Economic-union Books

A better title is The Same Old Rank and File. Unions often have the same problems as the communist governments of old. They often benefit top leadership at the expense of the workers they claim to represent, and use scare tactics and violence to punish those who wish to decent.

Second this book fails to acknowledge the thuggish behavior perpetrated by unions over the last 150 years. Just within the Teamsters alone intimidation, threats, destruction of property, and murder were used on those who stood in the way.

Therefore,I must give 1 star. If none were possible I would give this book none what so ever.

To all those who suffered at the hands of my union I am sorry.
We behaved in a most egregious manner, many of my members behaved most poorly and harmed the lives of many. Since my hiatus from public life I have become increasingly excited by libertarian concepts and ideas.

Among my favorite works are "Free to Choose" by Milton Friedman, "The Ten things You Can't Say in America" by Larry Elder, and "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith.

As the world becomes more globalized the only way for the american worker and american business to survive is to confront the challenges of the global economy head on. We need to work with management and not against it to ensure prosperity not only for ourselves but also for the economy as a whole.

If we don't work with managment(as opposed to being totally against it) to make this country attractive for investment and thereby the creation of new jobs, our union risks becoming politically and economically irrelevant.

In 1983 the Indiana University historian Robert F. Byrnes collected essays from 35 experts on the Soviet Union -- the cream of American academia -- in a book titled After Brezhnev. Their conclusion: Any U.S. thought of winning the Cold War was a pipe dream. "The Soviet Union is going to remain a stable state, with a very stable, conservative, immobile government," Byrnes said in an interview, summing up the book. "We don't see any collapse or weakening of the Soviet system."

Barely six years later, the Soviet empire began falling apart. By 1991 it had vanished from the face of the earth. Did Professor Byrnes call a press conference to offer an apology for the collective stupidity of his colleagues, or for his part in recording it? Did he edit a new work titled Gosh, We Didn't Know Our Ass From Our Elbow? Hardly. Being part of the American chattering class means never having to say you're sorry.

While I did not expect the contributors to this collection of essays necessarily to be Europhiles, I found little emphathy that anthropologists usually show towards their object of study, in this case the European Union, as a result of their long-term and in-depth research. One author, Marc Abélès, still speaks of a virtual Europe for what in fact is already very much reality, whether one likes it or not (and I speak here as the citizen of a European country that is not a member of the European Union). At times, the editors and several authors even strike me as Europhobic, rehashing old arguments about the problems of a unifying Europe rather than focusing on its achievements and opportunities. I thus find disappointingly little about either experiencing or imagining and building Europe in this book, and the question arises: Where is the anthropology here? Sadly, this collection of essays also lacks historical depth at either the micro or macro level. Yet a truly anthropological discussion of unifying Europe could benefit much from examining for contrast the very developments of earlier multilingual-multicultural federations such as Switzerland in 1848. Anthropologists furthermore have much to contribute by providing a broader historical context for understanding modern Europe, i.e. the development of complex societies into international conglomerates of states from an evolutionary perspective. Ultimately, this collection of essays fails in this respect as well, and does not offer any new insights into what other social scientists (economists, political scientists, sociologists, etc.) have already described and analyzed for some fifty years.

Emanuel J. Drechsel, Professor, Liberal Studies, University of Hawai'i

This easy-to-understand little book is a must-have for every local union trustee and auditor, providing the know-how and confidence needed to spot problems so they can be promptly reported and corrected. It offers a basic road map of procedures and a toolbox of skills and worksheets to help auditors and trustees accomplish their jobs. And it's a big help to local union treasurers as well, especially those new to the job.

Contents include: Rights and responsibilities of local union trustees; reviewing income sources; analyzing union assets; understanding disbursements; completing your audit; summarizing your results, presenting your report; handling discrepancies and problems.

The book is filled with sample forms and worksheets to help you do the job. Each chapter ends with exercises designed to help readers master the contents.

Formerly published by Cornell University ILR Press; original edition, with new acknowledgements.

Five stars, not the one you see above!

