An alternative employee rights paradigm: Labor process theory

A dialectical relationship exists between the capitalist desire for accumulation of wealth and profits, and the rights of employees. Labor process theory exposes facets of the fundamental incongruity between the interests of employers and workers in a capitalist political economy. An analysis of employee rights through the labor process framework facilitates the potential for human emancipation by illuminating the ideological, political, and economic sources of domination and repression that are embedded in the capitalist system. In this article, three core elements of labor process theory—the social relations of production, the managerial control imperative, and the restructuring of work—are used to highlight ways in which organizations maintain their hegemonic position. This exposé offers the basis for an alternative paradigmatic view of the employment relationship and informs our thinking of how employee rights are impacted, and often tempered, in work organizations. Portions of this article were presented by both authors at the 12th Annual International Labour Process Conference March, 1994 in Birmingham, England.     

A stakeholder perspective of employee responsibilities and rights

This article offers a perspective that serves as an alternative to dealing with workplace issues within the framework of managerial capitalism. In accomplishing this, the article questions managerial capitalism by drawing from some of the same arguments used to justify it—such as those based on corporate morality, the law, notions of bureaucracy, and social construction of reality. Introducing and applying a strategy of inquiry known as deconstruction helps fulfill the underlying analysis. The result is an articulation of a stakeholder perspective of employee responsibilities and rights. This is an extended version of an Invited/Guest Paper presented to the Study Group on Employee Rights and Industrial Justice of the International Industrial Relations Research Association, at the 43rd IRRA Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., December 27, 1990.     

Review of no-fault absenteeism cases taken to arbitration, 1980–1989: A rights and responsibilities analysis

No-fault absenteeism control programs represent an emerging counterpoint to traditional misconduct-based approaches. By altering the policies governing absence in the work place, the rights and responsibilities of both the employee and employer may be modified. This article examines the arbitral standards applied in the disposition of grievances arising under no-fault absenteeism plans. Arbitration cases from 1980 to 1989 are analyzed; a taxonomic structure for reviewing arbitrator rulings on the unilateral imposition of no-fault programs, as well as discipline and discharge arising under no-fault policies, is developed. While advocates of no-fault plans have asserted that arbitrators will embrace these plans, the results of this analysis indicate that arbitrators will infuse standard elements of reasonableness and just cause into no-fault policy. Trends in arbitral standards in absence cases, policy-making strategies for managements and unions, as well as implications for the rights and responsibilities of employees and employers are outlined.     

Integration of collective bargaining and formal worker participation processes: Boon or barrier to worker rights?

Many employers are extending workplace rights by allowing for more employee voice in decision making. Numerous unionized organizations have established formal worker participation processes to help achieve this end and to improve organizational performance. Based largely on theory, such processes are normally designed to operate independently from the bargaining process. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between participation and bargaining processes, and the effect of this relationship on workplace satisfaction. A total of 712 Midwest union officials were surveyed, and the results indicate that the processes tend to become integrated in the workplace. Further, union officials' workplace satisfaction was greater where formal worker participation is institutionalized within the bargaining process.     

关于小企业发挥工会组织作用的思考

文章阐述工会组织职能在企业中发挥作用的重要性,并对如何发挥工会组织作用进行了思考。     

关于创建劳动关系和谐企业的认识和研究

建立和谐劳动关系是构建和谐社会的基石,是企业健康发展,实现人企价值共融、人企价值共创、人企价值共享的重要保证,是落实科学发展观的基本要求,是维护好职工群众利益的重要途经。     

Temporary workers: Employee rights and employer responsibilities

As the number of temporary workers in the U.S. has increased dramatically over the past ten years, so, too, has social policy concent over the rights of temporary employees in the workplace and the responsibilities of employing organizations to them. This article first reviews the extent to which temporary workers can be considered “employees” of organizations and thereby be extended the same rights and protections as permanent, full-time employees. Then, the article reviews the current state of case law on the most salient legal issues pertaining to the treatment of temporary workers: discrimination, pay and fringe benefits, worker’s compensation, occupational safety and health, and union activity. The article concludes with the managerial implications of current labor law for compliance with legislative and judicial mandates.     

New Technology in Unionized Firms: Advantages of Mandatory Bargaining

U.S. Labor Law currently allows employers whose work forces are unionized to introduce new technologies without bargaining over the decision to do so. This forces unions to adopt inefficient strategies when negotiating collective bargaining agreements in an effort to minimize the impact of technological change on their members. Allowing unions to bargain over the decision to introduce new technologies would obviate their having to resort to these inefficient strategies. In addition, it might increase the likelihood of employees suggesting alterations in production processes that would increase the rate of technological change. For these reasons, this article advocates amending U.S. labor law to require employers to bargain over the introduction of new technologies.     

A Historian’s Perspective on the PATCO Strike, Its Legacy, and Lessons

This article argues that the unsuccessful 1981 strike of federal air traffic controllers was the most significant single event in accelerating the decline of organized labor in the United States in the late 20th century. Like the failed Homestead steel strike of 1892, the PATCO strike cast a long shadow over US labor relations for many years after the event itself. Among the effects of the strike was the role it played in legitimizing the use of permanent replacement workers during strikes. This article draws lessons from the PATCO debacle that are worth considering 25 years later.

