LERA gratefully acknowledges the continuing support of its continuing sponsors and annual organizational members.

Sustaining Sponsors
Bloomberg BNA
BlueCross BlueShield Association National Labor Office

Annual Members 2011
AFL-CIO
American Federation of Teachers
American Rights at Work
Boston University Human Resources Policy Institute School of Management
Communication Workers of America
Cornell University, Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution
Cornell University, School of Industrial and Labor Relations
Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service
Florida State University, College of Business
Harvard University
International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management
Michelin North America, Inc.
National Labor College
New York State Nurses Association
Paratransit Services
Parker, Milliken, Clark, O'Hara & Samuelian
Pennsylvania State University
Rutgers University, School of Management and Labor Relations
Seabury Group LLC
Society for Human Resource Management
Southwest Airlines Pilots' Association
St. Joseph's University
Tennessee Employment Relations Research Association
University of California at Los Angeles, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment
United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776
United Steelworkers of America
West Virginia University Department of Industrial Relations and Management

We welcome these new LERA members who joined between Dec. 1, 2011 – Jan. 31, 2012.

John August, Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, Washington, D.C.
Joseph Baniszewski, National Labor Relations Board, Washington, D.C.
Ilana Boivie, National Institute on Retirement Security, Washington, D.C.
Devon O. Byrne, Senior Manager, Global Employee Relations at Gap, Inc., Bolingbrook, Ill.
Matthew F. Capece, United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, Washington, D.C.
Julie J. Cayemberg, Golden Valley, Minn.
Amy Clary, American Federation of Teachers, Research & Information Services, Washington, D.C.
George Dragnich, International Work & Employment Relations, Arlington, Va.
Harris Freeman, Western New England University, Springfield, Mass.
Daniel Gilbert, Labor Education Program, School of Labor and Employment Relations, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Ill.
Nancy Hutt, Independent Alternative Dispute Resolution Professional, San Francisco, Calif.
Valarie Kniss, MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, Mass.
William Kowalski, Senior Human Resource Consultant, Treetop HQ, Mokena, Ill.
Ann M. Looney, Massachusetts Organization of State Engineers & Scientists, Boston, Mass.
Matt Marx (pictured, above right) MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, Mass.
Harriet B. Newburger, Bryn Mawr College, Philadelphia, Pa.
Janice L. Reiff, UCLA, Los Angeles, Calif.
Elizabeth C. Simon, Labor and Employment Arbitrator and Mediator, River Forest, Ill.
Rosemary K. Sokas, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
Richard M. Stanton, Dick Stanton Arbitrator/Mediator, Evanston, Ill.
Yoko Tanaka, University Tsukuba Chuba, Chiba, JAPAN
Edward Tomlinson, West Virginia University, Morgantown, W.Va.
Debra K. Wallet, Debra K. Wallet, Law Offices, Camp Hill, Pa.

New Student  Members

Burcu Bolukbasi, School of Labor and Employment Relations, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Ill.
Jennifer Cohen, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Northampton, Mass.
Kristie McAlpine, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
Matthew Piszczek, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich.

Dear LERA members,

Since the Labor and Employment Relations Association gavel was passed to me after the 64^th Annual Meeting in Chicago, I’ve been asked about my priorities as the LERA president. Here is my response:

• Increase the national LERA’s membership, including members of LERA local chapters.
• Increase the membership’s involvement in LERA activities, including planning the annual meeting and further developing the LERA and Employment Policy Research Network (EPRN) websites.
• Strongly encourage policy-oriented research and thinking, both at the macro (public) and micro (organization, workplace and individual) levels.
• Bring the latest fresh research and thinking to bear on key (or all) aspects of the employment relationship, including at the annual meeting, in the annual research volume, in the LERA newsletter, and in the LERA and EPRN websites.

Today, I’m writing you about LERA membership. It’s the foundation of our organization. The sad fact is that LERA membership has been on a downward path for a decade or more. Hence, priority No. 1 is to increase our membership ranks. I want to make the case for LERA membership on the grounds of individual benefit and our organization’s larger work-economic-societal impact.

Since its founding 64 years ago, the LERA has continually provided its academic, union, management and arbitrator/mediator members with a “big tent” encompassing the best thinking about the fundamental employment relationship. LERA has done this through research papers and publications, meetings, policy forums, interest groups, industry councils and most recently the robust LERA.org and Employment Policy Research Network  web sites. If you haven’t visited these web sites, click on the links and check them out.

Log in to LERA org. and register if you haven’t yet done so. In the left-hand corner of the LERA homepage you’ll find your LERA ID number and membership expiration date. The latter works like a magazine subscription that you renew at the same time every year. If your membership is not current, click here and join or rejoin the LERA. (For questions, please contact LERAoffice@illinois.edu.)

I hardly need tell you that we live in fractious, unsettled and highly divisive political and economic times. As a LERA member, you interact with colleagues and friends to create and voice the thinking that can potentially translate into better government, business and organizational policy and practice. Stated differently, the LERA provides you opportunities to influence the development of good jobs, employee voice, successful organizations and economic prosperity in the U.S. and internationally.

When you put it all together, keeping your LERA membership current and actively participating in the organization are the right things to do — for yourself, your colleagues and the larger socio-economic future.

I’ll talk about my other LERA priorities in future e-newsletters (June, September and December 2012).

Thanks for all you do for the LERA. Feel free to contact me about these and related matters.

