Worker Power and Economic Mobility

Worker Power and Economic Mobility PDF Author: Ioana Elena Marinescu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Worker power is an important channel by which workers can achieve economic security and mobility in the labor market. This landscape report summarizes the state of knowledge on the different pathways workers can use to exercise their power and voice to achieve higher wages and better working conditions. Higher wages allow workers and families to move out of poverty, avoid material hardship, and raise their living standards. Better working conditions can improve workers' attachment to the labor force and make them more productive and loyal employees. We propose a two-part framework of how workers achieve greater power and mobility and in the labor market: (1) leaving one's current job for a better option (referred to as “exit”) and, (2) organizations and institutions such as labor unions that allow workers to exercise their voice in the workplace, including through input on working conditions and firm decisions (referred to as “voice”). We review empirical evidence on the market forces and policies that allow workers to express power through exit. We also summarize evidence on major institutions and policies that enable workers to gain power through voice.

Worker Power and Economic Mobility

Worker Power and Economic Mobility PDF Author: Ioana Elena Marinescu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Worker power is an important channel by which workers can achieve economic security and mobility in the labor market. This landscape report summarizes the state of knowledge on the different pathways workers can use to exercise their power and voice to achieve higher wages and better working conditions. Higher wages allow workers and families to move out of poverty, avoid material hardship, and raise their living standards. Better working conditions can improve workers' attachment to the labor force and make them more productive and loyal employees. We propose a two-part framework of how workers achieve greater power and mobility and in the labor market: (1) leaving one's current job for a better option (referred to as “exit”) and, (2) organizations and institutions such as labor unions that allow workers to exercise their voice in the workplace, including through input on working conditions and firm decisions (referred to as “voice”). We review empirical evidence on the market forces and policies that allow workers to express power through exit. We also summarize evidence on major institutions and policies that enable workers to gain power through voice.

Strategies for Improving Economic Mobility of Workers

Strategies for Improving Economic Mobility of Workers PDF Author: Maude Toussaint-Comeau
Publisher: W.E. Upjohn Institute
ISBN: 0880993529
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Get Book Here

Book Description
The chapters in this book aim at offering a fresh review of the economic circumstances of disadvantaged segments of our Population, as well as providing a provocative but nuancedassessment of the effectiveness of various policies and practices geared to redress a number of issues affecting them. Examples of programs discussed include housing allowances that addressthe spatial mismatch between poor inner-city neighborhoods and areas with job growth, education retention programs and financial aid for older low-income students, employment andtraining programs for former welfare recipients, and labor market reentry programs for the hard-to-employ/ex-offenders in distressed communities. This diversity of programs reflects thevariety of challenges and varying issues that vulnerable populations and communities confront; it also reflects the many creative ways of approaching these problems.

Divergent Paths

Divergent Paths PDF Author: Annette Bernhardt
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610440498
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book Here

Book Description
The promise of upward mobility—the notion that everyone has the chance to get ahead—is one of this country's most cherished ideals, a hallmark of the American Dream. But in today's volatile labor market, the tradition of upward mobility for all may be a thing of the past. In a competitive world of deregulated markets and demanding shareholders, many firms that once offered the opportunity for advancement to workers have remade themselves as leaner enterprises with more flexible work forces. Divergent Paths examines the prospects for upward mobility of workers in this changed economic landscape. Based on an innovative comparison of the fortunes of two generations of young, white men over the course of their careers, Divergent Paths documents the divide between the upwardly mobile and the growing numbers of workers caught in the low-wage trap. The first generation entered the labor market in the late 1960s, a time of prosperity and stability in the U.S. labor market, while the second generation started work in the early 1980s, just as the new labor market was being born amid recession, deregulation, and the weakening of organized labor. Tracking both sets of workers over time, the authors show that the new labor market is more volatile and less forgiving than the labor market of the 1960s and 1970s. Jobs are less stable, and the penalties for failing to find a steady employer are more severe for most workers. At the top of the job pyramid, the new nomads—highly credentialed, well-connected workers—regard each short-term project as a springboard to a better-paying position, while at the bottom, a growing number of retail workers, data entry clerks, and telemarketers, are consigned to a succession of low-paying, dead-end jobs. While many commentators dismiss public anxieties about job insecurity as overblown, Divergent Paths carefully documents hidden trends in today's job market which confirm many of the public's fears. Despite the celebrated job market of recent years, the authors show that the old labor market of the 1960s and 1970s propelled more workers up the earnings ladder than does today's labor market. Divergent Paths concludes with a discussion of policy strategies, such as regional partnerships linking corporate, union, government, and community resources, which may help repair the career paths that once made upward mobility a realistic ambition for all American workers.

Inequality and the Labor Market

Inequality and the Labor Market PDF Author: Sharon Block
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815738811
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 263

Get Book Here

Book Description
Exploring a new agenda to improve outcomes for American workers As the United States continues to struggle with the impact of the devastating COVID-19 recession, policymakers have an opportunity to redress the competition problems in our labor markets. Making the right policy choices, however, requires a deep understanding of long-term, multidimensional problems. That will be solved only by looking to the failures and unrealized opportunities in anti-trust and labor law. For decades, competition in the U.S. labor market has declined, with the result that American workers have experienced slow wage growth and diminishing job quality. While sluggish productivity growth, rising globalization, and declining union representation are traditionally cited as factors for this historic imbalance in economic power, weak competition in the labor market is increasingly being recognized as a factor as well. This book by noted experts frames the legal and economic consequences of this imbalance and presents a series of urgently needed reforms of both labor and anti-trust laws to improve outcomes for American workers. These include higher wages, safer workplaces, increased ability to report labor violations, greater mobility, more opportunities for workers to build power, and overall better labor protections. Inequality in the Labor Market will interest anyone who cares about building a progressive economic agenda or who has a marked interest in labor policy. It also will appeal to anyone hoping to influence or anticipate the much-needed progressive agenda for the United States. The book's unusual scope provides prescriptions that, as Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz notes in the introduction, map a path for rebalancing power, not just in our economy but in our democracy.

