The low cost of information, communication, and interaction on the web offers trade unions opportunities to improve services and attract members, and thus reinvent themselves for the twenty-first century. The authors argue that unions can use the web to: develop virtual minority unions at many non-union firms; improve services to members; enhance democracy in unions; aid in industrial disputes; and strengthen the international labour community. They conclude that, if unions fail to exploit the opportunities on the web to gain members, other organizations are likely to provide services to workers on the internet. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd/London School of Economics 2002.

This paper argues that the low cost of information, communication, and interaction on the Web offers trade unions opportunities to improve services and attract members and thus reinvent themselves for the 21 st Century. Analyzing current use of the Internet by unions in the United Kingdom and United States, we develop five hypothesis about the impact of the Internet on unions. 1) the Customized Services hypothesis that unions will individualize services; 2) the Cyber-organizing hypothesis that the Web will ease organization and produce virtual minority unions at many non-union firms; 3) the Cyber-democracy hypothesis that the Web will enhance democracy in unions; 4) the Cyber-dispute hypothesis that the Web will become an important space for industrial disputes; and 5) the New Internationalism hypothesis that the Web will strengthen the international labor community. If unions fail to exploit the opportunities on the Web to gain members, we expect other organizations, Internet recruitment sites, specialized advice centers, and the like, to fill the e-union niche.

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A survey was conducted to examine the strength of beliefs among French school pupils in three perceptions of the education-labor market link traditionally studied in the economy of human capital: 'productivity', 'screening' and 'credentialism'. 247 male and female French students aged between 14 and 24 years responded to a paper-and-pencil questionnaire. The purpose of the study is by means of introducing the concepts of 'productivity', 'screening' and 'credentialism' into the field of psychology of education to identify on the one hand the relative dominance of these three conceptions, and on the other hand to study each in relation to classical demographic variables and psychosocial variables such as academic self-evaluation, self-assessment of the range of vocational options and type of education and training sought by the pupils. Results indicate that students are more inclined to believe that the achievement of academic degrees acts more as a 'screening' device and as evidence of achievement than a factor enhancing productivity in the workplace. It seems that the variability of the role assigned to education as regards employability depends on the students' social and academic standing and on the way they deal with it.