3,267 research outputs found
Paradise Lost Revisited: GM and the UAW in Historical Perspective
Purpose Analysis of historic relationship between GM and Union of Automobile Workers (UAW) from 1936 through the moment of bankruptcy of GM in 2009. How can this historic relationship be explained from the viewpoint of evolving labor and industrial relations in the US?
Design/methodology/approach Historical and comparative analyses. Secondary analysis.
Findings Over time the relationship has been a dynamic and flexible one. In the first decades the most important objective of the UAW was the recognition of the union by GM. From the second half of the 1940s until the 1970s the main attention of both parties shifted towards a dynamic wage policy. Finally, from the 1970s onwards the safeguarding of job security became the main objective of the UAW, whereas GM tried to maximize its room of maneuver to transform its Fordist production system into a more flexible one.
Research limitations/implications The present study provides a starting point for further in-depth research towards the historic relationship between GM & the UAW.
Originality/value Longitudinal approach of development of labor-management relationship between two opposite parties in differing economic and technological contexts
Loops, matchings and alternating-sign matrices
The appearance of numbers enumerating alternating sign matrices in stationary
states of certain stochastic processes is reviewed. New conjectures concerning
nest distribution functions are presented as well as a bijection between
certain classes of alternating sign matrices and lozenge tilings of hexagons
with cut off corners.Comment: LaTeX, 26 pages, 44 figures, extended version of a talk given at the
14th International Conference on Formal Power Series and Algebraic
Combinatorics (Melbourne 2002); Version2: Changed title, expanded some
sections and included more picture
Avant-garde Welfare Capitalism: Corporate Welfare Work and Enlightened Capitalism in Great Britain, the US, Germany and France (1880-1930)
This research paper deals with welfare work in four industrializing countries, Great Britain, the USA, Germany and France, in the half century of flowering enlightened paternalistic capitalism between 1880 and 1930. Welfare work in this context is defined as, sometimes overly, paternalistic labour policy of enlightened entrepreneurs often encompassing workman’s housing programs, pensions, saving programs, educational programs, sports facilities, medical services, worker participation, generous remuneration forms, and shorter working times. The question is raised if nowadays flex-capitalism in the context of shrinking collective welfare states can learn lessons from past experience with welfare work. By redefining paternalistic welfare work in modernistic terms as well as by reweighting company, personal and state responsibilities a new future-proof trade-off as regards welfare work might be realised
The two-boundary Temperley-Lieb algebra
We study a two-boundary extension of the Temperley-Lieb algebra which has
recently arisen in statistical mechanics. This algebra lies in a quotient of
the affine Hecke algebra of type C and has a natural diagrammatic
representation. The algebra has three parameters and, for generic values of
these, we determine its representation theory.
We use the action of the centre of the affine Hecke algebra to show that all
irreducible representations lie within a finite dimensional diagrammatic
quotient. These representations are fully characterised by an additional
parameter related to the action of the centre. For generic values of this
parameter there is a unique representation of dimension 2^N and we show that it
is isomorphic to a tensor space representation. We construct a basis in which
the Gram matrix is diagonal and use this to discuss the irreducibility of this
representation.Comment: 45 pages Latex, 21 eps figures, revised versio
A summation formula for Macdonald polynomials
We derive an explicit sum formula for symmetric Macdonald polynomials. Our
expression contains multiple sums over the symmetric group and uses the action
of Hecke generators on the ring of polynomials. In the special cases and
, we recover known expressions for the monomial symmetric and
Hall-Littlewood polynomials, respectively. Other specializations of our formula
give new expressions for the Jack and -Whittaker polynomials.Comment: 8 page
On the integrability of the square-triangle random tiling model
It is shown that the square-triangle random tiling model is equivalent to an
asymmetric limit of the three colouring model on the honeycomb lattice. The
latter model is known to be the O(n) model at T=0 and corresponds to the
integrable model connected to the affine Lie algebra. Thus it is
shown that the weights of the square-triangle random tiling satisfy the
Yang-Baxter equation, albeit in a singular limit of a more general model. The
three colouring model for general vertex weights is solved by algebraic Bethe
Ansatz.Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX, inluding 2 postscript figure
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