Securing Prosperity

Securing Prosperity PDF Author: Paul Osterman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691086885
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Get Book Here

Book Description
Despite prospering post-war industries, Americans are still uncertain of their economic future. This book claims the reason for this is the lack of stable, full-time jobs and steadily rising incomes. It outlines plans for new economic institutions to secure a more stable future.

Explorations in Low Pay, Collective Bargaining, and Economic Mobility

Explorations in Low Pay, Collective Bargaining, and Economic Mobility PDF Author: Peter B. Doeringer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Collective bargaining
Languages : en
Pages : 154

Get Book Here

Book Description
Report on a study of low incomes in the USA, exploring the influence of trade unionization and collective bargaining on wages trends, wage structures and upward labour mobility - includes references and statistical tables.

Getting Ahead

Getting Ahead PDF Author: Daniel P. McMurrer
Publisher: The Urban Insitute
ISBN: 9780877666745
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 120

Get Book Here

Book Description
Adapted in part from the "Opportunity in America" series of policy briefs, this volume focuses on social and economic mobility in the United States. Class or family background has a strong effect on individual success, the authors find. They examine the possible reasons for this relationship; how it has changed over the past century; and the role of the economy, the welfare system, and education in opening up opportunities for the less fortunate.

Beaten Down, Worked Up

Beaten Down, Worked Up PDF Author: Steven Greenhouse
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 1101872799
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 418

Get Book Here

Book Description
“A page-turning book that spans a century of worker strikes.... Engrossing, character-driven, panoramic.” —The New York Times Book Review We live in an era of soaring corporate profits and anemic wage gains, one in which low-paid jobs and blighted blue-collar communities have become a common feature of our nation’s landscape. Behind these trends lies a little-discussed problem: the decades-long decline in worker power. Award-winning journalist and author Steven Greenhouse guides us through the key episodes and trends in history that are essential to understanding some of our nation’s most pressing problems, including increased income inequality, declining social mobility, and the concentration of political power in the hands of the wealthy few. He exposes the modern labor landscape with the stories of dozens of American workers, from GM employees to Uber drivers to underpaid schoolteachers. Their fight to take power back is crucial for America’s future, and Greenhouse proposes concrete, feasible ways in which workers’ collective power can be—and is being—rekindled and reimagined in the twenty-first century. Beaten Down, Worked Up is a stirring and essential look at labor in America, poised as it is between the tumultuous struggles of the past and the vital, hopeful struggles ahead. A PBS NewsHour Now Read This Book Club Pick

Research Handbook on the Economics of Labor and Employment Law

Research Handbook on the Economics of Labor and Employment Law PDF Author: Michael L. Wachter
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1781006113
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 521

Get Book Here

Book Description
ÔWachter and Estlund have assembled a feast on the economic analysis of issues in labor and employment law for scholars and policy-makers. The volume begins with foundational discussions of the economic analysis of the individual employment relationship and collective bargaining. It then progresses to discussions of the theoretical and empirical work on a wide range of important labor and employment law topics including: union organizing and employee choice, the impact of unions on firm and economic performance, the impact of unions on the enforcement of legal rights, just cause for dismissal, covenants not to compete and employment discrimination. Anyone who wants to study what economists have to say on these topics would do well to begin with this collection.Õ Ð Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt, Indiana University Bloomington School of Law, US This Research Handbook assembles the original work of leading legal and economic scholars, working in a variety of traditions and methodologies, on the economic analysis of labor and employment law. In addition to surveying the current state of the art on the economics of labor markets and employment relations, the volumeÕs 16 chapters assess aspects of traditional labor law and union organizing, the law governing the employment contract and termination of employment, employment discrimination and other employer mandates, restrictions on employee mobility, and the forum and remedies for labor and employment claims. Comprising a variety of approaches, the Research Handbook on the Economics of Labor and Employment Law will appeal to legal scholars in labor and employment law, industrial relations scholars and labor economists.

Jobs Aren't Enough

Jobs Aren't Enough PDF Author: Roberta Rehner Iversen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781592133550
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Get Book Here

Book Description
This unflinching examination of the obstacles to economic mobility for low-income families exposes the ugly reality that lies beneath the shining surface of the American Dream. The fact is that nearly 25% of employed adults have difficulty supporting their families today. In eye-opening interviews, twenty-five workers and nearly a thousand people who are linked to themOCochildren, teachers, job trainers, and employersOCotell wrenching stories about trying to get ahead. Spanning five cities over five years, this study convincingly demonstrates that prevailing ideas about opportunity, merit, and bootstraps are outdated. As the authors show, some workers who believe the myths end up destroying their health and families in the process of trying to move up. "Jobs Aren't Enough" demonstrates that the social institutions of family, education, labor market, and policy all intersect to influenceOCoand inhibitOCoemployment mobility. It proposes a new mobility paradigm grounded in cooperation and collaboration across social institutions, along with revitalization of the public will."