Entire Labor Research Articles

Globalisation, Competitiveness, and the Social Democratic Model

For a long time, the discussion about the impact of economic globalisation on the full employment/generous welfare state policies pursued by social democratic governments was characterised by doom and gloom. Glib neo-liberal arguments about the impossibility of maintaining social democratic policies, that were presumably hindering competitiveness through excessive wages and taxes in the new international environment were difficult to counter, because social democrats could not resort to an equally elaborate and internally consistent economic doctrine that could substitute for evidence, and the evidence was not yet in to counter these arguments on empirical grounds. Recently, careful and comprehensive comparative studies have provided evidence that, despite undeniable problems posed by economic internationalisation, social democratic welfare states and employment regimes have proven to be highly resilient (Scharpf and Schmidt, 2000; Huber and Stephens, 2001). Indeed, some kinds of traditional social democratic policy, such as an emphasis on labour mobilisation through active labour market policy and social services that make it possible to combine labour force participation with raising children, and an emphasis on human capital formation have facilitated adaptation to the new economic conditions. Moreover, newly available data on skill distribution (OECD/HRDC, 2000) and income distribution (LIS) suggest that the egalitarian thrust characteristic of social democratic policy has made an important contribution to raising literacy skills at the bottom, which in turn facilitates the integration of the entire labour force into productive activities that are competitive in high-quality markets.

Productivity Effects of Organizational Change: Microeconometric Evidence

This paper analyzes the relationship between investment in information and communication technologies (ICT), non-ICT-investment, labor productivity and workplace reorganization. Firms are assumed to reorganize workplaces if the productivity gains arising from workplace reorganization exceed the associated reorganization costs. Two different types of organizational change are considered: enhancement of group-work and the flattening of hierarchies. Empirical evidence is provided for a sample of 411 firms from the German business-related services sector. A simultaneous econometric model for labor productivity and firms' decision to reorganize workplaces shows that changes in human resources practises do not significantly affect firms' output elasticities with respect to information and communication technologies, non-ICT-capital and labor. We also do not find significant differences in firms' returns to scale. The point estimates of the individual output elasticities and of the control variables for observable firm heterogeneity are, however, generally larger if workplace reorganization is realized. We therefore apply Kernel density estimation technique to demonstrate that the entire labor productivity distribution shifts out to the right if workplace reorganization takes place, indicating that workplace reorganization induces a significant increase in labor productivity. Significant differences in the productivity of ICT-capital and non-ICT-capital cannot be found.

Modeling Supply and Demand for Arts and Sciences Faculty

What Ten Years of Data Tell Us About Labor Market Projections of Bowen and Sosa Introduction: Labor Market Models, Data, and Critiques In 1989 William Bowen and Julie Sosa published Prospects for Faculty in Arts & Sciences, attempting to project balance of faculty supply and demand over a 25-year span, from 1987 through 2012. The book was last of a number of similar reports and studies (e.g., Bowen & Schuster, 1986; Lozier & Dooris, 1987; McGuire & Price, 1989), all of which predicted, from depths of a recession in academic labor markets, that a rapid turnaround was in sight. Although supply of new PhDs had far exceeded demand for new faculty throughout eighties, these works were intended as wake-up calls to fact that large numbers of faculty who had been hired during higher education's expansion in sixties would soon retire, creating a swelling demand for new faculty that would be difficult to fill at then current rate of PhD production. The intent was to spur action on part of institutions and policymakers to increase flow of students into graduate programs and rebuild supply of faculty. All of these works relied on fixed-coefficient models for calculating future supply and demand. That is, they projected current trends mathematically, without attempting to account for feedback loops or adjustment mechanisms of marketplace. Yet, there is a range of different levels of sophistication. Whereas much of previous work had been based upon relatively simple assumptions, Bowen and Sosa took a much more detailed approach, making Prospects for Faculty extremely rich in hard data. Indeed, its authors had access to levels of detail in their data that had been almost unimaginable just a few years earlier. Bowen and Schuster (1986), for example, were unapologetic in their work's aggregation of entire national academic labor market, explaining that the necessary data...[to break totals down into components such as geographic regions, types of institutions, or academic disciplines] ... are not available and we do not have resources to gather (p. 195). In their defense, Bowen and Schuster were primarily concerned with quality of faculty, not quantity. Bowen and Sosa, on other hand, focusing almost entirely on quantity, were able to obtain finer data and disaggregate their figures, both for faculty and for graduate degrees, by individual academic fields and by type of institution. Although their model required them to make many assumptions about future values of various factors and coefficients, majority of these assumptions are carefully supported by detailed analyses of data trends. Out of a universe of, at one count, 96 distinct scenarios that might be played out over quarter century of their vision, Bowen and Sosa eventually narrowed their projections down to four main models that they considered most likely to occur. With only slight variation, each of those models projected significant shortages of PhDs in academic labor market arising as early as 1992 and by 1997 at latest, reversing an oversupply of PhDs during years leading up to that point. Unlike their contemporaries, however, Bowen and Sosa did not attribute projected shortages to any sudden wave of retirements, but rather to combined effects of slight recoveries in postsecondary enrollments (after a drop in early nineties), stagnant production of PhDs (with actual declines in percentage of new PhDs who choose to pursue academic careers) and most importantly, a large, steady outflow of faculty from combined life processes of career changes, retirements, and deaths. Almost immediately after its publication, some researchers began to criticize accuracy and reliability of projections made in Prospects for Faculty (Blum, 1991; Gill, 1992), even as others rushed to proclaim arrival of first faculty shortages years ahead of when Bowen and Sosa had predicted they would begin (EI-Khawas, 1990, 1991). …

