Abstract This paper begins by defining current trends in human resource management. It then looks at competing views of the workforce: patronage, civil service, and privatization. It examines techniques for defining change within an organization and discusses issues in the public sector.
From the Paper "The history of human resource management can be traced back to the early 1900s where human resource managers? original function was to control and influence the relationship between businesses and labor unions. Although human resource management was originally seen as a necessary evil to deal with labor unions, currently human resource managers are recognized as an essential part of any successful organization. Human Resource Management focuses on securing, maintaining, and utilizing an effective work force essential to an organizations success. Human Resource Management involves a variety of activities including recruitment and screening of prospective employees, the study of training needs, preparing human resource forecasts, the development of compensation systems, and an understanding of the laws that effect the performance of these activities."
Abstract This paper outlines the historical development of the labor movement, especially focusing on role of women and minorities. It describes how women and minorities have suffered in the past and are presently still in process of being granted equal opportunity in labor.
From the Paper "The formation of gender and minority roles is prompted by changes or developments in economic conditions, and this can be seen in the way that different some cultures face problems with gender and minority status even though they are economically advanced countries. The economic status of individuals may not necessarily rid them off their stereotyped roles, as even today, as it was in the past, women and minorities still strive for equality in labor."
Abstract This paper looks at the history of labor relations in the field of baseball from John Montgomery Ward's first attempt to form a players' union in 1885 to the 32-day lockout during spring training in 1990. The author points out that the 2002 collective bargaining agreement was successfully negotiated with significant compromises on both sides and without a work stoppage. The paper concludes that this agreement ensures the continued fiscal health of America's favorite pastime.
Table of Contents
Labor History
1994-1995
2002 Collective Bargaining Agreement
From the Paper "In addition to higher ticket sales, an estimated 40 percent of this revenue came from the sale of broadcasting rights. Each team received around $18.6 million from national broadcasting revenue. Local broadcasting rights generated additional earnings, although this figure differed widely between cities. The New York Yankees, for instance, received $52 million in local broadcasting revenue while other franchises got less than one-tenth of that figure (Verducci 2002). In any case, a strike and the subsequent loss of broadcasting revenue would represent a significant income loss for both the owners."
Abstract Examines how to determine the kind of people needed, how to assess people who apply for jobs, the process of selection and rejection, and how to train employees. Examines key features of personnel selection and development.
From the Paper "The effectiveness of any organization depends, to a large extent, on the quality of its members. As a result, the methods that an organization employs to determine the kind of people it needs, how to ..."
Abstract Discusses barriers to employment, the need for workplace protections to prevent discrimination, laws and regulations that protect Americans with disabilities, and the need to enforce the laws.
From the Paper "Over the past three decades there have been a number of important advances made in terms of employment for Americans with disabilities. A number of laws, regulations, and federal initiatives have worked ..."
Abstract This paper discusses the minimum wage and, in particular, why it does not work in America today. It looks at how the federal minimum wage was created to ensure American workers received adequate and fair wages during the Great Depression, when jobs were scarce and wages were abysmally low and how, today, the federal minimum wage stirs controversy and ire in many areas of American politics and business. It evaluates how the federal minimum wage has served its usefulness and how many believe there are now better ways to ensure workers receive adequate wages.
From the Paper "Along with job loss, raising the minimum wage can also have severe affects in many other areas of the American economy. A rising minimum wage can make it more difficult for people to return to the workforce from welfare, and it can encourage high-school students to drop out, as many studies have shown, including this one: "Minimum wage jobs are often thought of as 'entry-level' jobs. The evidence in our data supports this view. Among the workers earning the minimum wage in the second year of our panels, 39.4% were not employed in the prior year" (Even & Macpherson, 2003, 676). This seems to support the theory that many high school and college-aged young people are leaving school for jobs."
Abstract This paper discusses how far women have come in the workplace. The jobs of women past compared to the jobs of women today. It discusses efforts such as Take Your Daughter to Work Day and the impact they have had on women's lives.
From the Paper "Throughout history women have held power positions such as queens, wives, lawyers, doctors and ambassadors to other nations. Women held some of the most powerful and hard working positions in biblical times. In pre-industrial society women worked right beside their husbands and children. Many believe that women's status in the workforce improved dramatically during World War I and World War II. The industrial boom of the late 19th and 20th centuries helped many women to enter the workforce. Although today women are entering more occupations than ever, there are still more glass ceilings to be broken."
Abstract This paper explores the ethical and economic concerns small and large businesses face when it comes to providing, or not providing, health care coverage to employees. The paper looks at the need for coverage for employees and the economic burden coverage places on businesses. Situations when a business should be ethically required to supply coverage and when it should not be required to do so are discussed, as well as which types of companies find health care coverage more economically feasible.
