Showing papers on "Labour law published in 1977"

Emerging Issues in Agricultural Labor Relations

Abstract: Labor relations in agriculture have been characterized by the absence of formal agreements negotiated by employer and labor representatives. Historically, labor law has assured agriculture a "special and exempt" status, a condition obviating any legal responsibility for employers to respond to employee demands, making organizing efforts more difficult. The hired farm work force found self-organization nearly impossible. Despite periodic resurgences of interest in the agricultural labor problem associated with the periodic "rediscovery" of migrant farm laborers, the extension of minimum wages and, more recently, unemployment insurance to farmworkers, and the proper role of alien labor in American agriculture, agricultural labor relations within a defined legal framework are a product of the mid-1970s.' The 1975 passage of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA) in California, the state with the largest hired work force, marks a new era in agricultural labor relations. A system of labor relations is usually defined by the actors or participants in the process (e.g., employers, workers, and government), a context or framework within which the participants interact, and a body of rules that govern participant behavior in the course of negotiating and interpreting labor agreements. The identification of participants, frameworks, and rules implies a sense of formality and continuity, attributes uncharacteristic of past labor-management interactions in agriculture. The fact that an orderly system of labor relations is just emerging forces an analysis of two related issues: factors giving rise to unionism and bargaining, i.e., the existence of unionism and the share of the agricultural labor force that is organized, and factors shaping the direction and content of labor relations, i.e., the type of labor-management relationship that evolves. This paper explores salient aspects of current labor relations in agriculture and erects a framework for predicting the course of future labor-management interactions. After exploring the impacts of agricultural structure and labor force composition on the functioning of the agricultural labor market, the evolution of public policy that culminated in California's ALRA is described. Predictions about the existence and shape of agricultural labor relations are made within the framework of structural, composition, and public policy influences, and it is suggested that the ability of the competing employers and unions to secure favorable public intervention will be as important as raw economic power for achieving partisan goals. Although data are drawn from national sources, we conclude by noting that agricultural labor relations are most likely to be confined to the labor-intensive fruit and vegetable sectors in the South and West.

The pan‐pacific trade union movement and Australian labour, 1921–1932∗

Abstract: (1977). The pan‐pacific trade union movement and Australian labour, 1921–1932. Historical Studies: Vol. 17, No. 69, pp. 441-457.

Improving the Conditions of Child Labour in Russia: The Law of 12 June 1884

Abstract: The origins of Russian labour legislation date essentially from the 1880s, when the government of Emperor Alexander III introduced a series of enactments intended to eliminate some of the most grievous abuses of the factory system. Earlier laws were inadequately enforced and had little impact on the lives of the workers. The enactment of 7 August 1845 is a case in point. As Reginald E. Zelnik has observed, this measure ’Russia’s first legislation governing the use of child labour in private factories’ quickly ’became a dead letter’ and ’was not even registered in the official digest of Russian laws’.1 1