This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book examines the links between economic growth, changing employment conditions, and the reduction of poverty in Latin America in the 2000s. Our analysis answers the following broad questions: Has economic growth resulted in gains in standards of living and reductions in ...

Prisons have always existed in a climate of crisis. The penitentiary emerged in the early decades of the nineteenth century as an enlightened alternative to brute punishment, one that would focus on rehabilitation and the inculcation of mainstream social values. Central to this goal was physical labour. The penitentiary was constructed according to a plan that would harness the energies of the prison population for economic profit. As such, the institution became central to the development...

A frightening look at the meat industry’s cost to public health, worker safety, and the future of medicine—as well as the potential for agricultural reform.Over the past century, new farming methods, feed additives, and social and economic structures have radically transformed agriculture around the globe, often at the expense of human health. In Chickenizing Farms and Food, Ellen K. Silbergeld reveals the unsafe world of chickenization—big agriculture’s t...

Millions of people—nearly 3 percent of the world’s population—no longer live in the country where they were born. Every day, migrants enter not only the United States but also developed countries without much of a history of immigration. Some of these nations have switched in a short span of time from being the source of immigrants to being a destination for them. International migration is today a central subject of research in modern labor economics, which seeks to put into perspective a...

A provocative new approach to race in the workplaceWhat role should racial difference play in the American workplace? As a nation, we rely on civil rights law to address this question, and the monumental Civil Rights Act of 1964 seemingly answered it: race must not be a factor in workplace decisions. In After Civil Rights, John Skrentny contends that after decades of mass immigration, many employers, Democratic and Republican political leaders, and advocat...

Al Capone moved into union racketeering in 1920s, one of many Mafia bosses who did so. Three Capone surrogates were murdered in cold blood in the Blue Hour Saloon on April 20, 1930. A single assassin was responsible for all three deaths. The murders represented a rupture in the peace agreement in the Chicago underworld of 1930. It was also a bonafide challenge to Capone's hegemony as boss of bosses in the windy city. My e-book looks at the murder victims, how they related to Capone's union...

Our jobs are often a big part of our identities, and when we are fired, we can feel confused, hurt, and powerless—at sea in terms of who we are. Drawing on extensive, real-life interviews, Job Loss, Identity, and Mental Health shines a light on the experiences of unemployed, middle-class professional men and women, showing how job loss can affect both identity and mental health.Sociologist Dawn R. Norris uses in-depth interviews to offer insight into the experience of losi...

For nearly three decades, English has been the lingua franca of cross-border organizations, yet studies on corporate language strategies and their importance for globalization have been scarce. In The Language of Global Success, Tsedal Neeley provides an in-depth look at a single organization—the high-tech giant Rakuten—in the five years following its English lingua franca mandate. Neeley’s behind-the-scenes account explores how language shapes the ways in which employees who work...

Economy, Work and Education: Critical Connections addresses effects of neoliberal capitalism in particular regard to work and education. The book elaborates key aspects and problems of generalized policy models of knowledge-based economies and learning societies in contexts of liberalized firm action, accelerated competitiveness and labor market flexibility. It discusses limits and paradoxes of higher skilled, knowledge-based economies which include significant disparities in labo...

Ask any manager today and they will say their biggest concern is the competition for talent, good employees. The business costs and impact of employee turnover can be grouped into four major categories: costs resulting from a person leaving, hiring costs, training costs, and lost productivity costs. The estimated cost to replace an employee is at least 150 percent of the person's base salary. As you can see managers must learn to hire, train, and keep your employees highly motivated.

Explores the ongoing transformation of service relationships, focusing on the incorporation of the customer's active contribution to virtually all aspects and stages of the production process. This volume illuminates social relations and interaction between customers and service providers as well as between the users of web-based services.

This volume presents original theory and research on precarious work in various parts of the world, identifying its social, political and economic origins, its manifestations in the USA, Europe, Asia, and the Global South, and its consequences for personal and family life.In the past quarter century, the nature of paid employment has undergone a dramatic change due to globalization, rapid technological change, the decline of the power of workers in favor of employers, and the sprea...