Macroeconomic equilibrium with illegal immigration

Illegal immigration (ILM) has been analyzed very little in the context of a macroeconomic framework. This paper introduces immigration of illegal unskilled workers into a simple model of an open economy with heterogeneous labor and, within this context, examines its macroeconomic and welfare consequences. The analysis shows that when skilled native wage setters and the policymakers behave as Nash players, ILM improves the position of the entire native labor force, i.e. both skilled and unskilled workers. Moreover, it reduces the inflationary bias associated with expansionary policies and thus has a positive overall impact on ‘social welfare’ in the economy. This result contrasts with several earlier studies that suggest that illegal immigration causes the position of at least some members of an economy to worsen. It also provides one possible macroeconomic explanation as to why illegal immigrants are currently tolerated in ‘inflation prone’ countries despite the fact that their presence sometimes causes social tensions. On the other hand, when native skilled workers and the policymakers behave cooperatively, ILM may in fact make the entire native workforce worse off. This result suggests that countries with ‘aggressive’ unions in skilled labor markets stand to gain from illegal immigration while countries with ‘soft’ unions may lose. Finally, it is shown that domestic labor market conditions determine the ‘optimum’ degree of government intervention in the illegal migrant labor market.

Ronaldo Munck and Peter Waterman, eds., Labour Worldwide in the Era of Globalization: Alternative Union Models in the New World Order. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. vii + 269 pp. $79.95 cloth.

In the wake of the Russian Revolution, labor radicals believed that they had discovered the ideal organizational form: internationally affiliated parties of professional revolutionaries to coordinate the activities of national trade unions and mass political parties toward revolutionary ends. Communist “vanguard” parties proved capable of mobilizing masses but also of imposing dictatorial control over entire labor movements and for decades defended Joseph Stalin's hecatombs. Many of today's labor militants have ransacked the contemporary political scene for alternative methods of bringing unions into mass politics. The provocative and important collection edited by Ronaldo Munck and Peter Waterman argues that labor radicals should emulate social movements such as the peace, environmental, and feminist movements.

From Organized Dependence to Disorganized Despotism: Changing Labour Regimes in Chinese Factories

Like opening Pandora's box, Chinese reforms have unleashed institutional and social forces which have led to a variety of production regimes co-existing under the permissive banner of “market socialism.” The industrial scene of Guangdong, which boasts of itself as one of the first, the most and the best reformed provincial economies, bears witness to the profound and wide-ranging transformation in production politics. Compared to the era of state socialism, a restructuring of industrial employment has evidently occurred. The 740 state-owned industrial enterprises in Guangzhou, for instance, now account for only 15 per cent of a total of 4,903 industrial establishments, and the 307,000 employees in the state industrial sector account for one-third of the city's 940,000-strong industrial workforce. Twenty-one per cent and 46 per cent of all industrial employees are found respectively in 2,005 collective enterprises and 2,158 private, foreign and joint ventures. As recently as 1985, the state industrial sector was still dominant, employing 65 per cent of the city's industrial workforce, and producing 68 per cent of industrial output. The composition of the work force has also significantly changed: among the 2.03 million urban (including non-industrial) employees in Guangzhou, 700,000 are “registered” migrant workers, of whom 280,000 work in state and collective enterprises. For the province as a whole, registered migrant workers numbered 3.6 million in 1996, while a generally-accepted estimate for the entire migrant labour population reached a staggering 11 million. In the pre-reform days, this massive pool of rural labour was sequestered in the countryside by the hukou system and the number of those who found employment in state factories as temporary contract workers was estimated to be only about 6 per cent of all employees in urban state enterprises by 1978. Complexity is further induced by a new round of deepening reform measures in the 1990s, targeting enterprise ownership, scientific management and labour laws.

