I am posting this paper on new labor organizations in the U.S. by my Japanese colleague Ken Yamazaki, deputy senior researcher at the Japan Institute for Labor Policy and Training. Yamazaki and his organization conducted a survey in the U.S. to understand the "collapse of the New Deal industrial relations system" and the rise of new labor organizations including unions, organizations involved in vocational training and the Occupy Wall Street protesters. Ultimately, the project aims to better understand similar trends in Japan.
The theoretical framework the Japanese researchers use is that of my MIT Sloan School of Management colleague Paul Osterman's 2001 Working in America: A Blueprint for the New Labor Market.
I commend to you this ambitious work that serves as an introduction by Yamakazi et al. to a longer paper, "Social Networking of Labor Organizations: New Industrial Relations, Vocational Training and Advocacy Activity in the United States." The paper is being translated into English and is scheduled to be available by the end of the year. We'll post on EPRN.
The summary and the longer paper's references draw upon the theories and empirical research of EPRN researchers and LERA members, including Richard Locke (MIT) and Michael Piore (MIT) Janice Fine (Rutgers), Richard Freeman (National Bureau of Economic Research), Bruce Kaufman (Georgia State), Joel Rogers (Wisconsin) and me. The posted paper includes references to the late John T. Dunlop's 1958 Industrial Relations Systems. Dunlop, a LERA president, was a Harvard economist, department chair and Secretary of Labor in the administration of President Gerald Ford.
