Inequalities in the commodification of labor are constitutive for economic activities that span political borders. Increasing global economic integration at the end of the twentieth century is motivated part by new opportunities to exploit such inequalities. Despite this fundamental characteristic of global economic relations, the twentieth century has also witnessed the evolution of an institutional framework of international labor regulation, produced and monitored by the International Labor Organization (ILO), that aims at reducing inequalities in working conditions and protecting workers from the extremes of economic competition, i.e. decommodifying labor. What factors account for the formation of a world labor regime in the twentieth century? And, given the apparent contradiction between the purpose of the ILO's world labor regime and the roots of economic globalization in inequalities in labor commodification, what effects has the world labor regime had for workers on the ground? This study explores the formation and effects of the world labor regime in the twentieth century. Neo-institutionalist theories of an emergent world culture and world polity provide a useful framework for understanding the diffusion of symbolic constructs and institutional forms on a world scale, but they tend to de-emphasize questions of agency, power and conflict. Global class conflict approaches (world systems theory, dependent development theory, dependency theory) help to situate the formation of the ILO's global labor regime in the context of global patterns of exploitation, stratification, dependence and conflict. Three dimensions of world labor regime formation are examined: the historical roots of the world labor regime in the nineteenth century, the articulation of international labor standards by the ILO, and the ratification of those standards by ILO member countries, between 1919-1999. This study examines the impact of member countries' integration in the world labor regime on labor protest, and on workers' rights. The most important findings concern the dynamic relationships between labor protest and world labor regime formation, and the significant effects of countries' labor regime integration on the protection of workers' rights. The formation and integration of the world labor regime is in part a co-optive response to the threat posed by working class mobilization; nevertheless, integration in the world labor regime does appear to benefit workers on the ground.

Nicholas Bryor Massenburg, a cotton and tobacco planter in Piedmont North Carolina, operated his plantation within a network of fellow farmers, neighbors, friends, and relatives. He turned to merchants in town and to scattered individuals for goods, services, and hired labor. He also sold surplus food crops locally, meaning that a portion of his income was derived not just from the sale of cotton and tobacco. For Massenburg, managing his plantation also meant implementing agricultural reform techniques. The twenty-some slaves were organized into a system that was a hybrid of task and gang labor, with work routines varying throughout the year. Task variation peaked in spring and late fall, while during much of summer and early fall the slaves performed a limited variety of tasks. Rigid gender segregation did not characterize the working environment at the Massenburg plantation.

