Brazil’s Deferred 1968

The consignment of industrial wage labor and its central figures to the status of ruins has become something of a cliché in contemporary scholarship and artistic practice. On this view, its demise first became apparent in the 1970s, the precise moment when Brazilian labor movements experienced their first significant gains. This article identifies, describes, and analyzes the emergence of a cinema-labor cycle in São Paulo (1977–82) that constitutes a key instance of Brazil’s “deferred 1968”: a complex response to the distinct pressures of a repressive military regime, entrenched paternalistic union structures, and the auteurist legacy in cinema. In their efforts to apprehend the largest strikes in recent history, filmmakers in the cinema-labor cycle attempted what had seemed elusive in Brazilian cinema up until this point: a mutually constituting alliance between cinema and labor. This article focuses above all on the new understandings of time—including urgency, immediacy, the present tense, and the belated—forged in these films, and the new relationships that emerged among artists and worker-activists as a result. Ultimately, an analysis of this film cycle queries attempts to inscribe both cinema and labor in the past tense.

Inter-industry wage inequality: persistent differences and turbulent equalisation

The empirical stylised fact of persistent inter-industry wage differentials is an enduring challenge to economic theory. This paper applies the classical theory of ‘real competition’ to the turbulent dynamics of these inter-industrial wage differentials. Theoretically, we argue that competitive wage determination can be decomposed into equalising, dispersing and turbulently equalising factors. Empirically, we show graphically and econometrically for 31 US industries in 1987–2016 that wage differentials, like regulating profit rates, are governed by turbulent equalisation. Furthermore, we apply a fixed-effects OLS as well as a hierarchical Bayesian inference model and find that the link between regulating profit rates and wage differentials is positive, significant and robust.

Cost economics in construction of multi storied buildings

India is fast moving forward from agrarian economy to Industrial Economy. Our country is considered to be a safe platform for industrial investment by the world. Global Leaders and very many MNCs (Multi-National Companies) are evincing keen interest in having Joint Venture or opening their manufacturing facility in India. India is witnessing a boom in industrialisation. This leads to vast employment opportunities to people of all walks of life. People are moving from rural areas to urban areas for occupational needs. This leads to mass arrival of people to city and consequently the rental costs also shoot up substantially. The industrial wage structure being reasonable with assured disposable income, people who prefer to stay in city start comparing rental costs versus paying EMI towards owning an apartment for themselves. The idea gets strong rooted with the easily available institutional finance to people, especially to youngsters with longer duration of EMI. All these result in a sustained demand for apartments. The builders, particularly in the city, are cashing in on the opportunity by embarking upon construction of multi storied buildings in the city and also the outskirts of same.

Domestic servants and the labour movement, 1870s–1914

Between the 1870s and 1914, there was no occupation with a higher proportion of women workers than domestic service. Female servants, however, faced the problem that many working-class people, including most socialists and trade unionists, did not see them as members of the working class. Refusing to take for granted the servants' proverbial deference and lack of class-consciousness, this chapter examines the numerous ways in which domestic servants tried to overcome the barrier separating them from the organised labour movement. Servants were not as isolated as one might think from other working-class people. Physical proximity with employers could actually fuel class resentment, and in comparing themselves to animals, slaves and machines, the servants signaled their commonality with the rest of the working class. The chapter also focuses on some of the servants' attempts to form unions of their own, in particular in Dundee and London. Through their obstinacy servants eventually gained inclusion in workers’ compensation and health insurance legislation between 1906 and 1913. This study of a long-neglected branch of the British proletariat suggests that the working class cannot be understood only in terms of industrial wage labourers and conventional trade union organisation.

Decomposing the structure of wages into firm and worker effects

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to show that for some key topics on labour economics such as the effect of seniority and job mobility in wages, it is important to explicitly consider firm fixed effects. The author also wants to test whether the importance of firm in explaining wage dispersion is higher or lower in Spain than in other European countries. Design/methodology/approach The author estimates an individual wage equation where firm and workers effects are considered and the estimation process control for censored wages. This exercise is performed for the Spanish economy over the course of a whole business cycle, i.e., 2000-2015. Findings The author demonstrates that Spanish firms contribute to explain around 27 per cent of the individual wage heterogeneity but more importantly around 74 per cent of inter-industry wage differentials. In both cases, this contribution is mainly related to large dispersion in firm’s wage policies. The process of positive sorting of workers across firms or industries does not play an important role. Interestingly, the importance of firm’s wage policies in explaining individual wage dispersion has increased over the current Big Recession. Practical implications The results confirm that firms set wages and, henceforth, are partially responsible for individual wage heterogeneity but more importantly for inter-industrial wage dispersion. Originality/value The exercise is performed under optimal conditions because the author uses a longitudinal matched employer-employee data set, observed wages are at a monthly frequency, and implements an estimation method suitable for censored models with two high-dimensional fixed effects. This is the first study that looks deeply into the role of firms in explaining wage heterogeneity at the individual and industry level in Spain and along the current Big Recession.

Transience, Labor, and Nature: Itinerant Workers in the American West

This article focuses on the tens of thousands of itinerant workers, also known as tramps or hoboes, who provided the primary labor force for the natural resource extraction industries of the American West in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Itinerant workers' visceral encounters with nature differed from the experiences of most urban residents in this era of city growth and related anxiety about Americans' loss of contact with the natural world. This article argues that some hoboes embraced time spent in “wild” nature as an escape from work, and they consciously asserted their ability to appreciate nature in the face of claims that such appreciation was class-specific. As workers and as travelers, itinerant laborers experienced and knew nature in ways that reflected both their distinct circumstances as mobile industrial wage workers and the cultural context of a national obsession with nonhuman nature.