Peter Fairbrother

This book brings together perspectives from sociology, political science, gender studies, and history to produce new ways of analysing wildfire preparedness and policy in Australia. Drawing on data from hundreds of interviews with residents, volunteers and emergency services professionals living and working in wildfire-prone areas, the authors focus on issues of power and inequality, the contested nature of community and the relationship between citizens and the state.The book questions not only existing policy approaches, but also the central concepts on which they are founded. In doing so, the aim is to create a more conceptually robust and academically contextualised discussion about the limitations of current wildfire policy approaches in Australia and to provide further evidence of the need for disaster studies to engage with a variety of social science approaches.Wildfire and Power: Policy and Practice will be of most interest to higher degree by research students, other academics and policy makers examining the evolving patterns and politics of work, employment, management and industrial relations as well as those involved in emergency and disaster management service delivery. It would be most suited to academic and public libraries as well as organisations in the field of emergency and disaster management.

This book brings together perspectives from sociology, political science, gender studies, and history to produce new ways of analysing wildfire preparedness and policy in Australia. Drawing on data from hundreds of interviews with residents, volunteers and emergency services professionals living and working in wildfire-prone areas, the authors focus on issues of power and inequality, the contested nature of community and the relationship between citizens and the state.The book questions not only existing policy approaches, but also the central concepts on which they are founded. In doing so, the aim is to create a more conceptually robust and academically contextualised discussion about the limitations of current wildfire policy approaches in Australia and to provide further evidence of the need for disaster studies to engage with a variety of social science approaches.Wildfire and Power: Policy and Practice will be of most interest to higher degree by research students, other academics and policy makers examining the evolving patterns and politics of work, employment, management and industrial relations as well as those involved in emergency and disaster management service delivery. It would be most suited to academic and public libraries as well as organisations in the field of emergency and disaster management.

In recent decades, trade unions have suffered major reversals and experienced declining memberships. Transnational corporations and state-owned multi-nationals have increasingly implemented deteriorating terms and conditions of employment, with vulnerable and insecure job contracts. In this context, there has been a wide-ranging debate about the form of trade unionism, the bases for collective organization and struggle and the future of trade unionism. This book addresses these questions both theoretically, in relation to debates, as well as substantively via a series of selected studies. It is a must read for all those studying industrial relations, human resource management, the sociology of work and employment, economic sociology, economic and labor geography and business studies in general.

In recent decades, trade unions have suffered major reversals and experienced declining memberships. Transnational corporations and state-owned multi-nationals have increasingly implemented deteriorating terms and conditions of employment, with vulnerable and insecure job contracts. In this context, there has been a wide-ranging debate about the form of trade unionism, the bases for collective organization and struggle and the future of trade unionism. This book addresses these questions both theoretically, in relation to debates, as well as substantively via a series of selected studies. It is a must read for all those studying industrial relations, human resource management, the sociology of work and employment, economic sociology, economic and labor geography and business studies in general.

Perestroika's fate was determined by the hostile reaction of the working class. Strikes, protest and the fear of working class action had a devastating impact, yet relatively little is known about the workers' movement during this period. This major book surveys the development of the new workers' movement in Russia under perestroika to understand how it connected with the workers at shop floor level and the national and local political authorities to whom it addressed its demands, and whose development it sought to influence.Drawing on a unique programme of collaborative research on Russian industrial relations from 1987 to 1995, the authors use a series of case studies to explain the gulf between the thousands of tiny independent groups, often based in a single enterprise or even a single shop, and regional and national organizations without a grassroots base. Extensive interviews with participants, tape and video recordings, as well as substantial documentary material are used in case studies of the 1989 miners' strike in Kuzbass, the Kuzbass regional council of workers' committees, the independent miners' union in Kuzbass, Sotsprof in Moscow and the Federation of Air Traffic Controllers' Unions. An extensive introduction puts these studies into context. Political scientists, industrial sociologists and students of the transition process in Russia will welcome The Workers' Movement in Russia which not only shows how perestroika touched the lives of ordinary people, but also offers a unique opportunity to study how spontaneous populist initiatives are institutionalized in hierarchical, bureaucratic structures.

Most writing on the dramatic events in the former Soviet Union has been based on the assumption that Russia is engaged in a transition from "state socialism" to capitalism, and focuses on political and ideological debates formulated in these terms.This book questions whether Russia is in transition to capitalism and looks behind the political and ideological debates to focus on the development of the social relations of production, and on the class struggles to which these give rise. Simon Clarke introduces the book with an examination of the crisis of state socialism, in order to identify the dynamic of change in contemporary Russia. Michael Burawoy and Pavel Krotov develop a detailed case study of one Russian enterprise, which is followed by an analysis of the role of the trade unions in the Soviet system by Simon Clarke and Peter Fairbrother, on the basis of which they develop an analytical account of the development of the workers' movement in Russia since 1987. Simon Clarke concludes the book with a detailed examination of struggles around privatization.The common conclusion is that beneath the political turmoil the dominant class has renewed and restructured itself, but has not managed to overcome the challenge presented by the working class. The fragmentation and atomization of the working class remains a problem, but the struggle over the transformation of class relations is only just beginning.