Cordially,

David Lewin
LERA President
Neil H. Jacoby Professor of Management, Human Resources & Organizational Behavior
UCLA Anderson School of Management
Office phone: (310) 206-7666; Mobile phone: (310 498-4547.
Email: david.lewin@anderson.ucla.edu

Union Friendly? On April 30 LERA member and University of Illinois School of Labor and Employment Relations professor Bob Bruno was interviewed on WBEZ Chicago public radio station on "Is Illinois Still a 'Union-Friendly' State?" Here's what Bruno had to say: "'[Illinois] Gov. Quinn doesn’t get elected without the labor movement. That’s no secret there. He absolutely needed them ...' Bruno said the state’s fiscal crisis is bound up with rising Medicaid costs, costs for state pensions and public jobs. It’s enough to cause some friction in the once happy marriage of unions and Illinois Dems. 'At the end of the day, it certainly does leave organized labor fighting with its friends just as it fights with its political enemies and that has certainly made labor relations in a state like Illinois much more hostile.'" You can access the story and the audio file here. Bruno is director of the University of Illinois' School of Labor and Employment Relations Labor Education Program in Chicago. Bruno was back in the news in a Chicago Sun-Times story about how Caterpillar Inc.'s record profits announcement a week before 780 employees at the company's Joliet plant went on strike over a contract with no wage or cost-of-living increases. Here's an excerpt: "What’s happening in Joliet is not unique, said Robert Bruno, a labor studies professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Unions that make concessions in lean years are finding that they don’t gain back what they lost once the company profits. 'Unions begin to believe this is not a short-term sacrifice. This is the new normal,' Bruno said. 'Employers are trying to impose a new wage structure. ...You either surrender to it or wage some kind of last stand.” You can read the whole story here.

Job polarization: Past LERA president Eileen Appelbaum, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Employment Policy Research Network researcher, is blogging for U.S. News and World Report's Economic Intelligence section. In her April 10, 2012 blog, "Low-Wage Jobs to Blame for Slow Economic Recovery," she writes: "Many of the ills of the labor market have been attributed to a supposed hollowing out of the job distribution — to 'job polarization.' Indeed, the claim that middle-skill/middle-income jobs in the United States are disappearing while jobs at the top and bottom of the occupational ladder are growing has been put forward as the explanation for four decades of wage stagnation for men. Today, the claim that employers have good jobs but can't find workers with the right skills to fill them has gained currency in the popular press. Yet such an imbalance between supply and demand would cause wages to rise in those occupations, and no such increase in pay can be observed." She credits the job-polarization thesis to research by LERA member and MIT economist David Autor in his paper, "The Polarization of Job Opportunities in the U.S. Labor Market." Like Appelbaum, he is an EPRN researcher. You can read Appelbaum's job polarization blog on EPRN. You can access Appelbaum's other U.S. News blogs here.

Macro economic policy: LERA past president Stephen R. Sleigh has been appointed to the Federal Reserve Bank's Baltimore Board of Directors. The announcement was made by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. The latter serves the Fifth Federal Reserve District, which includes North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, most of West Virginia and Washington, D.C. There are 12 regional Federal Reserve banks. The Federal Reserve Bank manages the nation's money supply and is in charge of regulating financial institutions. The Fed's mission is to strengthen the economy and keep inflation under control. Sleigh, whose tenure officially began Jan. 1, 2012, and will serve the remaining year of an unfilled term. Sleigh is the director of the IAM Pension Fund in Washington, D.C. To read the news release from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, click here.

Labor prof on Fox Business News? You read it here first (or second). Monica Bielski Boris, assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign School of Labor and Employment Relations' Labor Studies Program, was quoted in a Fox Business News Story, "Pros and Cons of Joining a Labor Union." Here's some of what Bielski Boris had to say: "Employers' relationships with unions have become more acrimonious since the 1970s, Bielski Boris says. And nowadays, some governors of revenue-starved states are blaming public-sector unions for their woes and aggressively attempting to reduce benefits and curtail collective bargaining rights. (Public sector unions account for more than half of all union members in the United States.) 'The political climate can often turn against unions and their members,' Bielski Boris says. The political attacks, combined with declining membership rolls, could weaken gains made by unionized employees." Here's the real news on the piece. It's remarkably "fair and balanced." Check it out.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Sustainable capitalism: LERA member and Employment Policy Research Network researcher Christian Weller a U-Mass.-Boston economist, contributed to Challenge magazine and EPRN a compelling article, “On Uneven Ground.” Weller and co-author Luke Reidenbach detail reforms needed in corporate governance and executive incentives to encourage long-term, sustainable company growth, increased productivity, better wages and a generally more prosperous economy. The subtitle of the article is "How Corporate Governance Prioritizes Short-term Speculative Investments, Impedes Productivity Investments and Jeopardizes Productivity Growth." Among the substantive reforms the authors suggest: Tie managerial compensation to long-term company productivity growth and stock performance, limit share buybacks and dividend payouts and empower independent boards of directors and shareholders vis à vis management to balance disproportionate managerial power and influence.

Re-defining poverty. From the new Wealth and Poverty Desk on American Public Radio's Marketplace Morning Report, a Feb. 28 feature, "What is Poverty? Think Beyond the Official Numbers," LERA member Randy Albelda, was the expert source. Albelda, an economist at U-Mass, Boston, explained that poverty indeed was not just a dollar figure and family size as it's usually reported. "You’re poor when you can’t buy what you need. When you cannot afford to pay for your rent, you can’t afford to buy food, you can’t afford clothing. ... For a single mom, who also has a lot of relatives who are also low-wage or low-income, especially if she works and she’s got young children, $24,000 may not even come close to the sets of costs she would face, even being as frugal as she possibly could be. ... A car breaking down can have enormous consequences — like losing your job." Click here to listen to the segment and view photos.

 LERA international: LERA and the LERA Philadelphia Chapter are welcoming the 16th World Congress of the International Labour and Employment Relations Association July 2-5 in the city of Brotherly Love. From the ILERA web site: "The 16th World Congress will provide academic and practitioner participants with a forum for discussion of policies and research findings on a wide range of topics related to labour and employment relations. Sessions, workshops and symposia will cover topics such as globalization, new technology, gender, HIV/AIDS, employee involvement, occupational safety and health, industrial relations, labour law, human resource management, international labour standards, social dialog, labour administration, the informal economy." Early-bird registration (by April 1) is $475; the regular registration rate is $625. Student registration is $300. Tom Kochan and the Employment Policy Research Network are planning a panel discussion at the 16th World Congress. ILERA president is LERA's Janice Bellace (Wharton, pictured above left); LERA's Anil Verma is ILERA academic program coordinator.

