Rights at Work: Employment Relations in the Post-Union Era [Paperback]

Richard Edwards (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1994

One consequence of the growing international integration of economies has been an erosion of American workers' rights. Employers attempting to meet the pressures of new international competition have had to change the way they organize their work forces and the protections given to their employees. There are more low-wage jobs, more part-time and temporary workers, more subcontractors, reduced benefits, and intensified work schedules. In the current environment, employers have a greater need for highly motivated, hardworking, skilled employees, and have often developed innovative forms of management to enlist these workers' support. Other forces transforming the traditional system have been the decline of unions and the ascendance of conservative policy. Even with all these developments, workers have won new rights in recent years, such as mandatory early notification of plant closings, greater rights for workers with disabilities, and increased protection for older workers. State legislatures have also enacted expanded protections for workers, and state courts have been rewriting basic legal doctrines governing workers' rights in ways that favour employees. In addressing this subject, Edwards calls on law, economics, and institutional change.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

A dean at the University of Kentucky, Edwards here proposes new ways of protecting workers' rights, which he claims would also make the workplace more efficient. Edwards finds that the old ways of establishing and enforcing workers' rights are increasingly ineffective, costly, and even counterproductive, particularly as employers strive to cut costs and become more competitive and as labor unions continue to slide in membership and power. The "protections" that Edwards puts forth encompass an obligation by employers, union and nonunion, to detail the rights that they unilaterally grant to their workers, and which are legally enforceable, along with an independent system of mediation and arbitration, in place of litigation, to resolve disputes about these workplace rights. Recommended for research libraries with industrial-relations collections.
- Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 265 pages
• Publisher: Twentieth Century Fund (August 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815721056
• ISBN-13: 978-0815721055
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,895,130 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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