Over the last several decades, employers have increasingly replaced permanent employees with temporary workers and independent contractors to cut labor costs and enhance flexibility. Although ...commentators have focused largely on low-wage temporary work, the use of skilled contractors has also grown exponentially, especially in high-technology areas. Yet almost nothing is known about contracting or about the people who do it. This book seeks to break the silence.
The institutional arrangements governing skill formation are widely seen as a key element in the institutional constellations defining 'varieties of capitalism' across the developed democracies. This ...book explores the origins and evolution of such institutions in four countries - Germany, Britain, the United States and Japan. It traces cross-national differences in contemporary training regimes back to the nineteenth century, and specifically to the character of the political settlement achieved among employers in skill-intensive industries, artisans, and early trade unions. The book also tracks evolution and change in training institutions over a century of development, uncovering important continuities through putative 'break points' in history. Crucially, it also provides insights into modes of institutional change that are incremental but cumulatively transformative. The study underscores the limits of the most prominent approaches to institutional change, and identifies the political processes through which the form and functions of institutions can be radically reconfigured over time.
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Drawing from the EU-funded DomEQUAL research project across 9 countries in Europe, South America and Asia, this comparative study explores ...the conditions of domestic workers around the world and the campaigns they are conducting to improve their labour rights.
The book showcases how domestic workers' movements put 'intersectionality in action' in representing the interest of various marginalized social groups from migrants and low-income groups to racialized and rural girls and women.
Casting light on issues such as subjectification, and collective organizing on the part of a category of workers conventionally regarded as unorganizable, this ambitious volume will be invaluable for scholars, policy makers and activists alike.
The Space Age began just as the struggle for civil rights forced Americans to confront the long and bitter legacy of slavery, discrimination, and violence against African Americans. Presidents John ...F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson utilized the space program as an agent for social change, using federal equal employment opportunity laws to open workplaces at NASA and NASA contractors to African Americans while creating thousands of research and technology jobs in the Deep South to ameliorate poverty. We Could Not Fail tells the inspiring, largely unknown story of how shooting for the stars helped to overcome segregation on earth. Richard Paul and Steven Moss profile ten pioneer African American space workers whose stories illustrate the role NASA and the space program played in promoting civil rights. They recount how these technicians, mathematicians, engineers, and an astronaut candidate surmounted barriers to move, in some cases literally, from the cotton fields to the launching pad. The authors vividly describe what it was like to be the sole African American in a NASA work group and how these brave and determined men also helped to transform Southern society by integrating colleges, patenting new inventions, holding elective office, and reviving and governing defunct towns. Adding new names to the roster of civil rights heroes and a new chapter to the story of space exploration, We Could Not Fail demonstrates how African Americans broke the color barrier by competing successfully at the highest level of American intellectual and technological achievement.
Women in the Sky examines Korean women factory workers' century-long activism, from the 1920s to the present, with a focus on gender politics both in the labor movement and in the larger society. It ...highlights several key moments in colonial and postcolonial Korean history when factory women commanded the attention of the wider public, including the early-1930s rubber shoe workers' general strike in Pyongyang, the early-1950s textile workers' struggle in South Korea, the 1970s democratic union movement led by female factory workers, and women workers' activism against neoliberal restructuring in recent decades. Hwasook Nam asks why women workers in South Korea have been relegated to the periphery in activist and mainstream narratives despite a century of persistent militant struggle and indisputable contributions to the labor movement and successful democracy movement. Women in the Sky opens and closes with stories of high-altitude sit-ins—a phenomenon unique to South Korea—beginning with the rubber shoe worker Kang Churyong's sit-in in 1931 and ending with numerous others in today's South Korean labor movement, including that of Kim Jin-Sook. In Women in the Sky, Nam seeks to understand and rectify the vast gap between the crucial roles women industrial workers played in the process of Korea's modernization and their relative invisibility as key players in social and historical narratives. By using gender and class as analytical categories, Nam presents a comprehensive study and rethinking of the twentieth-century nation- building history of Korea through the lens of female industrial worker activism.
Domestic and caregiving work has been at the core of human existence throughout history. A team of international scholars addresses the issues of state, agency, and domestic service in colonizer ...frames globally in historical perspectives.
This study investigated organizational employees' opinions and acceptance of AI-based service assistants using the Behavioral Reasoning Theory (BRT). The behavioural reasoning theory-based study ...included 50 hotel industry executives, HR leaders, and employees. Themes were identified by thematic analysis of observations, focus groups, and participant interviews. This study used comparative thematic analysis and MAXQDA automated content analysis. It examines "reasons for" and "reasons against" adoption from a least developing nation's perspective. The reasons are personalisation, interactivity, perceived intelligence, anthropomorphism, language difficulties, technology phobia, service failure recovery, and inadequate infrastructure. "Reasons for" positively affect mindset and adoption intention, whereas "reasons against" negatively affect them. Financial risks, technological infrastructure issues, data security issues, and a lack of an organisational strategy are also seen in Bangladesh's AI deployment. The study provides practical insights for hotel industry practitioners, managers, and employees, as well as system designers and developers of AI-driven service solutions, on AI assistant adoption. Behavioural reasoning theory is used for the first time to examine hotel employees' attitudes and intentions to use AI-based service assistants. This study is a cross-sectional investigation that is carried out within certain, limited industrial sectors. Longitudinal studies can be conducted to generalize the outcome of this study.
Games constitute a wonderful tool for engaging learners and reinforcing learning. This is a practical and entertaining introduction to using games and structured learning activities in training. It ...is the first book to combine gaming rationale, hands-on advice and sample games. Susan El-Shamy begins with an overview of the benefits of using games, touches on the learning psychology foundations of game playing, describes the most common types of games, and provides guidelines for choosing games appropriate for given objectives. She offers seasoned advice on how to set up and conduct games and on how to assess their effectiveness. She concludes with suggestions on how to adapt existing games and activities to new purposes and, beyond that, on how the reader can create and design his or her own games. The book includes a resource list of commercially available games and related Web sites. Susan El-Shamy admirably succeeds in demonstrating how games promote serious learning in adult training. If you are new to games, this book will allay your concerns about using them. If you are a veteran user of games, here are new ideas, including an introduction to e-games. All readers will appreciate the Ultimate Training Games Assessment form for evaluating games and as a guide to creating their own.
Despite constitutions that enshrine equality, until recently every state in Latin America permitted longer working hours (in some cases more than double the hours) and lower benefits for domestic ...workers than other workers. This has, in effect, subsidized a cheap labor force for middle- and upper-class families and enabled well-to-do women to enter professional labor markets without having to negotiate household and care work with their male partners. While elite resistance to reform has been widespread, during the past fifteen years a handful of countries have instituted equal rights. In Care Work and Class, Merike Blofield examines how domestic workers’ mobilization, strategic alliances, and political windows of opportunity, mostly linked to left-wing executive and legislative allies, can lead to improved rights even in a region as unequal as Latin America. Blofield also examines the conditions that lead to better enforcement of rights.