Booking it. Plenty of LERA authors in the currently running New Books Received list. The champ is the new Cornell ILR Press book, From Iron Rice Bowl to Informalization: Markets, Workers, and the State in a Changing China (cover) with four (count 'em) LERA members: two editors, Sarosh Kuruvilla (Cornell) Ching Kwan Lee (UCLA); and two contributors, Mingwei Liu (Rutgers) and Lu Zhang (Temple). Quite the interdisciplinary, cosmopolitan and international working group. LERA's Michael Zweig, director of the Center for Working Class Life, economics department, SUNY-Stony Brook, has the second edition of his The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret out. He also contributes an essay to Michael D. Yates' Wisconsin Uprising: Labor Fights Back. LERA member Stephanie Luce, associate professor of labor studies at the Murphy Institute at CUNY, contributed the essay, "What Can We Learn from Wisconsin?" to Wisconsin Uprising. Brigid O'Farrell is represented with her new-in-paperback Cornell University Press book She Was One of Us: Eleanor Roosevelt and the American Worker (cover above left). Virgina Doellegast, a LERA member at the London School of Economics, is out with Disintegrating Democracy at Work: Labor Unions and the Future of Good Jobs in the Service Economy. Media-savvy Paul Clark at Penn State is out with a  new video Labor Arbitration —The Suspension of Nurse Kevin. Also out is the monumental American Political Economy in Global Perspective  from the Cambridge University Press by the late Harold L. Wilensky (UC-Berkeley, pictured at right) who finished the 40-year project nine days before his death.

Still on the (Previously noted) list is Ellen Pinkos Cobb's Bullying, Violence, Harassment, Discrimination and Stress: Emerging Workplace Health and Safety Issues.  Cobb is a LERA member and attorney with the Isosceles Group, an environmental management and health- and safety services company in Boston. Longtime LERA editor Charles Whalen is the editor of Financial Instability And Economic Security After The Great Recession. In a similar vein is editor Steven Kates' The Global Financial Crisis: What Have We Learnt? with an essay by the above-mentioned Charles Whalen. From Down Under LERA member Greg Bamber sends up International and Comparative Employment Relations. Then there's president emeritus of the United Steelworkers and LERA's Lynn Williams' One Day Longer, A Memoir (cover above left). John Budd's The Thought of Work inspired a session at the January LERA 64th Annual Meeting in Chicago and will be reviewed in the next issue of LERA's Perspectives on Work due out in October. Rounding out the list is Wage Policy, Income Distribution, and Democratic Theory by Oren M. Levin-Waldman, a LERA member at Metropolitan College in New York. Send review copies of new books to Mike Lillich at LERA's offices at the University of Illinois Labor and Employment Relations school: 115 LER, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 504 E. Armory Ave., Champaign, IL 61820. (217) 244-0725.

Political consensus on minimum wage? LERA's Michael Reich (UC, Berkeley and Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, pictured at left) was quoted in a Jan. 24 Fortune article, "A new day for the minimum wage?" Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney has suggested tying the minimum wage to inflation, according to the story. Also in favor of a raise are Republicans New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. The story quoted Reich: "'There would be a multiplier effect in the economy,' maintains Michael Reich, economics professor at the University of California-Berkeley, who has conducted several studies on the minimum wage. He agrees that the wage increase would trigger a decrease in hiring, 'but that is offset by other factors such as reducing employee turnover, so net employment is the same.' Hiking the basic wage means more competition for jobs, he says, but cautions that ... 'it could also be an incentive for people to come across the border.'" Click here to read the Fortune story.

Encouraging January unemployment numbers. When the January unemployment figures showed the second straight of better-than-expected gains, Alan B. Krueger, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and LERA member, was quoted prominently in the Feb. 3 New York Times story, "U.S. Jobless Rate Falls to 8.3 Percent, a 3-Year Low": “Today’s unemployment report provides further evidence that the economy is continuing to heal from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression,” said Alan B. Krueger, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, in a statement. “It is critical that we continue the economic policies that are helping us to dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the recession that began at the end of 2007.” The Times article said the last time the unemployment numbers were this good was in February 2009, President Obama's first full month in office. Krueger is a Princeton University labor economist and former Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Click here to read the New York Times story.

Poaching hi-tech talent? Longtime LERA stalwart Daniel J.B. Mitchell, UCLA professor emeritus (pictured, left), posted a link on the LERA-L listserv to a Jan. 28 Associated Press story, "Suit claims no-poaching-talent plot" describing alleged collusion among hi-tech companies against poaching much-in-demand programmers and engineers from each other's companies. The companies included the heaviest of hi-tech heavyweights. Mentioned prominently in the story is the late Steve Jobs. Here's the beginning of the story: 

"SAN JOSE - In Silicon Valley's white-hot competition for tech talent, programmers can face a daily barrage of calls from recruiters seeking to woo them to rival companies with offers of better pay and perks.

"But workers for some of the biggest names in the business claim their phones fell silent because of a conspiracy among their employers. And they claim the world's biggest tech icon was at the center.

"A lawsuit filed in federal court in San Jose claims senior executives at Google Inc., Intel Corp., Adobe Systems Inc., Intuit Inc., Lucasfilm Ltd., Pixar and Apple Inc. violated antitrust laws by entering into secret anti-poaching agreements not to hire each other's best workers. In doing so, the suit contends the companies were able to keep wages artificially low by preventing bidding wars for the best employees.

"The plaintiffs also claim that company emails show Steve Jobs himself sought and orchestrated at least some of the so-called "gentlemen's agreements" while Apple's CEO." ...

An attorney who works in this area of law is quoted as saying the plaintiffs had little chance of winning their suit.

Arbitration video available: LERA member and EPRN researcher Paul Clark, professor and head of Penn State's labor studies and employment relations department, on Jan. 30 posted on the LERA-L listserv the availability of  a labor-arbitration instructional video, "Labor Arbitration — the Suspension or Nurse Kevin." It's a joint project of PSU and the National Academy of Arbitrators. Here is part of what Paul posted on the listserv: "Most of the arbitration films available today are dated. Depictions of hearings set in the 1970s and 1980s are not helpful in conveying the message that arbitration can play an important role in the modern American workplace. Using a case written and enacted by actual union and management practitioners and an experienced arbitrator, the film replicates, to the greatest degree possible, the experience of observing an arbitration hearing. Shot in a documentary style, the film enacts an arbitration hearing involving the suspension of an employee for insubordination." The DVD is is 66 min. long. Click here to view a trailer. The video is available for $149 ($99 for non-profits and educational institutions). Click here for ordering info.

