Joseph B. Rose

Employers Associations and Industrial Relations: A Comparative Study.

little selective; there are, after all, other qualifying advanced industrial democratic countries. Second, the book lacks a sense of how counting procedures evolved over time in different countries and, hence, of the historical continuity of certain tabulations. Third, Walsh argues, with some justification, that crossnational analyses of strike measures of a crosssectional nature are likely to be flawed. But he further argues that the comparison of historical trends among countries is less problematic because flaws in the counting procedures are constant over time within a country. This assumption ignores not only the problems related to historical continuity, but the likelihood that the efficiency of counting procedures has increased over time wholly apart from any changes in the procedures themselves. Overall, this book is a significant contribution to statistical studies of strikes because it makes researchers more mindful of the frailties of their data base and causes them to think more assiduously about the validity of their measures and about certain epistemological questions that confront the field. Whether these and other questions can be adequately answered within the parameters of existing collection and tabulation practices remains to be seen.

Legislative Support for Multi-Employer Bargaining: The Canadian Experience

This study appraises the laws adopted in the 1970s by most provinces in Canada for the purpose of promoting stronger employer associations and broader bargaining structures in the construction industry. The author finds that employer associations in construction are now more cohesive and less vulnerable to union whipsaw and leapfrog tactics, and the frequency of construction strikes has declined. On the other hand, other measures of strike activity, such as total days lost, increased following the legislative changes, and construction wages continued to rise as rapidly as in the late 1960s.

Book Review: Labor Law and Legislation: The Davis-Bacon ActThe Davis-Bacon Act. By ThieblotArmand J.Jr., Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School, Industrial Research Unit, 1975. xiv, 239 pp.

rectly points out, firms may view forced profit distributions as a form of costs. Thus, profit sharing could give rise to cost-push price increases. As a book, rather than as a collection of papers, lW/age Determi nation staffers from an overly broad theme. Many of the papers dealt tangentially or directly with incomes policy. But the papers were sufficiently general so that no conflicts could surface (or be resolved) . For example, the American view of incomes policy has centered on cost-push inflation; the European view has focused on income distribution and working-class consumption propensities. This crucial difference in approach could have been a major theme for rliscussion, but it never emerged. Future OECD conference planners ought to consider narrower themes and provide more guilance to participants.