Contentious Negotiations Research Articles

“Situation in Palestine” (Int'l Crim. Ct. Pre-Trial Chamber)

On February 5, 2021, the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) delivered its decision on territorial jurisdiction in the “Situation in Palestine.” The result reflects the controversy surrounding the process and the merits: a divided bench, with a Minority decision three times the length of that of the Majority. The outcome marked the culmination of sustained attempts by Palestinians and their supporters over more than two decades to engage the ICC, beginning with contentious negotiations preceding the vote on the Rome Statute at the Rome Conference and including three preliminary examinations, the third of which concluded with this decision. The Rome Statute, adopted by vote on July 17, 1998, included elements that negotiators acknowledged had never appeared before in international law, and were directed at an Israeli target. For this reason, in large part Israel, which had long supported the principle of an international criminal court, chose not to become a state party to the Statute or to participate in the proceedings.

The Global Crisis of Commodity Glut During the Second World War

This article examines the global crisis of commodity glut that came in the wake of the Fall of France and Italy’s entry into the Second World War in June 1940, when the extension of the British blockade and shipping problems cut off primary producers around the world from major continental European markets. As a surplus of unmarketable primary commodities piled up in British colonies, as well as in Latin America and French, Dutch, and Belgian colonies, this jeapordized the blockade and threatened political unrest across the British Empire, as well as the spread of Nazi influence in Latin America. This article examines how the British government attempted to respond to this crisis, both unilaterally and in combination with the U.S. government. In doing so, it argues that Anglo-American negotiations over a joint approach to the problem of commodity glut led to some of the earliest attempts to create new international economic organizations for the postwar period. While these plans were transformed as the surplus problem itself changed in late 1941, they nonetheless laid the groundwork for Anglo-American relief planning, contentious negotiations over an international wheat agreement, and international commodity price stabilization schemes.

Looking back to move forward: the status of environmental rights under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

ABSTRACTThe 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was adopted after contentious negotiations. When compared with the 1994 UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Draft Declaration), article 29 of UNDRIP falls short on the definition of environment, its management and accountability for environmental violations. Therefore, the article analyses whether article 29 lacks effective environmental-rights protection, and what imprint the Draft Declaration has on UNDRIP? This article further examines the development of international law on business and human rights, sustainable development, climate change, and trade law after 2007. The consequence of ignoring this development is having tragic outcomes on indigenous peoples’ environmental rights upon which they depend for their subsistence, culture and development rights. Looking at indigenous peoples’ environmental rights through the Draft Declaration, therefore, will help to understand both the challenges faced by UNDRIP and gives the opportunity to discuss a potential free-standing environmental right under the Convention on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which would be the natural progression from the UNDRIP. Such a right could eliminate conflicts with indigenous peoples’ rights to development and culture. Also, it could bring coherence and integration between indigenous peoples’ rights and international law developed after 2007.

Author(iz)ing a Playground Game: “The Arguing Started Once the Rules Were Written Down”

Using data from a 4-year longitudinal ethnography, this study moves from a classroom to the playground to examine a multiage community engaged in a deeply revered playground game with a history stretching back nearly a decade. Mediated discourse analysis is leveraged to examine the game’s historical nexus of practice, rooted in embodied and oral modes of transmission, and to understand how the nexus was transformed with the introduction of written transmission in the form of the first official rulebook. Contentious negotiations on the playground and in the classroom emerged regarding questions of textual ownership, authorship, and authority. Findings suggest that written text did not supersede oral transmission but instead prompted more talk as well as more writing. Significantly, making space for these negotiations created opportunities for writing to be(come) significant to children as children as they passionately and critically negotiated how to sustain their own collective brand of literacy.

The Internet as a global good: UNESCO’s attempt to negotiate an international framework for universal access to cyberspace

The article analyzes one of the earliest intergovernmental initiatives regarding Internet constitutionalism. Based on an analytical framework that combines argumentative discourse analysis with elements from actor–network theory, it assesses the actors and discourses involved in the preparation of an international recommendation on universal access to the Internet, adopted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2003. During the contentious negotiations, UNESCO had to find a balance between the divergent positions of its member states and to account for the different levels of technological development amongst them. By retracing the performative and discursive struggles that UNESCO had to face to reach consensus, the article contributes to the general understanding of ideas and practices behind Internet policy making in international settings.