From the Paper "In the United States today, employers are usually not legally responsible for providing employees with health benefits. Only a few states require employers to provide workers with health care insurance. In other words, an employee has the choice of accepting or rejecting a job that does not provide him or her with health benefits, depending on whether he or she determines such a course of action to be prudent for him or herself. The employer may chose to provide health benefits to an employee or not, extending the option as part of an initial contract of employment, or later on during the employee's tenure at the company. (Findlaw for Business, 2003, "Employee's Rights) The employer's decision to do so will usually depend on the type of employee his or her business needs to attract to remain financially stable. Extending health benefits are one way of attracting a desirable employee. Usually, the company will do so if this is financially in the company's interest. However, there is another concern, if the business owner is ethically responsible to provide employees with health benefits""
Abstract The term "Affirmative Action" is used to represent the employment practices in the United States work force that has been provided sanctions by the federal government for the purpose of protecting the rights of women and minorities. This paper examines how the policy came about, the various judicial laws that came about because of them, and how employers have gone about implementing the policy. The paper looks at the views of proponents and critics of affirmative action, and, finally, looks at how it is viewed today in America's labor market.
From the Paper "We can state that job discrimination is basically because of bias and elimination, and it is important that we opt for affirmative action when and wherever required to try and overcome discrimination or prejudice. The best way to bring about this change is by getting the society and its people to try and come about with new techniques and methods to do exactly what the affirmative action requires of us. The same way we would treat a nutrition deficiency we should treat affirmative action with vitamin supplements."
This paper argues that developing and implementing programs to reduce employee stress will result in a reduction in health care costs, retention of employees, and improvements in production.
Abstract This paper analyzes the role and importance of organizational communication in managing stress at workplace in the current global business environment, which is often plagued by uncertainty, excessive competition, and pressure on profitability. Stress in its negative form has unlimited potential to cause long-term ill-effects to the organization in a variety of ways. If left unchecked, stress can cause losses in productivity, decline in employee performance, and health hazards in employees. This is an unwarranted cost to the organization, especially in today's environment, which is driven by the concept of lean management and cost reduction. Organizations are naturally keen to ensure that stressful forces are eliminated from the workplace to rule out potential costs on this count. The paper discusses the impact of stress on the psychological well-being and health of employees, highlighting the different health risks, such as depression, anxiety, alcoholism etc., that employees are likely to encounter in the course of their work. To support this view, the paper provides indications of costs and consequences of stress-related health problems, including fatal consequences, which the organizations can do well without. Impact of stress factors on the performance of employees and the major areas in workplace that can be subject to negative stress are discussed. The role of personal communication at the workplace to remove the stress-causing factors is highlighted. The paper recognizes the reality that stress is integral to human life and, in fact, drives performance within limits. It is only the negative side of stress that is detrimental to the individual and the organization and has to be eliminated or controlled. It is recommended that organizations implement stress management strategies to enable employees cope up with stress; for such efforts to be successful, the key requirement is effective organizational communication.
From the Paper "Stress at the work place is one of the most widely discussed topics today. The challenges of globalization of business, increased competition, advancing technology that result in job losses and the compulsion to perform are some of the macro-level reasons that contribute to stress among employees. Organizations suffer from the impact of stress in terms of absenteeism, higher employee turnover, poor quality and situations of conflict at the work place. In effect, stress adversely affects the overall performance of the organization. The origin of the term stress is the Latin word stringer, which means "to draw tight". The meaning of stress can be best understood from the basic concepts of physics and engineering. Stress arises when external or environmental forces of certain magnitude impact an object; the forces result in strain on the object and this may lead to either temporary or permanent distortion of the object, depending on the extent of force applied. In respect of humans, a situation that is likely to be threatening, ambiguous or burdensome is likely to induce stress. From a psychological perspective, stress is the difference between the demands placed upon the individual and the individual's ability to cope with these. (Ivancevich and Matteson, 32). The individual must experience the demand as excessive for the occurrence of stress. This leads to the inference that different people find different things stressful; what is stressful for one person may not be for another. For instance, one person may fear retirement from work, whereas another person of the same age may actually be looking forward to a retired lifestyle."
This paper discusses the Irish immigration to America, which was associated with the genocide in the Potato Famine of the 1840s and the policies of the British that caused the death of nine million Irish.
