Labor Market, Labor Studies - General & Miscellaneous, Working Class
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Overview
How did working people find jobs in the past? How has the process changed over time for various groups of job seekers? Are outcomes influenced more by general economic circumstances, by discriminatory practices in the labor market, or by personal initiative and competence? Walter Licht uses intensive primary-source research on a major industrial city for a period of over one hundred years to tackle these questions. He looks at when and how young people secured first jobs, the influence of agencies on the hiring process, schools and work, apprenticeship programs, unions, the role of firms in structuring work opportunities, the state as employer and as shaper of employment conditions, and the problem of losing work--the job search as a seemingly perpetual activity. Licht's findings enliven and sometimes revise specific scholarly and social policy debates. School programs, for example, are shown to have been unsystematic because of various social clashes; working-class children had only loose ties to schools. Men and women, blacks and whites, older-stock Americans and newcomers had disparate labor market experiences. Experience in the labor market varied not only by group and across time, but also during different stages of the individual's life. Getting Work is important reading for policymakers, social historians, economists, and students of management and industrial relations.Editorials
From the Publisher
"Exemplary. . . . A major contribution."—Journal of American History
"Licht contributes greatly to an understanding of the work force, the community, and the role of government and educational institutions on the economy."—Philadelphia Inquirer
"This is the way labor history should be practiced: not a fable about good and evil, but an engagingly written, thorough examination of the mundane, yet important, day-to-day working of the labor market."—Journal of Economic History
"A comprehensive treatment of how people became and remained workers in one of the nation's largest cities, and in it are lessons for today."—Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Book Details
Published
August 18, 1992
Publisher
Harvard University Press
Pages
336
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780674354289