No free lunch? LERA member Michael LeRoy, a professor at the University of Illinois School of Labor and Employment Relations and its College of Law (pictured at right), was quoted in a Jan. 17 Good Morning America Show story about Sharon Smiley. She was an administrative assistant who was fired for working through her lunch break one day at the Chicago real estate company where she had worked for 10 years. To add insult to injury, her unemployment benefits were denied. Finally after two years, an Illinois appeals court ruled that denial of her unemployment benefits was "clearly erroneous." But, according to LeRoy, the happy ending to the story wasn't a slam dunk: " ... Illinois is an employment-at-will state, which means the employer can fire someone for a good reason, no reason, or a bad reason, as long as it is not discriminatory." Here's a link to the ABC News story.

Multiple job syndrome. Ellen Ernst Kossek (Michigan State) was quoted in a Jan. 12 MSNBC online article, "Few part-timers, but more are working multiple jobs": “'I hate to be a cynic, but I want to look behind the numbers,'” said Kossek, a human resources professor at Michigan States University’s School of Labor & Industrial Relations. 'Are they making the same money they did before, or did they take full-time jobs at lower wages? It’s about the quality of those jobs.' In addition, she pointed out that more and more employees are taking on multiple jobs in order to make ends meet. 'A lot of companies are holding the line on wages for hourly workers and on overtime,” she said, and that’s forced many people to take on additional work. More than 7 million Americans were working two or more jobs in December, according to the BLS. That ups from 6.8 million in 2010 and 6 million in 2009. 'Multiple jobs means increased stress and complexity for workers and that’s not good for health and families,” she maintained. “Longer term, we need better quality jobs, economically.'” To read complete article, click here.

NLRB ruling angers business. LERA's Alex Colvin was quoted in a Jan. 6 Steven Greenhouse New York Times story, "Labor Board Backs Workers on Joint Arbitration Cases." The board ruled that employers' requiring that all workers pursue claims individually through arbitration denied workers' rights to engage in collective action. The ruling covered a broad swath of workers, including both union and non-union employees, restaurant workers and highly compensated Wall Street employees. Colvin: "'This is a big deal,' said Professor Alex Colvin, an expert on mandatory arbitration agreements who teaches at the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations. 'Mandatory arbitration agreements are so widespread, and this would suggest that many of them violate labor law by barring class actions. I also think the business community will be up in arms because you have federal labor law being applied in a nonunion setting.'” Click here to read the Greenhouse story.

Labor Law, Economic Justice and Political Rhetoric: LERA member Wilma Liebman (at right) began her post-National Labor Relations Board career at the University of Illinois School of Labor and Employment Relations 2011 Derber Lecture on Dec. 1. School of Labor and Employment Relations professor and dean, Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld introduced Liebman as "perhaps the most-accomplished chair of the National Labor Relations Board." The title of Liebman's talk was "Labor Law, Economic Justice and Political Rhetoric." Click here to view a video of Liebman's 2011 Derber Lecture. She also gave the keynote speech at LERA's 64th Annual Meeting in Chicago. (Click here to read a story about her Chicago speech.) Then Liebman and Cutcher-Gershenfeld appeared in a long-form interview on WILL, the University of Illinois public radio station, on "The National Labor Relations Board and the Role of Collective Bargaining in Civil Society." The show streamed live on the Internet and is available for listening as a podcast by clicking here.

Sustainable Entrepreneurship: Five LERA members are part of the new Employment Policy Research Network research cluster on "sustainable entrepreneurship." Leading the new research group is EPRN co-founder Thomas A. Kochan (MIT, at left). Inaugural group members are Adam Seth Litwin (Johns Hopkins), Diane Burton (Cornell), James Rebitzer (Boston University), Barbara Dyer (Hitachi Foundation and MIT) and Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld (Illinois). As reported in the last "Member Notes," the development of the new topic is supported by a grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, one of the nation's largest foundations and the world's largest foundation focusing on entrepreneurship. “Sustainable entrepreneurship" in contemporary parlance generally connotes green jobs, clean tech and socially responsible companies. EPRN, however, is taking an employment point of view on the subject. So the questions are what entrepreneurial startups need to do as they grow to be a continuing source of good jobs; how startups can attract, retain and manage employees effectively and build long-lived, thriving companies; how employers can value and fully engage employees as resources and not as costs; and how entrepreneurial enterprises can achieve the scale to drive a prosperous 21st century economy. While the Silicon Valley-style serial entrepreneur has been a high-riding, romantic capitalist hero for more than a decade, some startups, à la Apple and Google, need to grow and persevere to become large-scale excellent employers in the long term.

Kochan led an EPRN session on the preconference day (Jan. 5) at LERA's 64th Annual Meeting in Chicago that included a discussion of sustainable entrepreneurship, unemployment by Brandeis Dean Lisa Lynch and Columbia economist Till von Wachter. LERA's Barry Bluestone (Northeastern, at right) presenting his and Kochan's new paper, "Toward a New Grand Bargain: Collaborative Approaches to Labor-Management Reform in Massachusetts." What Bluestone described as a new "alternative model of public-sector, interest-based bargaining," includes the creation of a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded academy to sponsor new age, state-of-the-art collective-bargaining workshops for all of the stakeholders in Boston's ongoing public-school contract negotiations. Click here to read “Toward a New Grand Bargain” and watch a video of a panel discussion on the topic. We will report on the progress of this ambitious project.

Then, Cornell and LERA's Rosemary Batt reported on her preliminary explorations into the arcane world of financialization in all its leveraging, arbitraging, private-equity, hedge-fund and sovereign-debt complexity. Batt and Kochan received a grant for LERA from the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research to do two research papers and policy briefs on the financialization topic.

Holiday report. A few days after Christmas, Eileen Hoffman forwarded to the LERA home office an email from John "Jack" Buettner with a subject line "Time to go." Jack ended his almost 40-year career as Eastern Regional Director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service in Independence, Ohio. A longtime LERA member, he was a Cleveland chapter member and was on LERA's construction and health care industry councils. Hoffman, also a LERA member, is project director at the FMCS' Department of International and Dispute Services Washington, D.C., office.

