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 $t=1$ and $q=0$, 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 $q$-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 $A_2^{(1)}$ 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