Labor Unions in the United States

Labor unions are major participants in the world of work in the United States and abroad. Although union membership in the United States has steadily declined since the 1950s, unions continue to provide a critical countervailing force to the largely unchecked power of employers, whose strength has increased. Hence, to be successful in meeting their goals, unions must learn to deal creatively with the realities of automation, globalization, privatization, de-unionization, and the trend toward contingent work arrangements. Nonetheless, despite the disadvantages and struggles they face, labor unions in 2020 represented almost 16 million wage and salary workers, who have families who vote; therefore, they remain a core constituency for political and corporate America and a significant part of the economic landscape in this country and abroad. Unions remain a core constituency and continue to be a significant part of the economic landscape in this country and beyond.

Contingent workforce management: a holistic overview

Purpose This paper aims to illustrate a simple, holistic overview of contingent workforce management. Design/methodology/approach This paper’s viewpoint outlines benefits and challenges that employers and employees encounter with contingent work arrangements and highlights relevant human resource (HR) practices to effectively manage contingent workforce. Findings Benefits to employers are cost-effective hiring solutions, filling-up skill requirements, increasing numerical flexibility and diversity and broadened talent pool. Challenges include legal ramifications, hidden costs, confidentiality and security issues, low organisational commitment and productivity. For employees, benefits are working flexibility and financial gain and gaining work experience. Challenges include dependence on economy, irregular work hours, health risks and exploitation and differential treatment by employers. “Value-adding” practices of holistic hiring, onboarding, performance management, workplace training and developing resilient organisational culture can effectively manage contingent workforce. Research limitations/implications This paper provides a broader outline of benefits and challenges, both from employers’ and employees’ perspectives, linked with precarious employment. Further investigations on employers’ and employee’s perspectives based on specific types of contingent work arrangements (e.g. temporary agency workers and gig workers) can give in-depth insights. Originality/value This paper provides a simplified framework of pros and cons of contingent employment, along with practical HR remedies to manage contingent workforce.

Gig qualifications for the gig economy: micro-credentials and the ‘hungry mile’

This paper argues that micro-credentials are gig credentials for the gig economy. Micro-credentials are short competency-based industry-aligned units of learning, while the gig economy comprises contingent work by individual ‘suppliers’. Both can be facilitated by (often the same) digital platforms, and both are underpinned by social relations of precariousness in the labour market and in society. They are mutually reinforcing and each has the potential to amplify the other. Rather than presenting new opportunities for social inclusion and access to education, they contribute to the privatisation of education by unbundling the curriculum and blurring the line between public and private provision in higher education. They accelerate the transfer of the costs of employment preparation, induction, and progression from governments and employers to individuals. Micro-credentials contribute to ‘disciplining’ higher education in two ways: first by building tighter links between higher education and workplace requirements (rather than whole occupations), and through ensuring universities are more ‘responsive’ to employer demands in a competitive market crowded with other types of providers. Instead of micro-credentials, progressive, democratic societies should seek to ensure that all members of society have access to a meaningful qualification that has value in the labour market and in society more broadly, and as a bridge to further education. This is a broader vision of education in which the purpose of education is to prepare individuals to live lives they have reason to value, and not just in the specifics required of particular jobs.

The Investigation on Solution for Diseases Caused by Contingent Work

Contingent work was deemed as a precarious employment which could be characterised by an atypical, temporary and marginal form of work arrangement. There is increasing evidence that contingent employment is significantly associated with adverse health outcomes and three health outcomes will be expounded in this paper: depressive disorders, work-related fatigue and occupational injuries. Simultaneously, fruitful micro-and macro-level precautionary and recovery measures are also be provided, including application of positive psychology interventions (PPI strategies), amelioration of work environments and social support, establishment of a fatigue risk management system (FRMS), and development of multifaceted approaches. Furthermore, various recommendations will be afforded to improve the sustainability and practicability of the aforementioned measures in the future research. Overall, the effective implementation of precautions aimed at health promotion and injury prevention for temporary workforce is of paramount importance to the healthy development of the nation.

