Higher Wage Demands Research Articles

ВИМОГИ РИНКУ ПРАЦІ: ТРАНСФОРМАЦІЙНІ БІЗНЕС-ПРАКТИКИ

The article considers the Fourth Future of Jobs 2023 report released at the World Economic Forum on changes in the global labor market caused by innovation and technological shifts; it is stated that there have been no such studies in Ukraine so far. The transformation of business practices in the labor market has been traced based on Forbes Ukraine research on the ranking of lead ing enterprises and Work.ua on wages in 2023 and the trends of its change in various fields and in the leading industries of production. The common (recognition of one’s own merits and proper appreciation of work by the employer, decent pay, protection and flexibility of employment) and distinctive features of these changes in the world and in Ukraine are clarified: donations and charitable contributions for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, rapprochement of society and business, entrepreneurial flexibility, ingenuity, cleverness, creativity, responsiveness, adaptability, autonomy, changing the status of television, creating new protective structures, giving preference to workers with “soft skills”. The expediency of introducing the term “transformational business practices” into modern scientific discourse is substantiated. It is suggested that the term “transformational business practices” should be understood as the results of developing new and changing creative business practices. The prospects of transformational business practices for the next five years are outlined: encouraging employers to change with the active participation of employees; the impact of the wage level on employment; employment protection and flexibility; balance between work and personal life; professional burnout; innovations and NBIC-initiatives as catalysts of labor market transformation; robotization of production; transition to a “green economy”; reduction of irrelevant jobs and creation of urgent jobs; the demand for certain professions; giving preference to employees with “hard skills”; diversity, equality and inclusion; training in production processes and their automation. According to the results of a study by the Work.ua company, it is indicated that the growth of the wages of young and qualified professionals was influenced by the practices of slowing inflation, the growth of the dollar exchange rate and the average nominal wage, the decrease in the level of unemployment and competition, the lack of qualified personnel and the demand for higher wages from the current employees. It is proposed to recognize the improvement of old and the development and implementation of new business practices as a priority direction for the development of the labor market.

Modelling population retention in Australia’s Northern Territory – how do current forms of migration contribute to population turnover and retention?

ABSTRACTIn the past, population growth in Australia's Northern Territory, as in other peripheral parts of high-income countries, has been driven by internal labour migration and migration from outside of Australia. These have been contributing to the high population turnover experienced in peripheral areas. Since 2010, the Northern Territory has experienced low (and even negative) population growth, and public policy is currently focused on migration as a lever to reverse this trend. However, the extent to which the characteristics of migrants influence the potential for longer-term population growth is poorly understood. This paper uses a new method to analyse the contributions of various types of migrants to both population turnover and retention. Two major sets of findings emerge: First, the significance of separating newer in-migrants from longer-term residents when analysing migration patterns; and secondly, the contribution of age, gender, Indigenous status, international origin, wages and industry of employment to the Northern Territory's population turnover. The research suggests that current forms of migration favour people who are likely to stay for only short periods, and have high wage demands. The main policy inference is that long-term population growth will likely not eventuate unless new forms of migration can be stimulated.

Women in American Labour Movement

In this article, the author examines the history of exclusion and sex-based discrimination against U.S. women workers seeking to join unions established by men. The author describes how groups of women and girls working in fabric mills in the 19th Century took strike action against work speed up and increased production requirements, making demands for higher wages, equal pay with men, improved working conditions, clean water, health care and time off. Then, in the early 20th century, women teachers formed their own unions to gain increased pay and pension plans, and for social justice. These unions continue to the present seeking also social justice and exercising political power.

