Perspectives Online Companion - Spring 2011: Number 12

From the Editor

This issue of LERA’s Perspectives on Work Online Companion is the first since LERA’s affiliation with the Employment Policy Research Network (EPRN). The EPRN web site (employmentpolicy.org) launched in January to fill a void in objective, evidence-based research as the basis for better state and national employment law, policy, and practice. EPRN offers self-posted  research by 120 researchers in labor relations, management, and collective bargaining, economists, attorneys, and sociologists.  EPRN  postings can be accessed  through the LERA website. The EPRN startup is supported by grants from the Rockefeller and Russell Sage foundations.

In this issue, we have four articles and one book review. The first two articles focus on jobs.  Eileen Appelbaum’s article suggests several policy options for increasing the pace of job creation and reducing unemployment.  Andrew Sum and his colleagues at Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University explore job displacement in the U.S. economy in the Great Recession and the reemployment difficulties of the dislocated. The issue is rounded out by two articles on public sector unions.  The debates in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio have brought issues surrounding public employees’ rights and the tensions that can exist between public sector unions and government and/or management into the national spotlight.  Here Jeff Keefe answers the question on many people’s minds: “Are State and Local Public Employees Overpaid?” and Saul Rubinstein and John McCarthy look at school districts that follow a collaborative model offering a alternative model to the contentious relationships being exposed in the news of late.

The fall issue of Perspectives on Work will continue the important and timely public sector employee discussion.  Please look for your copy in September.  If you’d like to send a comment to one of these online authors send it to me, scass@mit.edu and I will forward it along. In addition, feel free to send comments or article suggestions for Perspectives on Work to me.

Susan Cass

Understanding the Great Recession: March 2011
Eileen Appelbaum

The Dislocation Experiences of  U.S. Workers From 2007-2009
Andrew Sum, Mykhaylo Trubskyy, Joseph McLaughlin with Sheila Palma

Are State and Local Public Employees Overpaid?
Jeffrey Keefe

Collaborating on School Reform: Creating Union-Management Partnerships to Improve Public School Systems
Saul Rubinstein and John McCarthy

NAFTA and Labor in North America by Norman Caulfield
Book reviewed by Seth Pipkin