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\"Exploring divergences in the choice of neoliberal policies by labour party governments in New Zealand, Australia, and Britain, this book challenges common explanations of the embrace of neoliberalism by social democratic parties. It argues that the diminishing influence of labour unions within these parties is the result of a lack of strategy on the part of the union movement itself. Be it due to a lack of interest by the unions in engaging in politics or a passivity resulting from years of anti-union Conservative rule, Union interests particularly in New Zealand and Great Britain have been neglected by party leadership when formulating policies. In contrast, it poses the Australian example as one in which the unions were sufficiently united, disciplined, and strategically minded to ensure that a Labor Party government integrated them into the making of policy. The book lays bare the Australasian \"roots\" of Britain's New Labour era. In an age in which the macroeconomic, industrial, and social policies of social democratic parties have so often moved to the right, this book asks the question: how can trade unions retain some measure of control over the policies of the parties that are ostensibly theirs\"-- Provided by publisher.

In Re-Union, David Madland explores how labor unions are essential to all workers. Yet, union systems are badly flawed and in need of rapid changes for reform. Madland's multilayered analysis presents a solution—a model to replace the existing firm-based collective bargaining with a larger, industry-scale bargaining method coupled with powerful incentives for union membership. These changes would represent a remarkable shift from the norm, but would be based on lessons from other countries, US history and current policy in several cities and states. In outlining the shift, Madland details how these proposals might mend the broken economic and political systems in the United States. He also uses three examples from Britain, Canada, and Australia to explore what there is yet to learn about this new system in other developed nations. Madland's practical advice in Re-Union extends to a proposal for how to implement the changes necessary to shift the current paradigm. This powerful call to action speaks directly to the workers affected by these policies—the very people seeking to have their voices recognized in a system that attempts to silence them.

[Purpose/Significance] Identifying key core technologies helps to clarify the direction of future efforts, optimize the allocation of innovation resources, accelerate the breakthrough of key core technologies, and promote the development of new quality productive forces by cultivating new types of workers, updating new types of means of labor, and expanding new types of subjects of labor. [Method/Process] Given the importance of key core technology identification in empowering the development of new quality productive forces, the research clarifies the connotation and extension of the key core technologies, and investigates the qualitative and quantitative identification methods of key core technologies at home and abroad. Quantitative methods are divided into three categories: indicator evaluation, social network analysis, and text mining. A comparative analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of each method are reviewed, and the overall shortcomings and problems of existing identification methods are summarized. Based on the analysis of the practical requirements and significance of breakthroughs in key core technologies, this study delves into the inherent logic of identifying key core technologies, which enables the development of new quality productive forces. The method of identifying key core technologies can cultivate new types of workers by improving talent management mechanisms and strengthening skills training for workers, New types of means of labor are updated through promoting technological integration and innovation and engaging in industry-academia-research cooperation and expanding new types of objects of labor by developing new production fields and analyzing market demand. In view of the challenges faced in the process of empowering new quality productive forces through the identification of key core technologies, this study proposes a practical way for empowering the development of new quality productive forces through the identification of key core technologies. [Results/Conclusions] Current research on identifying key core technologies is in its early stages and still faces several challenges, including outdated identification methods, inconsistent standards, the complexity of integrating technologies across disciplines, the need for improving accuracy of identification results, the lack of mining and using of multi-source data, and uncertainties in forecasting market demand. These obstacles hinder the process of using key core technology identification to cultivate new types of workers, update new types of means of labor, and expand new types of objects of labor, thus hindering the accelerated development of new quaity productive forces. Therefore, we need to focus on removing the obstacles that hinder the acceleration of new quality productive forces through the identification of key core technologies. A dynamic identification indicator system can be established to support the training of new types of workers, industry-academia-research cooperation can be strengthened to facilitate the updating of new production materials, and industrial development funds can be established to support the expansion of new types of objects of labor.

This study is concerned with the ‘Old’ Labour right at a critical juncture of social democratic and Labour politics. It attempts to understand the complex transition from so-called ‘Old Right’ to ‘New Right’ or ‘New Labour’, and locates at least some of the roots of the latter in the complexity, tensions and fragmentation of the former during the ‘lean’ years of social democracy in the 1970s. The analysis addresses both the short and long-term implications of the emerging ideological, organisational and political complexity and divisions of the parliamentary Labour right and Labour revisionism, previously concealed within the loosely adhesive post-war framework of Keynesian reformist social democracy. It establishes the extent to which ‘New’ Labour is a legatee of at least some elements of the disparate and discordant Labour right and tensions of social democratic revisionism in the 1970s. In so doing, it advances our understanding of a key moment in the development of social democracy and the making of the contemporary British Labour Party.