An Empirical Analysis of Exchange Rate Pass-Through to Prices in South Africa (2002-2016)

South Africa is currently running inflation targeting monetary policy since the year 2000 solely to achieve price stability. However, the persistent depreciation of the rand is making keeping inflation within the stipulated band very cumbersome. The objective of this paper is to find the duration taken by price indices to respond to exchange rate fluctuations. A Recursive VAR was used to investigate exchange rate passthrough (ERPT) to tradable prices in South Africa. Using monthly data, we find producer prices contributing highly to inflation with an average of 22% of fluctuations passed to prices. Large and persistent ERPT, especially on import and producer prices accompanied by high wage demands and a depreciating currency, are worrying factors for South Africa. Policy makers are advised to consider targeting the exchange rate if inflation is to be kept under control

Shelley’s Revolutionary Idealism in Prometheus Unbound

Nineteenth century was a very tumultuous period in which England was experiencing colossal changes in terms of its economy and politics. Industrial revolution was gaining speed and affecting workers negatively. Their demands for higher wages and better working conditions led to their replacement with machines. Also, the government employed very strict measures to curb possible political movements that might be influenced by the principles of the French Revolution and, hence pose a threat to the established order. Despite coming from the ruling class, Percy Bysshe Shelley was not detached from the sufferings of the working class. He actively sought remedies for social evils and injustices. He was “averse” to despotism and the patriarchal order. He believed in a future millenium in which people would live in peace and harmony. In this paper, Shelley’s revolutionary idealism in Prometheus Unbound will be brought to the fore with textual analysis in the context of the nineteenth century.

Wine, Sugar, and the Making of Modern France: Global Economic Crisis and the Racialization of French Citizenship, 1870–1910. By Elizabeth Heath. New Studies in European History. Edited by Peter Baldwin et al.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xiv+312. $99.00 (cloth); $79.00 (Adobe eBook Reader).

<i>Wine, Sugar, and the Making of Modern France: Global Economic Crisis and the Racialization of French Citizenship, 1870–1910</i>. By Elizabeth Heath. New Studies in European History. Edited by Peter Baldwin et al.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xiv+312. $99.00 (cloth); $79.00 (Adobe eBook Reader).

Older Workers’ Wage Demands: Relationships with the Quantity and Quality of Work Motivation

The present study investigates the role of work motivation in explaining older workers wage demands. Relying on Expectancy-Value Theory and Self-Determination Theory we identify aspects of the quantity (the overall valence attached to working and expectations concerning the feasibility of working) and quality (the type of aspired work goals and reasons for engaging in work) of older workers’ work motivation and empirically investigate relationships with their wage demands. Analyses on large sample of 1 782 workers aged 50 or more indicate that aspects describing the quantity or intensity of work motivation are differentially related to wage demands. Attaching high valence to work is negatively related to wage demands, whereas having strong expectations about being able to find another job is associated with higher wage demands. In addition, also the type of work goals one aspire matters: aspiring intrinsic work goals is associated with lower wage demands. Finally, we find interaction effects between both qualitative dimensions and between the value attached to working and engaging in work for autonomous reasons. These results show that differences in wage demands among older workers can be better understood by taking into account the quantity and quality of their work motivation.

Anti-Jewish Violence. Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History (review)