Manufacturing good news–bad news. Kochan and immediate past LERA president Gordon Pavy (pictured at left) were quoted in a very good Lou Uchitelle article, "U.S. Manufacturing Gains Jobs, but Wages Retreat," on Dec. 29. The good news in the story was that GE was bringing manufacturing jobs home from overseas. The bad news — wages for the new hires are $10 to $15 an hour less than current employees — with the additional concession that the newcomers will not catch up for the foreseeable future. Such union-endorsed contracts are also showing up in the auto industry, at steel and tire companies, and at manufacturers of farm implements and other heavy equipment, according to Gordon Pavy, until recently, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s director of collective bargaining. “Some companies want to keep work here, or bring it back from Asia,” Mr. Pavy said. “But in order to do that they have to be competitive in the final prices of their products, and one way to be competitive is to lower the compensation of their American workers.” Kochan: “My hope is that we will rebuild wages to their old levels over time as the economy strengthens and the demand for workers rises,” said Thomas A. Kochan, a management expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “But that is by no means a certainty.”

(Send Member News, photos, books and story ideas to the editor Mike Lillich at LERA’s offices at the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 504 E. Armory Ave., 115 LER Building, Champaign, IL 61820.)

To access previously published "Member Notes," click here.

• Good Jobs America: Making Work Better for Everyone by Paul Osterman and Beth Shulman.
• Lean But Agile by William J. Rothwell, James Graber, Neil McCormick
• They Say Cut Back, We Say Fight Back! by Ellen Reese
• The Accordian Family by Katherine Newman
• Coming Apart by Charles Murray
• From Iron Rice Bowl to Informalization by Sarosh Kuruvilla, Ching Kwan Lee, Mary E. Gallagher (eds.)
• Wisconsin Uprising by Michael D. Yates
• Borrow — The American Way of Debt by Louis Hyman
• She Was One of Us by Brigid O'Farrell
• Disintegrating Democracy at Work by Virginia Doellgast
• Organizing at the Margins by Jennifer Jihye Chun
• The Working Class Majority by Michael Zweig
• Labor Arbitration — The Suspension of Nurse Kevin (video)
• American Political Economy in Global Perspective by Harold Wilensky
• Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising by OECD
• With Liberty and Justice for Some by Glenn Greenwald
• The Transformation of the American Pension System by Edward Wolff

Click on titles below for ordering information.

Good Jobs America: Making Work Better for Everyone (Russell Sage Foundation) by Paul Osterman and Beth Shulman. From the Russell Sage description of Good Jobs America: "America confronts a jobs crisis that has two faces. The first is obvious when we read the newspapers or talk with our friends and neighbors: there are simply not enough jobs to go around. The second jobs crisis is more subtle but no less serious: far too many jobs fall below the standard that most Americans would consider decent work. A quarter of working adults are trapped in jobs that do not provide living wages, health insurance, or much hope of upward mobility. The problem spans all races and ethnic groups and includes both native-born Americans and immigrants. But Good Jobs America provides examples from industries ranging from food services and retail to manufacturing and hospitals to demonstrate that bad jobs can be made into good ones. Paul Osterman and Beth Shulman make a rigorous argument that by enacting policies to help employers improve job quality we can create better jobs, and futures, for all workers." ... <More> Paul Osterman is a LERA member and a faculty member at MIT's Sloan School of Management and the MIT Department of Urban Planning. The late Beth Shulman (above left) was a senior fellow at Demost, chair of the board of the National Employment Law Project and co-chair of the Fairness Initiative on Low-Wage Work. She was the author of The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans. Newsweek's Anna Quindlen said The Betrayal of Work "should be required reading for every presidential candidate and member of Congress." Shulman, who was a LERA board member from 1998-2000, died in February 2010.

Lean But Agile: Rethink Workplace Planning and Gain a True Competitive Edge (AMACON, a divison of the Amerian Management Association) by William J. Rothwell, James Graber, Neil McCormick. From the AMACOM book description: "Powerful strategies for streamlining your staff and the work they do. As organizations strive to maximize efficiency to meet stringent budgets, a general 'do more with less' mandate is no longer sufficient. Managers and executives must evaluate every process and every role, and do away with assumptions about how work gets done and who does it. Lean but Agile presents a system for analyzing work and selecting the ideal combination of cost-effective resources — employees, consultants, contractors, temporary workers, vendors — to accomplish it. The book advocates changes in hiring, goal-setting, learning and development, and performance management, and discusses the introduction, implementation, and management of lean work and agile staffing methods. It also explores the fundamental role technology can play in the transformation. Packed with practical advice, examples, guides, worksheets, diagrams, and metrics, Lean but Agile will help leaders, managers, and human resource professionals optimize their workforces while still achieving superior results." Rothwell is professor of Workplace Learning and Performance at Pennsylvania State University and President of Rothwell & Associates, a business consultancy. Graber is Managing Director of Business Decisions, Inc., a talent management technology and software company. McCormick is a senior vice president at Talent2 with 30 years’ experience in international management, human resources and consulting.

The Accordian Family: Boomerang Kids, Anxious Parents and the Private Toll of Global Competition (Beacon) by Katherine Newman, a sociologist and dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. From the Beacon description: "Why are adults in their twenties and thirties stuck in their parents' homes in the world's wealthiest countries? There's no question that globalization has drastically changed the cultural landscape across the world. The cost of living is rising, and high unemployment rates have created an untenable economic climate that has severely compromised the path to adulthood for young people in their twenties and thirties. And there's no end in sight. Families are hunkering down, expanding the reach of their households to envelop economically vulnerable young adults. Acclaimed sociologist Katherine Newman explores the trend toward a rising number of 'accordion families' composed of adult children who will be living off their parents' retirement savings with little means of their own when the older generation is gone. While the trend crosses the developed world, the cultural and political responses to accordion families differ dramatically. In Japan, there is a sense of horror and fear associated with 'parasite singles,' whereas in Italy, the 'cult of mammismo,' or mamma's boys, is common and widely accepted, though the government is rallying against it. Meanwhile, in Spain, frustrated parents and millenials angrily blame politicians and big business for the growing number of youth forced to live at home. Newman's investigation, conducted in six countries, transports the reader into the homes of accordion families and uncovers fascinating links between globalization and the failure-to-launch trend. Drawing from over three hundred interviews, Newman concludes that nations with weak welfare states have the highest frequency of accordion families while the trend is virtually unknown in the Nordic countries. The United States is caught in between. But globalization is reshaping the landscape of adulthood everywhere, and the consequences are far-reaching in our private lives. In this gripping and urgent book, Newman urges Americans not to simply dismiss the boomerang generation but, rather, to strategize how we can help the younger generation make its own place in the world."

