Government Regulation of the Employment Relationship. - Review - book reviews

Administrative Science Quarterly,  Sept, 1999  by Holly McCammon

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Bruce E. Kaufman, ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. 565 pp. $29.95.

This is not the sort of book one would read cover to cover. Rather, although there is a wealth of information in the volume, the book is more a reference work that one would pull off the shelf to consult a chapter or two as one began research in a particular area of workplace regulation. The myriad of chapters (18 in all, written mainly by university scholars) offers a broad look at government regulation of the employment relationship. Many chapters summarize developments in law in a variety of legal areas, including regulation of minimum wages and overtime pay, worker compensation, unemployment insurance, pensions, workplace health and safety, unionization and collective bargaining, employment at will and wrongful discharge, affirmative action, and dispute resolution. Other chapters assess the empirical research on the impact of various regulations on workplace relationships, including pointing to areas in which there is a dearth of study, while still other chapters summarize theoretical approaches in the study of workplace regulation. The "old" and "new" institutionalist theories and neoclassical thinking are given much of this attention. Finally, other chapters suggest potential policy fixes for existing problems in employment regulation.

The unifying themes of the book become apparent early in the volume. Bruce Kaufman's chapter at the beginning of the book outlines the logic of the "old" institutionalists as they defined key reasons as to why government regulation of the workplace was needed. Many, if not most of these reasons, defined early in the century by John Commons and others, still exist today and can be summed up, as they are rather nicely in one of the later chapters of the book by Robert Pleasure of the AFL-CIO and Patricia Greenfield when they state, "Regulation which establishes minimum standards is necessary because in our social, moral, and economic systems there needs to be a counterbalance to unregulated employer power" (p. 517).

Another important theme appearing in a number of the chapters is a call for policies to ensure worker "voice" in the workplace. Richard Edwards, in his chapter on employee rights, proposes that employees be allowed to participate in elections to determine the content of employee handbooks. David Levine and Thomas Schneider discuss the positive roles workers and unions, respectively, can play in regulatory reform. David Weil extends this point by providing evidence that the presence of a union in a workplace increases the likelihood of compliance with government regulations on employment, fair hiring practices, and safety. Ray Marshall, addressing the need for revision of health and safety regulations, calls for joint labor-management committees.

While the book, or at least the chapters relevant to one's research will be indispensable reading for those working in these various areas of employment regulation, the volume also has its flaws. Some areas of law are not well-developed (or developed at all) in this volume. Policies concerning sexual harassment, employment of the disabled, and family leave come quickly to mind. And only one chapter, Mary Radford's, discusses anti-discrimination policy in any detail. Other areas get extended treatment across multiple chapters, in particular, labor standards legislation and workplace health and safety regulation. There are other redundancies across chapters. For instance, the debates between the institutionalists and neoclassical economists seem overworked in the chapters in the first half of the book but, oddly, disappear in the latter half of the book. Perhaps a more balanced treatment of the different areas of regulation and theorizing was called for. Finally, while not necessarily a flaw of the volume, potential readers should know that the book contains little that is original or new work. Rather, it supplies summaries and overviews of extant research and thought. Anyone delving into the intricacies of employment regulation, however, should have a look at this volume, at the very least at the index, to determine whether one's area of interest is included.

Associate Professor of Sociology

Vanderbilt University

Nashville, TN 37235

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