Book Description

Harvey Mackay is the author of two New York Times #1 bestsellers, Swim with the Sharks without Being Eaten Alive and Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt. Both these books were recently listed by the New York Times among the top fifteen inspirational business books of all time. Harvey's most recent book, Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty was also a New York Times bestseller. His books have sold more than eight million copies worldwide, have been translated into thirty-five languages, and have sold in eighty countries.

In addition, Harvey is a nationally syndicated columnist and was named by the 170,000-member Toastmaster International as one of the top five speakers in the world. He is founder and CEO of the $85 million Mackay Envelope Corporation. ... Read more

Reviews (18)

Mackays best book to date
I have been a fan of Harvey Mackay since reading Swim with the Sharks. Pushing the Envelope is even better.If you are in business or want to be, read this book and learn from a master..

Mackay's best book yet
"Pushing The Envelope" is probably Harvey Mackay's best book since he wrote "Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive." And, maybe "Pushing The Envelope" is better. Mackay shares his wisdom about how to build a business from the standpoint of a professional envelope maker, one of the world's best salesmen, and probably the leading business self-help writer.

Mackay knows his envelopes and much else. He talks about setting resolutions, but realizes most people never keep them. He points out that to succeed you must work hard and stick to your goals until you reach them, like an postage stamp sticks to an envelope. "Initiative is important. Finishative is vital," Mackay writes.

Mackay tells you not to take yourself too seriously, and that it is probably good to let the other fellow think he is smarter than you. But "Pushing The Envelope" is far more than a collection of positive thinking aphorisms (yes, there are a lot of those also). Mackay discusses his views about managing people and selling, both of which are crucial to most company's success. And, both areas where Harvey Mackay is a world class expert.

Mackay teaches you how to cultivate your sales force. He gives insight on making intelligent hires, and points out that recognizing talent is the most valuable talent of an entrepreneur. Mackay shares his views on getting rid of employees and points out that it is the people who you should fire, but who you don't, that cause you problems. Not that Harvey fires many people himself. Many of his happy envelope makers have worked for him for several decades or longer.

And, as Mackay points out, making envelopes isn't a business you would consider naturally fun or sexy. And, some of Mackay's people who left to work for the competition were rehired when they learned that the generous offers made to them by Harvey's competitors were deceptions. More money, better tasting glue on the flaps, and who knows whatever else was offered.

Harvey understands the importance of forgiveness and helping other people reach their personal and life goals. Without an aphorism, Harvey cares about people and about his employees. He understands the importance of people. And, that computers can't replace them.

This is not to say that old Harvey is as flat as one of his envelopes due to being walked over by chums. As Mackay says, "every dog can get in one bite." After that and I'd bet the pouch is in trouble.

"Pushing The Envelope" also briefly discusses why people pay more for some products. Value-added. He really shows you how to successfully charge more for your product by focusing on service. Mackay says this is what smaller companies who can't swing lower per unit costs can offer.

"Pushing The Envelope All The Way To The Top" should be read by all business people, even those who cringe at the thought of reading one more Harvey Mackay aphorism! By Chapter 82 (yes, Chapter 82, he writes bite-sized chapters) Harvey runs out of business wisdom and goes off on a tangent telling you about how to properly tip waiters and waitresses and the tennis pro at your vacation resort. Ah, Thanks, Harvey.

Just when you are questioning if the book will end without a bang, Mackay falls back to his natural ability in closing a deal to write a chapter about how we all appreciate a good and true compliment. But, I'll save the ending for your own reading. I'll leave you with my favorite Mackay aphorism, "While on the ladder of success, don't step back to admire your work." Peter Hupalo, author of "Thinking Like An Entrepreneur"

Great book
One of my favorite things to do besides learn about the stock market is read books on starting/running businesses and self help/motivational/inspirational books I find these books to be a relaxing brain stimulant that helps me better myself. I am sure others receive the similar feelings and thoughts from reading material like this.

Pushing the envelope is another great book by Harvey Mackay (he owns an envelope company incase you were wondering.) Like his other books "Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive" and "Beware the naked man who offers you his shirt" Pushing the envelope is choke full of real life tips on how to be better at work, at home and with friends. Hands off to Harvey for he has created another wonderful book.

If you would like to invest in your future I recommend purchasing this book: Pushing the envelope all the way to the top

Reed Floren

Is it me?
Did I read the same book as the rest of these reviews? I like Harvey Mackay and enjoyed Swim With the Sharks, but I thought this book was a fairly simplistic brain dump of cliches and unoriginal thoughts. I do believe Mackay's geniunely decent nature come through and most of the concepts were fairly well presented, but I found very little here I hadn't already heard. I kept thinking to myself that this was Harvey's publisher squeezing out another book under contract. Sorry.

Buy this book!
From Author of "Script Magic: Subconscious Techniques to Conquer Writer's Block: Want to get motivated? Want to do the impossible! You can, with Harvey MacKay as your guide! There are many poignant messages in this book, but the two that touched me the most was the fact that MacKay aimed for and achieved his desires, despite the "odds." And secondly, the subtle message I get from him and his book is that generosity is really the best policy. Tuck it under your pillow at night and read it for inspiration! ... Read more

Book Description

After unification large amounts of money were spent to retrain the East Germany labour force in order to ease the transition to the new market economy. This book uses microeconometric methods and individual data to evaluate the impact of these training programmes on the participants' labour market situation. It discusses the appropriate evaluation methodology as well as the effectiveness of the actual programmes for the individual participants. The empirical results suggest that the public sector sponsored training programmes were fairly ineffective. In contrast, the training organized and paid by the enterprises caused considerable earnings growings. ... Read more

Book Description

A Primer on American Labor Law is an accessible guide written for nonspecialists -- labor and management representatives, students, general practice lawyers, as well as trade unionists, government officials, and academics from other countries. It covers such topics as the National Labor Relations Act, unfair labor practices, the collective bargaining relationship, dispute resolution, the public sector, and public-interest labor law. This thoroughly updated fourth edition contains extensive new material, covering developments in the eleven years since the third edition, including the continuing decline in union membership, job security rights, wrongful discharge litigation and dispute resolution procedures, ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) litigation, cases involving sexual harassment and sexual orientation, the most recent collective bargaining agreements in professional sports, and the debate -- spurred by globalism -- on international labor standards. Much of the discussion of the National Labor Relations Act covers decisions and policy changes by the National Labor Relations Board during the author's chairmanship in 1994-1998. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

