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In Lancashire cotton spinning in the heyday of laissez-faire capitalism the labor market did not operate as an auction market. Evidence on piece-rate flexibility, length of tenure, and seniority is consistent with Okun's contract approach. Both workers and firms incurred initial set-up costs. Workers wanted to protect their initial investments in training, and firms, faced with a labor supply that varied in reliability and regularity, had a desire to cover initial hiring and tryout costs. The need to maintain long-term attachments had implications for wage and employment adjustment and the age structure of the labor force.

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Using yarn prices and output as proxies for wages and employment, this paper asks how cotton spinning firms in the heyday of industrialization responded to demand shocks. The evidence is consistent with a two-sector efficiency wage model composed of large and small firms. Large firms incurred monitoring costs on their new technology. To eliminate shirking, they paid efficiency wages and laid off workers when faced by a reduction in demand. In small firms technical change was slower, and since monitoring was not a problem, they cut wages. Over the period, the number of small firms declined and layoffs increased.

Using the record books of M'Connel and Kennedy, a leading cotton-spinning firm in Manchester, this article traces the development of managerial strategies to elicit effort from workers during the Industrial Revolution. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the firm had difficulty in extracting effort from its workers, who were unwilling to increase output without capturing some of the gains through wage adjustments. Since spinners controlled the work organization, M'Connel and Kennedy had to accommodate workers' demands for stable piece rates, which were codified in the Manchester list of prices of 1829.

The first generation of enterprises during the industrial revolution had made sizeable investments in new machinery and plant, and to amortise these fixed costs it is widely believed that firms worked long hours, regardless of the state of trade. A detailed study of Lancashire textile firms in 1841 shows this picture to be inaccurate. Short-time working was a common response of firms, especially large ones, during cyclical downturns in the nineteenth century. Firms used collective output cuts as a means to protect the wage lists they had negotiated with workers. The lists also promoted and preserved the regional basis of the industry. As for workers, they saw short-time as a means to protect their jobs and the standard relation between effort and pay. Enforced by sanctions on firms that broke output agreements, short-time evolved into a rule of thumb in the Lancashire textile industry.

Le partage de l'emploi, conditions et avantages, étudié à partir de l'exemple de Bell Canada et celui de Volkswagen en Allemagne.

At the outset of the industrial revolution the Lancashire labour market was a model of thoroughgoing competition. Wages adjusted quickly and smoothly to changes in the demand for and supply of labour. Within two generations, however, workers and firms had retreated from the market. Instead of busting wages, firms paid fixed rates; instead of breaking ties on short notice, workers sought longer-term associations. Social norms - doing the right thing - protected and preserved the fresh labour market arrangements. This book explains the causes and effects of changes in the labour market in the context of developments in labour economics and fresh research in social and economic history.

One technique which some hospitals have used in an attempt to control Operating Room costs is a “zero tolerance for overtime” policy. We used a case cost analysis to determine if this policy was always cost effective.

This paper evaluates five recent experiences of worksharing in Québec since 1994: Bell Québec, Alcan, Scott Paper, the Ministère de l'Environnement et de la Faune and Sico. Participation in voluntary worksharing programs was high where workers' sacrifice (lost wages) was not great and where workers had previous experience with shorter or flexible work hours. Where worksharing was mandatory programs were less successful. We draw out implications for policy. To achieve higher participation rates and to give workers experience with shorter hours, governments can play a positive role in financing or kick-starting worksharing programs. Cette étude évalue cinq expériences récentes de partage du travail au Québec depuis 1994 : Bell Québec, Alcan, Les papiers Scott, le Ministère de l'Environnement et de la Faune, et Sico. Le taux de participation aux programmes de partage du travail offerts sur une base volontaire était élevé dans les entreprises où les sacrifices que devaient consentir les travailleurs (les pertes salariales) n'étaient pas considérables et dans celles où les travailleurs avaient déjà fait l'expérience d'un horaire de travail flexible ou réduit. Dans les cas où le partage du travail était imposé, les programmes ont remporté moins de succès. Nous déduisons des conséquences en matière de politique publique. Entre autres, pour atteindre des taux de participation plus élevés et initier les travailleurs à un horaire réduit, les gouvernements peuvent jouer un rôle positif en finançant ou en aidant à démarrer des programmes de partage du travail.

Debate on the role of international unions (unions with headquarters in the United States) in Canada is longstanding. One school of thought maintains that internationals have weakened Canada's union movement; another view holds that international and national unions acted in concert and increased the number of disputes and the likelihood of workers' victory. Using a newly created data base of strike dimensions for the period before World War I, the key years of union growth in Canada, we test these opposing views in a competing-risks framework. We find that internationals did not weaken Canada's union movement; nor did the two union types act in concert. Instead, internationals were absorbed in Canada's industrial relations framework.

Social sciences recently witnessed an increase in multidisciplinary studies. Economists are part of this movement. Do they have an impact on other disciplines? Few studies are concerned with the transfer of knowledge from one discipline to another. Our paper tries to shed some light on this issue in the specific case of the contribution of economics to historical research in Canada in the last three decades. Is the use of economic tools widespread? Does it follow an upward trend over the period? Is it related to research topic, period treated or historiographical tradition? Is there a difference between Anglophone and Francophone historians? These are some of the questions explored.

Cet article évalue cinq expériences récentes sur le partage du travail au Québec depuis 1994: Bell Canada, Alcan, Papier Scott, Sico et le Ministère de l'environnement et de la faune. Basées sur des évidences de sondages qui démontrent que les heures de travail désirées tendent vers une approximation des heures de travail actuelles, des études antérieures ont souligné des doutes en ce qui concerne les chances de succès des initiatives pour le partage du travail. Par contre, dans les cas que nous avons étudiés les taux de participation dans les programmes volontaires de partage de travail étaient élevés, particulièrement lorsque le coût d'opportunité (les salaires perdus) des travailleurs n'était pas élevé et lorsque les travailleurs avaient déjà été exposé à des expériences de temps de travail réduit et flexible. Les initiatives de partage du travail ont rencontré moins de succès lorsqu'elles étaient obligatoires. Les programmes étudiés suggèrent que les réponses à l'offre de travail sont importantes lors de la création de politiques. Les gouvernements ont un rôle dans la création de politiques qui rendent le partage du travail plus attrayant aux travailleurs en plus de changer les attitudes des travailleurs envers le partage du travail. Nos résultats sont en accord avec les recommendations du Groupe consultatif sur le temps de travail du gouvernement fédéral. /// This paper evaluates five recent experiences of worksharing in Quebec since 1994: Bell Canada, Alcan, Scott Paper, Sico, and the Ministère de l'environnement et de la faune. Based on survey evidence showing that desired work hours tend to approximate actual work hours, previous studies have raised doubts about the likelihood of successful worksharing initiatives. However, in the cases we have studied, participation rates in voluntary worksharing programs were high, especially where the worker's sacrifice (lost wages) was not great and where workers had previous experience with reduced and flexible worktime. Worksharing initiatives were less successful when they were mandatory. The programs studied point to the importance of labour-supply responses in policy design. Governments have a role to play in designing policy that makes worksharing more attractive to workers and then changes their attitudes toward it. Our findings are consistent with the recommendations of the federal government's Advisory Group on Working Time.