Labor Disruption Research Articles

Effects of customer unionization on supplier relationships and supplier value

This study examines whether suppliers modify trading strategies upon their customers’ unionization. The study demonstrates that when customers unionize, suppliers experience negative stock returns and rely less on the unionized customers for sales. Results are robust for alternatively using a regression discontinuity design. Suppliers reduce their exposure to unionized customers due to the demand uncertainty arising from potential labor disruptions, the customers’ reduced competitiveness in the product market, and customers’ potential shifting of unionization costs to suppliers. Furthermore, suppliers with unionized customers mitigate risks by seeking new customers and diversifying their customer concentration.

Strengthening the Grid: Proactive Transmission Resiliency Strategies in an Era of Intensifying Storms and Climate Change

The world is changing, and so are the damages and loss of life and property from more frequent extreme weather events. Climate change is causing a steady increase in the intensity and frequency of severe storms, wildfires, and other natural disasters. Recent studies have shown an increase in electrical outage events correlated to extreme weather events from 50 per year on average in the early 2000s to over 100 annually on average during the past five years.1 These events cause substantial economic losses through infrastructure damage, manufacturing and labor disruptions, and property value losses.

Fundamental Rethinking of Supply Chain Management

Labor disruptions, inflation, high interest rates, permitting delays, and long interconnection queues characterized the development and construction of new energy infrastructure in 2023. Terrestrial and offshore wind, solar, transmission, and hydrogen projects have been impacted most, and continued challenges are expected.

The Judicial Bookshelf

The Judicial Bookshelf Donald Grier Stephenson Jr. (bio) Introduction: Supreme Court History as a Parade of Themes Of the hundreds of books about the Supreme Court published in the twentieth century, surely few have been more widely read and referenced than The American Supreme Court by Robert G. McCloskey, professor of government at Harvard University from 1946 until his death in 1969. First published in 1960 by the University of Chicago Press, this compact and elegantly written one-volume interpretive history of the Court has been updated now through six editions by McCloskey's student, Sanford Levinson of the University of Texas.1 The paragraph that concluded the Epilogue in the initial edition combined a historical overview with what appeared to be an admonition for the Warren Court, ironically just as it was on the eve of an even more activist phase. From 1789 to the Civil War, the Court labored to establish a reasoned argument for the cause of union. From the war to 1937 it performed a similar function on behalf of laissez faire. Toward the end of each of those periods, the judges overstepped the practical boundaries of judicial power and endangered the place they had earned in the American governmental system. Since 1937, the Court has striven to evolve a civil rights doctrine that will realize the promise of the American libertarian tradition, yet accord with the imperatives of political reality. Even when criticisms are duly acknowledged, the fact remains that the Court has contributed more to an understanding of this issue than any other agency in American life. It would be a pity if the judges, having done so much, should now once again forget the limits that their own history so compellingly prescribes.2 McCloskey's paragraph illustrates a common goal of many who write about the Court: Highlighting one or more themes that capture the essence of a period of judicial history. [End Page 113] Indeed, in fewer than 150 words, McCloskey pointed to at least four such themes, the last of which was hardly a surprise. As William Lasser observed some three decades later in the context of warnings against an overreach of judicial power, the theme of "weakness and vulnerability pervades the literature on the Supreme Court."3 This theme perhaps echoed the same "forbearance in the use of power" to which Paul Freund referred as he eulogized Justice Felix Frankfurter in 1965.4 The word forbearance itself is a reminder that the Court's work of deciding cases occurs in at least three dimensions as it may choose to allow, to direct, as well as to forbid. Yet in the context of deciding cases contemporary observers as well as someone decades hence might well choose to associate the words political or partisan as both a related and even an identifying theme for the Court of this part of the twenty-first century. That characterization, however, is hardly novel or even distinctive in that the label could also easily be applied to much of the Court's history. Indeed, scholars have long regarded the Court as political in numerous ways. Perhaps most obviously, the Court is political because its decisions shape public policy by deciding what government—national, state, or local—may or may not do. At least since the 1960s, for example, the Court has overseen operation of the criminal justice system to a degree never before experienced, from police-citizen encounters through punishment. Second, decisions clarify the boundaries of political authority, focusing less on what may be done than on who may do it or how it may be done. The Steel Seizure Case5 turned not on whether government could cope with labor disruptions but on whether President Truman in the executive order had exceeded his authority and intruded into Congress's law-making domain. The Legislative Veto case6 did not question government's authority to deport a particular individual but instead challenged the device by which Congress had mandated deportation. Third, the Court itself may become an issue in presidential elections, as has happened at least a dozen times since 1800 because of unpopular decisions. Quadrennial campaigns in the past four decades, for example, would have...