An enlightening book
This book is an accessible guide to labor law history in America. The careful analysis of the groundbreaking NLRB and Supreme Court Cases guides the reader through the legal developments in labor law, while explaining the signifigance of each developement in a practical way. Anyone who is involved in a union or is interested in labor managment relations would benefit greatly from reading this book. ... Read more

Book Description

Everyday capable, hardworking, committed employees suffer emotional abuse at their workplace. Some flee from jobs they love, forced out by mean-spirited co-workers, subordinates or superiors -- often with the tacit approval of higher management.

The authors, Dr. Noa Davenport, Ruth Distler Schwartz, and Gail Pursell Elliott have written a book for every employee and manager in America. The book deals with what has become a household word in Europe: Mobbing.

Mobbing is a "ganging up" by several individuals, to force someone out of the workplace through rumor, innuendo, intimidation, discrediting, and particularly, humiliation. Mobbing is a serious form of nonsexual, nonracial harassment. It has been legally described as status-blind harassment.

Mobbing affects the mental and physical health of victims. It extracts staggering costs from victims, their families, and from organizations.

With this new book, Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace, there is a name for the problem and help for the victims. The book helps readers to understand what mobbing is, why it occurs, how it affects a victim and organizations, and what people can so. The authors have interviewed victims from across the U.S. and the book contains many quotes that poignantly illustrate the gravity of the mobbing experience. An overview of the literature and research is provided as well as many practical strategies to help the victims, managers, healthcare and legal professionals. Original drawings by Sabra Vidali express the depth of the experience and enhance the authors' work. ... Read more

Reviews (23)

A must read for those who are bullied at work
Mobbing: Emotional abuse in the American Workplace is a must read for anyone who has been bullied or harassed at work and for others interested in this phenomenon. This book is a soup to nuts resource taking us from the origins and basics of mobbing to the eventual healing and prevention. It is concise and detailed leaving no stone unturned and is loaded with terminology essential to define and identify acts of mobbing and the course one goes through in it's aftermath. The examples given, anecdotes in each chapter and the highlighted lists of terminology make this book an easy read for those who need to understand why one's job can bring so much misery so unnecessarily. As a former victim and now a union shop steward and anti-bullying activist, I say run, not walk, to buy this book. You'll be glad you did and you will be armed with the information to heal, and to understand what happened to you and what you can do about it. As a shop steward I have already used the terminology and concepts found within to prepare and file a grievance on behalf of a client. This book has become a valuable handbook and reference I use daily to sort out the various types of bullying and emotional abuse found in my workplace. Bob Miller PAWA People Against Workplace Abuse

Mobbing : What Happens Before Workers Go Postal
This book is a MUST READ for all those who are employed in the American workplace. We have all heard of the "disgruntled employee" who goes into his / her present or former workplace and shoots up the management. Why does this happen? Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace methodically and clearly explains how workers reach this deserate point in their work lives. This gross, cruel, dysfunctional behavior-psycho terror expresses it well-is perpetrated by business and large corporations. Such completely unacceptable behavior needs to be addressed by business and government, and those who practice it should be held accountable. Psychological torture of the mind and heart constitutes a breach of everything that we, as Americans, consider the American character.

BULLIES - FAMILY / WORKPLACE / SCHOOL / NEIGHBORHOOD
Excellent compliments to this book are: Emotional Blackmail: When People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation and Guilt to Manipulate You by Susan Forward and Donna Frazier; Why Is It Always About You?: The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism by Sandy Hotchkiss and James Masterson; The Angry Heart: Overcoming Borderline and Addictive Disorders by Joseph Santoro and Ronald Cohen; The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment by Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman and Robert Pressman; Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable and Volatile Relationship by Christine Ann Lawson; Living with the Passive-Aggressive Man by Scott Wetzler; Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited by Sam Vaknin and Lidija Rangelovska (Editor); Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents by Nina Brown; Treating Attachment Disorders: From Theory to Therapy by Karl Heinz Brisch and Kenneth Kronenberg; Toxic Coworkers: How to Deal with Dysfunctional People on the Job by Alan Cavaiola and Neil Lavender; Bully in Sight: How to Predict, Resist, Challenge and Combat Workplace Bullies by Tim Field.

And if you want to pursue the subject even further, you may be interested in reading The Narcissistic / Borderline Couple: A Psychoanalytic Perspective On Marital Treatment; Parenting with Love and Logic: Teaching Children Responsibility by Jim Fay and Foster Cline.

There's A Name For It!
Finally, the USA has a name for a practice that has been identified and is illegal in many other countries. This is an excellent book, short on psychobabble and long on research,case studies, and support for targets of mobbing. The good news is, we're not alone. The bad news is, there's little legal recourse in the USA. The only solution? Find another job (and work to make mobbing illegal).

My own supervisor is afraid of the ringleaders of mobbing (whom he supervises)in my facility. The bullies at my workplace have been ferociously successful thanks to management fear and inaction. I will give my supervisor my copy of this book once I find another position.

Unbelieveable but true
Hopefully books like this will help get legislation passed to stop this abuse. It helped me understand that I'm not alone, although I didn't think I was. I personally experienced mobbing from one of the most respected, richest companies on earth. There management solicits your comments, then when you tell them what's going on, they join in the mobbing and tell you it's your fault, stopping at nothing, including insults and lying and coercing employees to reveal what they wrote in "anonymous" company polls and surveys so they would know who to target!!

