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As companies increasingly look to the global market for capital, cheaper commodities and labor, and lower production costs, the impact on Mexican and American workers and labor unions is significant. National boundaries and the laws of governments that regulate social relations between laborers and management are less relevant in the era of globalization, rendering ineffective the traditional union strategies of pressuring the state for reform. Focusing especially on the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (the first international labor agreement linked to an international trade agreement), Norman Caulfield notes the waning political influence of trade unions and their disunity and divergence on crucial issues such as labor migration and workers' rights. Comparing the labor movement's fortunes in the 1970s with its current weakened condition, Caulfield notes the parallel decline in the United States' hegemonic influence in an increasingly globalized economy. As a result, organized labor has been transformed from organizations that once pressured management and the state for worker concessions to organizations that now request that workers concede wages, pensions, and health benefits to remain competitive in the global marketplace.

In Neutral Accent, A. Aneesh employs India's call centers as useful sites for studying global change. The horizon of global economic shift, the consequences of global integration, and the ways in which call center work "neutralizes" racial, ethnic, and national identities become visible from the confines of their cubicles. In his interviews with call service workers and in his own work in a call center in the high tech metropolis of Gurgoan, India, Aneesh observed the difficulties these workers face in bridging cultures, laws, and economies: having to speak in an accent that does not betray their ethnicity, location, or social background; learning foreign social norms; and working graveyard shifts to accommodate international customers. Call center work is cast as independent of place, space, and time, and its neutrality—which Aneesh defines as indifference to difference—has become normal business practice in a global economy. The work of call center employees in the globally integrated marketplace comes at a cost, however, as they become disconnected from the local interactions and personal relationships that make their lives anything but neutral.

While the internet bubble has burst, the New Economy that the internet produced is still with us, along with the myth of a workplace built around more humane notions of how people work and spend their days in offices. No-Collar is the only close study of New Economy workplaces in their heyday. Andrew Ross, a renowned writer and scholar of American intellectual and social life, spent eighteen months deep inside Silicon Alley in residence at two prominent New Economy companies, Razorfish and 360hiphop, and interviewed a wide range of industry employees in other cities to write this remarkable book. Maverick in their organizations and permissive in their culture, these workplaces offered personal freedoms and rewards that were unheard of in corporate America. Employees feared they may never again enjoy such an irresistible work environment. Yet for every apparent benefit, there appeared to be a hidden cost: 70-hour workweeks, a lack of managerial protection, an oppressive shouldering of risk by employees, an illusory sense of power sharing, and no end of emotional churning. The industrialization of bohemia encouraged employees to think outside the box, but also allowed companies to claim their most free and creative thoughts and ideas. In these workplaces, Andrew Ross encountered a new kind of industrial personality, and emerged with a sobering lesson. Be careful what you wish for. When work becomes sufficiently humane, we tend to do far too much of it, and it usurps an unacceptable portion of our lives. He concludes that we should not have to choose between a personally gratifying and a just workplace, we should strive to enjoy both.

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