Reviewed by: Anti-Jewish Violence. Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History Ilya V. Gerasimov (bio) Anti-Jewish Violence. Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History, Edited by Jonathan Dekel-Chen, David Gaunt, Natan M. Meir, and Israel Bartal (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011). 220 pp., 1 map. Index. ISBN: 978-0-253-35520-1. Click for larger view View full resolution Violence erupted unexpectedly, on the third day of the Orthodox Christian Easter celebrated on April 26 that year, and swept all over the city. It lasted three days, and it took the authorities another three days to take the situation completely under control. Fifty-five people died and almost 2,000 were injured in violent confrontations - quite a high toll (to compare: over the three days of the Kiev pogrom in 1905, 47 people were killed and over 300 injured 1 ). The raging mob looted and destroyed property, set houses on fire, causing multimillions in damages. The clashes had a clear interethnic aspect, with one minority group being particularly targeted for its presumably unfair business practices and cultural self-isolationism. The 1992 Los Angeles riot described above (alternatively named - and thus interpreted - as the Rodney King Riots, the 1992 Los Angeles Civil Disturbance, and the 1992 Los Angeles Civil Unrest) had nothing to do with Jews, Russians, or Russia, yet its description in general terms is striking in its structural similarity to archetypal Jewish pogroms in Late Imperial Russia. The similarity may well be accidental and superficial. Or, one may argue, those parallels between such different events question the perceived uniqueness and uniformity of the very phenomenon of "Jewish pogrom." The absence of any interest on behalf of historians toward the nature of urban riots in Russian [End Page 396] modern history (not of the seventeenth century) 2 resulted in the strikingly one-sided perception of all instances of civic unrest as fundamentally ideologically motivated: either revolutionary or counterrevolutionary. Accordingly, unorganized and undereducated masses are believed to rally for "surrogates" of these ideal types: either "progressive" or "reactionary" causes (e.g., demands for higher wages vs. an anti-Semitic rampage). Therefore, all instances of mass-scale outbursts of violence were expected to bear an embedded deeper meaning and reflect a general constellation of socioeconomic and fundamental political factors. A limited repertoire of those factors (revolutionary movement, economic conflicts, interconfessional strife, and nationalist mobilization) determined a rigid and unvarying classification of individual acts of communal violence. Both the Kishinev massacre of Jewish residents in 1903 and the "Kazan commune" days of October 1905 were immediately branded by observers as "Jewish pogroms" because Jews were among the victims, even though during the trial of pogromists in Kazan, those Jews who suffered from the mob insisted that they had never experienced anti-Jewish attitudes before. 3 Thus, the singularity and universality of the category "Jewish pogroms" is hinged upon the indiscriminate lumping together of a broad variety of incidents of intercommunal violence into several rigid categories of ideological confrontation − but also upon a fundamental belief in the self-evident meaning and boundaries of Jewry (both by modern scholars [End Page 397] and as ascribed to pogromists and their victims a century ago). The collection Anti-Jewish Vio lence. Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History aims at revisiting the older historiographic orthodoxy of the "pogrom paradigm" that treated pogroms of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a single phenomenon, a historically developing and amplifying spiral of ethnic violence. Remarkably, the late John Klier was among the initiators of this publication project that grew out of the conference "Anti-Jewish Violence: Reconceptualizing 'the Pogrom' in European History, 17th−20th Century," held in Stockholm in May 2005 - just as he was instrumental in the elaboration of the "pogrom paradigm" that the new collection set up to deconstruct. 4 Klier was one of the most dynamic and original scholars of the late imperial period, and his sudden death in 2007, in the opinion of this reviewer, has significantly weakened the methodological foundation of the collection that was produced without him. Structurally, Anti-Jewish Violence consists of three uneven parts ("Twentieth-Century Pogroms", "Responses to Pogroms", and "Regional Perspectives"), de facto...

The Determinants and Some Consequences of Unemployed Workers' Wage Demands

AbstractThis paper studies the determinants and consequences in the early stages of the hiring process of unemployed workers' wage demands using direct data on workers' wage requests. We show that most unemployed workers want a wage close to their previous wage, and thus much more than they get in unemployment benefits. However, some groups, such as women, tend to demand lower wages. Moreover, we find that workers with high wage demands are contacted by firms less often than otherwise similar workers with lower wage demands. Thus, our results suggest that too high wage demands may contribute to high unemployment.

The Private Sector's Role in limiting unemployment in Jordan

This study is aimed to define unemployment, and private sector, to know more about both, and to study the role of the private sector in limiting unemployment in Jordan in special. In a particular year the level of unemployment is determined by the level of aggregate demand for the goods and services which a country produces .if demand higher this reduces unemployment so the demand side approach to unemployment .so to expand demand through higher budget deficits and lower interest rates. But unfortunately unemployment cannot be reduced indefinitely by expand demand .for eventually the economy will run into bottle necks and labor shortage that point employers will increasingly raise wages to attract labor and there will all be increased union demands for higher wages .so demand will have to stop rising-either of its own or through policy action. Thus our ability to reduce unemployment is limited by the labor shortages which begin to appear as unemployment falls are features of the “supply-side of the economy and it is they which determine how unemployment can fall without creating inflationary pressures while demand management is important the key issue for employment policy is how reduce the level of unemployment at which inflationary pressures appear.

