Labor Market Institutions

Freeman, Richard B., Joni Hersch, and Lawrence Mishel, editors Emerging Labor Market Institutions for the Twenty-First Century.

Private sector unionism is in decline in the United States. As a result, labor advocates, community groups, nongovernmental organizations, and individuals concerned with the well-being of workers have sought to develop alternative ways to represent workers' interests. Emerging Labor Market Institutions for the Twenty-First Century provides the first in-depth assessment of how effectively labor market institutions are responding to this drastically altered landscape.

This important volume provides case studies of new labor market institutions and new directions for existing institutions. The contributors examine the behavior and impact of new organizations that have formed to solve workplace problems and to bolster the position of workers. They also document how unions employ new strategies to maintain their role in the economic system. While non-union institutions are unlikely to fill the gap left by the decline of unions, the findings suggest that emerging groups and unions might together improve some dimensions of worker well-being. Emerging Labor Market Institutions is the story of workers and institutions in flux, searching for ways to represent labor in the new century.

Here is the table of contents:

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Introduction, p. 1-12
Richard B. Freeman and Joni Hersch

1. Individual Rights and Collective Agents: The Role of Old and New Workplace Institutions in the Regulation of Labor Markets, p. 13-44
David Weil

I. Studies of Nonworker Organizations

2. White Hats or Don Quixotes? Human Rights Vigilantes in the Global Economy, p. 47-97
Kimberly Ann Elliott and Richard B. Freeman

3. The Living Wage Movement: What Is It, Why Is It, and What's Known about Its Impact? p, 99-140
Jared Bernstein

4. The Role and Functioning of Public-Interest Legal Organizations in the Enforcement of the Employment Laws, p. 141-176
Christine Jolls

II. Studies of Membership-Based Initiatives

5. Unionization of Professional and Technical Workers: The Labor Market and Institutional Transformation, p. 179-206
Richard W. Hurd and John Bunge

6. A Workers' Lobby to Provide Portable Benefits, p. 207-228
Joni Hersch

III. New Union Opportunities and Initiatives

7. A Submerging Labor Market Institution? Unions and the Nonwage Aspects of Work, p. 231-263
Thomas C. Buchmueller, John E. DiNardo and Robert G. Valletta

8. Union Participation in Strategic Decisions of Corporations, p. 265-291
Eileen Appelbaum and Larry W. Hunter

9. Development Intermediaries and the Training of Low-Wage Workers, p. 293-314
Lisa M. Lynch