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"Industrial relations -- North America"
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NAFTA and labor in North America
\"As companies increasingly look to the global market for capital, cheaper commodities and labor, and lower production costs, the impact on Mexican and American workers and labor unions is significant. National boundaries and the laws of governments that regulate social relations between laborers and management are less relevant in the era of globalization, rendering ineffective the traditional union strategies of pressuring the state for reform.\" \"Focusing especially on the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (the first international labor agreement linked to an international trade agreement), Norman Caulfield notes the waning political influence of trade unions and their disunity and divergence on crucial issues such as labor migration and workers' rights. Comparing the labor movement's fortunes in the 1970s with its current weakened condition, Caulfield notes the parallel decline in the United States' hegemonic influence in an increasingly globalized economy. As a result, organized labor has been transformed from organizations that once pressured management and the state for concessions to organizations that now request that workers concede wages, pensions, and health benefits to remain competitive in the global marketplace.\"--BOOK JACKET.
Book
When Good Jobs Go Bad
From Chinese factories making cheap toys for export, to sweatshops in Bangladesh where name-brand garments are sewn-studies on the impact of globalization on workers have tended to focus on the worst jobs and the worst conditions. But inWhen Good Jobs Go Bad, Jeffrey Rothstein looks at the impact of globalization on a major industry-the North American auto industry-to reveal that globalization has had a deleterious effect on even the most valued of blue-collar jobs.
Rothstein argues that the consolidation of the Mexican and U.S.-Canadian auto industries, the expanding number of foreign automakers in North America, and the spread of lean production have all undermined organized labor and harmed workers. Focusing on three General Motors plants assembling SUVs-an older plant in Janesville, Wisconsin; a newer and more viable plant in Arlington, Texas; and a \"greenfield site\" (a brand-new, state-of-the-art facility) in Silao, Mexico-When Good Jobs Go Badshows how global competition has made nonstop, monotonous, standardized routines crucial for the survival of a plant, and it explains why workers and their local unions struggle to resist. For instance, in the United States, General Motors forced workers to accept intensified labor by threatening to close plants, which led local unions to adopt \"keep the plant open\" as their main goal. At its new factory in Silao, GM had hand-picked the union-one opposed to strikes and committed to labor-management cooperation-before it hired the first worker.
Rothstein's engaging comparative analysis, which incorporates the viewpoints of workers, union officials, and management, sheds new light on labor's loss of bargaining power in recent decades, and highlights the negative impact of globalization on all jobs, both good and bad, from the sweatshop to the assembly line.
eBook
NAFTA and Labor in North America
As companies increasingly look to the global market for capital, cheaper commodities and labor, and lower production costs, the impact on Mexican and American workers and labor unions is significant. National boundaries and the laws of governments that regulate social relations between laborers and management are less relevant in the era of globalization, rendering ineffective the traditional union strategies of pressuring the state for reform._x000B__x000B_Focusing especially on the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (the first international labor agreement linked to an international trade agreement), Norman Caulfield notes the waning political influence of trade unions and their disunity and divergence on crucial issues such as labor migration and workers' rights. Comparing the labor movement's fortunes in the 1970s with its current weakened condition, Caulfield notes the parallel decline in the United States' hegemonic influence in an increasingly globalized economy. As a result, organized labor has been transformed from organizations that once pressured management and the state for concessions to organizations that now request that workers concede wages, pensions, and health benefits to remain competitive in the global marketplace.
eBook
Reshaping the North American Automobile Industry
This work examines the responses of unions and workers to regional integration and restructuring in the automobile industry in North and Central America. The focus is on the automobile industry in Mexico, which, because of its size and importance, is viewed as a strategic sector of the Mexican economy and was the focal point of talks between the US, Canada and Mexico during negotiations on NAFTA. Focusing on the period from 1980, John P. Tuman examines the changes implemented by firms to promote export production, he explores reasons for the variation in labour responses to restructuring, and he discusses the prospects for cross-border organizing and co-operation among automobile workers in Canada, the US and Mexico.
