Once you read Puette's take on media distortion you read with new-found insight. The points he made in 1992 are equally relevant today. To my knowledge, this is one of very few titles from the viewpoint of the worker and the worker's union. In a recent talk to librarians in Honolulu Dr. Puette explained that newpapers depend on advertising. Naturally, their bias tends to be with business. How could it be otherwise? If you are a thoughtful student of American life, you owe it to yourself to read the book and then start observing.

The subject of antitrust is perenially contentious. Here, we have a European take on it. The authors look at the limitations Europe places on agreements between firms. A nontrivial consideration, especially because in the years since the book came out, EU authorities have discovered and broken various price fixing cartels. Some were in vitamins [!] an in basic chemicals. Firms involved have included huge multinationals; several European-based in fact. Naughty, naughty!

Thus, the book is not about academic debating points. The issues involved and the case law discussed may be worth contemplating by a broad spectrum of firms doing business in Europe.

The working lives of garment workers in NYC in the early 20th century were horrendous: working conditions were miserable, unsafe, and unhealthful with autocratic employers subjecting employees to abuses and arbitrary rules, like having to pay for needles and thread, which was a not subtle way of cheating workers out of their already meager pay. This book is about the Progressive era reaction and solution to that workplace regime involving the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), middle class reformers and experts, the Factory Investigating Commission (FIC), an arm of the NY legislature, and the garment workers themselves. The fire at the Triangle Company, located in the upper floors of the Asch Building in NYC and devoid of fire safety measures, where 146 shirtwaist-making women were trapped in a fire either burning or leaping to their death on March 25, 1911, served as a catalyst for the solidification of reform measures.

The book begins with the Uprising of Twenty Thousand, an industry-wide strike coordinated by the shirtwaist makers' union (a division of the ILGWU) in 1909. The owners and other forces of reaction overplayed their hands, as middle class society of NYC was aghast at the abuse that young striking women were subjected to on picket lines by thugs and policemen and by officers of the legal system. That public focus facilitated settlements with some improved working conditions, although Triangle workers returned to work with no new settlement with fatal consequences.

However the Great Revolt the next year involving 75 thousand cloak-makers (also a division of the ILGWU) finally achieved what Progressive reformers wanted: the clipping of the wings of unfettered business with tri-partite oversight involving the public, business, and workers represented by a union. The Protocols of Peace was a private agreement between the cloak-makers business association and the ILGWU that sought to define nearly all facets of the cloak-making business involving labor. No longer could workers simply walk off the job over a dispute. Instead all grievances had to be tendered to a multi-step grievance process while work continued. Union workers also gained the right of preferential hiring. Piece rates were now subject to joint consultation via shop committees. While the Protocols was a private agreement, designated neutral public members sat on boards at the highest levels.

Industrial democracy is a concept that gets considerable attention in this book and apparently had some resonance in that era. But its meaning is disputed. For many, industrial democracy may conjure a direct role for workers, perhaps through worker bodies, of defining and controlling most all aspects of work and directly negotiating compensation. Yet that is hardly what the "peacemakers,' that is the reformers, had in mind. The ILGWU's role was more to discipline workers and enforce the agreement than empower workers. Those different perspectives did clash. Workers became unhappy with such issues as the slow process of grievance settlement, the setting of piece rates, and employers ignoring union preferential hiring. Workers inevitably engaged in wildcat strikes to force resolutions, which were violations of the no-strike provisions of the Protocol.

Both the shortcomings of Protocolism and the tragic, yet highly preventable, deaths of over one-hundred workers in the Triangle fire spurred the formation of the FIC in June, 1911. In addition, Tammany Hall, the Democratic political machine in NY and dependent on working class voters, realized the necessity and opportunity to be pro-active concerning working conditions for their supporters. Two Tammany politicians, Al Smith and Robert Wagner, later of national stature, led the efforts to create the FIC to propose and enact pro-worker legislation. The FIC paralleled the Protocols in many ways as many reformers, intellectuals, etc worked with both bodies and addressed many of the same issues. Frances Perkins, a social worker later to become FDR's labor secretary, was a key figure in both bodies. The actions of the FIC advanced notions initiated by the Protocols with the difference being that legislation applied to all targeted citizens of the legislation with at least the possibility of state-led enforcement. Fire safety and sanitation issues were first on the FIC agenda followed by gender- and age-based legislation designed to protect the health of the targeted workers by limiting hours and night work. Non-gendered legislation, like minimum wage laws, proved to be fatally divisive to the FIC.

Both the Protocols and the FIC had either dissolved or lost effectiveness by 1916, though most of the FIC legislation remained in place. The idea of tripartite regulation of business had lost credence by the early 1920s, only to be revived in the New Deal by many of those individuals involved in the NYC garment wars. The book only covers a few years in one state - mostly one city, though the largest in the US - in an experiment in a nebulously defined industrial democracy. One is struck by the difficulty that workers had then and now in establishing humane and just workplaces and the fragility in maintaining any gains.

The book is definitely an insider labor relations book with assumptions being made about labor movement organization and labor terminology. The book proceeds first on the Protocol track and then secondly on the FIC track. Though occurring during the same time frame, the interactions and cross-impacts between the two are barely described. So many individuals and formal organizations, like boards, are named that at times maintaining continuity is difficult. For example, what "Board" is being discussed? Secondly, the author declines to offer much in the greater significance of the events and actions discussed. For example, where do garment workers of today stand? Is there the equivalent of the Protocols? How is industrial democracy viewed today by workers? By business? By the state? However, the book is a worthwhile contribution to the history of labor in America. It provides better context than most books that are concerned only with the Triangle fire.

The book is a collection of essays by Turkish and non-Turkish authors, regarding Turkey's integration into Europe. Many aspects of a prospective EU membership are looked at. Like the majority in Turkey that are in favour. With perhaps the main reason being the prospect of greater growth and higher standards of living.

The Islamist movement in Turkey is cited as a serious factor in aiding any eventual membership. The analysis of this movement is probably the most interesting section of the book, for many readers. For it revolves around the question of whether a majority Muslim nation can be compatible with the secular Europe.

The book also looks at the big differences between the secular nature of Europe and the secular elements of Turkey. To the latter, restrictions on wearing of veils, or the imposition of military rule, are sometimes seen as necessary, to protect secularism inTurkey. How these two visions might be reconciled is unclear.

Taylor and Witney provide an excellent history of the shaping of American labor law. Starting with the early attempts to squash labor unions with the English common law theory of conspiracy, the authors move us through some of the important common law cases such as Commonwealth v. Hunt and Danbury Hatters. Their history takes us to the formation of the Wagner Act and the birth of the NLRA. The appendixes include texts of the NLRA (Wagner Act). This is an excellent companion book to any Labor Law textbook.