The Internet as a Global Good: UNESCO’s Attempt to Negotiate an International Framework for Universal Access to Cyberspace

The article analyzes one of the earliest intergovernmental initiatives regarding Internet constitutionalism. Based on an analytical framework that combines argumentative discourse analysis with elements from actor–network theory, it assesses the actors and discourses involved in the preparation of an international recommendation on universal access to the Internet, adopted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2003. During the contentious negotiations, UNESCO had to find a balance between the divergent positions of its member states and to account for the different levels of technological development amongst them. By retracing the performative and discursive struggles that UNESCO had to face to reach consensus, the article contributes to the general understanding of ideas and practices behind Internet policy making in international settings.

Resolving potential energy conflicts among allies: The 2015 United States-Republic of Korea nuclear cooperation agreement

After four years of sometimes contentious negotiations (that at one point required a two-year extension from the U.S. Congress), the United States and Republic of Korea signed a new nuclear cooperation agreement in the summer of 2015. These negotiations caused strain in one of the closest bilateral relationships the U.S. has in Asia – a regional priority for the foreign policy of the Obama administration. This paper examines energy conflict within the confines of an otherwise cooperative and productive partnership. It examines the strategic, technical, economic, and political factors that extended the negotiation period and the creative compromises that led to a final agreement. It then considers the potential pitfalls in implementing the agreement and the implications, in terms of process and substance, for future negotiations regarding civilian nuclear cooperation.

Partnership Negotiations: Innovation for Nurse Contract Negotiations During Turbulent Times.

Health care delivery is undergoing rapid change, with frontline nurses at the epicenter. A mind-set requiring innovative collaboration, creativity, flexibility, and openness to new care delivery models is necessary. This article describes an innovative approach to modern world contract negotiations in a 371-bed university-affiliated hospital. The nurses' contract negotiations were scheduled to begin 6 months after a layoff affected nurses and other caregivers. Concurrently, a strike was underway at a hospital in the state with the same union. Contentious negotiations were anticipated. Strategies employed to prepare for negotiations included consultation with a nurse expert, and an agreement between the chief nursing officer and chairman of the Shared Governance Committee to conduct negotiations that would allow for more dialogue between the staff nurse and nursing leadership teams. Sessions opened with a video address by a major health care nurse thought leader who provided an overview of the current health care landscape and future direction of nursing. Joint presentations by staff nurses and nurse leaders on topics of interest were conducted. "Nurses for Nurses" round table sessions took place each day, and valuable work was completed at breakout sessions. Ultimately, the partnership negotiations resulted in a successfully negotiated contract.

Back Channel to Cuba: The History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana by LeoGrande, William M., and Peter Kornbluh (review)

