Barry Bluestone

This article is a stub. You can help by expanding it.

Biographical Information

"Barry Bluestone is the Stearns Trustee Professor of Political Economy and director of the Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Gorbachev Foundation of North America... On partial leave from U.Mass.-Boston in 1995, Bluestone served as a member of the senior policy staff of Congressman Richard Gephardt, the Democratic Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives.

"As a political economist, Bluestone has written widely in the areas of income distribution, business and industrial policy, labor-management relations, higher education finance, and urban and regional economic development. He contributes regularly to academic, as well as popular journals, and is the author of nine books. In 1982, he published The Deindustrialization of America (co-authored with Bennett Harrison of the New School for Social Research) which analyzed the restructuring of American industry and its economic and social impact on workers and communities. A sequel published in 1988, The Great U-Turn: Corporate Restructuring and the Polarizing of America, also co-authored with Harrison, investigated how economic policies have contributed to growing inequality. In earlier books, Bluestone investigated the low-wage labor market, the aircraft industry, and the revolution in the retail trade sector. In 1992, Negotiating the Future: A Labor Perspective on American Business was published. Co-authored with his father, Irving Bluestone, the book traces the history of labor-management relations since World War II and offers the concept of the "Enterprise Compact" as an approach to industrial relations which can boost productivity, improve product quality and innovation, and enhance employment security. As of 1998, Korean, Spanish, and Japanese editions had been published.

"Bluestone has just completed two new books. The first of these, co-authored again with Harrison and titled Growing Prosperity: The Battle for Growth with Equity in the 21st Century, investigates the prospects for faster economic growth in the U.S. It was published by Houghton Mifflin and the Twentieth Century Fund in January 2000. The second, The Boston Renaissance: Race, Space, and Economic Change in an American Metropolis, published by the Russell Sage Foundation, is the culmination of nearly five years of research on the new Boston economy. It recounts the industrial and demographic revolution in post-World War II Boston and its impact on racial and ethnic attitudes, residential segregation, and the labor market success of whites, blacks, and Latinos.

"As part of his work, Bluestone spends a considerable amount of time consulting with trade unions, with industry groups, and with various federal and state government agencies. He was executive adviser to the Governor's Commission on the Future of Mature Industries in Massachusetts and has worked with the economic development departments of various states. He has testified before Congressional committees and lectures regularly before university, labor, community, and business groups. As a founding member of the Nommos Consulting Group and working with Streamline Communications, he has been involved in the development of multimedia productions and CD-ROMs used in training sessions for labor/management groups and for public school teachers. Bluestone is also a founding member of the Economic Policy Institute, along with Robert Reich, Lester Thurow, Robert Kuttner, Ray Marshall, and Jeff Faux. "

Affiliations

• Campaign for America's Future