Do men leave feminizing occupations?

This article analyzes the 1970 and 1980 Public Use Samples of the decennial census and the 1983 Current Population Survey to determine if the degree of occupational feminization, i.e., the change in the percent female, affects men changing occupations. The results lend some support to the contention that men do not leave feminizing occupations. Men in occupations with the greatest increases in their percentage of female workers had the lowest percentage of men leaving their occupations. As the change in the percent female decreased, the percentage of men leaving the occupation increased. However, occupation was a critical factor in this relationship. While men from nonmanufacturing occupations followed a pattern similar to that found in the entire labor force (described above), men in manufacturing occupations left occupations that feminized the most. Men who changed occupations, in fact, often entered occupations that feminized. In the wake of these findings, I discuss how occupational sex segregation may be maintained.

Women’s Employment or Return to “Family Values” in Central-Eastern Europe

BARBARA LOBODZINSKA * Socialism in Central-Eastern Europe reinforced only the formerly existing patriarchal system by allowing men to run governments and by fortifying their leading positions at home and work. The basic socialist legal foundations claimed for all, without supplying the system with functional application of a related legislation. As a reaction to the previous socialist constraints and pressures in the former Soviet Bloc countries, a strong new push toward removing women from gainful employment and toward - so called - traditional family values can be seen. Even some women are opting now to be financially supported by their men, to stay at home and to concentrate on care of their children. Men become more eager to elbow out female competitors from the shrinking employment opportunities. Unemployment is a new, post-socialist, phenomenon. Previously, workers had job security resulting from the full employment social policy. Getting away from the cradle to grave state protection for all citizens, the new governments are trying to save this part of expenditures that under socialism was spent on subsidies for social and family policies. To analyze women's family and employment roles combined with their attitudes toward these roles, under the new conditions, calls for a review of the previous system. Many facets of the former strategies and ways of thinking are still functioning. The former system created numerous parallels in the outcome of social institutions and social relationships. research studies conducted before and after 1989 in one of the examined countries can illustrate a pattern in most of the region. WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT BEFORE AND DURING THE POST-SOCIALIST TRANSITION PERIOD Employment In spite of ideological, legislative and social policy efforts to secure positions of equality for men and women in the socialist societies, an extensive discrimination against women persisted, manifested in the concentration of women in lower priority sectors of the economy, in lower posts occupied, and in lower wages (Beyer, 1992; Fuszara, 1993; Lobodzinska, 1978 and 1983; Paukert, 1991; Putnam, 1990; Reszke,1991-a and 1991-b; Sokolowska, 1963; Sziraczki and Windell, 1992; Waluk, 1963, and others). Marxist doctrine implemented in socialist countries confronted the task of including women in economic activities as equal partners with men. The outcome was basically on a pledge level, influencing citizens to think that a potential for equal opportunities existed. Studies on equality principles in socialism indicate that family allowances and benefits for employees were taken for granted. They were not considered a privilege but a revenue added to entitlements stemming from employment. They were regarded as inherent obligations owed by the State to its citizens: as premises of the system (Bromberek, 1987; Ferge, 1976; Flakierski, 1992; Koralewicz-Zebik, 1984; S. Nowak, 1966; S. Nowak, 1981). The right to work - and to entitlements (e.g., free health care, free education, job security, paid retirement, paid vacations, protection of under-age employees, etc.) - was guaranteed to all citizens, with considerable additional advantages for working women and mothers. Thus, the present departure from the previous gains is now perceived as termination of beneficial advantages in labor relationships. Under the conditions of political and economic instability, and the labor market conditions now considered as worse, the old survival technique comes in handy and the preservation of the family becomes an undisputed priority for women. Resentment against the capitalist market economic reforms and their political promoters is the attitude of the majority. This has resulted in the recent return of the communists to power in Poland, Lithuania and Hungary 1993-4). Due to the full-employment policy under socialism, women made up between 40-50% of the entire labor force (see, table I). …

