Employment Books

by Paul O'Kane

Hsiao-Hung Pai has written an important book. This freelance journalist, who specialises in Chinese and East Asian issues, has `gone underground' to amass evidence of the brutally unjust world in which migrant workers are forced to operate in Britain due to inadequate and outdated legislation. Loopholes, black markets and downright criminality allow obscene working conditions, violent and intimidating bosses, gang masters and threatening loan-sharks to bleed-dry people already forced by poverty to travel to so-called `first world' countries in search of some means of rescuing themselves and their families from the inadequacies of their emerging home nations.

The writer's style and gift for description immediately brings home and makes real the unpalatable vision of a meat-packing factory shift on a tiny hourly rate; a cold onion field in the Midlands in the early hours; or a seedy suburban `massage parlour' (read `brothel') as well as crowded, dingy rooms packed with grubby mattresses shared by workers who pay for the dubious privilege. Meanwhile, the fact that Pai works secretly, for and alongside bosses known for their violent or brutal tactics (and gives many detailed names and places) makes the reading a nervous adventure as you begin to fear for the author's own safety.

The writer's disgust at this urgent humanitarian issue comes through clearly but Pai uses her journalist's professionalism to balance her findings with the defensive statements of the shady agencies and employers she accuses. Furthermore, rather than polemically communicating mere hopeless anguish she regularly refers to the need for updated legislation to solve this Dickensian problem festering within a 21st century society. Just beneath the surface of the famous capital's tourist hotspots; in its suburbs; and away in lesser-known Midlands , Northern and East-Anglian towns, a pathetic, prone and powerless underclass works in unacceptable conditions, manhandling the very produce proffered by leading supermarket chains to sustain consumers in their superior fantasy of cornucopic choice.

Migrant workers fear the police as much as their bosses and are afraid to present themselves to doctors or A&E wards when sick or injured for fear of discovery and deportation. Some die even before they reach Britain -as we know from hideous stories of suffocating trailers arriving in Dover or the Republic of Ireland. Others, like the so-called `cockle pickers' of Morecambe bay, die in tragedies which should not be allowed to occur in any country which thinks of itself as fair and decent (these events have been movingly portrayed by Nick Broomfield in his film `Ghosts' -also based on the work of Hsiao-Hung Pai).

Cultural theorist Sarat Maharaj has compared the inexorable suction of the fatal Morecambe bay tide to that economic force which draws migrant labour from China to Europe, and one of the most pathetic and emotive images of the Morecambe bay tragedy remains that of people, aware of their imminent demise, saying goodbye to loved ones on the other side of the world, using mobile phones to express their fear, sorrow and ultimate folly.

How'd we get here? What are the REAL problems today? And most importantly of all, how do you DO IT ALL without going crazy? Offers practical ideas you can use

Lindsey o'Connor's book has become a "best friend" to me in getting my publishing company up and running. The corners of the pages are now dog-eared and my highlighter is dry from all the passages I've marked. She covers everything from organizing your closets to marketing your product. You're going to love it!

Julie Bloss has done an excellent job of providing a tool for understanding employment law in any religious organization. Whether a church, school or other ministry, she clearly explains how each law can affect the issues faced by religious organizations. The book also provides very clear examples and scenarios that help in the application of what is being read. She has taken what to many can be a difficult skill to comprehend and made it very readable and easy to understand!

The world of Employment Discrimination is an amazingly complex maze of legal development. Constantly changing court interpretations, burden shifting, and miniscule caveats created by Congess make this practice a headache for even the most seasoned attorney. Professor Lewis' Hornbook smoothly glides through the inter-workings of Title VII, the ADEA, Section 1981, McDonnell-Douglas, Price-Waterhouse and many other like statutes and case law. As one of Professor Lewis' current students, this book has helped me understand Employment Discrimination law more completely.

The book was everything I needed it for. I needed it for some tests and it was great for that because I passed.

I can always count on Amazon to ship my order out to me in an expedite manner!

This is an excellent collection of correspondence between Keynes and numerous other economists over topics and ideas that would later turn out to be covered in the General Theory of Employment ,Interest and Money in 1936.Perhaps the most relevant part of the volume is contained on pp.373-375.It involves an exchange between Keynes and Richard Kahn over Keynes's initial breakthrough concerning the existence of multiple equilibria using the boundary and interior of the Production Possibilities Frontier curve model combined with a microeconomic foundation of purely competitive firms operating under constant returns to labor.Kahn demonstrates that he had absolutely no idea or understanding at all about what Keynes was doing.Kahn ,incredibly,confuses constant returns to labor with the case of constant cost.Kahn never recovered from this set back intellectually.

Volume 27 is basically an extension of Keynes's discussions on pp.128-130(especially footnote 1 on p.128)of the GT establishing Keynes's support for a program of long run public investment financed by loan expenditure(based on the accouting concept of a capital account) and his opposition to deficit finance(based on the manipulation of the current account) based on short run attempts to cut tax rates in order to finance increased consumption spending .The reader should cover pp.225-410 of this volume in order to grasp that there is simply no support for the various spurious claims about Keynes being a supporter of deficit finance or a supporter of expansionary and contractionary monetary and fiscal policy or of demand management.Everything written about Keynes and deficit finance(budget deficits) by numerous libertarians and Austrian economists(Henry Hazlitt,Ludwig von Mises,Murray Rothbard,etc.) for over 50 years in the libertarian magazine " The Freeman " is easily dismissed as misinformation or disinformation.

Van Hutchinson's book is one of the funniest how-to guides I've ever read. The cartoons are hilarious. One of them shows a guy telling the doctor, "It hurts when I go like this," as he pulls out his wallet.

Mr. Hutchinson covers a lot of detail but makes it real, because the whole book is based on interviews with dozens of college-age entrepreneurs. It's believable too. They are not all Michael Dells, but range from a perfoming clown to a well-staffed computer upgrade firm, and the various students share their frustrations as well as their successes.

I know from my own experience it is tough to take classes and juggle a real-world business. But it's rewarding, and Hutchinson's book helped me in my small business.

I give it 5 stars and recommend it highly.