Cultural value orientations of the former communist countries: a gender-based analysis

This article argues that there is a trend towards enterprise unionism in a number of countries. The authors begin by defining enterprise unionism and developing a framework of analysis in terms of activities, governance, and resources. Utilizing this framework, six countries – Japan, US, France, Germany, UK and Australia – are examined. The trend towards enterprise unionism is best seen in terms of collective bargaining and joint consultation. The authors then consider various explanations for this tendency, including unions and their members, the state, and employers in their market context. This is followed by a discussion of the implications, which may be drawn, and the research gaps, which need to be filled.     

Conceptions of employee responsibilities and rights in the United States and the People's Republic of China

Workplace responsibilities and rights tend to be defined in ways that imply their universal applicability in various cultural contexts. Based on comparisons of the United States and the People's Republic of China, this article investigates the influence of differing cultural characteristics on conceptions of responsibilities and rights. The basic assumptions underlying the conceptions of employee (and employer) responsibilities and rights in the two countries are examined. Evidence drawn from relevant bodies of literature and a close examination of many social or organizational incidents suggest that the concepts of employee (and employer) rights and responsibilities are culture-relative. Based on the findings, the article further offers a set of theoretical propositions, and discusses implications for future comparative research on employee responsibilities and rights.     

推行工资集体协商机制 促进劳动关系和谐发展

工资集体协商是当前调整劳动关系、深化企业分配制度改革的重要手段。文章为基层工会推行工资集体协商,实现劳资双赢献策,以期促进企业劳动关系和谐发展。     

A Response to the British Journal of Industrial Relations Symposium on the Human Rights Watch Report: A Minimum Program for Promoting Collective Bargaining Rights as a Human Right

The publication of Unfair Advantage, a report published by Human Rights Watch (HRW), documents and analyzes how employers routinely violate international human rights standards by depriving U.S. workers of their legal right to organize. In a recent symposium on Unfair Advantage published in the British Journal of Industrial Relations, 7 essays analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of the HRW report from a variety of ideological and theoretical perspectives. Although the scholars who wrote these essays raised a number of important issues concerning Unfair Advantage, they failed to provide any concrete or practical methodologies for using this report to promote the collective bargaining rights of U.S. workers in the early years of the twenty-first century. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to critique these symposium papers as well as to propose a minimum program, on the basis of Unfair Advantage, for advancing the collective bargaining rights of U.S. workers.     

The challenge of responsibilities: Confronting the revolution in workplace rights in modern organizations

The contemporary world of work is experiencing a revolution in workplace rights thinking and practices. Included among factors related to this are professionalization and technocracy, management orthodoxy, corrupt organizational structures, the moral ineptitude of business education, the increasing size of the working population, worker mobility, worker diversity and the variegated cultural milieu, the growth of highly paid and very powerful workers, favorable solons, and supportive justices. Demands for protection and respect of rights are expressed in a variety of ways ranging from the statutory or economic to the ethical or psychological. Because of the correlative link between rights and responsibilities, organizational researchers and practitioners should be concerned with identifying various responsibilities implied by various employer and employee rights. Of equal importance is the challenge of examining in detail these responsibilities and how the strategies suggested by them can be used to manage specific employee rights in the contemporary workplace.     

Barriers to employee rights: Gender,selection, and the labor process

This article applies a labor process analysis to the issue of employment rights in the particular context of gender inequality and unlawful discrimination in the recruitment process. It criticizes conventional perspectives on employee rights for their failure to examine critically managerial power and prerogative and its implications for gender inequality. The article outlines two particular labor process theories of gender divisions and inequality. In exploring the strengths and weaknesses of these more critical perspectives, the article highlights the analytical significance that they ascribe to power asymmetries in the labor process and labor market. Building on this perspective, the analysis then presents empirical data on gender discrimination in the selection practices of contemporary UK organizations. The research material reveals how gender discrimination can be reproduced, rationalized, and resisted. These empirical findings are theorized through a combined labor process analysis of power, knowledge, and identity in recruitment practices. We conclude that labor process analysis facilitates our understanding of the deep-seated barriers that continue to impede the protection of employee rights in workplace practices.     

高职教育人才培养模式创新研究——劳动争议处理课程培养模式研究

实践中,劳动关系与争议处理是企事业单位和谐劳动关系的重要内容之一。如何改进高等院校人力资源管理专业劳动争议处理课程的培养模式也随之成为当务之急。本文试就高职院校人力资源管理专业劳动争议处理课程的定位、开设需求、现实问题与处理办法等做一探讨和研究。     

The family and medical leave act of 1993: Employee rights and responsibilities,employer rights and responsibilities

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was signed into law on February 5, 1993 after approximately eight years of controversial discussion in Congress. The FMLA provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for eligible employees for the birth or placement for adoption or foster care of a child, to care for a child, spouse, or parent with a serious health condition, or for the employee’s own serious health condition. The Act is intended to help individuals balance their home obligations with their work obligations. This article highlights both employee rights and responsibilities afforded by the FMLA and employer rights and responsibilities under the Act.     

基于竞争性交易理论的高职教育地位探析

基于竞争性交易理论,本文从高等职业教育与人力资本的增值、国家竞争力的提升、经济全球化挑战的应对以及弱势群体边缘化的防范等方面分析了我国高等职业教育的地位。     

基层工会组织开展“创先争优”活动存在的问题与对策研究

文章通过对基层工会组织开展创先争优活动存在的问题进行梳理、归类、分析,提出了相应的对策和建议,具有一定的参考意义。