When you think about this, it should be the downfall of a company eventually because if anyone who speaks out about anything becomes a target of mobbing, all problems and open communication will be swept under the rug. Maybe a couple of multi-million dollar judgements will do the trick! This book will make you want to speak out about your experiences as well and empower you to do so. ... Read more

Book Description

In the 1980s and early 1990s, a substantial number of U.S. companies announced major restructuring and downsizing. But we don’t know exactly what changes in the U.S. and global economy triggered this phenomenon.Little research has been done on the underlying causes of downsizing.Did companies actually reduce the size of their workforces, or did they simply change the composition of their workforces by firing some kinds of workers and hiring others? Downsizing in America, one of the most comprehensive analyses of the subject to date, confronts all these questions, exploring three main issues:the extent to which firms actually downsized, the factors that triggered changes in firm size, and the consequences of downsizing.

The authors show that much of the conventional wisdom regarding the spate of downsizing in the 1980s and 1990s is inaccurate.Nearly half of the large firms that announced major layoffs subsequently increased their workforce by more than 10 percent within 2 or 3 years.The only arena in which downsizing predominated appears to be the manufacturing sector—less than 20 percent of the U.S. workforce.

Downsizing in America offers a range of compelling hypotheses to account for the adoption of downsizing as an accepted business practice. In the short run, many companies experiencing difficulties due to decreased sales, cash flow problems, or declining securities prices reduced their workforces temporarily, expanding them again when business conditions improved.The most significant trigger leading to long-term downsizing was the rapid change in technology.Companies rid themselves of their least skilled workers and subsequently hired employees who were better prepared to work with new technology, which in some sectors reduced the size of firm at which production is most efficient.

Baumol, Blinder, and Wolff also reveal what they call the dirty little secret of downsizing:it is profitable in part because it holds down wages. Downsizing in America shows that reducing employee rolls increased profits, since downsizing firms spent less money on wages relative to output, but it did not increase productivity.Nor did unions impede downsizing.The authors show that unionized industries were actually more likely to downsize in order to eliminate expensive union labor.In sum, downsizing transferred income from labor to capital—from workers to owners.

Downsizing in America combines an investigation of the underlying realities and causes of workforce reduction with an insightful analysis of the consequent shift in the balance of power between management and labor, to provide us with a deeper understanding of one of the major economic shifts of recent times—one with far-reaching implications for all American workers. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Corporate downsizing: public perception versus reality
Headlines in the last decade of the twentieth century contained a steady drumbeat of corporate downsizing announcements. Now three professors of economics have used money from the Russell Sage Foundation to examine the record to see what actually happened to American firms during those stressful years. They wanted to know whether public perceptions matched reality.

The limited funds placed significant constraints on the resources available to the researchers. The value of their work depends heavily on their skill and judgement in using publicly available statistics and discrete private data bases to reveal more than at first sight evident. The result is a model of econometric technique.

The first conclusion is that newspaper media tended to favor the dramatic figures from large, well-known manufacturers. Manufacturing in America has been in long-term decline since 1967 and manufacturers have steadily shed jobs. So far, perception matches reality. However, agriculture and manufacturing only provide employment for 15% of the population, so this segment is not a good proxy for the entire economy.

What happened in the Service Sector that employed the other 85% of the population? Unfortunately, we can only see gross trends, because the government doesn't collect steady, detailed statistics on this segment. The researchers were forced to use some indirect techniques to tease out meaning from what was available.

"Downsizing", it turns out, is corporate-speak for upsizing. Firms laid off one set of workers - disproportionately less-educated, older, female or parents of young children - and hired on another set, by implication younger, male and single. Was the resulting workforce more productive? No, there was no change in employee productivity. Moreover, non-managerial employees bore the brunt of the layoffs, so that claims to be ridding the company of "fat" actually increased the management-to-staff ratio.

Did investors reward companies for their action? Perception says that downsizing is followed by an increase in the stock price. The reality is that stock prices remain steady or decline after downsizing announcements.

So what were the benefits of downsizing? The authors come to a surprising, but authoritative conclusion. Downsizing announcements force down staff wages so that the firm retains more profit. Simple really, isn't it?

"Downsizing in America" contains numerous graphs, tables, and economic formulae. Professors Baumol, Blinder and Wolff have spent the Sage Foundation funds wisely to "foster the development and dissemination of knowledge about the economy's political, social, and economic problems." ... Read more

Book Description

The surprising finding of this book is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, global income inequality is decreasing. Critics of globalization and others maintain that the spread of consumer capitalism is dramatically polarizing the worldwide distribution of income. But as the demographer Glenn Firebaugh carefully shows, income inequality for the world peaked in the late twentieth century and is now heading downward because of declining income inequality across nations. Furthermore, as income inequality declines across nations, it is rising within nations (though not as rapidly as it is declining across nations). Firebaugh claims that this historic transition represents a new geography of global income inequality in the twenty-first century.

This book documents the new geography, describes its causes, and explains why other analysts have missed one of the defining features of our era�a transition in inequality that is reducing the importance of where a person is born in determining his or her future well-being. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

The Inequality Transition
Glenn Firebaugh is the first scholar to document an extraordinarily important pattern in modern economic history.

Prior to industrialization, persons in one nation fared about as well as persons in other nations with respect to income and standard of living. Within nations, however,individual deviations from the means of national income were commonly quite large.

One effect of industrialization was to reverse this situation. Today dramatic disparities in income are found between industrial and non-industrial nations, with industrial nations and their citizens being quite well off and non-industrial nations and their citizens being quite poor, on average.

Using highly regarded national income data and bringing to his analysis a set of well-reasoned assumptions, Firebaugh makes an astounding discovery. In the last quarter of the 20th Century income inequality began to increase within nations and
decline across nations. An economic process that has pointed in one direction for over a hundred years has begun to reverse itself.

Firebaugh coins the term "inequality transition" to identify the two stages of an economic process related to the global spread of industrialization. In the first stage, the principal source of global income inequality moves from within-nations to between-nations. In the second stage, the principal source of global income is restored to the historic norm, namely, within-nations. Today we are in the early stages of the second phase of the inequality transition.

