THIS BOOK analyses the efforts of self-employed workers in four occupations - newspaper carriers, rural mail couriers, personal care workers, and freelance editors - to organize for collective ...representation and bargain to improve their pay and working conditions. The four case studies together with well-presented introductory and concluding chapters provide considerable insights into the limitations of labour law and the dominant model of industrial unionism for self-employed workers. Through this analysis, the authors also present important challenges to the routine classification of workers into dichotomous categories of the employed versus the self-employed. The book highlights the diversity of self-employed work experiences, and the degree to which many self-employed workers face a dependency and insecurity far more akin to that of employees than to the ideals of entrepreneurship with which they are more typically associated. In the final chapter, the authors draw on their case studies to identify changes necessary for improving the collective representation and working conditions of self-employed workers. They emphasize the need to shift away from employee and industrial-centred models of labour relations toward models that promote parity and plurality. Parity refers to giving all workers the right to freedom of association for collective bargaining. Within this framework, self-employment would not be presumed equivalent to some entrepreneurial ideal. Plurality would entail the use of a variety of models for worker organization and representation, including organization by craft rather than by employer, geographical organization, and combining of bargaining units. Workers, not labour tribunals, would choose the organization that can best represent them. The authors also suggest that principles of majority support and exclusive representation be excised from labour law and policy.
The arid climate of California's Salinas Valley allows almost year round crop production, but constant use quickly drains the nutrients and organic content of the soil. When the world's larget ...lettuce grower, Tanimura Antle Inc, asked Don Cranford to make a mature compost to add nutrients to the soil, a lucrative business was born.
