Review
"Written by an internationally renowned labor scholar, this book documents the evolution of the employer-employee working relationship through three eras (artisanal, industrial, and digital production) and articulates the impact and policy implications of these changes...This is an insightful, readable, carefully researched resource likely to be of considerable interest to professionals and scholars across a wide range of disciplines." T. Gutteridge, University of Toledo, Choice

"This is a formidable book. Katherine Stone has showed yet again that she is one of America's leading labour law scholars. What she has to say is imaginative and original, relevant, carefully researched and easily accessible to professions and scholars right across the spectrum of disciplines." Harry Arthurs, York University

"Contemporary employment practices no longer fit the legal models that are supposed to regulate them. Katherine Stone, one of our most thoughtful and articulate labor scholars, shows in this book how the situation came about and what should be done to improve it. It's hard to imagine a sharper or more readable account of these issues." William H. Simon, Columbia University

"An insightful, readable, carefully researched resource likley to be of considerable interest to professionals and scholars across a wide range of disciplines." Choice

Book Description
Although existing labor and employment laws were built on the assumption of long-term, stable relationships between employees and firms, this book explores the changing nature of the employment relationship and its implications for labor and employment law. The current challenge of labor regulations is to find a means to provide workers with continuity in wages, ongoing training opportunities, sustainable and transferable skills, unambiguous ownership of their human capital, portable benefits, and support structures to enable them to weather career transitions.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

From Widgets to Digits analyzes the impact of the new flexibile workplace on the issues of employment discrimination, ownership of human capital, worker representation, employee benefits, and income distribution, and proposes legal and institutional reforms to ensure the conditions of success in today's boundaryless workplace. Professor Stone contends that a constructive program for workplace justice must provide continuity in wages, on going training opportunities, transferable skills, unambiguous ownership of individual human capital, and portable health and retirement benefits. She also advocates the creation of a reliable social safety net to ease transitions and cushion the fall for those who are left behind by the boundaryless workplace.

SYNOPSIS