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Perspectives on Work

Begun in 1997 as part of the LERA's 50th anniversary, Perspectives on Work magazine was created to look at the critical issues confronting workers and employers then, now and in the future. Founding editors included Thomas A. Kochan, Peter Cappelli, Walter J. Gershenfeld, Marlene Heyser, Magdalena Jacobsen and Hoyt Wheeler. In 2003, Charles J. Whalen was named editor and an Editorial Advisory Board of scholars and practitioners in the field of labor and employment relations was created. In 2009, Susan Cass assumed the editorship. Perspectives is published once a year.

Perspectives Online Companion: In 2004, the first issue of Perspectives on Work Online Companion was posted at the LERA web site. The electronic publication featured mini-forums addressing timely issues of interest to the member community. Published each spring and fall, the Online Companion provides a complement to the print version of Perspectives.

Perspectives on Work: Vol. 16, 1-2

The summer 2012/winter 2013 issue of Perspectives on Work (Vol. 16, Nos. 1-2) explores where good new jobs will come from. Successful high-tech, environmentally and socially sustainable entrepreneurial startups can be an answer. In this topic, we have five articles that examine entrepreneurial startups and how they can grow to become major providers of good jobs and drive widespread general prosperity. In another series of articles, our authors give an analysis of the 2011 UAW-Detroit 3 negotiations, an example, according to one of the articles’ authors, of how collective bargaining can work to craft a compromise that satisfies all parties. Our features include a variety of topics, including nurse migration (Is this another version of the sweatshop dilemma?), skills needed by today’s supervisors, and the NLRA. In each article we strive to present different takes on current issues to promote understanding of the issues, the stakeholders, and policy options.

Members can read the issue in the Members' Library. Not a Member? Become one here!

Read Excerpts from Perspectives on Work (Volume 16.1-2):
Entrepreneurship, Jobs, Sustainable Businesses = Economic Prosperity
by Mike Lillich

The National Labor Relations Act and Bargaining Power: Its History
by Ellen Dannin

The 2011 Auto Negotiations
by Linda Ewing and Arthur R. Schwartz

Perspectives on Work: Vol. 15, 1-2

The summer 2011/winter 2012 issue of Perspectives on Work (Vol. 15, Nos. 1-2) is actually a double policy forum issue including June’s Policy Forum on Future of Public-Sector Unions as well as a Policy Forum on Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility. There is also a second Policy Forum, Changing Nature of Work internationally; and a progress report on the Employment Policy Research Network, LERA’s ambitious foray into a new online research-publication model. There are also features by former Secretary of Labor. W.J. "Bill" Usery Jr., "A Heart for People: Even in Negotiation"; and "Labor in China: Conflicts or Conflict Resolution" by Arnold Zack, an arbitrator and lecturer at the Labor and Worklife Program at the Harvard School of Law and a 2009 LERA Inaugural Practitioner Fellow. Reviews of two books complete the volume.

Members can read the issue in the Members' Library in PDF format. (You will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader.) Not a Member? Become one here!

Read Excerpts from Perspectives on Work (Volume 15.1-2):
Public Sector Relations: A System Struggling to Adjust to the FInancial Crisis
by Robert McKersie

Fiscal Crisis and the Future of Public Unions
by Barry Bluestone

The Globalization of Service Work: Comparative Institutional Perspectives on Call Centers
by Rose Batt