Suchergebnisse

After several months of research and consultation the previous Labor government introduced in May 1994 a set of labour market programs targeted at the long term unemployed with its publication of Working Nation. With the new Coalition government taking office in March 1996 we saw the end of Working Nation. Working Nation had a short life: it was born accompanied with a loud fanfare, it was buried quietly. Did Working Nation labour market programs lead to a fall in unemployment and a fall in long term unemployment? This paper attempts to evaluate its success using simple econometric methods on macroeconomic data. Our results suggest that although Working Nation had a very short life it succeeded in helping the long term unemployed: it was a very valuable social experiment which was aborted for political reasons. The Coalition government has apparently lost interest in the long term unemployed: there has been a massive cutback in expenditure on labour market programs and the only plans it has announced to date are the work for the dole scheme for long term unemployed young people. It is hoping that its industrial relations legislation will lead to a miraculous solution to the problem of unemployment and long term unemployment which has plagued most of the OECD economies for several years.

Jim McNeill discusses Rick Fantasia and Kim Voss's Hard Work: Remaking the American Labor Movement; Dan Clawson's The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements; Steven Henry Lopez's Reorganizing the Rust Belt: An Inside Study of the American Labor Movement; and Rebuilding Labor: Organizing And Organizers in the New Union Movement, edited by Ruth Milkman and Kim Voss.

McNeill reviews Hard Work: Remaking the American Labor Movement by Rick Fantasia and Kim Voss, The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements by Dan Clawson, Reorganizing the Rust Belt: An Inside Study of the American Labor Movement by Steven Henry Lopez, and Rebuilding Labor: Organizing and Organizers in the New Union Movement edited by Ruth Milkman and Kim Voss.

Cover; Page i; Contents; Introduction; Acknowledgments; Abbreviations; Part One: On the Job; Chapter One: On the Job in Canada; Chapter Two: Ontario's First Factory Workers; Chapter Three: Work and Struggle in the Canadian Steel Industry, 1900-1950; Part Two: Workers' Cultures; Chapter Four: Arguing about Idleness; Chapter Five: Labour and Liquor; Chapter Six: Into the Streets; Part Three: Getting Organized; Chapter Seven: Labourism and the Canadian Working Class; Chapter Eight: The Great War, the State, and Working-Class Canada; Chapter Nine: Contours of a Workers' Revolt