Evolving Employment Relations in the United States

Abstract

Changes in the nature of employment relations have been the subject of much recent discussion in the United States and in many other industrial nations. Popular and academic literature have heralded the ascendance of a variety of “nonstandard,” “nontraditional,” “atypical,” or “contingent” work arrangements such as temporary work, contracting, and part-time work (see Kalleberg 2000, for a review of this literature). Some writers have argued that these nonstandard work arrangements represent a “new deal” between employers and employees, in which market mechanisms, often vaguely specified, have replaced hierarchical systems and wherein notions of loyalty and the social contract—especially for highly skilled workers— are obsolete (e.g., Cappelli 1999; Chapter 9, this volume). By contrast, others have maintained that these changes do not represent a fundamental change in the institutions underlying employment relations, but rather reflect more minor changes in the allocation of risk from employers to employees in light of changing economic conditions (Jacoby 1999), and a return to work arrangement characteristic of the pre-World War II era in the United States.