They Say Cut Back, We Say Fight Back! Welfare Activism in an Era of Retrenchment (Russell Sage Foundation) by Ellen Reese, Hull Professor and chair, Department of Feminst Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara. From the Russell Sage press description of They Say Cut Back, We Say Fight Back!: "In 1996, President Bill Clinton hailed the 'end of welfare as we know it' when he signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. The law effectively transformed the nation’s welfare system from an entitlement to a work-based one, instituting new time limits on welfare payments and restrictions on public assistance for legal immigrants. In They Say Cutback, We Say Fight Back!, Ellen Reese offers a timely review of welfare reform and its controversial design, now sorely tested in the aftermath of the Great Recession. The book also chronicles the largely untold story of a new grassroots coalition that opposed the law and continues to challenge and reshape its legacy. While most accounts of welfare policy highlight themes of race, class and gender, They Say Cutback examines how welfare recipients and their allies contested welfare reform from the bottom up. Using in-depth case studies of campaigns in Wisconsin and California, Reese argues that a crucial phase in policymaking unfolded after the bill’s passage. As counties and states set out to redesign their welfare programs, activists scored significant victories by lobbying officials at different levels of American government through media outreach, protests and organizing. ..." <Read more>They Say Cut Back, We Say Fight Back! is a volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology.

Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960 — 2010 (Crown Publishing Group) by Charles Murray. From the Crown Forum description of Coming Apart: "In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way of driving home the fact that the trends he describes do not break along lines of race or ethnicity. Drawing on five decades of statistics and research, Coming Apart demonstrates that a new upper class and a new lower class have diverged so far in core behaviors and values that they barely recognize their underlying American kinship — divergence that has nothing to do with income inequality and that has grown during good economic times and bad. The top and bottom of white America increasingly live in different cultures, Murray argues, with the powerful upper class living in enclaves surrounded by their own kind, ignorant about life in mainstream America, and the lower class suffering from erosions of family and community life that strike at the heart of the pursuit of happiness. That divergence puts the success of the American project at risk. The evidence in Coming Apart is about white America. Its message is about all of America." Murray also wrote The Bell Curve. Click here to read the New York Times Sunday Book Review of Coming Apart. Click here to read Paul Krugman's Feb. 9 New York Times column, "Money and Morals," about Coming Apart.

From Iron Rice Bowl to Informalization: Markets, Workers, and the State in a Changing China (Cornell ILR Press. Use the CAU6 code to receive a 20 percent discount from the list price of the book.) by Sarosh Kuruvilla, Ching Kwan Lee, Mary E. Gallagher (eds.)  From the ILR Press book description: "In the thirty years since the opening of China's economy, China's economic growth has been nothing short of phenomenal. At the same time, however, its employment relations system has undergone a gradual but fundamental transformation from stable and permanent employment with good benefits (often called the iron rice bowl), to a system characterized by highly precarious employment with no benefits for about 40 percent of the population. Similar transitions have occurred in other countries, such as Korea, although perhaps not at such a rapid pace as in China. This shift echoes the move from 'breadwinning' careers to contingent employment in the postindustrial United States. In From Iron Rice Bowl to Informalization, an interdisciplinary group of authors examines the nature, causes, and consequences of informal employment in China at a time of major changes in Chinese society. This book provides a guide to the evolving dynamics among workers, unions, NGOs, employers, and the state as they deal with the new landscape of insecure employment. Contributors: Fang Cai, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Baohua Dong, East China University of Politics and Law; Mark W. Frazier, University of Oklahoma; Mary E. Gallagher, University of Michigan; Sarosh Kuruvilla, Cornell University; Ching Kwan Lee, UCLA; Kun-Chin Lin, King's College, London; LERA member Mingwei Liu, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; Albert Park, University of Oxford; Yuan Shen, Tsinghua University; Sarah Swider, Wayne State University; LERA member Lu Zhang, Temple University." About the editors: Sarosh Kuruvilla is a LERA member and Professor of Comparative Industrial Relations, Asian Studies, and Public Affairs at Cornell University, where he serves as chair of ILR International Programs. Ching Kwan Lee is a LERA member and Professor of Sociology at UCLA and the author of Gender and the South China Miracle and Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt. Mary E. Gallagher is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan and the author of Contagious Capitalism: Globalization and the Politics of Labor in China."

 Wisconsin Uprising: Labor Fights Back (Monthly Review Press) edited by Michael D. Yates. From the Monthly Review Press description: "In early 2011, the nation was stunned to watch Wisconsin’s state capitol in Madison come under sudden and unexpected occupation by union members and their allies. The protests to defend collective-bargaining rights were militant and practically unheard of in this era of declining union power. Nearly forty years of neoliberalism and the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression have battered the labor movement, and workers have been largely complacent in the face of stagnant wages, slashed benefits and services, widening unemployment, and growing inequality. That is, until now. Under pressure from a union-busting governor and his supporters in the legislature, and inspired by the massive uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, workers in Wisconsin shook the nation with their colossal display of solidarity and outrage. Their struggle is still ongoing, but there are lessons to be learned from the Wisconsin revolt. This timely book brings together some of the best labor journalists and scholars in the United States, many of whom were on the ground at the time, to examine the causes and impact of events, and suggest how the labor movement might proceed in this new era of union militancy." LERA's Michael Zweig, director of the Center for Working Class Life, economics department, SUNY-Stony Brook, contributed the essay, "Beyond Wisconsin: Seeking New Priorities as Labor Challenges War." LERA member Stephanie Luce, associate professor of labor studies at The Murphy Institute at CUNY, contributed the essay, "What Can We Learn from Wisconsin?"