Critics of modern, capitalist, industrial expansion have it wrong. Contrary to their pessimistic pronouncements, today, the overwhelming majority of the world's poor are not getting poorer but are getting richer. Spreading industrialization is improving the lot of most of the world's peoples. Indeed, the promise of global economic justice is inherent in the notion "inequality transition."

Much of What You Thought You Knew Is Wrong
Much of what you thought you knew is wrong! If you are seriously interested in globabilization and recent trends in world income inequality, you need to read Glenn Firebaugh's The New Geography of Global Income Inequality (Harvard U. Press, 2003). In a straightforward and detailed presentation, Firebaugh explains the arithmetic of inequality -- how it divides into within-nation and between-nation components. He then charts each of these, both over-time and at the present time. You will learn where the U.S. fits in the world, and which countries and continents are at the top and the bottom in terms of income and inequality in income. Most important, you will see that, contrary to much current journalistic and even scholarly writing, world income inequality has actually been decreasing since the 1990s. This books complements and in important ways adds to recent books by Stiglitz, Easterly, Soros, Bhalla, Diamond, and Landes

Are the rich getting richer?
Are rich nations getting richer and poor nations getting poorer? Are the rich nations exploiting the poor nations, as critics of globalization in the trade protest movement suggest? The answer to both questions is no, according to Firebaugh, who shows that world inequality is on the decline. This book should become a classic among scholars, but it should also be of interest to the general public. Firebaugh writes well and uses plain talk and common sense along with plenty of supporting evidence.

The New Global Equality
This thorough and informative investigation should be rewarding reading for anyone who is interested in understanding the past, assessing the present, and thinking about the future of world income inequality. This book puts conventional wisdom to the test about the course of global income inequality at a time when alarms are being sounded about large-scale economic changes that are occurring throughout the world with increasing globalization. Among the claims of conventional wisdom that this book challenges are: (1) world income inequality is increasing across nations, with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer; (2) globalization exacerbates inequality across nations; and (3) international exchange is inherently exploitative. One of the nice things that the author is able to do is point out how inequality within nations and inequality between nations contribute to the overall level of global income inequality. I would recommend this book to readers of all ideological persuasions who are interested in a thoughtful presentation and discussion of evidence about a contentious issue. ... Read more

Book Description

`[Research for Development] is well-written and, at every stage, is well-documented with practical examples. The simplicity with which it is written adds to its value in that non-professional persons get well-aquainted with the research process. Every chapter in the book ends with highlighting of the main points made in that chapter... A further strength of the book is the inclusion of an appendix with a list of websites that deal with issues in the area of development research... the simplicity of its organization and message should appeal to people//researchers across disciplines' - Pakistan Development Review

`Research for Development achieves the near impossible: it provides vast quantities of useful guidance for almost anyone involved in research for development regardless of the size of your research project or your role within that project' - Arvac Bulletin

`Written by professional researchers, this immensely practical book provides development workers with a more research-oriented point of view, so that they can avoid mistakes in the design of programmes. It will also help them to understand people's needs and respond accordingly' - The Asian Age

`It is a beautiful and comprehensive compilation giving scores of instances that prove the essentiality if carrying out a survey of a particular locality for bringing about a change there' - Rafique Jalal, DAWN

This book provides a comprehensive introduction and handbook for undertaking and managing research in development.

It is designed to provide both a quick reference manual and an indispensable learning tool for all students, researchers and practitioners engaged in development work.

The text is divided into two parts: Managing research for development, and Doing research for development. Together the two parts review the complete research process from outlining the essential role and purpose of research, highlighting specific issues to development research, to demonstrating how to evaluate and secure the best results from subsequent research projects.

The book includes: an overview of different types of research in development work; practical steps to writing a brief and managing research; practical steps to evaluating and promoting research findings; step by step guides to getting started and choosing a research method; detailed guidelines to seven key research techniques; examples, exercises, summaries and checklists; and glossary and guides to additional resources and packages

Drawing on considerable hands-on experience, Research for Development will be an essential companion and invaluable tool for anyone engaged in contemporary development research, development work and development studies.

Book Description

If you run a business, what should you outsource (and what shouldn't you)?

If you're a knowledge worker (inside or outside IT), how can you protect yourself?

How will outsourcing evolve next? What do those changes mean to you?

Outsourcing is not just the #1 issue facing IT organizations: It's driving a profound transformation throughout American business. Whether you're an executive or a knowledge worker, the decisions you make about outsourcing can make or break your future. This book brings together all the information and insight you need to make those decisions—and make them the right ones.

Once, outsourcing was largely limited to IT. Suddenly, it touches everyone from telemarketers to tax preparers, radiologists to market researchers. No American company or knowledge worker can ignore its challenge. Now, widely acclaimed author and consultant Ed Yourdon helps you understand the challenge of outsourcing—and meet it.

IT pros and knowledge workers: Protect your career

Eight realistic strategies for surviving the outsourcing revolution

How to compete with the entire low-cost world and win

Quantify, protect, and enhance your personal ñvalue propositionî

Executives: Make smarter outsourcing decisions

What to outsource, how to do it right, and when to avoid it

Outsourcing, the next generation: Beyond programmers

From telemarketers to accountants, clinical trials to market research

The politics and geopolitics of outsourcing

Backlash at home, upheaval overseas, and a plan for renewal

Along the way, Yourdon assesses the politics and economics of outsourcing, long-term implications for both suppliers and buyers of knowledge-based services, and much more.

Yourdon has been writing about outsourcing since before it had a name. In this book, he doesn't just predict your future, he helps you take control of it. ... Read more

Book Description

A leading economic journalist explains why Washington's responses to globalization have created a global worker surplus that undermines both American workers and those in developing nations.

As evidenced by the WTO riots in Seattle in December 1999, there is a volatile debate among Americans over how the new world economy affects our standards of living and our country's chances for future prosperity. With giant multinational companies based in the U.S. and other wealthy countries transferring ever more factories and labs to poorer countries, the fear is that slave-wage workers overseas are undermining the bargaining power of labor in the industrialized world.