Level of Development and Rates of Return to Schooling: Some Estimates from Multicountry Data

Estimation of rates of return to education has been an important part of the human capital and the development literature, and many scholars have provided rate of return estimates for a wide variety of countries, economic settings, labor market sectors, and levels and types of schooling. George Psacharopoulos, for exampale, has produced comprehensive rate of return estimates and discussed the relationships between the rate of return estimates and the level of economic development.' Although many different kinds of data sets and procedures have been used to generate rate of return estimates, no attempt seems to have been made to obtain a global view of returns to education by using multicountry data. While intracountry data have some obvious advantages over intercountry data, the latter are better in some other respects. For example, if one considers the entire labor force, crosscountry differences in age, experience, and ability may not be a matter of major concern, and relatively simple specifications can be used. Moreover, multicountry data permit a direct comparison of rates of return to education in groups of countries that are at different levels of economic development.2 The main purpose of this study is to use an earnings-function approach to estimate rates of return to schooling from multicountry data on labor force education and real income. The work has been made possible by Psacharopoulos and Ana Maria Arriagada's compilation of data on labor force schooling for a large number of countries and the recent update by Robert Summers and Alan Heston of data on real GDP that have good cross-country comparability.3 Besides obtaining an estimate of the overall (global) rate of return to schooling, this article (a) compares estimates from the sample of

Der Katholische Gesellenverein in der Diözese Rottenburg von 1852 bis 1945: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Katholizismus in Württemberg by Ansgar Krimmer

268 BOOK REVIEWS change between Bishop Jules-Marie Courcoux and Dom Fulbert Glories: the bishop chagrined that a secretary of Charles Maurras—thus an important member of the condemned Action française—should be allowed to receive Communion publicly at the parish church. And the writer Max Jacob has an important walk-on part, in that this flamboyant gay and earnest convert treasured his moments at the ancient abbey. (For another off-angle look at the convert Jacob, see the extraordinary Correspondence ofJean Cocteau and Jacques Maritain with essential notes by Michel Bressolette and Pierre Glaudes [Paris: Gallimard, 1993]). After the drôle de guerre (here again, readers can view localized experience of a nationally traumatic event), the modern Benedictine community at St.Beno ît-sur-Loire was established, finally, October 11, 1944. Important examinations of the reputed relics of St. Benedict (and St. Scholastica) were conducted by church and medical authorities, verifying that the bones were those chronicled at the founding of the monastery in the seventh century. The results of the brief, sound reports of these examinations, previously available only locally, are reported by the author. This is a necessary book. We cannot understand the significance of major events if we cannot see how they impinged on individual lives and concrete events of local significance. Fortunately for us, St.-Benoît-sur-Loire has an erudite chronicler and a genial interpreter in Alphonse de SaintVincent. Joseph F. Byrnes Oklahoma State University Der Katholische Gesellenverein in der Diözese Rottenburg von 1852 bis 1945:Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Katholizismus in Württemberg. By Ansgar Krimmer. [Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Zeitgeschichte, Reihe B: Forschungen, Band 66.] (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. 1994. Pp. xxx, 306.) This is a well-researched regional study of the Catholic journeymen's associations , which were of considerable, if underappreciated, significance in the development of working-class culture and consciousness in the nineteenth century. The socialist August Bebel, for example, first came to an awareness of the plight of German workers while a member of various Catholic journeymen 's associations in southern Germany. Krimmer's work is an important contribution to our understanding of this long-neglected aspect of both Catholic and working-class history in Germany. The work gives a thorough introduction to the history, organization, and work of the journeymen's associations. The Gesellenvereine were clerically led organizations devoted to preserving religious faith and providing economic assistance among the young artisans ofGermany . The milieu of the Catholic journeymen's associations is also well fleshed out: the function of the various association houses as meeting place, temporary BOOK REVIEWS 269 shelter, and employment register; the creation of savings and insurance funds; and the sponsorship of libraries, lectures, theater presentations, dances, and athletics. Krimmer does an excellent job delineating the serious organizational conflicts between journeymen's associations, Catholic Arbeitervereine (workingmen 's associations), and Christian trade unions. Krimmer's perspective on the divisive Gewerkschaftsstreit (trade union controversy) of the early twentieth century reveals how the journeymen's associations were jealous of their role and skeptical of the democratic and interconfessional practices of the unions. About 1907, a compromise was reached wherein religious-cultural work was left to the journeymen's associations, and economic work delegated to the unions. At the same time, an accommodation with the workingmen's associations was established, transforming the journeymen's associations into organizations for young, unmarried workers of all kinds. The delay in resolving the crisis, as Krimmer rightly points out, severely damaged the entire Catholic labor movement. Krimmer falters, however, on two counts. First, the consistently positive portrayal of the internal life of the associations glosses over any conflict between the clerical leadership and the artisanal/working-class members. Krimmer presents the question ofwhether the associations functioned as charitable welfare organizations, or as instruments for the emancipation of craftsmen, as a nonquestion , arguing that these two perspectives worked hand-in-hand with each other. If the history of the Catholic workers' associations is any indication, such peaceful relations within the associations were an illusion. Workers and journeymen wanted organizations that were more than paternalist bulwarks for the defense of traditional occupations and religion; yet this conception was what the...

