The Origins of Right to Work

The Origins of Right to Work PDF Author: Cedric de Leon
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801455871
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Book Description
"Right to work" states weaken collective bargaining rights and limit the ability of unions to effectively advocate on behalf of workers. As more and more states consider enacting right-to-work laws, observers trace the contemporary attack on organized labor to the 1980s and the Reagan era. In The Origins of Right to Work, however, Cedric de Leon contends that this antagonism began a century earlier with the Northern victory in the U.S. Civil War, when the political establishment revised the English common-law doctrine of conspiracy to equate collective bargaining with the enslavement of free white men. In doing so, de Leon connects past and present, raising critical questions that address pressing social issues. Drawing on the changing relationship between political parties and workers in nineteenth-century Chicago, de Leon concludes that if workers’ collective rights are to be preserved in a global economy, workers must chart a course of political independence and overcome long-standing racial and ethnic divisions.

Politics and the Right to Work

Politics and the Right to Work PDF Author: Rob Jenkins
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781849045704
Category : Manpower policy, Rural
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
A rare and hugely successful story in the global development world, Jenkins and Manor present detailed research that convincingly demonstrates the efficacy of the MGNREGA in India

Rights at Work

Rights at Work PDF Author: Michael W. McCann
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226555713
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 704

Book Description
McCann explains how wage discrimination battles have raised public legal consciousness and helped reform activists mobilize working women in the pay equity movement over the past two decades. Rights at Work explores the political strategies in more than a dozen pay equity struggles since the late 1970s, including battles of state employees in Washington and Connecticut, as well as city employees in San Jose and Los Angeles. Relying on interviews with over 140 union and feminist activists, McCann shows that, even when the courts failed to correct wage discrimination, litigation and other forms of legal advocacy provided reformers with the legal discourse--the understanding of legal rights and their constraints--for defining and advancing their cause.

Politics at Work

Politics at Work PDF Author: Alexander Hertel-Fernandez
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190629894
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Book Description
Politics at Work documents how and why U.S. employers are increasingly recruiting their own workers into politics-and what such recruitment means for American democracy and public policy.

The Right and Labor in America

The Right and Labor in America PDF Author: Nelson Lichtenstein
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812244141
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Book Description
This collection of essays by leading American historians explains how and why the fight against unionism has long been central to the meaning of contemporary conservatism.

Making Politics Work for Development

Making Politics Work for Development PDF Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464807744
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Book Description
Governments fail to provide the public goods needed for development when its leaders knowingly and deliberately ignore sound technical advice or are unable to follow it, despite the best of intentions, because of political constraints. This report focuses on two forces—citizen engagement and transparency—that hold the key to solving government failures by shaping how political markets function. Citizens are not only queueing at voting booths, but are also taking to the streets and using diverse media to pressure, sanction and select the leaders who wield power within government, including by entering as contenders for leadership. This political engagement can function in highly nuanced ways within the same formal institutional context and across the political spectrum, from autocracies to democracies. Unhealthy political engagement, when leaders are selected and sanctioned on the basis of their provision of private benefits rather than public goods, gives rise to government failures. The solutions to these failures lie in fostering healthy political engagement within any institutional context, and not in circumventing or suppressing it. Transparency, which is citizen access to publicly available information about the actions of those in government, and the consequences of these actions, can play a crucial role by nourishing political engagement.

Private Government

Private Government PDF Author: Elizabeth Anderson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691192243
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Book Description
Why our workplaces are authoritarian private governments—and why we can’t see it One in four American workers says their workplace is a “dictatorship.” Yet that number almost certainly would be higher if we recognized employers for what they are—private governments with sweeping authoritarian power over our lives. Many employers minutely regulate workers’ speech, clothing, and manners on the job, and employers often extend their authority to the off-duty lives of workers, who can be fired for their political speech, recreational activities, diet, and almost anything else employers care to govern. In this compelling book, Elizabeth Anderson examines why, despite all this, we continue to talk as if free markets make workers free, and she proposes a better way to think about the workplace, opening up space for discovering how workers can enjoy real freedom.

Free Choice for Workers

Free Choice for Workers PDF Author: George C. Leef
Publisher: Jameson Books (IL)
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Book Description
This is a captivating chronicle of the fifty-year "David-Goliath" struggle between the bosses of Big Labor and Americans opposed to their coercive power.Few Americans realize their freedom to say "no" to compulsory unionism is largely the result of the valiant efforts of the National Right to Work Committee and its Legal Defense Foundation. Big business and the Republican Party have usually avoided the battle, leaving only Right to Work and its hundreds of thousands of grass roots supporters to defend employee freedom to get or keep their jobs without being forced to pay dues or join a union.Leef's narrative covers the New Deal legislation that gave Big Labor its initial monopoly power, and then the inspiring, decades-long struggle in Washington and the states to reduce the abusive power of labor bosses.The book also teaches a crucial lesson for those involved in public policy wars, regardless of their political philosophy -- that principled and dedicated idealists can prevail against strong special interest groups if they fight for a just cause.

The Workplace Constitution from the New Deal to the New Right

The Workplace Constitution from the New Deal to the New Right PDF Author: Sophia Z. Lee
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316061191
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 429

Book Description
Today, most Americans lack constitutional rights on the job. Instead of enjoying free speech or privacy, they can be fired for almost any reason or no reason at all. This book uses history to explain why. It takes readers back to the 1930s and 1940s when advocates across the political spectrum - labor leaders, civil rights advocates and conservatives opposed to government regulation - set out to enshrine constitutional rights in the workplace. The book tells their interlocking stories of fighting for constitutional protections for American workers, recovers their surprising successes, explains their ultimate failure, and helps readers assess this outcome.

From the Bargaining Table to the Ballot Box

From the Bargaining Table to the Ballot Box PDF Author: James Feigenbaum
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Labor unions directly affect wages, employment, industrial structure, and inequality. But unions also influence the economy and labor market indirectly through their effects on politics, providing candidates with voters, volunteers, and contributions, and lobbying on public policy. We use the enactment of right-to-work laws--which weaken unions by removing agency shop protections--to estimate the effect of unions on politics and policy from 1980-2016. Comparing counties on either side of a state and right-to-work border to causally identify the effects of the state laws, we find that right-to-work laws reduce Democratic Presidential vote shares by 3.5 percentage points. We find similar effects in Senate, House, and Gubernatorial races, as well as on state legislative control. Turnout is also 2 percentage points lower in right-to-work counties after passage. Exploring the mechanisms, we find that right-to-work laws dampen organized labor contributions to Democrats and that potential Democratic voters are less likely to be contacted to vote. The weakening of unions also has large downstream effects: fewer working-class candidates serve in state legislatures and Congress, while state policy moves in a more conservative direction.