As evidenced by the WTO riots in Seattle in December 1999, there is a volatile debate among Americans over how the new world economy affects our standards of living and our country's chances for future prosperity. With giant multinational companies based in the U.S. and other wealthy countries transferring ever more factories and labs to poorer countries, the fear is that slave-wage workers overseas are undermining the bargaining power of labor in the industrialized world.

In this book Alan Tonelson explains how a competition has emerged in which countries with the weakest workplace safety laws, the lowest taxes, and the toughest unionization laws win investment from American and European countries. Tonelson argues that this "race to the bottom" of labor standards has been the driving force behind the decline of American living standards for the past quarter century, and, as we have already begun to see, will cause even bigger problems for the worldwide economy as it continues.

Tonelson analyzes how the entry of such population giants as China, India, and Brazil into the global market have added fuel to the eroding labor standards. He reveals how an ever larger share of the foreign competition faced by American laborers is hitting not just fields such as apparel and toys, but many of America's highest wage industries such as aerospace and software. And he describes how the reeducation and retraining programs that political leaders say is the remedy to the problem will do nothing to help most Americans cope with competition from the global workforce.

A lively, provocative guide to the new global economy, The Race to the Bottom fills the gap of hard evidence in readable form in the globalization debate, providing the guidebook that American workers have been waiting for, and the indictment that our economic and policy establishments have been dreading. ... Read more

Reviews (9)

Fails to deliver on it's shock-value title.
"The Race To The Bottom" fails to deliver on it's shock-value title.

Author Tonelson provides considerable detail that demonstrate the
increase in job exports from US, yet still concludes that "of the
1990s, manufacturing wages ... grew ... 2.9 percent after adjusting for inflation" - pg. XIII. It was GREW, not shrank.
On page 48: "large influxes of legal and illegal imigrants into the United States have forced many of America's loweset income workers into a race to the bottom of the wage scale". Note that the AVERAGE worker is in fair shape. Finally, on page 137: "The race to the bottom is only the worst and most important symptom, not the cause, of the global economy's problems."

The main thrust of the facts presented betray the book's title:
that dispite the truth that job export has had a deflationary
effect on US wages, those wage losses have been minimal. The facts presented would better name a book "downward wage pressure" - but of course that title would not sell many books.

Not a waste of time, but by itself this book paints an incomplete
picture. "The Dollar Crises" by Richard Duncan is better, and with "Tommorrow's Gold" by Marc Faber fill the most of void. Add
"Globalizaation and It's Discontents" by Joseph Stiglitz and a
much clearer view is created of the crazy world economy that we
must deal with.

Frightening
This book details the depressing details of globalization, and debunks the promises of free trade, like Mexico being a huge market(it isn't), most workers that lose their factory jobs would get new and improved high tech jobs(they haven't), and we'll do the high tech stuff and the Third World will do the low tech(not true). We are living in an age where business can relocate almost anywhere. Our corporations are dumping our highest paying jobs overseas and/or importing Third World workers to do them (like Indian programmers). The result is a slowly sinking standard of living. Between mass immigration and globalization it appears we may be at the beginning of a new age of poverty.
For "fun" scroll down to the first review of the book, down to the guy that gave it one star (apparently after reading only part of chapter one). Print it out and keep it with this book. After you read the book, re-read his review and then see if you can answer the question: What planet are the globalists living on?
This just in: According to NPR, one of the last textile factories in the US closed on October 22, 2002. It was a fancy high-end shirt factory in Maine. It had been in business for decades. The women there worked so fast that their hands were just a blur. Not fast enough apparently, as they couldn't compete with the sweat shops of the Third World. (NPR said "foreign competition") Some of the women had worked there for twenty years and cried when they left. I seem to remember the globablists saying that foreigners only took jobs Americans didn't want. Perhaps those women were just crying tears of joy.

Facts First And Feelings Second
I found this work to be significant in that the title and the content described clearly the global trade dynamic which we find our selves in today. I'd heard George Gilder a few years back tell a gathering of telecomm executives that they were caught up in this very dynamic; many of them have already lost that race and are no longer with us.

Mr. Tonelson's research is clearly evident in this book. He has done the heavy lifting(analysis)needed to make considered and substantiated statements about something a complex as the impact of global trade on our quality of life in this country.

I recently read "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" by Thomas Friedman and thought it a good counterpoint to "The Race To The Bottom."

"The Race To The Bottom" is richer in the numbers and is focused on us, while "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" is the more subjective and places the subject in a global and human context.

I highly recommend both books, however if you want solid facts before solid impressions, I'd say read "Race To The Bottom" first to get a good sense of "what." Then read "The Lexus And The Olive Tree" to figure out the "why" of it all.

My thanks to both authors.

globalization is bad for your health
Tonelson describes in detail why the current trade system, aka globalization, will cause the purchasing power of the US population to go down the drain. (Yes, the book is written with a US bias, but it applies equally to Europeans). It describes a type of trade where factories (even sophisticated ones) are shipped off to China, Mexico, Malaysia... only to see US/European labor displaced by a torrent of cheap imports. Further aggravating the downward spiral in the standard of living of Americans/Europeans are the massive immigration flows - more cheap labor to compete for the dwindling manufacturing jobs. There is a chapter on the asymmetric type of trade that is worthwhile reading; it describes how countries like Korea do everything to build sophisticated industries with the intent of exporting primarily to the US, but at the same time do everything to impede US imports (except the capital goods necessary to build the original factories). The implications of the lopsided trade are catastrophic for all involved - US, Europe, Japan and the Asian tigers.
The consequences of globalization are massive and detrimental to US and Europe, and this requires an informed debate on the issues. This book is an important document that analyzes some of the reasons that globalization is detrimental to your health. The book nicely skirts "econospeak" - the type of analysis that causes brain damage. It makes its points backed up by data - it refers to the real world!!
On the downside: the book suffers from a wee bit of repetition - I guess the editor got lazy. The few graphs in the book discuss identical points with slightly changed data - this is on the less than useful side.
All in all, I read the book, and was happy I did so.