A cost-of-illness study of back pain in The Netherlands

In this study we estimated the costs of back pain to society in The Netherlands in 1991 to be 1.7% of the GNP. The results also show that musculoskeletal diseases are the fifth most expensive disease category regarding hospital care, and the most expensive regarding work absenteeism and disablement. One-third of the hospital care costs and one-half of the costs of absenteeism and disablement due to musculoskeletal disease were due to back pain. The total direct medical costs of back pain were estimated at US$367.6 million. The total costs of hospital care due to back pain constituted the largest part of the direct medical costs and were estimated at US$200 million. The mean costs of hospital care for back pain per case were US$3856 for an inpatient and US$199 for an outpatient. The total indirect costs of back pain for the entire labour force in The Netherlands in 1991 were estimated at US$4.6 billion; US$3.1 billion was due to absenteeism and US$1.5 billion to disablement. The mean costs per case of absenteeism and disablement due to back pain were US$4622 and US$9493, respectively. The indirect costs constituted 93% of the total costs of back pain, the direct medical costs contributed only 7%. It is therefore concluded that back pain is not only a major medical problem but also a major economical problem.

Disability by occupation in Finland 1986-90

The present paper describes differences in the standardized disability ratio between occupations in Finland in 1986-1990. Furthermore, it gives an overview of the relationship between occupational disability and mortality. The data are based on the 1985 census records in Finland linked with all disability pensions during the period 1986-1990. The study includes the entire male and female labor force aged 25-54 years in 1985. An indirect standardization method was used to calculate the standardized disability ratio for each occupation. Results indicated clear differences in disability by occupations for both men and women. Among both sexes, the manual workers occupations had higher standardized disability ratios and white-collar occupations had lower ratios than the entire labor force. The disability of male occupations correlated strongly with occupational mortality, whereas among women the correlation between mortality and disability was weaker.

Post-communist Transitions: Romanian Women's Responses to Changes in the System of Power

