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From Widgets to Digits: Employment Regulation for the Changing Workplace

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Amid the endless hype about the "new workplace," it is difficult to grasp the enormous changes that have occured in the world of work over the past quarter century. Katherine Stone's FROM WIDGETS TO DIGITS is an invaluable guide for anyone who wants to understand or to affect the character of labor in the globalizing economy.

The author starts be presenting the historical shift from 19th century artisanal production to 20th century industrial production and the social, political, and legal changes that emerged in response to it. Her presentation of that history provides a model for understanding what she calls "digital production" -- and, even more important, for addressing the issues it poses for the social, political, and legal regulation of work.

The book's power results in part from the fruitful combination of the insights of a labor historian with those of a legal theorist. It also grows from the author's underlying conviction that work relations must be considered not just from the point of view of economic efficiency, but from the point of view of justice.

The best and most authoritative analysis of why so many workers feel "nervously employed". A scholarly work of great value to all including those eager to take responsibility for their place in a turbulent workplace. It brights attention to the fact that productivity gains have gone to owners of capital not workers creating wealth...a must read!

This is a truly outstanding book. The author, a renowned expert in labor relations, discusses the transformation of the workplace, the increased risks to workers with the changes in health insurance, pensions, and low wages, the decline in unions and the new forms of discrimination. She has lots of good suggestions for reform. It is extremely well-written and thought-provoking.

In this excellent and highly readable book, author Stone shines new light on the structural changes in the modern American employment relationship. Stone's analysis is original and compelling--essential reading for policy makers, scholars and students. Drawing on her expertise as both a labor historian and legal scholar, Stone argues that throughout the twentieth century, employers have encouraged long-term employment relationships through "the use of implicit promises for job security and well-defined paths of career progression." As a result, labor and employment policy have been molded to meet these ends. The problem, according to Stone, is that modern day employment arrangements are no longer driven by stability, but rather by flexibility, as employers seek, for example, to farm out more and more of their core operations to independent contractors and short-term hires. The result is a regulation regime for a vanished era. More than just analysis, From Widgets to Digits, also offers a progressive, concrete program for the workplace, thereby allowing policy to keep pace with the employment revolution.