Freefall to Nowhere
Readers looking for ammunition in the ongoing battle against globalization would do well to pick up this book. It's not an unmixed triumph of analysis, but the author succeeds in putting a perspective on the results of globalization so far. His thesis is simple but devastating. Despite the media hype from politicians, economists, and other corporate types, popular perceptions are not wrong: globalization is driving down American living standards. Such sacrifices might be acceptable were there real prospects of a globally-led improvement down the road. However, Tonelson also argues that such promised benefits will fail to materialize unless real changes are made in policy currently defining global integration. It's the book's burden to carry out these claims, which, I believe, the author does with varying degrees of success. The book itself is compact and to the point, with few graphs, but sufficient statistics that are well integrated into the text, and a metculously footnoted appendix - All of which make for unencumbered reading.

Two points concerning the contents. Tonelson, like many others, gets careless in equating globalization with free trade. The two are not only conceptually distinct, but as the author himself shows, distinct in practice as well. For example, protectionist frameworks in many countries have encouraged "offsets", which amount to tradeoff schemes whereby the host country extracts concessions from foreign investors in return for project approval. Offsets have been a significant force behind "outsourcing" and the loss of good American jobs, quite apart from free-market measures such as NAFTA.Thus outsourcing as an aspect of global integration will likely drain American jobs with or without open markets. Second, Tonelson's solution to globalism's woes lies in US "unilateralism". Basically unilateralism amounts to getting tough with America's industrialized trading pardners, using domestic market access to leverage protected markets, such as Japan's. There is a well known risk here that the author unfortunately bypasses. As previous administrations have understood, a policy of unilateralism risks shattering the fragile multilateral framework kept in place for 50-odd years by US hegemony. Though trade wars are no longer certain in a nuclear age to end in shooting war, their outcome is highly uncertain and bound to loose unforeseeable consequences. Yet, Tonelson makes a strong point when he argues that the US cannot continue to act as purchaser of last resort in order to keep a harmonious framework in place. Something has to give. There is a real question implicit in a proposal like unilateralism, unaddressed in the book. Have the needs of an emerging global economy finally exhausted the era of Pax Americana, and, if so, what will take its place? ... Read more

Book Description

For human resource professionals, labor law specialists, and others involved in the practice of labor-management relations, Lenscis provides a concise, easily-accessed description of the workers compensation system in the United States, its governing laws and also its insurance aspects. Covering all major facets of workers compensation legislation and the insurance and risk management techniques used to comply with them, his book will have equal benefits for the staffs of insurance companies and brokerages, compensation and claims professionals, and for workers compensation executives in governmental agencies. ... Read more

Book Description

This book presents economic theories that seek to explain the prevalence of differentiated products in market economies. It uses these theories to derive market equilibria and to compare these to social optima for both horizontally and vertically differentiated products. The implications of product differentiation for market structure and power, strategic entry deterrence and international trade are all examined. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

: ) easy to read
This book presented various theories on product differentiation in a readable manner. It does not take you much time to pick up the idea presented in this book. Models covered are also basic. I think having some prior knowledge in game theory can help you understand better the materials. However, this book does not contain discrete choice theory, which is a more difficult topic. ... Read more

Book Description

Servants of Globalization is a poignant and often troubling study of migrant Filipina domestic workers who leave their own families behind to do the mothering and caretaking work of the global economy in countries throughout the world. It specifically focuses on the emergence of parallel lives among such workers in the cities of Rome and Los Angeles, two main destinations for Filipina migration.

The book is largely based on interviews with domestic workers, but the book also powerfully portrays the larger economic picture as domestic workers from developing countries increasingly come to perform the menial labor of the global economy. This is often done at great cost to the relations with their own split-apart families. The experiences of migrant Filipina domestic workers are also shown to entail a feeling of exclusion from their host society, a downward mobility from their professional jobs in the Philippines, and an encounter with both solidarity and competition from other migrant workers in their communities.

The author applies a new theoretical lens to the study of migration-the level of the subject, moving away from the two dominant theoretical models in migration literature, the macro and the intermediate. At the same time, she analyzes the three spatial terrains of the various institutions that migrant Filipina domestic workers inhabit-the local, the transnational, and the global. She draws upon the literature of international migration, sociology of the family, women's work, and cultural studies to illustrate the reconfiguration of the family community and social identity in migration and globalization. The book shows how globalization not only propels the migration of Filipina domestic workers but also results in the formation of parallel realities among them in cities with greatly different contexts of reception. ... Read more

Book Description

How has race determined the course of American history? From the Revolution to the New Deal, from the Civil War to the Second World War, race has been at the center of virtually every national turning point. In a brilliant book, Michael Goldfield doggedly documents the persistence of racism in the American nation through a penetrating assessment of racism in the labor movement. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Marxists, Communists, Extreme Leftists-this book is for you
It was a great torture to plow through Braverman's Marxist diatribes. An example: "...the detailed division of labor subdivides humans, and while the subdivision of society may enhance the individual and the species, the subdivision of the individual, when carried on without regard to human capabilities and needs, is a crime against the person and against humanity." Wow. If you enjoyed that passage, this book may be for you.

It is Braverman's opinion that the poor fellow who works to make straight pins would be oh so much more happy if he was capable of making the entire straight pin instead of just knowing how to put the head on the pin. It seems that in breaking his job down industry has robbed him of the glory of producing an entire straight pin. The fulfillment of creating the entire pin is lost to him forever because of the evil, dehumanizing, capitalistic management. Woe to the worker.

It's the same old story. Leftists complain and complain about the state of things but cannot offer a better alternative. My favorite current day lament: Jobs have been "dumbed-down" too much, but oh no, these dumbed-down jobs are being outsourced to other countries. Woe. Woe. Woe.

Unless you have no choice and this book is assigned to you by a marxist professor, my advice is RUN AWAY!

