Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, the contours of neoliberalism took shape, as individual corporations implemented new strategies seeking to shift the frontier of control in their favor and increase their profits. Their actions began to shape the political and economic practices of both major political parties, and the orientation of…

This article presents an interview with Wilma B. Liebman, the new chair of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). In this interview, Liebman talks about labor law, academics, and reversing ossification.

In 2002, approximately two thirds of school teachers in the Canadian province of Alberta went on strike. Drawing on media, government and union documents, this case study reveals some contours of the political economy of labor relations in education that are normally hidden from view. Among these features are that the state can react to worker…

While society has begun its evolution from the industrial age to the information age, most teacher unions continue to pattern their behavior after the industrial model of unionism focusing almost exclusively on salary, benefits and working conditions. In some school systems, though, teacher unions and management are questioning the legitimacy of…

Statistics teaching should not be carried out in the same way for all kinds of university students. Instead, teaching statistics should take into account the different fields of study that students have chosen. For example, students of sciences or engineering have different interests and backgrounds compared to students of any social or juridical…

This paper examines the reasons behind a historic shift in the language couching the wage demands of two North American labor movements during the last twenty years of the 19th century--the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor. We trace how the once dominant imagery of "wage slavery" lost its connection to producerist labor…

"Fortune" magazine's articulation of productivity during the period 1969 to 1972 was a skillfully crafted work of propaganda that mixed public perception about (a) the younger generation, (b) issues about the growing rate of inflation, (c) shifting employment sectors, (d) increasing nominal wages, and (e) declining rate of profit.…

Using matched employer-employee data from ten African countries, we examine the relationship between wages, worker supervision, and labor productivity in manufacturing. Wages increase with firm size for both production workers and supervisors. We develop a two-tier model of supervision that can account for this stylized fact and we fit the…

Purpose: Responding to the recent split in the US labor movement, this paper aims to argue that learning must become an integral part of a progressive union devoted to organizing. Design/methodology/approach: This paper traces the evolution of vocational education in US industrial unions and critiques it in light of the challenges facing labor…