Sociologists are interested in examining the relations between globalization and a range of labour market outcomes, including earnings inequality. Common approaches include studying the impact of globalization on the welfare state, and the effects of import competition and foreign direct investment (FDI) outflows. This thesis examines the effects of exporting, foreign ownership (FDI inflow), and outsourcing – with particular emphasis on exporting – on i) workplace productivity; ii) worker compensation; iii) the demand for skills and the pay of employees with different skill levels; and iv) employer-provided training. While sociological writings have largely treated productivity as a concept to be attacked, or simply ignored, this thesis discusses the meaning of productivity and addresses issues of its measurement. It highlights the productivity-wages link based on human capital theory, and argues that a necessary step in understanding the relations between globalization and earnings inequality is to look closely at the relationship between globalization and productivity. The four papers find evidence that i) exporting and foreign ownership have strong positive effects on productivity; ii) pay is substantially tied to productivity, and prolonged exposure to export markets and foreign ownership are associated with higher total compensation; iii) employees with higher skills are concentrated in workplaces that are exposed to international markets, and they are paid more than comparably skilled employees in workplaces that are not exposed to international markets; iv) exporters provide more training, most plausibly to make possible the innovation required to compete internationally. The results of the four papers also reinforce each other. First, the process of absorption of best practice in foreign markets, the technological and financial advantages associated with foreign ownership, the adoption of global supply chains, the employment of a workforce with higher / Les sociologues sont intéressés par l'examen des relations entre mondialisation et une série de résultats sur le marché du travail, incluant les inégalités salariales. Les approches communes incluent l'étude de l'impact de la mondialisation sur l'état providence, et les effets de la concurrence des importations et de l'investissement étranger direct (IÉD). La présente thèse examine les effets de l'exportation, de la propriété étrangère (entrées d'IÉD), et de la sous-traitance – en portant une attention particulière sur l'exportation – sur i) la productivité en milieu de travail; ii) le salaire et les avantages sociaux; iii) la demande de compétences et la paye des employés avec différents niveaux de compétence; et iv) la formation fournie par l'employeur. Alors que les écrits sociologiques ont largement attaqué le concept de productivité ou l'ont tout simplement ignoré, la présente thèse s'attarde à la signification de la productivité et les enjeux liés à sa mesure. On y met en relief le lien entre productivité et salaire basé sur la théorie du capital humain, et soutient qu'une étape nécessaire dans la compréhension des relations entre mondialisation et inégalité des gains est de s'attarder à la relation entre mondialisation et productivité. Les quatre articles démontrent que i) l'exportation et la propriété étrangère ont des effets positifs marqués sur la productivité; ii) la paye est fortement reliée à la productivité, et des expositions prolongées aux marchés internationaux et à la propriété étrangère sont associées à une plus grande rémunération; iii) les employés hautement qualifiés se retrouvent surtout dans des milieux de travail exposés aux marchés internationaux, et sont mieux payés que des employés aussi qualifiés qui travaillent dans des milieux de travail non exposés aux marchés internationaux; iv) les milieux de travail impliqués dans l'exportation fournissent plus de form

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-11, Section: A, page: 4523. Adviser: John Lawler. Includes bibliographical references. Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

The thesis seeks to explore the possibility of using planned transfer of labour to facilitate economic change and discusses the merits of this policy compared with Distribution of Industry policy. This is done by examining the National Coal Board's transfer scheme, by which over nine thousand miners were transferred between coal fields in the years 1954 - 56, with a special study being made of Central Scotland, West Durham and North Staffordshire. Resistance to transfer is shown to have been caused more by the effects of Government social policies, especially in the field of housing than by the organised opposition of community leaders. Individual resistances to migration are also discussed. The social consequences of the transfer of labour were much less than had been anticipated. The standards of living of those left behind did not fall, community life was not disrupted to any significant degree and few people were deprived of normal social satisfactions. No social capital was wasted. Over a half of the miners transferred into North Staffordshire failed to settle there. The reasons for this lay especially in the fact that wages were not up to expectations, but also in the different organisation of work, the system of contracting and working conditions. The social problems of transfer were, surprisingly, greater at the receiving end. There were numerous difficulties in the location of the estates and in the provision of amenities and social services. There were also problems of social adjustment. Despite the difficulties experienced in this particular scheme of transfer the economic rewards were immense and similar rewards could be expected from such a policy applied to other industries. Governmental policy should therefore not only facilitate such movement; it should also cease to obstruct it.

<p> Social scientists and food studies scholars have shown an enduring interest in how food is produced in our largely industrialized food system. However, there has been little research about the organization of labor on industrialized farms. These sites of production are mostly privately owned and hidden away from researchers and journalists, who are often perceived as critics or activists by farmers and other agriculturalists. My dissertation fills this gap by focusing exclusively on industrialized contract broiler farms. Contract broiler farming is a model where farmers agree to raise chickens for meat for a set amount of time, at a rate of pay based on the ratio of feed to chicken weight at slaughter. Farmers invest in the built infrastructure to execute this process, but the company they contract for is mostly in control of the upstream and downstream supply and processing chains that depend on the production of the broiler chicken for their continued functioning. </p><p> I use archival, interview, and ethnographic data to detail the history of broiler farming, the emergence of contracting, and what the experience of it is like today. The most significant and novel part of this project is my ethnographic data collected over six months spent working on two broiler farms contracted with one of the largest firms in the US. To date, no other researchers have been able to gain this level of access. </p><p> In this dissertation, I begin by exploring the role of management, detailing how the structure of the farming contract and ambiguous supervisory oversight facilitates farmer&rsquo;s compliance with company demands. Then, utilizing agricultural and labor scholarship on deskilling in the labor process, I explore how poultry farming has become deskilled, robbing farmers of autonomy, the opportunity to agitate for better labor conditions, and ultimately eroding the intimate knowledge necessary to execute successful animal husbandry. Finally, I explore the games farmers play at work. While these games obscure how surplus value is appropriated from the farmer by the contracting firm, they also demonstrate farmer&rsquo;s resistance and acquiescence to their deskilling and loss of autonomy.</p><p>