Escaping the Cubicle

A rise in contingent work, the increasing real estate costs for organizations, technological advances, and more recently, restrictions on movement emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in a sharp increase in the number of employees working from home. These have significant implications for individuals, organizations, and society. Yet the physical work environment within the home has received little attention from scholars. Research on traditional office settings indicates that the physical environment influences a range of well-being and performance outcomes, indicating a critical need for researchers to consider the impact of the physical work environment at home. To address this issue, the authors briefly summarize the effects of the physical work environment and review existing research on working from home. They then propose directions for future research and emerging methodologies to undertake this research. Finally, they detail the practical implications that these changes bring for individuals, organizations, and society.

Gender and Precarious Work in the United States: Evidence from the Contingent Work Supplement 1995–2017

A central element of the neoliberal phase of capitalism is the flexibilization of labor and the consequent prevalence of precarious work. Here, we discuss flexibilization, develop a definition and measure of precarious work using the Contingent Work Supplement to the Current Population Survey, and examine the gender composition of precarious work in the United States. We find that gender and racial hierarchies persist in precarious jobs over the 1995–2017 period. Women—and women with children in particular—are over-represented in precarious jobs compared to men. Our findings call for a consideration of the impact of the changing nature of work on different groups of workers, and a renewed role for policy to ensure equitable terms of social reproduction.

How Do Employers Choose between Types of Contingent Work? Costs, Control, and Institutional Toying

The increasing variety of contingent work raises the question of how employers choose between various types of contractual arrangements. The authors review relevant Employment Relations and Strategic HRM literature and distinguish four types of contingent contracts along the dimensions of costs and control. They argue that employers are making choices based on cost and control constraints but are able to reshape these constraints through “institutional toying.” Their case study of a German manufacturing plant and R&D center illustrates the mechanisms of institutional toying, which are consistent with the literature on institutional loopholes and exit options. The article develops propositions that explain the diversity of contingent work arrangements and show how toying strategies enlarge the range of options available to employers.

Unclear Signals, Uncertain Prospects: The Labor Market Consequences of Freelancing in the New Economy

The advent of various types of contingent jobs complicates selection criteria for full-time employment. While previous studies analyzed the penalties associated with other forms of contingent work, the labor market consequences of freelancing have been overlooked. I argue that freelancing works have features of both “good” and “bad” jobs, transcend the demarcation between “primary” and “secondary” sectors implied by segmentation theorists, and thus embed uncertainty around their categorization and meaning. Drawing on the “signal clarity” concept from management scholarship, I extend existing sociological works on employer perceptions of candidates by proposing a model to theorize how a history of freelancing affects workers’ prospects at the hiring stage. I present results from two interrelated studies. First, I use a field experiment that involves submitting nearly 12,000 fictitious resumes to analyze the causal effect of a freelancing work history on the likelihood of getting callbacks. The experiment reveals that freelancing decreases workers’ odds of securing full-time employment by about 30 percent. Second, I use data from 42 in-depth interviews with hiring officers to illustrate two mechanisms that could account for that observed effect. Interview data demonstrate that freelancing sends decidedly unclear competence signals: employers are hesitant to hire freelancers not because these candidates lack skills but because verifying these skills is difficult. Freelancing also sends clearer and negative commitment signals. This study sheds new lights on labor market segmentation theory and deepens our understanding of how nonstandard work operates as a vehicle for inequality in the new economy.

Innovation, Artificial Intelligence in Contingent Work-Force Management

In recent years, the global use of contingent workers is rapidly increasing despite the increasing quantity of artificial intelligence applications in business. The question is "how these companies leverage the use of artificial intelligence to enhance contingent workforce's management?". The ideal goal of this paper is to develop a purely conceptual application of innovation, artificial intelligence (AI) adjacent to contingent workforce management(CWM). The researcher used qualitative information gathered from various authors and observations to reinforce the usage of AI. One of the critical tools to integrate with contingent workforce management for reduction of time spent on human resource administrative tasks is AI. There must be a transformation of thinking, accepting positive organizational change, utilization of technology and openness to new technology to foster AI. Along with that, integrating contingent workforce management with AI reduces risks and costs, increases efficiency and quality of work. Innovation and Artificial intelligence have been used in five pillars performance of contingent workforce management to mitigate the challenges associated with it.