Chris Nyland

Taylorism and the Mutual-Gains Strategy

Through the inter-war years disciples of Frederick W. Taylor built and sustained an alliance with organized labor that centered on the development of what has become known as the mutual gains enterprise. This paper examines this association tracing its origins and evolution. In the process it challenges the tendency, common within the industrial relations community, to equate Taylor and Taylorism with authoritarianism and the exclusion of workers from the management process.

Capitalism and the History of Work-time Thought

The nations of the industrialized capitalist world are characterized by a tendency to reduce the length of time employees normally spend at work. Through capitalisms long history mercantilists, classicalists, Marxists and marginalists have devoted a great deal of eiffiort to attempting to explain why it is that standard times should tend to change. This paper overviews the major contributions to the debate. Various theories are examined and their emergence and fates placed in an historical context. Marginalisms preference argument which presently dominates the debate is challenged by showing that within Matsism there exists an alternative explanation for this phenomenon which is not based on income but on the innate limitations of human beings. Until the 1950s, it is argued, the human limits approach dominated the whole issue of worktime and the essence of this contribution has never been refuted but has been simply deleted from the discussion. Consequently the whole contemporary debate is being conducted on the basis of unjustified assumptions and this is rendering discussion increasingly sterile. Between 1870 and 1980 total annual working time in the major nations of the industrialized capitalist world fell by approximately 40 per cent. Why standard work times should change has been a matter of debate for as long as capitalism has existed. This paper overviews the major contributions to the discussion. An examination of this natuEre is necessary because the contemporary worktime debate has become limited to the examination of worker preferences for income and leisure, of how these preferences manifest themselves and how workers, individually or collectively, go about attaining their preferred option. Such debate has become increasingly barren and irrelevant. This is because it is based on a number of major misconceptions and because there has been omitted from the discussion a factor that formerly dominated the whole question. This is the nature of the

Mary van Kleeck, Lillian Gilbreth and the Women’s Bureau study of gendered labor law

This paper examines the 1928 Women’s Bureau report, The Effects of Labor Legislation on the Employment Opportunities of Women. It argues that this was a landmark study, demonstrating that scientific management had the potential to develop into a mature applied social science which could play an important role in the identification, measurement and amelioration of recurrent social problems. It further argues that the report demonstrated the usefulness of scientific management in measuring impartially the effects of gender‐specific labor legislation. The paper highlights the instrumental role Mary van Kleeck and Lillian Gilbreth played in bringing feminism and scientific management together and the manner by which they utilized the Women’s Bureau report to advance the social and economic interests of women.

Beatrice Webb and the National Standard for Manual Handling

In 1896 Beatrice Webb reported that those individuals opposed to special labour laws designed to protect women employees had formed a powerful alliance. The alignment of forces making up this alliance was composed of employers, free market economists and the middle-class wing of the movement for womens emancipation. In this paper it is argued that a similar alliance is active presently in Australia. Like its 1890s counterpart, this modern Australian alliance is campaigning for the abolition of certain special laws that exist to defend women employees from excessive demands on the part of employers. The paper discusses the nature of this alliance and examines one of its more recent successes. It is concluded that industrial relations analysts have paid insufficient attention to the protective character of these laws and that this is an omission that must be remedied.

Protective Legislation and Women's Labour Market Participation

Sex-specific protective labour laws are considered unacceptable by many analysts because it is presumed that they necessarily adversely affect labour market oppor tunities for women. This paper reviews United States research that has sought to assess the validity of this assumption and reports on the impact of these laws within Australia. It is shown that the assumption that sex-specific labour laws have a detrimental influence on female employment opportunities is not supported by United States research or Australian data. It is concluded that a reform strategy based on the assumption that these laws necessarily discriminate against women may involve loss of employee protection without necessarily producing any compen sating increase in employment opportunities for women. 1

The Income and Fatigue Explanations for Worktime Change

For the last century the industrialized capitalist nations have been characterized by a tendency to reduce the length of time employees spend at their place of paid employment. Within the contemporary economic and industrial relations literature, there are two primary contending explanations for this phenomenon. The neoclassical tradition argues that the change in standard times is primarily a consequence of rising wages, while Marxists claim that it is principally a manifestation of rising work intensity. The essence of these two hypotheses is outlined in this paper and the contemporary empirical evidence underpinning each is surveyed. It is concluded that, at this stage, the Marxist thesis would appear to have greater theoretical and empirical substance than that offered by the defenders of the rising income hypothesis.

Book Reviews : DELIVERING THE GOODS: A HISTORY OF THE TRANSPORT WORKERS' UNION IN NEW SOUTH WALES By Mark Bray and Malcolm Rimmer. Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1987, xii + 297 pp.,

factors and plans for permanent settlement are among the problematical areas in this regard. Further, there is a tendency to light fuses in debate and douse them in conclusion, and this is somewhat disruptive for the reader. The scope of the book is very broad and the authors set themselves a challenging task. It makes interesting reading, is at times provocative, and may serve to renew discussion on and around the issues raised.

24.95 (paperback)

Abstract A number of analysts have argued that Beatrice Webb was neither a feminist nor played any significant part in the womens movement. This claim has been challenged by other observers who have argued that Webb was very much a feminist, albeit a socialist rather than a liberal feminist. This article seeks to advance the debate regarding Webbs feminism by examining several papers she wrote and/or edited for the New Statesman in the period 1913—1919. These papers constitute but a portion of her written contribution to the struggle for womens rights. Their separate and detailed examination is justified, however, as they have thus far played virtually no part in the debate. This omission needs to be remedied, for the documents constitute substantial evidence that Webb actively campaigned against the injustices women suffered as workers, citizens, mothers and human beings.

Beatrice Webb as a Feminist

the length of time employees spend at their place of work. Roediger and Foner’s Our Own Time seeks to tell the history of how this movement has manifested itself in the United States from the time of colonization to the present. As the subtitle suggests, their contribution to the worktime literature is an exercise in labour history rather than a study of the economic and industrial relations implications of worktime change. The authors argue that the length of the working day has been the central issue for the American labour movement during its most vigorous periods of activity. The worktime issue enjoyed this centrality, it is further suggested, because the movement for reduced worktime was characterized by three special features. First, it had