Reviewed by: Back Channel to Cuba: The History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana by LeoGrande, William M., and Peter Kornbluh Michael Bustamante LeoGrande, William M., and Peter Kornbluh. Back Channel to Cuba: The History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. 544 pp. “This is the story of a failure.” So Che Guevara begins his Diaries of the Revolutionary War in the Congo.1 Until mid-December, diplomatic historians LeoGrande and Kornbluh might have easily embossed their own book’s cover with this epigraph, for reading Back Channel to Cuba—an absorbing, intimate account of U.S.-Cuban relations since 1959—served in most ways to retrace a prolonged road to nowhere. Now, following President Obama and Raúl Castro’s historic decision to restore diplomatic relations, LeoGrande and Kornbluh will be heralded for wielding the powers of prophecy. The point of their prodigious study, after all, is to highlight an alternative, underappreciated history of productive dialogue mitigating the ups and downs of bilateral confrontation. From Eisenhower to Obama, the authors demonstrate, every U.S. president has “engaged in some form of dialogue with Castro and his representatives” (2). Several proposed the terms for an explicit modus vivendi, and today President Obama appears closer than any of his predecessors to achieving it. Moments of levity, meanwhile, light the way. Readers will snicker when Cuban diplomats negotiating with the Carter administration steal towels from a Mexican hotel, purposely sticking their gringo interlocutors with the bill. Or when, on a list of “excludable” [End Page 405] migrants from the Mariel boatlift being considered for repatriation, the name Nome Hodes (an Anglicized rendering of no me jodes, “don’t screw with me”) hilariously registers one imprisoned refugee’s defiance of U.S. intake protocol. And yet, in the afterglow of December’s diplomatic breakthrough, Leo-Grande and Kornbluh’s work also reminds us of the vicious cycle of wasted opportunities and roads not taken, with the Nome Jodeses of the saga—average Cubans—ending up, for the most part, jodidos. Indeed, because some administrations flirted with success, the story becomes all that much harder to bear. Surely it would be more comforting to think Washington and Havana locked horns all these years over steadfast principles. In fact, as the authors reveal, the difference between stalemate and breakthrough just as often hinged on timing and pride. Emotions aside, Back Channel to Cuba stands among the most important and timely works in the admittedly crowded field of U.S.-Cuban diplomatic history. True, several instances of hidden diplomacy discussed in the book had been exposed previously. Other tidbits, however—like Henry Kissinger’s shocking contingency plans to “clobber” Cuba militarily when secret talks failed during the Ford years—represent fresh revelations. Researchers seeking exhaustive accounts of particular episodes may have to turn elsewhere for the complete picture,2 and opponents of Fidel Castro are likely to find the authors guilty of treating the Cuban government with kid gloves. Nonetheless, Back Channel to Cuba offers an unequaled look into more than fifty years of frustrating give-and-take. Drawing on interviews with virtually every negotiator involved over the years, the authors’ enviable combination of synthesis and new insight is unlikely to be duplicated. One criticism often leveled at the field of diplomatic history is its privileging of high-placed emissaries over popular voices and concerns. Back Channel to Cuba is no exception, tracing conduits of discussion and impasse largely hidden from public scrutiny. A fairer line of critique, though, might examine the extent to which the book uncovers the contending interests and points of view inside rival governments. On this front, LeoGrande and Kornbluh succeed in penetrating the walls of the White House more than they pry open the doors of the Palace of the Revolution. U.S. diplomacy toward Cuba, the authors show, involved contentious negotiations between officials, agencies, and competing priorities. On the Cuban side, however, the picture still echoes journalist Lee Lockwood’s 1967 book: Castro’s Cuba, Cuba’s Fidel.3 Until Cuban government archives are opened to researchers, processes of internal decision making will remain something of a black box. Readers, in the...

Opportunistic Proposals by Union Shareholders

Corporate governance reformers hope that giving shareholders more voting rights will improve firm performance, but critics argue that some shareholders, such as labor unions and public pensions, will use their rights to advance private interests. This paper finds that labor unions use shareholder proposals opportunistically to influence contract negotiations. We show theoretically that shareholder proposals can be used as bargaining chips to extract side payments from management. Our empirical strategy is based on the observation that proposals have a higher than normal value for unions in contract expiration years, when a new contract must be negotiated. We find that during contract expiration years, unions increase their proposal rate by one-quarter (and by two-thirds during contentious negotiations); nonunion shareholders do not change their proposal rate in expiration years. Unions are much more likely than other shareholders to make proposals concerning executive compensation, especially during expiration years. Opportunistic union proposals are associated with better wage outcomes for union workers. Overall, the evidence suggests that sometimes having more rights can be costly for shareholders.

The First Campaign and the Paradoxical Transformation of Fundraising in American Higher Education, 1915–1925

Background Comprehensive, multi-year mass fundraising campaigns in American higher education began with the Harvard Endowment Fund (HEF) drive, which extended from 1915 to 1925. Notwithstanding this prominence, the archival records of the campaign have never been studied closely, and in the absence of archival research, scholars have misunderstood the HEF campaign. According to the received and presentist view, the university president initiated the HEF campaign, which professional consultants then directed to a swift and successful conclusion, drawing on their expertise. Focus of study The fundamental purpose was to learn from the archives what actually happened in this pathbreaking campaign. The research soon revealed that the unpaid organizers had to negotiate virtually all aspects of this novel venture among competing and conflicting groups of alumni, units of the university, and university administrators, including the president. The purpose then became to understand the divergent values and interests of the participants and how those perspectives contributed to the new goals, strategies, tactics, and practices introduced by the campaign. Setting The research was conducted primarily in the Harvard University Archives and the Special Collections of Harvard Business School library. Research Design The archival records comprise some fifty three boxes containing about forty thousand unindexed sheets of letters, memos, drafts, minutes, accounts, pamphlets, and other materials reposited in the Harvard University Archives. A chronological and topical examination of these materials over the past five years provides the research for this essay, which also draws upon a review of related collections in the Harvard University Archives and the Special Collections of Harvard Business School library. Conclusions The research led to several surprising conclusions: that the landmark campaign failed to meet its goal, that professional consultants did not organize or run the campaign but emerged from it, that now long-standing features of university fundraising resulted less from deliberate planning than from contentious negotiations among conflicting groups, that the campaign prompted the university administration to centralize and control alumni affairs and development efforts for the first time, and, above all, that a central ideological tension arose between mass fundraising and the traditional approach of discretely soliciting wealthy donors. The unintended and unofficial outcome was to establish today's ubiquitous episodic pattern of continuous fundraising, in which mass comprehensive campaigns alternate with discrete solicitations of wealthy donors, whose dominant roles have never changed.