Post-communist Transitions: Romanian Women's Responses to Changes in the System of Power Madalina Nicolaescu In most East European sodeties women welcomed and even partidpated in the 1989 uprisings against Communist regimes. Did subsequent poUtical changes also bear the imprint of their partidpation? Γη this artide I focus on women's involvement in poUtical events in post-Communist Romania, based on first-hand experience. As Western countries were rather late finding out, the difference between Ceaucescu's sodalist regime in Romania and the government of other East European countries consisted largely in the former's intensification of StaUnist, totaUtarian features.1 Unlike Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and even Poland, whidi had embarked upon a process of "de-StaUnation," Ceausescu's personalist and absolutist rule blocked the economic and poUtical process of reforms condudve to the emergence of a more Uberal, post-totaUtarian sodety.2 Having securely isolated Romania not only poUticaUy and culturaUy but also economicaUy, Ceausescu felt free to set up a despotic power system that brought the StaUnist system to unprecedented hdghts in postwar Europe. In the process he added dements from Maoist China and the North Korean cult of personaUty. Viewed from a Foucauldian perspective, Ceausescu's power system—impressive and impregnable as it appeared to be—was wasteful and ineffident in its employment of technology. Its strategies proved counterproductive and self-destructive, undermining rather than rdnfordng the system.3 Ceausescu's handling of the problem of women serves as a case in point. His ambitious plans in the late 1960s for massive and rapid industrialization produced one of the highest growth rates in the world at the time. His plans required an increased input of labor. In particular, women's work had to be redireded away from housework and toward work outside the home. Administrative, legal, and finandal pressure was exerted on women to enter the world of paid work. The government used sodalist discourse about gender equaUty as a strategy for conditioning women to consider their value as individuals in terms of their contribution to the national economy. Such propaganda conveyed to women the idea that only work performed within the sodalist system of the planned economy was "productive" and therefore valuable. Attainment of fuU subjectivity was possible only in the pubUc sphere.4 By devaluing housework and the values of the private world of home, this egaUtarian rhetoric concealed the double burden that was imposed upon women. like everywhere else, women, upon entering the pubUc sedor, did not escape their household © 1994 Journal of Women's History, Vol 5 No. 3 O/Vinter) 118 Journal of Women's History Winter © AUyson Smith 1991 "Setting hot lead at the Bucharest State Printing Press" responsibüities.5 They desperatdy tried to reconcile and negotiate between the two worlds. ParadoxicaUy, Ceausescu, whüe emphasizing their role as economic agents within the socialist system, also reinforced the traditional patriarchal gender stereotypes, according to which housework remained women's exdusive responsibiUty. What made Romanian women's predicament particularly dramatic in comparison with that of women in other East European countries was Ceausescu's economic poUcy, which made women's dual workload practicaUy unbearable. Ceausescu placed an inordinate emphasis on production and was averse to consumption. Women were thdefore supposed to work and produce more and more, whüe consuming less and less. Ceausescu's prejudice against domestic consumption manifested itself in the increasingly deteriorating Uving conditions, which affeded women most because they had to bear the burden of the population's struggle for survival. As suppUes of foodstuffs dwindled, women queued for hours on end to attain the basic necessities for their famiUes. Energy and electridty cuts meant that women could not use household appliances of any kind, had no hot water in their homes, and in winter had tittle or no heating. It goes without saying that under these circumstances, the double burden Romanian women had to carry was physicaUy and psychologicaUy 1994 International Trends: Madauna Nicolaescu 119 exhausting. The combined pressure of legal, administrative, and economic measures proved successful eventuaUy. By the year 1990 women accounted for almost 45 percent of the entire labor force in Romania.6 TotaUtarian power aimed at extracting the maximum labor from women's...

Lashers and Leviathan: The 1954 Coalminers' Strike in Colonial Zimbabwe

SummaryIn 1953 Southern Rhodesia's (Zimbabwe's) only coal mine, Wankie Colliery, was taken over by the Anglo American Corporation of South Africa. The colliery's new owners soon discovered that the elimination of “hand lashing” (shovelling of coal) was the key to better productivity and expanded output. Coal cutting machinery was installed wherever possible, but in the colliery's two oldest shafts existing mining methods were too deeply entrenched and consequently too expensive simply to be swept away. Instead Anglo American attempted to reinforce colonial production relations. Supervision underground was tightened up, and the degree of “self-regulation” enjoyed by lashers in determining the amount of work they did was limited. The introduction of a new mine tub designed to increase productivity precipitated strike action in February 1954 by the colliery's entire black labour force.

Spillover Effects between the Insured and Uninsured Unemployed

In this paper, I consider the effect of changing the level of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits on workers who do not receive UI. I hypothesize that a spillover effect between insured and uninsured workers exists so that an increase in the UI benefits, which leads to longer durations of unemployment for insured workers, will lead to a reduction in the duration of unemployment for the uninsured. This prediction is tested using data from several March Current Population Surveys and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. In both samples I find that an increase in UI benefits leads to a reduction in the duration of unemployment for uninsured workers. Furthermore, using several years of state level data, I show that the estimated effect on unemployment for the entire labor force is roughly zero when I allow for the spillover effect.