Technological determinism
This book is the classic in the field of labor process. Marx put the labor process at the center of his masterpiece, ¡®The Capital¡¯. But since then, not much, if any, studies were done in Marxist schools. This book filled the temporal gap between Marx and the 20th century in the Marxist tradition. The author focused on the labor process under the Fordism. Braverman illustrates convincingly how the work, under the discipline of scientific management or Taylorism, becomes fragmented, dull, and repetitive tasks. The work is degraded. There has been not much objection to this argument. But when it comes to technology, things are different. His argument has too much smell of determinism. The theme of this book could put in this way: how the peculiar technological change in Fordism affected the feature of work and the differentiation of working class. No dispute. But his prophecy on technological change seems to go too far: every new technology just destroys our jobs and degrades the work. This kind of grim image has proliferated with the high-tech wave of the 1990s. Should we listen to such a forecast? I don¡¯t think so.
Braverman made a wrong calculation. In the larger picture, technological innovations, driven towards cost-saving and enhancing efficiency, bring job growth with revamped competitiveness of the industry and economy-wide. For example, in the US economy, when the IT investment leaped up in service sector during the 1980s, unemployment rate skyrocketed. But despite continuous downsizing and rapid diffusion of IT, unemployment rate fell sharply in the 1990s. High rates in EU area and Japan should be attributed to the factors of business cycle or rigid labor market. If Harry Braverman took the helm, the economy would end up in bankruptcy to nobody¡¯s interest. It¡¯s the picture of France or Spain, Italy. Even in Italy, the technologically innovative north faces labor shortage not unemployment. Here we can hardly see any relationship between new technology and overall unemployment rate.
Sure. Every new technology makes old one obsolete, so it lead to deskilling of labor. But in turn, it entails its own skilled labor. Since the 1970s, the manufacturing sector experienced substantial technological upgrading. It resulted in the shift of labor market composition: jobs in manufacturing, less-educated work declined. Investment in earlier technologies negatively impacted mainly low-skilled production workers, particularly in the 1970s and early 1980s, whereas investment in IT negatively impacted mainly low-skilled white-collar workers in the 1980s and 1990s. Resulting bloody downsizing and restructuring have decimated so many middle-paying jobs in factories and offices. Workers who lost those jobs, especially older workers, are likely fall into lower-paying jobs or, facing long-term unemployment, retire from the labor force. But all kinds of new jobs are being created as the old ones disappear, although the new jobs go to new entrants or younger workers moving up the job ladder.
Technophobe alarmists gain popularity because whatever the effect of creative destruction might be, the impact on employment is hardly painless. Technology is important. However, what is technology at all? It made no sense, were it not run by people. The impacts of technology on work are not simple, not necessarily direct, and cannot be considered in isolation. As seen above, their relation is not clear but spurious at best. The real mechanism lies in political and economic contexts that govern the conditions of work. Thus, when we talk about technology, we cannot forget about all those other human factors affect its use and what it does to the lives of workers, employers and citizens

Updating labor theory for the age of high technology
Labor and Monopoly Power, by Harry Braverman, brings basic Marxist labor theory up to date for the modern age. Though written 25 years ago, Braverman's work is the ideal guideline to understanding the age of information technology. Braverman expertly explodes the smug myths of "knowledge age" boosters by drawing the parallels to earlier industrial technology. The major misapprehension exploded is the one that says workplace automation demands higher skills and upgrades jobs. Braverman, through developing and applying the ideas not only of Marx, but of management proponents such as Babbage, Taylor and Bright, makes a convincing case for the opposite. Computers, like other technology before them, are being applied in ways that expose two objectives: (1) the reduction of the absolute numbers of workers, and (2) the reduction of skills among the remaining workers. Braverman's 1974 book was prophetic in that it described longstanding capitalist relationships that, applied vigorously since that time, have led to increasing income inequality in America. ... Read more

Book Description

Poverty may have always been with us, but it hasn't always been the same. In an in-depth look at trends, patterns, and causes of poverty in the United States, John Iceland combines the latest statistical information, historical data, and social scientific theory to provide a comprehensive picture of poverty in America--a picture that shows how poverty is measured and understood and how this has changed over time, as well as how public policies have grappled with poverty as a political issue and an economic reality.

Why does poverty remain so pervasive? Is it unavoidable? Are people from particular racial or ethnic backgrounds or family types inevitably more likely to be poor? What can we expect over the next few years? What are the limits of policy? These are just a few of the questions this book addresses. In a remarkably concise, readable, and accessible format, Iceland explores what the statistics and the historical record, along with most of the major works on poverty, tell us. At the same time, he advances arguments about the relative nature and structural causes of poverty--arguments that eloquently contest conventional wisdom about the links between individual failure, family breakdown, and poverty in America. At a time when the personal, political, social, and broader economic consequences of poverty are ever clearer and more pressing, the depth and breadth of understanding offered by this handbook should make it an essential resource and reference for all scholars, politicians, policymakers, and people of conscience in America. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Concise and complete
A must have for those working in labor unions or companies with union contracts.

A must for Management and Union
I became a union representative and had no prior labor relations experience. This book taught me everything I needed to know to process grievances. I don't know what I would have done without it! This is a must for all labor relations professionals, union and management. ... Read more

Book Description

Human Capital Over the Life Cycle synthesizes comparative research on the processes of human capital formation in the areas of education and training in Europe, in relation to the labor market.

The book proposes that one of the most important challenges faced by Europe today is to understand the link between education and training on the one hand and economic and social inequality on the other. The authors focus the analysis on three main aspects of the links between education and social inequality: educational inequality, differences in access to labor markets and differences in lifelong earnings and training. Almost all the stages in the life cycle are tracked from early childhood to stages late in the working life: firstly the characteristics and effects of schooling systems, then the transitions from school to work and, finally, human capital and the working career. ... Read more

Amazon.com

In 1959, meatpackers in the little Minnesota town of Albert Lea went on strike to demand better working conditions and higher rates of pay. The plant's owners brought in strikebreakers from nearby towns, violence ensued, the governor of Minnesota called in the National Guard, and for a few days news from Albert Lea filled papers around the United States.

