Getting Work or Our Continent Our Future

Getting Work: Philadelphia, 1840-1950

Author: Walter Licht

How did working people find jobs in the past? How has the process changed over time for various groups of job seekers? Are outcomes influenced more by general economic circumstances, by discriminatory practices in the labor market, or by personal initiative and competence? Walter Licht uses intensive primary-source research on a major industrial city for a period of over one hundred years to tackle these questions. He looks at when and how young people secured first jobs, the influence of agencies on the hiring process, schools and work, apprenticeship programs, unions, the role of firms in structuring work opportunities, the state as employer and as shaper of employment conditions, and the problem of losing work--the job search as a seemingly perpetual activity. Licht's findings enliven and sometimes revise specific scholarly and social policy debates. School programs, for example, are shown to have been unsystematic because of various social clashes; working-class children had only loose ties to schools. Men and women, blacks and whites, older-stock Americans and newcomers had disparate labor market experiences. Experience in the labor market varied not only by group and across time, but also during different stages of the individual's life. Getting Work is important reading for policymakers, social historians, economists, and students of management and industrial relations.

Table of Contents:

	List of Tables	viii
	Preface	ix
1.	Particularities	1
2.	Entering the World of Work	17
3.	Schools and Work	57
4.	Agencies	98
5.	Firms	141
6.	The State	174
7.	Losing Work and Coping	220
	Conclusion	256
	Primary Sources	265
	Notes	267
	Index	313

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Our Continent, Our Future: African Perspectives on Structural Adjustment

Author: Thandika Mkandawir

For decades now, many African countries have implemented the structural adjustment programs of the Bretton Woods Institutions. The results, however, have been less than sterling. Extreme poverty and underdevelopment continue to plague what is becoming the world's "forgotten continent," and it is now generally agreed that a new approach is urgently required. Our Continent, Our Future presents the emerging African perspective on this complex issue. The authors use as background their own extensive experience and a collection of 30 individual studies, 25 of which were from African economists, to summarize this African perspective and articulate a path for the future. They underscore the need to be sensitive to each country's unique history and current condition. They argue for a broader policy agenda and for a much more active role for the state within what is largely a market economy.

Times Literary Supplement - Michael Chege

A refreshing work from two of Africa's most eminent economists, which employs the research efforts of twenty-five of their colleagues across Africa.