Opening the Closed Shop: The Galveston Longshoremen's Strike of 1920-1921

Opening the Closed Shop:The Galveston Longshoremen's Strike of 1920–1921 Joseph Abel (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. The Mallory steamship line's coastwise docks in Galveston as they appeared during the 1920s. Courtesy of the Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas. [End Page 316] On June 25, 1920, an anonymous writer submitted a poem to the Union Review in Galveston. It read Forth went the Hobby mandate / Throughout this Texas land To mobilize the National Guard / That was his stern command. Ho! Martial law and war declared / "By my halidom," said he, "I'll humble that Galveston / Galveston by-the-Sea." In olden days in Ancient Rome / When Carthage did annoy The Romans sent their Scipio/ That Carthage to destroy. A modern pigmy Scipio / This Hobby, he would be, And make a modern Carthage of / Galveston by-the-Sea. Several pompous Generals / And Colonels too galore, And Majors bold and Captains / And Lieutenants by the score, All riding fast and furious / With eagerness and glee To capture poor old Galveston / Galveston by-the-Sea. But what of those, the rank and file / Those Texas' mothers' sons Who must obey this mandate / And handle murderous guns? Have they forsworn their manhood? / Must they automatons be? And murder men and mothers / In Galveston by-the-Sea. "Oh, Liberty! Oh, Liberty!" / Once cried a famous dame; "Alas! Alas! The awful crimes / Committed in thy name!" 'Tis thus may cry Galveston / As to tyranny she bends her knee For outraged homes and human rights / Galveston by-the-Sea.1 [End Page 317] These stanzas illustrate the frustration of the island's coastwise longshoremen in late June 1920 —on strike for a 25 percent wage increase since March 19. Day after day, hundreds of strikebreakers worked an increasing number of ships tied up along the docks of the Morgan Line and Mallory shipping companies. No strangers to conflict, the longshoremen were used to such tactics, but the event that inspired these verses caught them completely off guard. On June 7, the "modern pigmy Scipio" Gov. William P. Hobby declared martial law and took control of the strike situation in Galveston. Within days, more than one thousand soldiers occupied the island and for the next four months, the striking dockworkers indeed bent their knees to what they believed was tyranny, watching as "pompous Generals" and "Majors bold" trampled upon their rights. By the time the troops left in October, the union stronghold of Galveston bore at least a metaphorical similarity to ancient Carthage—although the city remained physically intact, its entire organized labor movement lay in ruins, especially the longshore unions. Much like their Roman predecessors, business leaders and their allies in Austin hoped to prevent future annoyances from this modern Carthage; rather than salt the earth, however, these men planted and nurtured the antiunion doctrines of the open shop. Ultimately, the Galveston longshoremen's strike was a major turning point in the history of the Texas labor movement. Supported by bayonets and rifles, Texas's business interests joined the nationwide assault on the American working class and launched the capital-state alliance that would prove so disastrous for organized labor through the 1920s.2 When the 1,600 members of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) Locals 385 and 807 walked off their jobs on March 19, 1920, they had no idea that their actions would have such dramatic repercussions. The weeks and months leading up to the strike had demonstrated the longshoremen's continued faith in the wartime bargaining power granted them by the federal government through the National Adjustment Commission (NAC). The origins of the strike lay in two hearings held between ILA representatives, the shipping companies, and the NAC in October and December 1919. Presented with a demand for higher wages, the shipping representatives stubbornly refused, arguing instead that Congress must first [End Page 318] allow an increase in freight rates. The newly reorganized peacetime NAC, meanwhile, backed off, stating that the privately owned shipping companies bore full responsibility for resolving the wage dispute, thus effectively eschewing its functions as arbitrator. By March 1920, the longshoremen had had enough of this back-and-forth. Following the lead...