Borrow — The American Way of Debt: How Personal Credit Created the American Middle Class and Almost Bankrupted the Nation (Random House, Vintage) by Louis Hyman, an economic historian and professor at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. From the Booklist review: “We learn from historian Hyman that when debt became a commodity to be bought and sold, it enabled the growth of the twentieth-century economy. Americans increasingly relied on expected future income from wages rather than cash to make consumer purchases. The author traces consumer debt beginning in the 1910s and through the 1920s, when personal loans became legal and mortgages were in demand. After WWII, consumption continued to be financed by debt, particularly television sets. Returning veterans could borrow easily through the VA loan program, and retailers developed revolving-credit programs. As the century progressed, we learn about the rise of discount stores over department stores, loans financed by issuing corporate debt, securitization, and credit cards. Hyman indicates that although policymakers declare the worst of our current financial crisis ended in mid-2009, important causes continue, and he concludes, ‘Debt, along with every other aspect of capitalism, is something that we have created and have the capacity to master.’ This is an excellent book.” Click here to read the Kirkus Review.

She Was One of Us: Eleanor Roosevelt and the American Worker (New in paperback. Cornell University Press: Use discount code CAU6 to receive a 20 percent discount off the book's list price.) by Brigid O'Farrell. From the Cornell University Press description of She Was One of Us: "Although born to a life of privilege and married to the President of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt was a staunch and lifelong advocate for workers and, for more than 25 years, a proud member of the AFL-CIO's Newspaper Guild. She Was One of Us tells for the first time the story of her deep and lasting ties to the American labor movement. Brigid O'Farrell follows Roosevelt — one of the most admired and, in her time, controversial women in the world — from the tenements of New York City to the White House, from local union halls to the convention floor of the AFL-CIO, from coal mines to political rallies to the United Nations. Roosevelt worked with activists around the world to develop a shared vision of labor rights as human rights, which are central to democracy. In her view, everyone had the right to a decent job, fair working conditions, a living wage, and a voice at work. She Was One of Us provides a fresh and compelling account of her activities on behalf of workers, her guiding principles, her circle of friends — including Rose Schneiderman of the Women's Trade Union League and the garment unions and Walter Reuther, 'the most dangerous man in Detroit' — and her adversaries, such as the influential journalist Westbrook Pegler, who attacked her as a dilettante and her labor allies as 'thugs and extortioners.' As O'Farrell makes clear, Roosevelt was not afraid to take on opponents of workers' rights or to criticize labor leaders if they abused their power; she never wavered in her support for the rank and file. Today, union membership has declined to levels not seen since the Great Depression, and the silencing of American workers has contributed to rising inequality. In She Was One of Us, Eleanor Roosevelt's voice can once again be heard by those still working for social justice and human rights." O'Farrell is an active LERA member.

Disintegrating Democracy at Work: Labor Unions and the Future of Good Jobs in the Service Economy (Cornell University Press: Use discount code CAU6 to receive a 20 percent discount off the book's list price.) by Virginia Doellgast. From the Cornell University Press description of Disintegrating Democracy at Work: "The shift from manufacturing to service-based economies has often been accompanied by the expansion of low-wage and insecure employment. Many consider the effects of this shift inevitable. In Disintegrating Democracy at Work, Virginia Doellgast contends that high pay and good working conditions are possible even for marginal service jobs. This outcome, however, depends on strong unions and encompassing collective-bargaining institutions, which are necessary to give workers a voice in the decisions that affect the design of their jobs and the distribution of productivity gains. Doellgast's conclusions are based on a comparative study of the changes that occurred in the organization of call center jobs in the United States and Germany following the liberalization of telecommunications markets. Based on survey data and interviews with workers, managers, and union representatives, she found that German managers more often took the 'high road' than those in the United States, investing in skills and giving employees more control over their work. Doellgast traces the difference to stronger institutional supports for workplace democracy in Germany. However, these democratic structures were increasingly precarious, as managers in both countries used outsourcing strategies to move jobs to workplaces with lower pay and weaker or no union representation. Doellgast’s comparative findings show the importance of policy choices in closing off these escape routes, promoting broad access to good jobs in expanding service industries." Doellgast is a lecturer at the London School of Economics and a LERA member.

Organizing at the Margins:The Symbolic Politics of Labor in South Korea and the United States (Cornell University Press: Use discount code CAU6 to receive a 20 percent discount off the book's list price.) by Jennifer Jihye Chun. From the Cornell University Press description of Organizing at the Margins: "The realities of globalization have produced a surprising reversal in the focus and strategies of labor movements around the world. After years of neglect and exclusion, labor organizers are recognizing both the needs and the importance of immigrants and women employed in the growing ranks of low-paid and insecure service jobs. In Organizing at the Margins, Jennifer Jihye Chun focuses on this shift as it takes place in two countries: South Korea and the United States. Using comparative historical inquiry and in-depth case studies, she shows how labor movements in countries with different histories and structures of economic development, class formation, and cultural politics embark on similar trajectories of change. Chun shows that as the base of worker power shifts from those who hold high-paying, industrial jobs to the formerly 'unorganizable,' labor movements in both countries are employing new strategies and vocabularies to challenge the assault of neoliberal globalization on workers' rights and livelihoods. Deftly combining theory and ethnography, she argues that by cultivating alternative sources of 'symbolic leverage' that root workers' demands in the collective morality of broad-based communities, as opposed to the narrow confines of workplace disputes, workers in the lowest tiers are transforming the power relations that sustain downgraded forms of work. Her case studies of janitors and personal-service workers in the United States and South Korea offer a surprising comparison between converging labor movements in two very different countries as they refashion their relation to historically disadvantaged sectors of the workforce and expand the moral and material boundaries of union membership in a globalizing world."