eBook
When Good Jobs Go Bad
In When Good Jobs Go Bad, Jeffrey Rothstein looks at the impact of globalization on workers in the North American auto industry, revealing that globalization has had a deleterious effect on even the most valued of blue-collar jobs. Rothstein shows how the consolidation of the Mexican and U.S.-Canadian auto industries, the expanding number of foreign automakers in North America, and the spread of lean production have all undermined organized labor and harmed workers
Book
NAFTA and Labor in North America
Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Labor and Global Capitalism in North America, 1850-1970 -- 2. The Politics of Mexican Labor and Economic Development in Crisis -- 3. Mexican Labor and Workers' Rights under NAFTA and NAALC -- 4. Labor Mobility and Workers' Rights in North America -- 5. The Crisis of Union-Management Relations in teh United States and Canada -- 6. The North American Auto Industry: The Apex of Concessionary Bargaining -- 7. VEBA Las Vegas! Unions Play Casino Capitalism: Autoworkers Lose -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Index.
Book
Canada's Workers Movement: Uneven Developments
Examines the Canadian labor movement in the context of North American integration & the influence of the US, providing a historical review of organized labor since the 1960s to contrast the Canadian labor movement to that of the US. Adapted from the source document.
Journal Article
Seattle in Coalition
In the fall of 1999, the World Trade Organization (WTO) prepared to hold its biennial Ministerial Conference in Seattle. The event culminated in five days of chaotic political protest that would later be known as the Battle in Seattle. The convergence represented the pinnacle of decades of organizing among workers of color in the Pacific Northwest, yet the images and memory of what happened centered around assertive black bloc protest tactics deployed by a largely white core of activists whose message and goals were painted by media coverage as disorganized and incoherent. This insightful history takes readers beyond the Battle in Seattle and offers a wider view of the organizing campaigns that marked the last half of the twentieth century. Narrating the rise of multiracial coalition building in the Pacific Northwest from the 1970s to the 1990s, Diana K. Johnson shows how activists from Seattle's Black, Indigenous, Chicano, and Asian American communities traversed racial, regional, and national boundaries to counter racism, economic inequality, and perceptions of invisibility. In a city where more than eighty-five percent of the residents were white, they linked far-flung and historically segregated neighborhoods while also crafting urban-rural, multiregional, and transnational links to other populations of color. The activists at the center of this book challenged economic and racial inequality, the globalization of capitalism, and the white dominance of Seattle itself long before the WTO protest.
eBook
On the line
\"How does one put into words the rage that workers feel when supervisors threaten to replace them with workers who will not go to the bathroom in the course of a fourteen-hour day of hard labor, even if it means wetting themselves on the line?\"-From the PrefaceIn this gutsy, eye-opening examination of the lives of workers in the New South, Vanesa Ribas, working alongside mostly Latino/a and native-born African American laborers for sixteen months, takes us inside the contemporary American slaughterhouse. Ribas, a native Spanish speaker, occupies an insider/outsider status there, enabling her to capture vividly the oppressive exploitation experienced by her fellow workers. She showcases the particular vulnerabilities faced by immigrant workers-a constant looming threat of deportation, reluctance to seek medical attention, and family separation-as she also illuminates how workers find connection and moments of pleasure during their grueling shifts. Bringing to the fore the words, ideas, and struggles of the workers themselves,On The Lineunderlines how deep racial tensions permeate the factory, as an overwhelmingly minority workforce is subject to white dominance. Compulsively readable, this extraordinary ethnography makes a powerful case for greater labor protection, especially for our nation's most vulnerable workers.
eBook
Unlikely Alliances
Often when Native nations assert their treaty rights and sovereignty, they are confronted with a backlash from their neighbors, who are fearful of losing control of the natural resources. Yet, when both groups are faced with an outside threat to their common environment—such as mines, dams, or an oil pipeline—these communities have unexpectedly joined together to protect the resources. Some regions of the United States with the most intense conflicts were transformed into areas with the deepest cooperation between tribes and local farmers, ranchers, and fishers to defend sacred land and water.Unlikely Alliances explores this evolution from conflict to cooperation through place-based case studies in the Pacific Northwest, Great Basin, Northern Plains, and Great Lakes regions during the 1970s through the 2010s. These case studies suggest that a deep love of place can begin to overcome even the bitterest divides.
eBook