Global Competition and the American Landscape as We Enter the 21st Century : New York University 52nd Conference on Labor

The global advance of the market economy exposes the American workforce to ever-greater competition from foreign product and labor markets. As a consequence, employers and employees in all forms of enterprise find themselves building new and complex relationships in order to maintain mutually acceptable levels of compensation, security, and trust.

In order to describe the contours of current global realities in labor and employment, to discern salient trends, and to formulate alternatives for dealing with the most pressing implications for the American workforce, New York University's Annual Conference on Labor for 1999 focused on the subject of global competition.

This important book presents the papers presented at the 52nd Conference, with several additional papers. In its pages nearly fifty noted American labor and employment experts offer penetrating analyses of developments and trends in such areas as the following:

• Job security
• Contingent work arrangements
• The growth of the service sector
• The decline of labor unions
• Employee contractual rights
• The effect of foreign labor and employment law on the US workforce
• Statutory minimum term and 'just cause' worker protection laws
• Employee ownership
• The growing importance of intellectual property rights in employment relationships
• Employment dispute resolution; and
• International labor standards.