This comprehensive textbook provides an introduction to collective bargaining and labor relations with a focus on developments in the United States. It is appropriate for students, policy analysts, and labor relations professionals including unionists, managers, and neutrals. A three-tiered strategic choice framework unifies the text, and the authors’ thorough grounding in labor history and labor law assists students in learning the basics. In addition to traditional labor relations, the authors address emerging forms of collective representation and movements that address income inequality in novel ways. Harry C. Katz, Thomas A. Kochan, and Alexander J. S. Colvin provide numerous contemporary illustrations of business and union strategies. They consider the processes of contract negotiation and contract administration with frequent comparisons to nonunion practices and developments, and a full chapter is devoted to special aspects of the public sector. An Introduction to U.S. Collective Bargaining and Labor Relations has an international scope, covering labor rights issues associated with the global supply chain as well as the growing influence of NGOs and cross-national unionism. The authors also compare how labor relations systems in Germany, Japan, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa compare to practices in the United States. The textbook is supplemented by a website (ilr.cornell.edu/scheinman-institute/research/introduction-us-collective-bargaining-and-labor-relations) that features an extensive Instructor’s Manual with a test bank, PowerPoint chapter outlines, mock bargaining exercises, organizing cases, grievance cases, and classroom-ready current events materials.

A less-expensive grayscale paperback version is available. Search for ISBN 9781680923018. Business Law I Essentials is a brief introductory textbook designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of courses on Business Law or the Legal Environment of Business. The concepts are presented in a streamlined manner, and cover the key concepts necessary to establish a strong foundation in the subject. The textbook follows a traditional approach to the study of business law. Each chapter contains learning objectives, explanatory narrative and concepts, references for further reading, and end-of-chapter questions. Business Law I Essentials may need to be supplemented with additional content, cases, or related materials, and is offered as a foundational resource that focuses on the baseline concepts, issues, and approaches.

Labor unions and courts have rarely been allies. From their earliest efforts to organize, unions have been confronted with hostile judges and antiunion doctrines. In this book, Julius G. Getman argues that while the role of the Supreme Court has become more central in shaping labor law, its opinions betray a profound ignorance of labor relations along with a persisting bias against unions. In The Supreme Court on Unions, Getman critically examines the decisions of the nation’s highest court in those areas that are crucial to unions and the workers they represent: organizing, bargaining, strikes, and dispute resolution. As he discusses Supreme Court decisions dealing with unions and labor in a variety of different areas, Getman offers an interesting historical perspective to illuminate the ways in which the Court has been an influence in the failures of the labor movement. During more than sixty years that have seen the Supreme Court take a dominant role, both unions and the institution of collective bargaining have been substantially weakened. While it is difficult to measure the extent of the Court’s responsibility for the current weak state of organized labor and many other factors have, of course, contributed, it seems clear to Getman that the Supreme Court has played an important role in transforming the law and defeating policies that support the labor movement.

Labour law has traditionally aimed to protect the employee under a hierarchy built on constitutional provisions, statutory law, collective agreements at various levels, and the employment contract, in that order. However, in employment regulation in recent years, ‘flexibility’ has come to dominate the world of work – a set of policies that reshuffle the relationship among the fundamental pillars of labour law and inevitably lead to degrading the protection of employees. This book, the first-ever to consider the sources of labour law from a comparative perspective, details the ways in which the traditional hierarchy of sources has been altered, presenting an international view on major cross-cutting issues followed by fifteen country reports. The authors’ analysis of the changing hierarchy of labour law sources in the light of recent trends includes such elements as the following: the constitutional dimension of labour rights; the normative intervention by the State; the regulatory function of collective bargaining and agreements; the hierarchical organization of labour law sources and the ‘principle of favour’; the role played by case law in both common law and civil law countries; the impact of the European Economic Governance; decentralization of collective bargaining; employment conditions as key components of global competitive strategies; statutory schemes that allow employees to sign away their rights. National reports – Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States – describe the structure of labour law regulations in each legal system with emphasis on the current state of affairs. The authors, all distinguished labour law scholars in their countries, thus collectively provide a thorough and comprehensive commentary on labour law regulation and recent tendencies in national labour laws in various corners of the globe. With its definitive analysis of such crucial matters as the decentralization of collective bargaining and how individual employment contracts can deviate from collective agreements and statutory law, and its comparison of representative national labour law systems, this highly informative book will prove of inestimable value to all professionals concerned with employment relations, labour disputes, or labour market policy, especially in the context of multinational workforces.

This open access book opens up the black box of mediation in collective conflicts through the analyses and comparisons of various systems. Mediation and related third party interventions such as conciliation and facilitation are discussed as effective prevention and regulation tools for different types of collective labor conflicts. These interventions fit in a new developed five-phase model of collective conflicts in organizations, going from capacity building in latent conflicts, through conciliation, mediation and arbitration in escalating phases, to rebuilding of trust after hot conflicts. The authors promote understanding and discussion with regards to labor mediation systems, presenting comparative research on the perspectives of mediators and users of mediation. This book describes and analyses laws, regulations and practices of mediation in seventeen countries, with a relative strong emphasis on Europe. Part 1 presents theoretical frameworks on conciliation and mediation in collective labor conflicts. Part 2 presents regulations and practices in 12 European countries: Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Part 3 discusses mediation in these collective conflicts in Australia, China, India, South Africa and the USA. Part 4 offers conclusions and ways forward. This book offers analyses, good practices and developments for third party intervention in collective labor conflicts in global and local changing environments. This book is a must-read for policy makers, , social partners at different levels, as well as scholars and practitioners in industrial relations, human resources management and conflict management, particularly conciliators and mediators.