Some historians have depicted industrial welfare as of small significance in the development of British industrial relations. This thesis contains case-studies of many firms and industries which illustrate the prevalence of company welfare provision between 1846-1939 and its usefulness to employers as a labour strategy. While there have been works on specific welfare schemes, this is a monographic study of industrial welfare enabling comparisons to be made between very different industries. The thesis also identifies the formative influences upon the organisation of company provision over a broad time span. Highly capitalised industries needed to invest more in the stability and reliability of their workforces than other trades. Moreover, market control enabled companies to exercise a greater degree of forward planning in the management of production, capital and men. As natural monopolies and the first large-scale enterprises, railways were innovators in industrial management and in the provision of industrial welfare. In more competitive trades, the passing of small firm and ex gratia paternalism and its replacement by more systematic welfare schemes usually followed the formation of large, corporate firms from the 1890s onwards. Changes in the organisation of industrial welfare tended to follow the establishment of the managerial bureaucracies and structures suited to the large company. The thesis argues that profit sharing can only be understood as an element of industrial welfare provision. It shows that, rather than welfare being mainly concerned with factory conditions, employers were more interested in the questions of income maintenance, sick pay and old age pensions. Consequently, employers lobbied Parliament to prevent their industrial welfare schemes from being made redundant by social legislation. By influencing the final form of government proposals, they ensured until the Second World War that company provision was able to continue as part of state welfare schemes.

<p> "MAXhr&rdquo;, the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) personnel system authorized as part of the most significant government restructure of the past 50 years by the Homeland Security Act (HSA), fundamentally altered labor relations policies for 170,000 DHS employees. A subsequent National Security Personnel System at the Department of Defense was modeled after MAXhr and expanded similar changes to nearly 700,000 federal civilian employees. Within this context of these systemic changes, the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) litigated a decade-long challenge to uphold key provisions of its collectively bargained agreement with the US Customs Service (USCS). Fifteen years after the HSA merged USCS into the new US Customs and Border Protection agency within the DHS, NTEU&rsquo;s initial legal setbacks have been resolved with precedential victories and pending back pay awards upholding its collective bargaining rights while rolling back the personnel management systems instituted in the name of homeland security.</p>

<p> This study examined the influences of tattoos on hirability and salary recommendations in the workplace. The study aimed to find whether educating participants about Title VII cases would moderate the relationship between type of tattoo and hiring recommendations as well as type of tattoo and salary recommendations. This study did not find any significant main effects of tattoos on hirability or salary.</p>

Les théoriciens néoclassiques croient que la participation stratégique est spécifique au type innovateur, et absente dans les anciennes formes d'organisation. Cependant, cette distinction n'est pas flagrante. II existe encore aujourd'hui des traces de structures traditionnelles qui bloquent la participation des employés dans les organisations innovatrices. L'étude de cas suivante comprendra deux organisations innovatrices et une autre traditionnelle. Il est à noter que l'étude du niveau de participation, appuyée de questionnaires, d'entrevues et de données secondaires, est réalisée dans chacun des cas sous l'angle de l'autonomie, de l'influence et de l'intégration considérées comme des facteurs de la participation. Nous verrons que la participation n'est pas partagée uniformément entre les employés, souvent à cause d'un manque d'intégration de certains d'entre eux. Il n'est alors pas suffisant de l'estimer seulement par des configurations organisationnelles. Il faut mener l'analyse plus loin.