The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret (Second edition, Cornell University Press: Use discount code CAU6 to receive a 20 percent discount off the book's list price.) by Michael Zweig. From the Publishers Weekly review of the first edition: "In this pungent critique of class and economics in the United States — part economic theory, part political lecture, and part reportage of working-class life — Zweig offers an insightful, radical analysis that will make many readers rethink commonly held but unexamined beliefs. Zweig supports his arguments with statistics, facts and personal stories and argues with a forcefulness and conviction backed by a deeply moral sense of the dignity that is due to each person in their work and workplace." From the Cornell University Press descriptor of The Working Class Majority: "In the second edition of his essential book — which incorporates vital new information and new material on immigration, race, gender, and the social crisis following 2008 — Michael Zweig warns that by allowing the working class to disappear into categories of 'middle class' or 'consumers,' we also allow those with the dominant power, capitalists, to vanish among the rich. Economic relations then appear as comparisons of income or lifestyle rather than as what they truly are — contests of power, at work and in the larger society." Zweig is a LERA member and the director of the Center for the Study of Working Class Life, Department of Economics, State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Labor Arbitration -The Suspension of Nurse Kevin (Pennsylvania State University and the National Academy of Arbitrators). This instructional film was submitted by LERA member Paul Clark, professor and head of the labor studies and employment relations department at Penn State. Here's part of the descriptor Clark sent: "Most of the arbitration films available today are dated. Depictions of hearings set in the 1970s and 1980s are not helpful in conveying the message that arbitration can play an important role in the modern American workplace. Using a case written and enacted by actual union and management practitioners and an experienced arbitrator, the film replicates, to the greatest degree possible, the experience of observing an arbitration hearing. Shot in a documentary style, the film enacts an arbitration hearing involving the suspension of an employee for insubordination." To view a four-minute trailer for the film click here. The 66 min. DVD is available for $149 ($99 for non-profits and educational institutions).

American Political Economy in Global Perspective (Cambridge University Press) by Harold L. Wilensky. Per the University of California Berkeley Public Affairs Office in its obituary of Wilensky who died Oct. 30: "At the time of his death, Wilensky had completed a book to be published in 2012 and had sent the final page proofs to Cambridge University Press nine days before his death. In this book, which concluded Wilensky’s 40-year project on the comparative political economy of advanced industrial countries, he devoted special attention to the past 15 years of crisis and to contemporary American policies and politics." Here is the description of the book from the Cambridge University Press: "This book is a guide to claims about the proper role of government and markets in a global economy. Moving between systematic comparison of nineteen rich democracies and debate about what the United States can do to restore a more civilized, egalitarian and fair society, Harold L. Wilensky tells us how six of these countries got on a low road to economic progress and which components of their labor-crunch strategy are uniquely American. He provides an overview of the impact of major dimensions of globalization, only one of which — the interaction of the internationalization of finance and the rapid increase in the autonomy of central banks — undermines either national sovereignty or job security, labor standards, and the welfare state. Although Wilensky views American policy and politics through the lens of globalization, he concludes that the nation-state remains the center of personal identity, social solidarity and political action." You can access the complete Harold L. Wilensky obituary here.

Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). While the Occupy movement has moved American income inequality into the vernacular and the media, less mentioned is that income inequality also has risen in most of the 22 OECD industrialized nations. From the OECD press release: "Divided We Stand finds that the average income of the richest 10 percent is now about nine times that of the poorest 10 percent  across the OECD. The income gap has risen even in traditionally egalitarian countries, such as Germany, Denmark and Sweden, from 5 to 1 in the 1980s to 6 to 1 today. The gap is 10 to 1 in Italy, Japan, Korea and the United Kingdom, and higher still, at 14 to 1 in Israel, Turkey and the United States. In Chile and Mexico, the incomes of the richest are still more than 25 times those of the poorest, the highest in the OECD, but have finally started dropping. Income inequality is much higher in some major emerging economies outside the OECD area. At 50 to 1, Brazil's income gap remains much higher than in many other countries, although it has been falling significantly over the past decade." To read the income inequality country note on the United States, click here. Click here to access video presentation of the OECD income inequality study.

With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful (Metropolitan Books, First Edition edition) by Glenn Greenwald, who is a constitutional law and civil rights attorney who blogs on news and politics for Salon.com. Per Wikipedia, Greenwald has written four previous books, including, How Would a Patriot Act?  In 2009, he and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now won the first Izzy (I.F. Stone, the legendary independent American journalist and publisher of the iconoclastic I.F. Stone Weekly, who died in 1989) for "independent journalism for pathbreaking journalistic courage and persistence in confronting conventional wisdom, official deception and controversial issues." Greenwald's calls are unyielding, right down the middle, and neither Republican or Democratic oxes go ungored. From the Amazon.com description of the book: " ... Starting with Watergate, continuing on through the Iran-Contra scandal, and culminating with Obama's shielding of Bush-era officials from prosecution, Glenn Greenwald lays bare the mechanisms that have come to shield the elite from accountability. He shows how the media, both political parties, and the courts have abetted a process that has produced torture, war crimes, domestic spying, and financial fraud." Here is a review by Frank Pasquale of With Liberty and Justice for Some from the blog site Balkinization. (A tip of the LERA cap to Victor Forberger on the LERA-DIALOG listserve who alerted us here in the LERA home office to this book.)

The Transformation of the American Pension System: Was It Beneficial for Workers?  (W.E. Upjohn Press) by Edward N. Wolff, a New York University economist. New from the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, Mich., the short answer to the question in the title is a resounding "No." Here's the abstract from the UpJohn Press: "The share of Americans with defined-contribution pension plans now exceeds the share of those with defined benefit plans. Wolff refers to this as the 'great transformation,' and it leads him to examine recent evidence to see whether there are winners and losers resulting from this switch away from traditional pension plans." Here is the beginning of Wolff's introduction: "The last three decades have witnessed the radical transformation of the Ameican pension system ... I call attention to this change which has been occuring since the early 1980s, I report that the shared of households in the age group 47-64 with a defined contribution (DC) pension system soared from 12 percent in 1983 to 60 percent in 1998, while the share of the defined benefit plan plummeted from 69 percent to 46 percent. Subsequently  ... I calculate that the share with a DC plan rose to 62 percent in 2001, while the share with a DB plan fell to 45 percent. ..." Read more>

Click here for previously noted books.