Richard L. Rowan

The american labor movement and employee ownership: Objections to and uses of employee stock ownership plans

This paper analyzes the evolution of American unions’ attitudes and policies concerning employee ownership that coincided with the rapid growth of employee stock-ownership plans during the 1980s. From an initial position of opposing employee ownership and viewing it as a threat, many major unions have come to accept, and in some cases to promote, stock ownership for their members. Among the factors driving this change of view have been economic necessity, evidence that many of the labor movement’s traditional concerns about employee ownership are largely unfounded, and the growing realization among unions that employee ownership is a potentially useful strategic asset.

Negro Employment in the Basic Steel Industry

Focuses on a study that explored the utilization of African-American workers in the steel industry in the United States in the 1960s. Factors influencing the job situation in the industry; White-collar prospects for African-American workers; Blue-collar occupations of African-Americans. (Abstract copyright EBSCO.)

State Seizure in Public Interest Disputes

I NCREASING intervention in labor disputes by the federal government in so-called public interest situations has overshadowed the fact that such intervention by the state is not uncommon. Yet little information on state activity is available, particularly to industry. The purpose of this article is to focus attention on seizure as a form of state intervention. Experience in five states-Virginia, Missouri, Maryland, New Jersey, and Massachusetts-with various forms of seizure laws is analyzed in terms of the problems and issues that can arise when the government becomes involved in public interest disputes. Seizure involves the invocation of state control of a business that is, or threatens to be, shut down by a work stoppage. Strikes or lockouts are forbidden during the period of seizure, which usually lasts until the threat of work stoppage is abated, or for a designated period. Most of our discussion is concerned with temporary seizure wherein the firm reverts back to private hands after the threat of a stoppage is eased.

The Machinists: A New Study in American Trade Unionism. By Mark Perlman. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961. Pp. xvii, 333.

the Jeffersonian doctrine of the supremacy of small organizations. On the positive side, Troys pamphlet is readable, unpretentious, and provocative. It warrants shelf space alongside such recent studies as Marshalls report on an unaffiliated union of refinery workers (Labor Law Journal, September 1961 ), Waltons book-length report on thirteen unaffiliated unions of engineers, Purcells comments on an unaffiliated union of packinghouse workers, Donnellys doctoral study of a now defunct unaffiliated union of refinery workers, and Webers research on unaffiliated unionism in the chemical industry (this Review, October 1959). These men and women, and particularly Leo Troy, are due considerable credit for advancing research on Americas forgotten labor organizations.