The World Economy

Following four quarters of exceptionally rapid expansion, growth in the US, China and Japan, the world's three largest economies in purchasing power parity terms, slowed in the second quarter of 2004. However, with growth remaining near trend levels in all three economies, this should not be viewed as an imminent collapse of the global recovery. On the contrary, we continue to expect world growth to stabilise at about 4-4¼ per cent per annum from 2004-2006, which is slightly faster than our estimate of trend global growth of just less than 4 per cent per annum. We see the world economy approaching full capacity output and, unless there is a shock to demand, a further acceleration in global growth is unlikely in the near term. In the second quarter of 2004, we also saw a slight dip in the Euro Area recovery, mainly driven by a drop in consumer expenditure in Italy, while growth in India and the Far East also eased slightly. Brazil, on the other hand, continued to strengthen following the recession in the first half of 2003, although recent strikes in demand for higher wages are likely to restrain the acceleration in the second half of the year. Looking forward, we expect to see some rebalancing of world growth by 2006, as the US and Japan slow to more sustainable levels and the recovery in the Euro Area becomes more broadly based. The only significant revisions to our forecast for the major economies since July include an upward revision to the outlook for Japan this year, and an upward revision to the outlook for inflation in the Euro Area in 2005. We have revised our projections for growth in Japan up by 0.4 percentage points, to 4 per cent. This follows the upward revision of 1 percentage point made in July, and primarily stems from an upward revision to growth in Chinese import demand this year.

Equilibrium unemployment, search behaviour and unemployment persistency

Unemployment persistency and high equilibrium unemployment is often assumed to be caused by rigidities and low search efficiency in the labour market, especially in European welfare states with generous income replacement schemes. These arguments are tested on data from Sweden, an old welfare state with a long period of full employment that has changed into a situation with high unemployment. Data show a clear and very strong unemployment duration dependency, but it is not possible to prove that this is a result of low employability among the long-term unemployed. Getting a job is most of all associated with relative qualifications, recall expectations and local labour market conditions, and not with search behaviour or high wage demands. It is argued that unemployment duration when unemployment is high can best be understood as a selection process rather than a search process, and that econometric estimations of equilibrium unemployment are too pessimistic about the potential for an expansive economic policy. It is also argued that an active labour market policy is a more efficient compliment to such a policy than changes in income replacement ratios. Copyright 2001 by Oxford University Press.

Employment and Capital Accumulation in Unionised Labour Markets: Evidence from five south-European countries

This paper analyses the link between employment and capital accumulation in unionised labour markets by using a dynamic monopoly union model. The role of wage setting is also explored within the above context. The empirical analysis is based on annual data from the manufacturing sector of five European countries (France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain). It verifies that capital accumulation has a positive influence on employment. Concerning wages, there is evidence that, in most countries, income opportunities in the public sector play an important role in wage determination. A larger public sector crowds out private investment and employment by serving as a safety net that allows wage setters to push for higher wage demands.

Human factors in the adoption and performance of advanced manufacturing technology in unionized firms

Some researchers have found that unionized firms are less likely to pursue automation because high wage demands deprive them of the necessary capital required to invest in advanced manufacturing technology (AMT). It has also been suggested that stringent work rules and technology agreements can make the substitution of new technology for union labor too expensive. Others have found, however, that the pursuit of high wage policies and the resultant requirement for improved worker and machine productivity can create a positive environment for technological change. This exploratory study examines the relationships between firm‐level union status and the adoption and performance of AMT in the discrete parts durable‐goods manufacturing industry. Analyses of our sample, which included Chi‐square tests, t‐tests, correlation analyses and multiple linear regression analyses, revealed a union effect on the adoption of just‐in‐time technology and a moderately positive union effect on performance. Results of analyses of the impact of union status, firm size and several human factor variables on firm performance are also presented and discussed.

