Kenneth Chilton

Solid waste policy should be directed by fundamental principles, not ill-founded feelings

Abstract This paper first reviews underlying misconceptions about landfill and incinerator safety that lead to public rejection of these solid waste management methods. It then briefly analyzes the widespread application of recycling programs as a more politically attractive approach to dealing with the garbage crisis. Next, state and local solid waste initiatives designed to support recycling are examined. Proposed changes to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act are summarized and critiqued, next. The final section suggests using two basic principles to determine appropriate roles for the varying levels of government. These two fundamental principles are economic and political in nature. To meet the basic objective of solid waste management - to protect public health and welfare while effectively dealing with the volumes of solid waste generated — requires that management methods be cost-effective. Secondly, to allow for geographic and demographic differences around the nation, decision-making should occur at the lowest level of government possible. Applying these principles would reduce the widening web of solid waste regulation and produce public policy that addresses the real issues rather than ill-founded public fears.

Lincoln Electric's Incentive System : Can It Be Transferred Overseas?

Lincoln’s Source of Shared Values Founded in 1895 by John C. Lincoln, the Cleveland-based Lincoln Electric Company originally manufactured electric motors and generators. In 1911, Lincoln Electric began producing arcwelding equipment. Today, arc-welding machines and supplies account for approximately 84% of the firm’s sales, with electric motors representing only 10% and oxy-fuel and plasma cutting tools another 6% to 7%. Indeed, Lincoln is the preeminent producer of self-shielded coredwire electrodes, with more than 90% of the world market.

Lincoln Electric's Incentive System: A Reservoir of Trust

One year ago, we promised you an update on V the ambitious expansion of the Lincoln Electric Company into foreign markets. Could this venerable firm, one of the first companies in the United States to install a successful productivity-based incentive system for all employees, expand its company culture and compensation practices to new holdings around the world? Would the world-wide recession of the early ’90s overwhelm the company’s efforts to &dquo;remake&dquo; its

Clearing the air of ozone

These important limitations to the BLS and GAO studies need to be acknowledged if policymakers are to avoid the pleas of special interests to intervene in labor-management relations. The irony is that many of the advocates of more federal involvement have ignored the inevitable trade-off involved in providing specified termination benefits to workers. It is naive to continue to believe that there is a free lunch available to employees or firms. With the current emphasis on competitiveness of United States industry and the importance of labor and management cooperation to compete effectively in the international marketplace, it seems oddly out of step to place further legislative restrictions on how these parties may interact. Many policymakers and opinion leaders who are supposedly most interested in the welfare of working men and women are advocating a labor policy agenda that would hamstring the response of our relatively free labor markets to meet this challenge. []

American manufacturing in a global market

I: Effects of Public Policy on Manufacturings Future.- 1. Government and Manufacturing: Dont Just Stand There, Undo Something.- 2. Public Policy and Manufacturing: Back to Basics.- 3. What Do Economic Statistics Tell Us About Manufacturings Future?.- 4. What Should Be Done for Manufacturing?.- 5. How to Rebuild America.- 6. Antitrust Policy and American Industrial Competitiveness.- II: Multinational Firms and Global Markets.- 7. To Compete Globally, American Firms Must Know Their Customers.- 8. The Changing Aerospace Marketplace.- 9. Joint Ventures: The Challenge of Cooperation.- 10. American Manufacturing in the 1990s: The Adjustment Challenge.- III: Educations Restructuring Task.- 11. Increasing Competition in U.S. Education.- 12. What Is the Role of Business in Education?.- 13. Targeting Education Reforms to Do the Most Good.- 14. A Higher Education Agenda for Manufacturing Management.- IV: Organizing for Success.- 15. Manufacturing Competitiveness Requires More Than Downsizing.- 16. The Effect of Mergers and Acquisitions.- 17. Manufacturing Growth through Acquisition.- 18. Creating Value from Castoffs.- V: The Changing Work Environment.- 19. Manufacturing Excellence and Work-Force Excellence Are Inseparable.- 20. Changes in Company Culture and Labor Relations.- 21. Building Business/Education Partnerships.- 22. Rhetoric and Reality in Labor Relations.- VI: R & D and Quality.- 23. Converting Knowledge into Products.- 24. Technology, Innovation and Commercialization.- 25. Research and the Pharmaceutical Environment.

The Crumbling of the Old Social Contract

The current wave of employee layoffs by American business firms represents more than just the results of necessary periodic restructuring of companies competing in a dynamic marketplace. The widespread downsizing—and subsequent reorientation of corporate operations—reflects the end of a long-standing informal but strong social contract that historically shaped the nature and the culture of the American workplace. This chapter examines the ferment occurring in labor-management relations in the United States.

Fashioning a New Social Contract for the American Workplace

In a speech to a national labor-management conference sponsored by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service on June 8, 1994, then-House of Representatives Majority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) offered his “inside-the-beltway” view of the changing workplace. A few excerpts show that even those removed from the actual battleground of the private sector see that the workplace is changing dramatically: nWe gather today at a time of growing uncertainty and anxiety in the American workplace. n nThe fact is our economy is changing in profound and permanent ways. We can’t protect ourselves from those changes. But we can prepare for them.... [W]e can define a new compact—a set of shaitd principles for management and labor....