Perception of order as a source of alliance cohesion

The level of alliance cohesion is affected by the shift of attitudinal aspects (such as homogeneity in goals and threat perceptions) and behavioural aspects (such as strategic compatibility, command structure and defence burden-sharing) of alliance operation. In particular, a clear threat perception tends to make an alliance cohesive, as it suppresses (potential) disputes over the behavioural aspects of alliance operation. This article argues, however, that it is not sufficient to evaluate whether an alliance is cohesive or not only by looking at how these attitudinal and behavioural indicators have changed over time. If it were sufficient to do so, it would be supposed that the level of alliance cohesion would be bound to become lower with a change of government from conservative political forces to liberal ones in cases such as those of the US–ROK and the US–Japan alliances. We argue that the list of indicators for alliance cohesion should include not only attitudinal and behavioural aspects of alliance operation, but also functional aspects. While serving its primary purpose of responding to a specific threat, an alliance incurs an additional function of serving to maintain or to build a favourable regional order that is appreciated by both liberal and conservative governments. The interests in relation to order-building and order-maintenance motivate allies to invest for the alliance, often at their own political risk, even while they are engaged in contentious negotiations with the United States over attitudinal and behavioural aspects of alliance operations. Such investments can be considered as a different type of alliance burden sharing than has heretofore been given adequate attention. The investments indeed consolidate the alliance, paving the way for further upgrading of the alliance as conditions warrant.

Archives and the Ethics of Replevin

One of the most contentious cultural property stories of the early 21st century the restitution of displaced treasures, from Nazi-stolen artwork to looted archeological finds to rare manuscripts. Replevin, according to lawyerarchivist Menzi L. Behrnd-Klodt, is one of several ancient common law remedies used to recover wrongfully taken personal property from whomever took it or holds it unlawfully.1 When analyzed in simple terms, returning stolen objects to the rightful owner clearly the right thing to do. In 2012, newspapers reported that Barry H. Landau, a once respected presidential historian, was convicted of removing manuscripts from archives. His finds included letters by Marie Antoinette, Karl Marx, and Franklin Roosevelt. He was sentenced to seven years in jail and forced to pay $46,525 in restitution to dealers who had bought manuscripts from him in good faith. Several thousand documents were recovered from his residence and returned. More displaced documents are currently being traced. By all accounts, justice has been served.2Several spectacularly successful replevin and restitution actions have recently wrested valued acquisitions from well-funded museums.3 In 2007, after years of legal wrangling and public controversy, the J. Paul Getty Museum of Los Angeles returned 40 ancient masterpieces to Italy including a massive statue of Aphrodite. The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, which in 1972 acquired a rare, classic painted vase called the Euphronios krater, returned it to Italy in 2008 after lengthy and contentious negotiations. The United States government has cooperated with the government of Mongolia to reclaim and repatriate a dinosaur skeleton, eight feet high and twenty-four feet long, removed from the Gobi desert for sale in the United States. The Mongolian police, Interpol, and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were all involved. Through the process of restitution litigation, the long-dead dinosaur has become a celebrated symbol of national pride in Mongolia, and its return scheduled for 2013 cause for a hero's welcome.4 Treasures occasionally, although less frequently, travel in the opposite direction across the Atlantic. In 2006, the Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna was forced to surrender five masterpieces by Gustav Klimt, paintings restituted to distant heirs now living in the United States, again after a protracted court battle.5Like paintings, antiquities and fossils, archives are cultural property and many of the same principles apply. If anything, public records, as a nation's memory, have a stronger claim to inalienability than artwork. This claim has been recognized in treaties for hundreds of years.6 Leopold Auer has identified dozens of international disputes over archival collections. Many such disputes have festered for decades.7 In 1866, France seized 297 volumes of Korean royal archives, which ended up in the Bibliotheque nationale de France where they were cataloged as Chinese manuscripts. Then in 1993, President Mitterand returned one volume to South Korea. The remaining 296 went back home in 2011, after 145 years.8 Books and manuscripts have long had a revered place in Korean culture, which produced the first book printed with moveable metal type in 1377, long before Gutenberg. Some curators claim that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of returning displaced cultural property, to the extent that scholarship inhibited, the public deprived of educational experiences, and the objects themselves are endangered.9 Can well intentioned restitution efforts simply result in manuscripts being displaced a second time, with all the attendant hazards? In the international arena, the current debate pits collectors such as museums and archives in the receiving countries against aggrieved parties in the source countries. Both sides have strong justifications for their claims.Because laws can be changed and reinterpreted, and judicial decisions are frequently inconsistent, this essay will focus on the moral and ethical arguments and justifications, not the legal ones. …