Abstract This paper specifically explains the immigration of the Irish to Connecticut and New England. Much of the information was developed by the Works Progress Administration, a Depression-era organization that initiated projects to keep writers employed. The author points out that, before the American Revolution, there was Irish immigration, but much of it was in the form of indentured servants who were regarded as only marginally more worthy than slaves. The paper states that the "massing of the green" aroused the New Englanders' fear of Catholicism because many Yankees thought only Protestantism was compatible with democracy and that the "Papists" would want a theocracy or religion-friendly monarchy.
Table of Contents
Mythical Images
Poor Huddled Masses
Native Fears
From the Paper "The Irish had come, whether the early indentured servants who had little choice, the second wave of the 1820s, or the third wave of the 1840s, in search of jobs. By 1870, they dominated the labor pool in the textile mills and such trades as bookmaking. The fact that they had come penniless and in search of jobs meant that, unlike settlers who had come with some money (some of the early Scandinavians and Germans, for example), they needed to settle in urban areas to perform those jobs. By 1860, about 21 percent of Hartford?s? population was Irish. By 1870, there was a similar contingent in New Haven."
Abstract Workplace violence, which is the second most common cause of death at work, often gets little or no attention. This paper first discusses the three groups that the Department of Justice has classified as workplace violence. It then looks at the cost to businesses, the warning signs of workplace violence, and ways of preventing it.
From the Paper "In spite of the steady rise in workplace violence, including everything from robberies to raging employees to stalking and domestic violence by third parties, IOMA found that more than 20% of the companies they questioned had no formal policy, and almost 40% had no training programs, either for management or rank and file employees. Even more startling, about 10% didn?t even have any system for tracking complaints when they occurred. A company cannot implement a thoughtful and effective workplace violence prevention policy and program if they are not even keeping track of the risk within their own walls."
Abstract This paper explores the impact that the Industrial Revolution and the information revolution had on society. The paper considers not only how the Industrial Revolution affected the amount of work people do and the amount of goods produced, but also the type of goods produced and how the machine age virtually eliminated the uniqueness and aesthetic qualities of the products. The paper looks at how the Industrial Revolution eventually led to the Arts and Crafts Movement, modernism, rationalism, and other aesthetic philosophies. The paper then examines the impact that the information revolution has had on society. How the information revolution affected democracy, power, the concentration of wealth, production, and new postmodernist philosophies is discussed as well.
From the Paper "It is difficult for anyone now alive to appreciate the radical changes that the Industrial Revolution brought to humanity. We imagine that we know what it was like before this shift in economics, in culture, in society: We think of farmers tilling fields and of their children piling hay into stacks for winter forage, or of trappers setting their snares for the soft-pelted animals of the forests, or of fishers casting their hand-woven and hand-knotted nets into the seas from the hand-sewn decks of ships. We imagine the hard physical work that nearly every person in society once had to do in the era before machines substituted their labor for ours ? and this exchange of human (and animal) labor for machine-driven labor is indeed one of the key elements of the Industrial Revolution."
Abstract This paper touches on several simple examples of workplace discrimination based on religion. It shows that with the continued expansion of the global market, situations of discrimination will continue to grow in difficulty. Employers must ensure they remain informed about changes in laws and create policies to comply with these laws. The paper suggests that training should be conducted on a continual basis to make managers, supervisors, and employees aware of discriminatory practices.
Paper Outline
Harassment
Undue Hardship
Workplace Rights: Muslims, Arabs, South Asians and Sikhs
Employer Responsibilities
Help from the EEOC
Conclusion
From the Paper "The EEOC is available to provide information and answer questions on how to best deal with workplace discrimination. Their website has a wealth of information translated into a simpler language than provided by laws and court examples. The EEOC also conducts training and can provide a format that is appropriate for all businesses. Small businesses face unique challenges that have warranted establishing Small Business Liaisons available to assist with compliance of laws."
Abstract This paper uses the case of Reeves vs. Sanderson Plumbing to discuss the issue of age discrimination in employment. The paper explains that this legislation provides protection against employment discrimination of any kind. As long as a person is able and willing to work, he/she cannot be discriminated against, provided his/her skills match the job for which he/she has applied.
From the Paper "Discrimination of any kind is considered an offence and it can exist in many forms including discrimination on the basis on age, sex, disability and pregnancy. These are some of the commonly known forms. Important cases in this connection have been helpful in explaining what constitutes discrimination and what can be the possible legal repercussions of such an offence. One such important case in Reeves vs. Sanderson Plumbing Inc. where a 57-year of worker of Sanderson Plumbing levied discrimination charges against his employer when Reeves was removed from his position after 40 years of employment."
Tags: legal, work, job, employer, employee, boss, fire, severence, old
