No abstract

The employment of foreign workers as a supplement to the available domestic labor force has been a recurrent public policy issue throughout much of the history of the United States. Under specified circumstances, nonimmigrant workers have been allowed legal access to the American labor market. They should not be confused with illegal immigrants who do not have such a pri vil ege. The legislative and the administrative actions that have authorized or permitted non-immigrant programs have generally been shrouded in controversy. The concerns have centered both upon the economic effects that non-immigrant workers have on working conditions for citizen workers and, also, on the special restrictions that are often imposed on the non-immigrants which would be considered both unfair and often illegal if applied to citizen workers.

Our politically dominated immigration policy is counter to our nation's labor needs and exacerbates our worst racial and income disparities. An economically sound immigration policy would secure our national well-being.

"On March 1, 1968, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders made public its findings concerning the nature, causes, and solutions to the violence which rocked many of the nation's cities during the "long, hot summer" of 1967. The basic conclusion of the Report is: "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white-separate and unequal". The main culprit is said to be "white racism." Tom Wicker, of the New York Times, writes in the introduction to the Report: "What had to be said has been said at last." Although the conclusion is not new, what is surprising and encouraging is that a national commission composed exclusively of moderates would reach such a conclusion unanimously and would express its findings so effectively."

216 pp. ISBN 0-7656-0557-0, $64.95 (cloth); 0-7656-0558-9, $22.95 (paper).This is a practical and useful volume on labor standards in today's highly globalized world. An introduction is followed by ten chapters, some of them general, talking about the ILO or the WTO, and some more specific, focusing on the United States and Europe. The general chapters cover the ILO, corporate codes of conduct, efforts to introduce labor standards into the multilateral trade regime, arguments for and against labor standards in trade, and policy implications. The specific chapters cover U.S. initiatives on child labor, labor standards in the bilateral trade agreements entered into by the United States and the European Union, labor standards among the European Union member countries, and NAFTA.The strength of the book is its combination of sound institutional description with strong opinions and judgments.Regarding the latter, I do not agree with all of Tsogas's views-in particular, I take exception to the two-page critique of me, which I thought misrepresented the approach I have taken to labor standards. I found the coverage to be imbalanced in places: for instance, six pages on the GE and Honeywell cases in NAFTA versus one page on the 1998 ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work-arguably the most important development in labor standards in decades-and no mention at all of the ILO's pathbreaking "Decent Work" initiative. Occasionally, the volume wanders off in strange directions, such as in the subsection "Any Role for 'HR' in HR?", where the author talks about the core competencies of HR professionals in handling an ethics policy. Was it a slip of the pen (or the keyboard) when the author referred to the HR function as the "human rights" function? Still, this is a book that I would recommend to newcomers to the subject and to more experienced practitioners alike. . 216 pp. ISBN 0-7656-0557-0, $64.95 (cloth); 0-7656-0558-9, $22.95 (paper).