Toward a (Re)signification of Cultural Hybridity: Guji Guji and Master Mason

Drawing on the theories of M. M. Bakhtin and Homi Bhabha, among others, this paper examines the textual discourse of cultural hybridity in two paradigmatic picturebooks, Guji Guji (2003) and Master Mason (2004), published in Taiwan in the first decade of the twenty-first century, with a close look at the socio-political milieu of Taiwan at the turn of the millennium. The story of Guji Guji deals with the dilemma that a hybrid self inevitably comes to face and negotiate and the ambivalences associated with the discourse of culture's in-between, whereas Master Mason pivots on the tension and contestation between the past and the present and views hybridity as a transgressive power to counter, disrupt, or subvert tradition, as well as to bring in a mosaic representation and improvisational negotiation of cultures and ideas. Differing in subject matter and art style, both picturebooks, nevertheless, substantially work to interpret and interrogate the complex and often contentious negotiations and representations of cultural crossings and mixings.

The mixed blessing of a deregulatory endpoint for the public switched telephone network

Receiving authority to dismantle the wireline public switched telephone network (PSTN) will deliver a mixture of financial benefits and costs to incumbent carriers and also jeopardize longstanding legislative and regulatory goals seeking ubiquitous, affordable and fully interconnected networks. Even if incumbent carriers continue to provide basic telephone services via wireless facilities, they will benefit from substantial relaxation of common carriage duties, no longer having to serve as the carrier of last resort and having the opportunity to decide whether and where to provide service. On the other hand, incumbent carriers may have underestimated the substantial financial and marketplace advantages they also will likely lose in the deregulatory process. Legislators and policy makers also may have underestimated the impact of no longer having the ability to impose common carrier mandates that require carriers to interconnect so that end users have complete access to network services regardless of location.This paper will identify the potential problems resulting from prospective decisions by National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs), such as the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to grant authority for telecommunications service providers to discontinue PSTN services. The paper also will consider whether in the absence of common carrier duties, private carriers providing telephone services, including Voice over the Internet Protocol (VoIP), voluntarily will agree to interconnect their networks. The paper will examine three recent carrier interconnection issues with an eye toward assessing whether a largely unregulated marketplace will create incentives for carriers to interconnect networks so that consumers will have ubiquitous access to PSTN replacement and other broadband services.The paper concludes that private carrier interconnection models and information service regulatory oversight may not solve all disputes, or promote universal service public policy goals. Recent Internet interconnection and television program carriage disputes involving major players such as Comcast, Level 3, Fox, Cablevision and Google point to the possibility of increasingly contentious negotiations that could result in balkanized telecommunications networks with at least temporary blockages to desired content and services by some consumers.