Aslund can only be described as a right-wing free market ideologue bent on coloring the Post-Soviet transition in the most glowing terms for free markets and the IMF. Read any unbiased author and some clear and valid critiques of the "shock therapy" economics that Russia endured are explained. Aslund, on the other hand believes that a problem like crime, endemic in post-Soviet Russia, only occurs because of the imperfect transition to completely free markets. Believing that once the markets are completely free and unfettered crime will magically disappear as the economic incentive decrease and opportunity costs rise. Thouroughly unconving to me, or anyone else who believes in the costs of social turmoil.

Read this book only if you want to know how the "Washington Consensus" works and the lengths that one of their own will go to justify (at times the justification is so one sided it is humorous, is anyone comforted that the murder rate in Russia is still only a fraction of Colombia's?, Aslund, apparently is....) their damaging and ill-conceived policies.

I would encourage anyone who remembers the Cold War and is glad that the Soviet Union is long gone to get a copy of this book. You can get a copy for almost nothing, but its sheer entertainment value is far beyond that. This is a series of transcribed conversations between the American "economist" John Kenneth Galbraith whose claim to fame was running the wage and price controls during WWII for Roosevelt and a Soviet journalist, author, and member of the Communist Central Committee as they discuss their view of the future of US and Soviet relations. They could not have been more wrong about everything they discussed. It is a hoot at times.

Their explanations are never more than rationalizations or assertions. Their mutual faith in socialism and central planning is complete and orthodox. Galbraith, as much as the Soviet, believes that capitalism is really an embarrassment that we must give up so that central planners such as himself can make us a poor as the Russians and the Chinese (or even poorer as the satellite nations they stole from).

As they discuss the phony economic statistics from the Soviet Union you will have to hold your sides as they try and make the present poverty jibe with the years of claimed growth that outstripped the US and Western nations by so much. At least the Soviet admitted that even though they lost so much during WWII, Japan and Western Germany have produced economic abundance. He had no final explanation. This is because these socialist believers could not see or admit the truth that socialism is a road to serfdom and where it exists to any degree it is a drag on the nation's economy rather than an engine for its growth.

Yet believers persist to this day. Maybe they believed their mom and dad had enough to feed and care for them when they were kids because they were there to eat the food and take up space. It makes about as much sense.

The CE Marking Handbook offers a loving philosophical defense of the European Community's (EC's) ideas on product safety, but little in the way of practical resources needed by people who have to sell products in the EC which comply with the appropriate safety standards. After several hours of reading, I had gleaned virtually no useful information, and was ready to send the book to the circular file. The book's organization is obscure and confusing, and the prose more like a novel than a handbook; a difficult and confusing read. The book has a glaring lack of the SPECIFIC, DETAILED, product requirements for the EC (not a single safety standard, nor even a summary of a standard, is printed in the book, as far as I can tell) and a mountain of non-sense about the differences between US and EC safety values. WHO CARES?! Readers who would consider buying this book need help, not moralizing lectures on safety philosophy. Don't waste your time and money, buy something else. I am going to have to.

Unfortunately, many academic were trapped in a time warp when they wrote their contributions to this book. Events have moved so far that their prejudices and biases were overtaken by reality, if not ":mugged by rerality". Any reader who years to know where the ex-USSR's economy is going -- or how it got to the miserable place it's now at -- should loook elsewhere. This is not the kind of book that will answer basic questions (such as "How did the average Russian enterprise cope, or at least try to cope, with the collapse of the USSR and the demise of the command economy?"). Scholars will, however, find some interesting items amongst some of the essays and articles reprinted in this book.

As a former student of Wendell Fountain's I expected so much more from this publication, as he expects of his students. His intentions appear to be good, however, good intentions are not good enough. For $35.00, I expected more than repetition, and expected to see graphs, charts and management/director info not glossed over in the, "we know this, and don't have to expound" language used by too many so-called writers, experts with the been there and done that attitude.

This was not helpful for my needs, which was to learn about SPECIFIC functional areas at financial institutions where IT and eCommerce are being employed. It was full of too many generalizations like "banks must provide on-line banking in order to survive" rather than specific considerations for eCommerce projects. I also think fully 50% of the tape was dedicated to the regurgitation of internet growth statistics that would apply to any industry, which, in addition, seem rather trite and obsolete in March of 2001.