The interface of race and accounting: the case of Hawaiian sugar plantations, 1835-1920

This paper explores the interface of race and accounting on Hawaiian sugar plantations during the 1835-1920 period. The data examined at the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association (HSPA) archives indicate that Caucasian and ethnically Hawaiian workers were paid significantly higher wages and held a disproportionately larger number of managerial positions than Asian counterparts. In addition, workers from different ethnic groups were imported at various times to stem an existing group's solidarity and demands for higher wages and better conditions. We review the accounting techniques used on the plantations and provide examples showing how the HSPA employed racist policies, controlled labour, and instituted productivity and cost control measures. The archives examined contain an extensive amount of data on worker attendance and field productivity; however, they include no records on the performance of individual workers. The absence of these data suggests that race rather than efficiency served as the primary measuring calculus of plantation work.

Brenner on Distribution

AbstractThe publication of Bob Brenner's long-awaited analysis of the development of post-war capitalism is to be welcomed. Brenner's systematic review of a mass of data on the development of the US, German and Japanese economies finally, and incontrovertibly, destroys the ‘profit squeeze’ explanation for the tendencies to stagnation and crisis which have afflicted global capitalism over the past thirty years. This once fashionable theory explained the crisis tendencies of capitalism in terms of the ability of workers to restrict profitability through their demands for higher wages and their resistance to the intensification of labour. It is manifestly the case that the struggles of workers over the past thirty years have been predominantly defensive struggles, attempting, at best, to limit the erosion of relative gains of previous years in the spheres of wages, job control and welfare provision. The resistance of workers to a further intensification of their exploitation may have presented a barrier to the resolution of the crisis on the basis of capital, but it is certainly not the struggle of workers that has provoked the crisis.

Capitalist Competition and the Tendency to Overproduction: Comments on Brenner's ‘Uneven Development and the Long Downturn’

AbstractThe publication of Bob Brenner's long-awaited analysis of the development of post-war capitalism is to be welcomed. Brenner's systematic review of a mass of data on the development of the US, German and Japanese economies finally, and incontrovertibly, destroys the ‘profit squeeze’ explanation for the tendencies to stagnation and crisis which have afflicted global capitalism over the past thirty years. This once fashionable theory explained the crisis tendencies of capitalism in terms of the ability of workers to restrict profitability through their demands for higher wages and their resistance to the intensification of labour. It is manifestly the case that the struggles of workers over the past thirty years have been predominantly defensive struggles, attempting, at best, to limit the erosion of relative gains of previous years in the spheres of wages, job control and welfare provision. The resistance of workers to a further intensification of their exploitation may have presented a barrier to the resolution of the crisis on the basis of capital, but it is certainly not the struggle of workers that has provoked the crisis.