The Mixed Blessing of a Deregulatory Endpoint for the Public Switched Telephone Network

Receiving authority to dismantle the wireline public switched telephone network (“PSTN”) will deliver a mixture of financial benefits and costs to incumbent carriers. Even if these carriers continue to provide basic telephone services via wireless facilities or the Internet, they will benefit from the likely substantial relaxation of common carriage duties, no longer having to serve as the carrier of last resort and having the opportunity to decide where and what services they will provide going forward. On the other hand, incumbent carriers may have underestimated the substantial financial and marketplace advantages they also will lose in the deregulatory process. Incumbent carriers often obscure or dismiss as insignificant the substantial privileges and benefits accruing from their status as telecommunications service providers. Common carrier responsibilities include duties to interconnect with other carriers, provide service on transparent and nondiscriminatory terms and offer some low margin services. But this legal status also guarantees wireline local exchange carriers access to billions of dollars in annual universal service funding, zero or low cost access to rights of way and radio spectrum, accelerated depreciation and other tax benefits, the ability to vertically integrate throughout the “food chain” of telecommunications services and dominant status in the administration of telephone numbers, standard setting and other policy issues. Incumbents will strive to capture deregulatory benefits while retaining the many benefits previously reserved for common carriers. This paper will identify the potential problems resulting from an FCC decision to grant authority for telecommunications service providers to discontinue PSTN services. The paper also will consider whether in the absence of common carrier duties, carriers providing telephone services, including Voice over the Internet Protocol (“VoIP”), voluntarily will agree to interconnect their networks. The paper will examine Internet peering and other types of network interconnection with an eye toward assessing whether a largely unregulated marketplace can ensure ubiquitous access to PSTN replacement services. The paper concludes that private carrier interconnection models and information service regulatory oversight may not solve all disputes, or foreclose price discrimination for functionally the same type of service. Recent Internet interconnection and television program carriage disputes involving major players such as Comcast, Level 3, Fox and Cablevision, point to the possibility of increasingly contentious negotiations that could result in balkanized telecommunications networks with reversed or reduced progress in achieving universal service goals. The paper also concludes that rural access to VoIP and other voice communications services could end up costing significantly more than what urban residents pay, an efficient, but politically risky outcome.

School district labour conflict and frame analysis: a field study of contentious negotiations

Labour conflict in school districts is a largely neglected area of educational research. This study examines the perceptions, actions, and decisions of union and district leaders using social movement theory to describe, analyze, and interpret contentious contract negotiations in three school districts in the Pacific Northwest region of the US. Research Methods: Having failed to arrive at a contract settlement mid-August prior to the beginning of the 2006–2007 school year, union and district leaders were approached and invited to participate in the study. Twenty-seven semi-formal interviews as well as observations of meetings and events, and artifacts were gathered for analysis. Findings: The article discusses key issues relevant to the ways union and district personnel perceived, spoke to, and engaged in labour conflict. Five action frames labeled craftsmanship, stewardship, competition, solidarity, and diplomacy were identified. The frames expose organizational logics and ideologies that appeared to guide how participants planned, managed, and communicated with each other and their constituents. The study illustrates and provides insights for interpreting, communicating, and structuring beliefs, actions, and events for both district and union leaders.

‘Breakthrough’ Deal on Flu Strains Has Modest Provisions

When negotiators finally reached a deal about the global sharing of influenza viruses on 15 April, the World Health Organization was quick to call it a "landmark agreement." But the most significant breakthrough may be that, after 4 years of complex and often contentious negotiations, there is a deal at all.

Semantic Provisioning of Children’s Food

Drawing upon in-depth interviews with mothers in the US about feeding their young children, this article examines how consumer culture — broadly construed — constitutes part of the indispensable context of mothering practices. The argument put forward is that mothers not only provide food and sustenance for their children, but necessarily encounter, engage with and make use of commercial meanings of foodstuffs as part and parcel of the caring work they accomplish while providing food and meals. The concept of ‘semantic provisioning’ is meant to capture the meaning-making labor of mothers as it arises in sometimes contentious negotiations with children over ‘proper’ and ‘appropriate’ foodstuffs and meals. The approach offered seeks to demonstrate how commerce, sentiment, caring and children’s subjectivities interweave at the level of practice.

Airline Negotiations and the New Concessionary Bargaining

I ask whether the highly confrontational collective bargaining in the airlines is unique to that industry or a sign of a deepening crisis in union–management relations nationally. First, airline labor relations are reviewed in the context of extremely contentious negotiations, intense industry competition, complex and fragmented bargaining structures, frequent bankruptcies, and unpredictable external shocks. Next, concessionary bargaining in the airlines is discussed, and a new and extreme form of concessionary bargaining is identified. The emergence of the new concessionary bargaining in the airlines and its spread to the automobile sector is then interpreted as the early signs of a fundamental transformation of collective bargaining. The implications of the new concessionary bargaining are then described at the workplace, company, union, and societal levels.