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Good Jobs, Bad Jobs provides an insightful analysis of how and why precarious employment is gaining ground in the labor market and the role these developments have played in the decline of the middle class. Kalleberg shows that by the 1970s, government deregulation, global competition, and the rise of the service sector gained traction, while institutional protections for workers—such as unions and minimum-wage legislation—weakened. Together, these forces marked the end of postwar security for American workers. The composition of the labor force also changed significantly; the number of dual-earner families increased, as did the share of the workforce comprised of women, non-white, and immigrant workers. Of these groups, blacks, Latinos, and immigrants remain concentrated in the most precarious and low-quality jobs, with educational attainment being the leading indicator of who will earn the highest wages and experience the most job security and highest levels of autonomy and control over their jobs and schedules. Kalleberg demonstrates, however, that building a better safety net—increasing government responsibility for worker health care and retirement, as well as strengthening unions—can go a long way toward redressing the effects of today’s volatile labor market. There is every reason to expect that the growth of precarious jobs—which already make up a significant share of the American job market—will continue. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs deftly shows that the decline in U.S. job quality is not the result of fluctuations in the business cycle, but rather the result of economic restructuring and the disappearance of institutional protections for workers. Only government, employers and labor working together on long-term strategies—including an expanded safety net, strengthened legal protections, and better training opportunities—can help reverse this trend.

Private equity firms have long been at the center of public debates on the impact of the financial sector on Main Street companies. Are these firms financial innovators that save failing businesses or financial predators that bankrupt otherwise healthy companies and destroy jobs? The first comprehensive examination of this topic,Private Equity at Workprovides a detailed yet accessible guide to this controversial business model. Economist Eileen Appelbaum and Professor Rosemary Batt carefully evaluate the evidence-including original case studies and interviews, legal documents, bankruptcy proceedings, media coverage, and existing academic scholarship-to demonstrate the effects of private equity on American businesses and workers. They document that while private equity firms have had positive effects on the operations and growth of small and mid-sized companies and in turning around failing companies, the interventions of private equity more often than not lead to significant negative consequences for many businesses and workers. Prior research on private equity has focused almost exclusively on the financial performance of private equity funds and the returns to their investors.Private Equity at Workprovides a new roadmap to the largely hidden internal operations of these firms, showing how their business strategies disproportionately benefit the partners in private equity firms at the expense of other stakeholders and taxpayers. In the 1980s, leveraged buyouts by private equity firms saw high returns and were widely considered the solution to corporate wastefulness and mismanagement. And since 2000, nearly 11,500 companies-representing almost 8 million employees-have been purchased by private equity firms. As their role in the economy has increased, they have come under fire from labor unions and community advocates who argue that the proliferation of leveraged buyouts destroys jobs, causes wages to stagnate, saddles otherwise healthy companies with debt, and leads to subsidies from taxpayers. Appelbaum and Batt show that private equity firms' financial strategies are designed to extract maximum value from the companies they buy and sell, often to the detriment of those companies and their employees and suppliers. Their risky decisions include buying companies and extracting dividends by loading them with high levels of debt and selling assets. These actions often lead to financial distress and a disproportionate focus on cost-cutting, outsourcing, and wage and benefit losses for workers, especially if they are unionized. Because the law views private equity firms as investors rather than employers, private equity owners are not held accountable for their actions in ways that public corporations are. And their actions are not transparent because private equity owned companies are not regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Thus, any debts or costs of bankruptcy incurred fall on businesses owned by private equity and their workers, not the private equity firms that govern them. For employees this often means loss of jobs, health and pension benefits, and retirement income. Appelbaum and Batt conclude with a set of policy recommendations intended to curb the negative effects of private equity while preserving its constructive role in the economy. These include policies to improve transparency and accountability, as well as changes that would reduce the excessive use of financial engineering strategies by firms. A groundbreaking analysis of a hotly contested business model,Private Equity at Workprovides an unprecedented analysis of the little-understood inner workings of private equity and of the effects of leveraged buyouts on American companies and workers. This important new work will be a valuable resource for scholars, policymakers, and the informed public alike.

The shift from manufacturing- to service-based economies has often been accompanied by the expansion of low-wage and insecure employment. Many consider the effects of this shift inevitable. InDisintegrating Democracy at Work, Virginia Doellgast contends that high pay and good working conditions are possible even for marginal service jobs. This outcome, however, depends on strong unions and encompassing collective bargaining institutions, which are necessary to give workers a voice in the decisions that affect the design of their jobs and the distribution of productivity gains. Doellgast's conclusions are based on a comparative study of the changes that occurred in the organization of call center jobs in the United States and Germany following the liberalization of telecommunications markets. Based on survey data and interviews with workers, managers, and union representatives, she found that German managers more often took the \"high road\" than those in the United States, investing in skills and giving employees more control over their work. Doellgast traces the difference to stronger institutional supports for workplace democracy in Germany. However, these democratic structures were increasingly precarious, as managers in both countries used outsourcing strategies to move jobs to workplaces with lower pay and weaker or no union representation. Doellgast's comparative findings show the importance of policy choices in closing off these escape routes, promoting broad access to good jobs in expanding service industries.

Here is a who’s who of business, thirty-one profiles of inventors, financiers, organizers, motivators, and gurus--a vivid, informative look at the history of management as seen through the lives of its most influential figures. We meet Eli Whitney, creator of the cotton gin and father of the machine tool industry, who failed to profit from his genius; Thomas Edison, who once vowed he would never invent anything he couldn’t sell; and Andrew Carnegie, who applied the railroad management system to the steel industry, with spectacular results. There are profiles of such railroad giants as James J. Hill and Edward H. Harriman, and colorful portraits of Samuel Morse and Graham Bell, the two men who launched the communications industry in the U.S. The great innovators of management and organization are here as well, including the founders of systematic management, Frederick W. Taylor and Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. There’s an intriguing side-by-side look at William C. Durant, builder of General Motors, a visionary but a weak manager and organizer, and Alfred P. Sloan, who gave GM the structure it needed, and provided the model for all large, multiproduct firms to come. And there are thought-provoking profiles of motivational experts Elton Mayo and Abraham Maslow; quality advocates W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Moses Juran; Taiichi Ohno, inventor of just-in-time manufacturing; and finally, Peter Drucker, the most influential management thinker of our time. This is the distilled essence of management genius, a stimulating and, at times, inspiring look at the pioneers who shaped how we do business today.

The U.S. government is faced with growing challenges to managing its facilities and infrastructure. A number of factors such as shrinking budgets, an aging workforce, and increasing costs demand new approaches to federal facilities management. The Federal Facilities Council of the NRC has sponsored a number of studies looking at ways to meet these challenges. This fourth study focuses on the people and skills that will needed to manage federal facilities in the next decade and beyond. The book presents a discussion of the current context of facilities management; an analysis of the forces affecting federal facilities asset management; an assessment of core competencies for federal facilities management; a comprehensive strategy for workforce development; and recommendations for implementing that strategy.