Stephen Blumenfeld

The long-run and short-run impacts of global competition on U.S. union wages

Union opposition to trade liberalizing agreements suggests that international trade harms organized labor. Using union contract data, we assess both long- and short-run impacts of international trade on U.S. collective bargaining outcomes. Results indicate that, in the short run, increases in either imports or exports reduce union wages. This is attributed to risk aversion on the part of both unions and management. In the long run, however, trade has little net impact on average union wage settlements. In forming their opposition to more open U.S. trade policies, unions appear more concerned with short-run impacts of trade and are willing to trade-off immediate wage gains in lieu of future employment possibilities.

Trade union delegate leadership and membership commitment: a cross‐sectional analysis

Purpose – This paper aims to identify what workplace representative behaviours are most strongly associated with members’ commitment. This is increasingly important, as decentralised management practices have shifted management decisions to workplace levels, placing new demands on workplace representatives.Design/methodology/approach – The methodological approach is quantitative and cross sectional. A total of two unions and 32 workplaces are examined.Findings – Members’ commitment corresponds to workplace delegate leadership that is responsive. Transparency had a negative relationship to commitment, possibly because it is also interpreted as bureaucratic and overly formal for workplace issues. Innovation was not significantly associated with members’ commitment. This applies regardless of occupational class, gender or age. It was also found that workplaces that had adopted the organising model had more committed members.Research limitations/implications – Cross sectional relationships do not equal causat...

Human capital formation under neo-liberalism: the legacy of vocational education training in Australasia and implications for the Asia-Pacific region

Abstract This appraisal considers the role and impact of vocational education and training (VET) in Australia and New Zealand, and suggests directions such policy might take in other Asia-Pacific countries. It identifies key issues and constraints in making VET more responsive to emerging labour market needs in the region as an important factor in sustaining high economic growth. It focuses on the way in which the demands of the government, industry, trainees, and, in particular, shifts in political ideology that have influenced the education and training sectors in both countries. It addresses points of specific relevance for the delivery of VET in the broader Asia-Pacific context and concludes with a consideration of lessons and experiences of Australia and New Zealand with VET that may hold for other countries in the region in formulating priorities and implementing strategies in meeting their current and emerging needs for skills development.

Women workers: caring, sharing, enjoying their work – or just another gender stereotype?

This article examines the responses of more than 10,000 unionised women and nearly 5000 unionised men, working in the New Zealand public sector, to a selection of questions in a workplace dynamics survey. The questions investigated in this article provide insights into women’s levels of commitment and job satisfaction compared to those of men. It also reports on comparative experiences of cooperation, information sharing, recognition and managerial practices. The findings show that women and men do not differ significantly in terms of organisational commitment. However, women are more committed generally and enjoy their work more than men, but they report less favourably on experiences of cooperation and communication at work. Women, compared with men, also report experiencing less recognition. We discuss the possible meaning of these results and the potential implications for management and unions.

Perceptions, Conceptions and Misconceptions of Organized Employment

The main objectives of this study were to identify facilitators and barriers to unionization among employees as well as to identify the effect of unionization and collective bargaining on employers’ and employees’ perceptions of workplace relations. To address these objectives survey data from just under 4000 employees and employers in over 150 New Zealand organizations was collected. The findings of this study suggest that union membership is related to employees’ perceptions of job security, ideology and job satisfaction. Employees’ perceptions of workplace relations were associated with union membership status. Employers’ perceptions of the contribution that unions make to their businesses were associated with the type of interaction employers had with trade unions. Implications for employees, employers, legislators and policy makers are discussed.

Union wages, strikes and profits

A model is used to propose the countervailing effects of a strike upon wages. Wages may rise if unions succeed in obtaining concessions. They may fall if firms succeed in neutralizing the potential damage to their profits. Some US evidence suggests that wages fall whenever strikes increase in intensity, somewhat corroborating the view that unions have continued to become weaker over time.

Book Review: Immigration and American Unionism

ones presented here. It would have been worthwhile to see her engage some of this material. The three case studies and the conclusions that are drawn from them are the most rewarding sections of the book. The cases were well chosen and the treatment of firms in assembly production (glass and electronic home entertainment ware), continuous flow (chemicals) and small batch processes (other chemical products) lends a valuable comparative dimension to the study, as does the selection of a Japanese transplant. Some of the findings are not particularly noteworthy, while others are definitely worthy of follow-up. Workers who labour in settings that researchers would consider unskilled, such as the glass bottle checkers in the study, simply do not possess operant notions of skill. Workers who are employed in typically Taylorised jobs (for example, assembly line manufacturing) have only narrow, job specific or practical task conceptions of skill, but have no references to autonomy or job discretion as a component of skill. Maintenance workers and those employed in the small batch production circuits of the chemical factory, on the other hand, relate discretion and autonomy to a definitional notion of skill. In other words, most workers, with the exception of the least skilled glass bottle checkers, have subjective perceptions of skill, but these vary with the nature of the job held and any upward or downward mobility that the person has experienced in their working career. Significantly, however, workers are unlikely to refer to processes of deskilling. Among the more interesting findings revealed by Thursfield’s research is the absence of independent effects for gender or employment status (that is, fulltime versus casual) on perceptions of skill. Thursfield also finds that Fordist and post-Fordist employment attributes are often found in common. For example, continued Taylorist organisations of work that divide conceptualisation from execution combined with business strategies are focused around niche market production using flexible technologies. In the end, it is the division between the work of conceptualisation and that of execution (that is, old fashioned scientific management), that best accounts for the subjective perceptions of skill in both the British and the Japanese manufacturing plants studied.