South Africa Turns the Corner

South Africa Turns the Corner Pauline H. Baker (bio) South Africa: The Political Economy of Transformation. Edited by Stephen John Stedman. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1994. 213 pp. This book, like others in the same series, results from an annual Country Day Conference sponsored by the African Studies Program of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. In this case, the conference was held two years before the South African elections of April 1994, which ended white minority rule. As the conferees met, the negotiations that would lead to this vote were well under way, but their success was by no means assured. The editor states in the preface that the book covers what "needs to be explained if South Africa is to become a long-lived multiparty democracy." It emphasizes "transformation" rather than "transition." The latter, Stedman argues, "deals only with the formal institutions of a polity," whereas the former "involves the informal rules, interactions, and power relationships upon which formal institutions rest" (p. vii). This is a meaningful theoretical distinction, but one that is difficult to maintain in practice. Nonetheless, Stedman has used it as a tool for elevating the sights of the book's contributors so that they avoid speculation on the outcome of the negotiations and concentrate instead on the central issue of whether a lasting democratic outcome is likely. This is an ambitious undertaking, launched at a time when the contents of the current power-sharing arrangement and the constitution were not fully worked out. Violence was still the biggest threat hanging over the talks. One of the contributors, Amy Biehl, was killed just two [End Page 176] days before she was to return to the United States. Despite these uncertainties and tensions, Stedman's decision to direct attention to deeper factors was the right one. As all book editors know, however, imposing a common framework on a collection of essays by different authors is nearly impossible. This book is no exception to that general principle. It omits or skims over critical factors relevant to both the transition and the transformation, and several contributors ignore the distinction altogether. The most obvious issue neglected here is the question of violence. While conflict has diminished substantially since the April 1994 elections, some sense of the root causes of the violence might have enabled us to assess the likelihood of renewed bloodshed in the future. Other issues receiving inadequate coverage include questions of political leadership, internal party politics, and the respective futures of the media, the judiciary, and the civil service. Whether democracy survives in South Africa hangs, in large part, on the fate of these issues and institutions in the long term. Another important but underdiscussed topic is economics. Although various contributors touch on this issue, only Jeffrey Herbst deals with it directly, if selectively. Herbst warns of exaggerated expectations, focusing on the dangers of limited tax revenue and high wage demands. His assessment is quite pessimistic. Yet he fails to consider the role of private foreign investment and trade at any length, and perhaps too readily dismisses the capacity for economic pragmatism of the African National Congress (ANC). Neither does the book address fully the question of how the nongovernmental sector or civic society may fare after apartheid. This vital sector will serve as a watchdog of democracy. It deserves more than passing references, as some of the contributors have given it; it merits a separate discussion as an important topic in its own right. Notwithstanding these shortcomings, the book offers some solid insights. Herbst's analysis of the labor unions helps the reader understand what is behind the rash of industrial protest that is plaguing the newly elected national-unity government. He predicts that organized labor, the force which "became the most powerful domestic opposition to the white government in the 1980s" (p. 39), will become one of the most demanding pressure groups in the 1990s. Despite—or possibly because of—the inclusion of top trade-union leaders in the government, unions are making seemingly extravagant demands that not only could price South Africa out of the market for foreign investment but could sideline the new...

The determinants of voting by the National Labor Relations Board on unfair labor practice cases: 1955–1975

This study has employed logit analysis in an attempt to determine important variables that influence the voting by the NLRB on unfair labor practice cases. Pooled regression results on the odds of voting prolabor were reported for the administrations of Eisenhower, Kennedy-Johnson and Nixon and for the entire period 1955–1975. A number of interesting findings are offered in this empirical investigation of the NLRB. First, it was found that if a Board member is reappointed to the Board, the greater will be the odds that the member will vote prolabor. This verifies the speculation that the Democrats preferred a solidly prolabor voting Board, and that the Republicans desired a strong prolabor voting minority on the Board. Secondly, political variables such as the party of the administration appointing the NLRB member and the member's own political party had an influence on the odds of voting prolabor. If the administration in power was Democratic or if the Board member was a Democrat, the greater were the odds that the member would vote prolabor. Even if a member of the Board professed to be an independent politically, which was the case for two members during the Eisenhower Administration, this variable was found to have a positive effect on prolabor voting for that particular administration and for the entire study period. Also, in the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations, being a former nonmember employee of the NLRB may have had some impact on the voting behavior. Finally, variables for economic conditions in the economy were introduced into the regression equations to test whether or not these variables had any effect on the voting behavior of the NLRB members. In almost all of the logit models reported, the unemployment rate had an influence on voting by Board members. The effect was found to be positive in the Eisenhower period and negative in the Kennedy-Johnson and Nixon periods. The effect for the entire period was positive. It is suggested that whether or not the influence of the unemployment rate on the voting on unfair labor practice cases was positive or negative depended on how the Board perceived the role of organized labor in the tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. If the members believe that organized labor's demands for higher wages caused accelerated inflation when the administration in power was simultaneously trying to reduce unemployment, then the odds of the member voting prolabor were reduced. Besides the unemployment rate, some other economic condition variables that were found to have a possible effect on NLRB voting during the Kennedy-Johnson administration were real GNP, strike days lost, and union membership in the United States. While admittedly this study is only a first attempt at modeling the voting behavior of the NLRB on important unfair labor practice decisions, we believe that we have captured some of the most important political and economic variables that effect the behavior of a quasi-judicial agency — the NLRB.