Transcripts of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the Federal Reserve and related documents provide new insights into how macro-policy makers characterized the labor market. Over the period of the 1980s and the 1990s, the Federal Reserve seemingly overemphasized the significance of...

If innovative work practices improve performance, why does the intensity of their adoption vary substantially across establishments; Following a lead suggested by some sociological studies, the authors empirically investigate the role of social networks (ties to other organizations) in the...

Most recent studies investigating pattern bargaining have sought to establish its presence or absence by statistically comparing summary measures of wage levels or growth rates across and within industries. The author of this study argues that a better measure of the existence of pattern...

The authors investigate whether the New York Times' coverage of strikes and non-strike wage settlements in large bargaining units changed during the 1980s, a time when a "transformation" of industrial relations is said to have taken place. Although the total number of New York Times articles on...

During the 1970s, Italy experienced an extreme compression of wage differentials, similar to the better-known situation in Sweden. Most evidence suggests that this compression came to a stop around 1982-83, coincident with a major institutional change (in the form of the escalator clause in...

Information and communication technology (ICT) challenges traditional assumptions about the capacity to manage workers beyond organizational and physical boundaries. A typology connects a variety of non-traditional work organizations made possible by ICT, including offshoring, outsourcing,...

The teleworkability of jobs - whether they can and will be performed remotely - has been increasingly contested in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. To explain which jobs are teleworkable and why, we emphasize the institutional context of a job, including differences among firms, union...

We examine an important recent organizing success of the US labour movement: the "Justice for Janitors" campaign in Los Angeles. This campaign has spanned a complete business cycle and shows the union's capacity for growth over time. It illustrates the potential for unions to overcome...