Intrapartum fetal heart rate assessment: Monitoring by auscultation or electronic means

Our purpose was to assess the frequency with which auscultation could be used as the primary mode of fetal assessment during labor in a busy labor and delivery suite by means of published criteria. During a 3-month period, 862 patients in labor with live fetuses between 24 and 43 weeks of gestation were available for auscultation in the prospective study. Auscultation was initiated during a contraction and extended for 30 seconds after uterine activity ceased. It was repeated every 15 minutes in the first stage and every 5 minutes in the second stage of labor. In 420 patients this modality was not begun because of inability of the nurses to meet 1:1 staffing requirements. In 19 patients auscultation was not performed because of obesity (12) or patient refusal (7). Of the 423 assessed by auscultation 392 were unable to complete monitoring caused by the frequency requirement (n = 212) or the recording criteria (n = 163). Of the 31 patients where auscultation was successfully completed, there was a 1:1 nurse ratio during the entire labor. Auscultation with stringent evaluation and recording frequency is not feasible under normal labor and delivery room conditions unless 1:1 nursing care is always available.

Attributing the Success to the Coordinated Development of Education and the Economy

Jinjiabao village, Ba county, is located along the banks of the Da Qing River. It has a population of 6,000. Since 1978, it has placed education in an important place in the course of developing their economy. Over the past nine years, they have selected and sent 126 people to various large specialized institutes and schools and state-run enterprises to make advanced studies; they have organized 8 medium-level specialized and middle-grade technical classes and trained up to 224 persons of medium-grade technology and management caliber; they have established 2 specialized classes of collegiate level, and enabled 107 persons to receive higher education; they have also accorded training to staff members and workers, making 80 percent of 2,920 workers receive varying degrees of training and fostering; and now 1,453 members of the labor force are of a cultural level of primary school and middle school, or roughly 50 percent of the entire labor force. Over the past 9 years, their investments in education amount...

Employment Spells and Previous Labour Market History

ABSTRACT: In this paper the author analyses the influence of the past labour market history of an individual on the length of employment spells he will experience. Most empirical works emphasize the so called Markov model, which implies that the probability of an individual changing state depends only on the state currently occupied. Using data on the labour market histories of a sample of unemployed persons, we specify and estimate a reduced form model where job separation rates arc a function of the entire labour market history and of variables related to personal characteristics and labour market conditions. The empirical analysis supports the claim that transition probabilities are related to past labour market history.

Scientists in Organizations: Discrimination Processes in an Internal Labor Market

It has been argued that discrimination against women may stem from their location in female-dominated occupations. In order to examine whether men and women working in the same occupation are similarly treated the attention is focused on the scientific enterprise that is considered to be governed by universalistic criteria. Whereas earlier studies of discrimination in science were conducted in academic settings or in the entire labor market, a more recent trend in organizational analysis is followed that emphasizes the significant role of internal labor markets in determining employment practices within large firms. This study, which employs a “one occupation-one firm” design, indicates that female scientists clearly have fewer promotion opportunities than their male counterparts. The article concludes that controlling for organizational position in wage equations produces a downward biased estimated level of wage discrimination. These results suggest that internal labor markets may act as a subtle mechan...

Bitter Choices: Blue-Collar Women In and Out of Work.

Ellen Israel Rosen presents a compelling portrait of married women who work on New England's assembly lines while they also maintain their homes and marriages. With skill and sympathy, she documents the reasons these women work; their experiences on the job, in the union, and at home; the sources of their job satisfaction; and their management of the double day. The major issue for this segment of the labor force, Rosen suggests, is not whether to work, but the availability and quality of jobs. Rosen argues that deindustrialization plant closings and job displacement confronts blue-collar women factory workers with a bitter choice between work at lower and lower wages or no work at all. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data from interviews with more than two hundred such women factory workers, Rosen traces the ways in which women who do unskilled factory work have gained in self-esteem as well as financial stability from holding paid jobs. Throughout, Rosen explores the relationship between public work experiences and private family life. She analyzes the dynamics of two-paycheck, working class families, clarifies relationships between class and gender, and explores the impact of patriarchy and capitalism on working class women. At the same time Rosen places women's job loss within the broader economic context of global industrial transformations, demonstrating how international capital shifts to cheaper labor in developing countries, as well as technological progress, are changing the shape of the entire labor force and are beginning to undermine the material and symbolic gains of the female factory worker, the promise of market equality, and progressive working conditions. This book is a significant contribution to our understanding of women's work and family lives, but it is also a valuable look at the consequences of deindustrialization in America for workers, their families, and their communities. Myra Marx Ferree, American Journal of Sociology