Africa was a key focus of Britain's foreign policy under Tony Blair. Military intervention in Sierra Leone, increases in aid and debt relief, and grand initiatives such as the Commission for Africa established the continent as a place in which Britain could ‘do good’. This book critically explores Britain's fascination with Africa. It argues that, under New Labour, Africa represented an area of policy which appeared to transcend politics. Gradually, it came to embody an ideal state activity around which politicians, officials and the wider public could coalesce, leaving behind more contentious domestic and international issues. Building on the story of Britain and Africa under Blair, the book draws wider conclusions about the role of ‘good’ and idealism in foreign policy. In particular, it discusses how international relations provide opportunities to create and pursue ideals, and why they are essential for the wellbeing of political communities. The book argues that state actors project the idea of ‘good’ onto idealised, distant objects, in order to restore a sense of the ‘good state’.

This book is a comprehensive critical introduction to one of the most original contemporary British writers, providing an overview of all of Iain Sinclair's major works and an analysis of his vision of modern London. It places Sinclair in a range of contexts, including: the late 1960s counter-culture and the British Poetry Revival; London's underground histories; the rise and fall of Thatcherism; and Sinclair's writing about Britain under New Labour and Sinclair's connection to other writers and artists, such as J.G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock and Marc Atkins. The book contributes to the growing scholarship surrounding Sinclair's work, covering in detail his poetry, fiction, non-fiction (including his book on John Clare, Edge of the Orison), and his film work. Using a generally chronological structure, it traces the on-going themes in Sinclair's writing, such as the uncovering of lost histories of London, the influence of visionary writings, and the importance of walking in the city, and more recent developments in his texts, such as the focus on spaces outside of London and his filmic collaborations with Chris Petit. The book provides a critically informed discussion of Sinclair's work using a variety of approaches.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- List of Acronyms -- Introduction -- 1. Community-Based, \"Catch-All\" Organizing on New York's Lower East Side -- 2. Getting beyond Racial, Ethnic, Religious, and Skill-Based Divisions -- 3. \"Like a Scab over an Infected Sore\": Full and Fair Employment during and after World War II -- 4. Attacked from the Right and the Left: Community-Organizing, Civic Unionism during the Early -- 5. A Third Labor Federation?: The Distributive, Processing, and Office Workers of America (DPO) -- 6. Community Organizing under the AFL-CIO Umbrella -- Conclusion -- Abbreviated Chronology -- Notes -- Index.

Through an analysis of women's reform, domestic worker activism, and cultural values attached to public and private space, Vanessa May explains how and why domestic workers, the largest category of working women before 1940, were excluded from labor protections that formed the foundation of the welfare state. Looking at the debate over domestic service from both sides of the class divide,Unprotected Laborassesses middle-class women's reform programs as well as household workers' efforts to determine their own working conditions.May argues that working-class women sought to define the middle-class home as a workplace even as employers and reformers regarded the home as private space. The result was that labor reformers left domestic workers out of labor protections that covered other women workers in New York between the late nineteenth century and the New Deal. By recovering the history of domestic workers as activists in the debate over labor legislation, May challenges depictions of domestics as passive workers and reformers as selfless advocates of working women.Unprotected Laborilluminates how the domestic-service debate turned the middle-class home inside out, making private problems public and bringing concerns like labor conflict and government regulation into the middle-class home.

Why do governments pass freedom of information laws? The symbolic power and force surrounding FOI makes it appealing as an electoral promise but hard to disengage from once in power. However, behind closed doors compromises and manoeuvres ensure that bold policies are seriously weakened before they reach the statute book.The politics of freedom of information examines how Tony Blair's government proposed a radical FOI law only to back down in fear of what it would do. But FOI survived, in part due to the government's reluctance to be seen to reject a law that spoke of 'freedom', 'information' and 'rights'. After comparing the British experience with the difficult development of FOI in Australia, India and the United States – and the rather different cases of Ireland and New Zealand – the book concludes by looking at how the disruptive, dynamic and democratic effects of FOI laws continue to cause controversy once in operation.