The incident has long been forgotten, even by many local residents. Cheri Register, who was 14 years old at the time, is one who remembers it well. In this affecting memoir of working-class life, she pays homage to her father, who worked in the plant for 31 numbing years, earning 70 cents an hour when he started, a bit more than five dollars an hour when he retired. The work was dangerous and unpleasant, but still an improvement over the alternatives, for, as she writes, "My entire family failed at farming in one of the richest stretches of the corn belt, where water was so plentiful it had to be drained away and the soil so thick that geologists could find no exposed rock."

As she recounts the strike and her father's life, Register describes how the subsequent generational conflicts of the 1960s and her own aspirations divided her family. "To be successful," she writes, "which means free from grueling labor, the children of blue-collar families must be driven from home, away from the familiar and secure." Her book is both a homecoming and a welcome contribution to labor history. --Gregory McNamee ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Tribute to the Greatest Generation's working-class
I don't much like memoirs. But Packinghouse Daughter, by Cheri Register, is not a typical memoir. It is enchanting, disturbing, and provocative. It should be read by a wide range of readers, including academics and other middle-class professionals who pride themselves on "siding with the working class." It shatters some of our illusions and our tendency to romanticize our identification with working-class people even as it encourages us to hold fast to our principles. The book should also be read by the countless working-class parents who worked hard to give their children the life they knew they could never have. Speaking for those children, this book says eloquently: we honor you, our parents, for your commitments and principles and will try to carry those into our very different worlds. As a bonus, the book's author tells her story so well, with a disarming openness about her conflicted emotions and with such humor and earthy but deep insight, that it will be accessible even to those who don't read much.

Register tells a story of growing up in the 1950s as the daughter of a longtime employee of the Wilson meatpacking plant in Albert Lea, Minnesota, not far from the more famous (and, in her account, more favored) Hormel plant in Austin. Coming-of-age memoirs now flood the market with stories that cater to our need for a revised Horatio Alger myth. In countless stories--many of them moving, important stories for our time--children grow up suffering from unspeakable poverty, abusive or otherwise dysfunctional families, or racism, but somehow survive and overcome those conditions to become not wealthy business moguls but their equivalent in our politically correct age: writers or academics who speak out against poverty, violence, and racism. Despite some similarities, this memoir is different. Register acknowledges gratefully that her parents provided an emotionally and economically secure environment for her, while educating her about her place in a world with more complicated class divisions than we see in most popular memoirs. It is, in part, her more subtle account of those divisions that makes her story so compelling.

Make no mistake about it: this is a one-sided story. Register's father is a loyal union man, and she is loyal to the union line, too, especially in telling the story of a particularly divisive labor dispute in 1959. But even when she makes it clear where she believes justice and unfairness lie, she complicates the story in ways that enrich our understanding rather than feed our prejudices.

I grew up in rural Ohio only slightly later than Register, the son of a small-town midwestern merchant in a solidly middle-class family with undoubtedly less disposable income than Register's. My father, like many of Albert Lea's merchants, resented the unions that secured better wages for the workers in the nearby General Motors plant than he thought he could afford to pay his loyal, hard-working employees--some of whom earned more than he did. That experience has always made me suspicious of class-based analyses of rural and small-town life. But Register's subtle class analysis of life in mid-century Albert Lea rings true even to my suspicious ears.

It also rings true because Register does not rely on memory alone. She consulted contemporary sources and interviewed a wide range of informants-balancing her interview with the union president by her interview and sympathetic portrayal of the plant manager, for example. Register knows what memories--hers and her informants--are good for. They convey the sentiment of the times. In that sense her account is sentimental in the best sense of that word. Her language is so vivid and her memories so fine-tuned that we feel we are walking the streets of Albert Lea with her, encountering mid-century sights and sounds that conjure up our own memories. But she knows enough not to trust memories when they become nostalgic, and she walks that fine line with a fine sense of balance.

Register also manages to succeed where many memoirists try but fail: though cast as a memoir, this book feels like it is more about the times than it is about her. Packinghouse Daughter is an eloquent and fitting tribute to the working-class lives of The Greatest Generation.

A Perfect Memoir
I first found out about this book in an article in the Rochester newspaper about the Minnesota Historical Society Press. Since then, I have purchased several of their books. *Packinghouse Daughter* won the American Book Award and the Minnesota Book Award for autobiography, and it deserved both prizes heartily! This book is full of interesting people, class struggle, a young woman coming of age, and old-fashioned Midwestern life. If you hate those whiney memoirs about bad childhoods then this is the perfect antidote.

I would also recommend Steven R. Hoffbeck's *The Haymakers,* which won the Minnesota Book Award for history, and Peter Razor's *While the Locust Slept,* which deserves to win every award out there--both from the Historical Society. These books, like Register's, are good stories concerned with how ordinary people get by and sometimes make an important impact on our culture. These heartfelt books should be read by Americans everywhere and should be the standard for all publishers to meet.

recommended reading
Even if you are not from the midwest or know nothing about the meat packing business this book will give you much to think about. Cheri has a way of bringing you into her experiences.

A gift to working-class families
This book -- personal and warm -- is an extraordinary gift to kids of working-class parents. Cheri Register says things that I felt about my own dad and about my own home town, but that I was never able to say to him. She shows how what we do for a "living" is really central to shaping who we are in the bigger world. Thank you for this book!

Packs a punch
This book does all the things so many memoirs fail to do. The author attempts to understand her parents, especially her father, rather than condemn them. She is critical of herself as often as anyone else. And, as Carol Bly points out in her blurb, she presents both a "public and personal memoir." Thus, the story of the 1959 meatpackers strike in Albert Lea, Minnesota, takes center stage. It becomes the flashpoint for future examination of class, gender, and the divide between union and management. By using this event as the book's anchor, Register reveals as much about the life of this small town as she does about herself. The point, it seems, is that her home town could as easily be our home town. We know these people. They happen to be packinghouse workers, but they could be Maine lobstermen fighting for fishing rights or small-plot farmer in the Southwest struggling for water rights. Best of all, Register makes you understand the human concerns of people on both sides. Where so many books would have chosen to demonize the plant managers, Register makes you see their point of view. By eschewing political agenda and dismissing easy propaganda, *Packinghouse Daughter* goes straight to the heart of the most basic American struggle. ... Read more