Spring 2003 Colloquia: Changing Labor Market Institutions in the U.S.


JOEL ROGERS, Director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Strategies for Labor"
April 28, 2003 - 4:00pm, IRLE Director's Room

Joel Rogers, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Law, Political Science, and Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is founder and director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy. Joel has written widely on American politics and public policy, political theory, and U.S. and comparative industrial relations. His most recent books are What Workers Want (Cornell, 1999), Metro Futures: Economic Solutions for the Cities and their Suburbs (Beacon, 1999), America's Forgotten Majority: Why the White Working Class Still Matters (Basic, 2000), and Working Capital: Using the Power of Labor's Pensions (Cornell, 2001). A contributing editor of The Nation and Boston Review, a MacArthur Foundation fellow, and a longtime social and political activist as well as academic, Joel was identified by Newsweek as one of the 100 Americans most likely to affect U.S. politics and culture in the 21st century.


 

STEVE ROSENTHAL, Former AFL-CIO Political Director
"America's Unions: Building to Win, Building to Last"
April 14, 2003 - 4:00pm, IRLE Director's Room



 

RICHARD M. LOCKE, Alvin J. Siteman Professor of Entrepreneurship and Political Science, M.I.T.
"Social Capital and Union Revitalization in the Construction Trades"
March 3, 2003 - 12:00-1:30pm, IRLE Director's Room

Richard Locke’s research focuses on economic adjustment and development, comparative labor relations, and political economy. He is currently working on a book, Development without Trust?, that examines patterns of economic development in southern Italy and northeast Brazil, two regions supposedly void of trust and lacking the “right” institutions – both factors often seen as prerequisites for development. Locke’s book shows that both trust and development can be created in these two supposedly “backward” regions and that this has implications for development in other regions as well. As part of a multi-year research project funded by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, Locke and three of his MIT colleagues (professors Osterman, Kochan, and Piore) have recently published Working in America (MIT Press, 2001) on new forms of labor market institutions in the United States. Locke is director of the MIT Italy Program, an innovative collaboration with Italian private and public partners to advance education and research in areas of common interest to the United States and Italy. In addition to MIT, Locke has taught at the Universita Degli Studi Ca’Foscari in Venice, Italy; the Georg-August Universitat in Gottingen, Germany; and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. At MIT, Locke teaches both in the Sloan School of management and in the Department of Political Science. At Sloan, Locke and his colleague, Simon Johnson have pioneered the popular Global Entrepreneurship Laboratory, a course that teaches students about entrepreneurship in developing countries by placing then in internships with start-ups in an array of companies in various emerging markets.

His publications include Remaking the Italian Economy (Cornell University Press, 1995, 1997); and with Thomas and Michael Piore; Employment Relations in a Changing World Economy (MIT Press, 1995). He has also published numerous articles in Politics & Society, Industrial Relations Research Review, European Journal of Industrial Relations, and Stato E Mercato.



 

ROSE BATT, Associate Professor, ILR School, Cornell University
"The Call Center Industry: Consumers & Workers in the Information Age"
February 24, 2003 - 4:00pm, IRLE Director's Room

Rosemary Batt is Associate Professor of Human Resource Studies at the Industrial and Labor Relations School, Cornell University.  She received her BA from Cornell University and her Ph.D. from the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Her research interests include strategic human resource management, service sector productivity and competitiveness, work organization and teams, and labor market analysis.  She has written extensively on service management strategies and the restructuring of the telecommunications services industry.  She has published numerous book chapters and articles in such journals as Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Academy of Management Journal, Personnel Psychology, International Journal of Human Resource Management, and the British Journal of Industrial Relations.  She is co-author of The New American Workplace: Transforming Work Systems in the United States, Cornell University Press.



 

MARGARET LEVI, International Studies, University of Washington
"Institutionalizing Preferences: Corrupt vs. Social Unions"
February 10, 2003 - 4:00pm, IRLE Director's Room

This study considers how different union leadership and participatory styles become institutionalized and with what consequences for union “culture” and leadership power. Levi finds that whatever their initial preferences, most members come to share their leader’s preference for type and aims of the union, and she provides some reasons for this. The focus is particularly on James R. Hoffa, IBT, and Harry S. Bridges, ILWU, with some comparison to counterparts in Australia.

Margaret Levi is the Jere L. Bacharach Professor of Political Science and International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle. She held the Harry Bridges Chair and served as Director of the UW Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, 1996-2000. Levi earned her B.A. from Bryn Mawr College in 1968 and her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1974, the year she joined the faculty of the University of Washington.

Levi is the author, co-author, or editor of numerous books, including Of Rule and Revenue (1988), Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism (1997), Analytic Narratives (1998), Trust and Governance (1998), and Trust and its Alternatives (in progress). She is the general editor of Studies in Comparative Politics for Cambridge University Press and serves on numerous editorial boards. She directs the WTO History Project.



 

TERESA GHILARDUCCI,  Department of Economics, University of Notre Dame
"The Attack on Retirement"
January 27, 2003

Erosions in the private pension system may force workers to spend many more years in the workforce, reversing decades of improvements in workers' retirement opportunities. Ghilarducci challenges the prevailing wisdom and directive on the economics of aging that states: "We are living longer, we should work longer."

Teresa Ghilarducci is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. She is also director of the Higgins Labor Research Center; former Member of the Board of Trustees: Indiana Public Employees Retirement Fund; former Advisory Board Member, Pensions Benefit Guaranty Corporation; and Fellow, National Academy of Social Insurance.