Resilience of Supply Chain Networks to Labor Disruptions

This study introduces a supply chain network efficiency measure for networks with labor and associated bounds on labor availability. It also proposes two resilience measures with respect to (1) labor availability disruptions and (2) labor productivity disruptions. Solving five distinct supply chain network examples, we find (1) a free movement of labor across the supply chain network results in a higher efficiency of the supply chain as well as a higher resilience, (2) a reduction in labor productivity can impact the supply chain network efficiency and the corresponding resilience, and (3) the presence of electronic commerce escalates the efficiency of the supply chain network but diminishes resilience.

Managerial Challenges of Emotional Labor Disruption: The COVID-19 Crisis in Mexico

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the knowledge of managing emotional labor during a crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a disrupting event, particularly affecting frontline healthcare workers and their supervisors who faced pressures to manage emotions during their interactions with patients. Emotional labor has been studied in emergencies; however, the case of Mexico offers insights into an understudied context and a long and singular crisis. Drawing from multi-level storytelling interviews with medical managers, physicians, and nurses in hospitals in different states of Mexico, this article argues that COVID-19 blurred relationships between performance and outcomes of emotional labor. As the organizational goal focused mainly on saving lives, some workers intensified and performed emotional labor innovatively, but others deviated from feeling rules. Managers’ role became crucial for employees to abide by affective requirements facing disruption.

Decentralized project management concept for schedule-critical space projects

The Apollo moon missions of the 1960s pioneered the classic phased approach to space mission management. While successful at the time, this rigid and inflexible management philosophy has become synonymous with cost and schedule overruns of most high-profile space missions. The software industry has recently adopted modern, more flexible project management techniques based on “lean-agile” methods that enable team collaboration and communication through distributed task and schedule management, online document sharing and rolling-wave planning. However, due to the inherent schedule complexities of hardware development and the firm constraints of design review and launch timelines, flexible project management frameworks have not been widely adopted for space mission management. This paper presents a modified version of the traditional agile management philosophy, adapted to the unique needs of the space industry. A recent satellite development project was managed using the new modified-agile approach, while collecting project hours and task durations. Comparisons were made between this new style of space project management and a recently completed satellite development project using traditional space project management techniques. Results show that the new management approach reduced strain on the project team, improved overall productivity, and maintained a more level task loading when compared to the traditional management approach. This paper also illustrates how the new management approach can enable project resilience to change by analyzing its response to the labor disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

HUBUNGAN PSIKOLOGIS IBU BERSALIN DENGAN KELANCARAN PROSES PERSALINAN KALA II DI RUMAH BERSALIN BHAKTI IBU SEMARANG

Maternal mortality rate is an indicator of the success of health services, especially midwifery. Until now, maternal mortality rates in Indonesia are still quite high. One of the causes of labor disruption is psychological factors, anxiety, fatigue, exhaustion and maternal worries, all combined so as to exacerbate existing physical pain. This type of analytic survey research using retrospective studies. The study was conducted at RB Bhakti Ibu Semarang. The population in this study were all maternity mothers in RB Bhakti Ibu with 65 respondents. The sampling technique uses random sampling and is obtained by 39 respondents. Hypothesis testing uses the analysis of chi square test to determine the psychological relationship of maternity mothers with the smoothness of the second stage of labor. The results showed that there was a psychological relationship between maternity mothers and the smoothness of the second stage of labor with a p value of 0,000.

A new approach to estimating flood-affected populations by combining mobility patterns with multi-source data: A case study of Wuhan, China

Estimating flood impacts on daily activities is vital to disaster risk reduction and urban resilience. Human mobility on complex road networks has caused citizens, especially automobile commuters, to suffer from remarkable impacts on rainy days. However, quantitative studies of these harms have been limited. In this paper, we develop a new approach to estimating flood-affected populations, including their quantity, structure, and spatial distribution, by integrating commuter mobility patterns and road inundation records using multi-source data. Mobility patterns were built by the Gravity model with point-of-interest (POI) data and then downscaled to individual routes by Monte Carlo simulation. Inundation locations and impassable roads were retrieved by combining flood hazard maps with social media data. This approach was applied to Wuhan, a large city in Central China, to estimate the affected automobile commuters under a typical flood event (July 6, 2016) and three flood scenarios (10-year, 20-year, and 50-year). Our approach produces an estimate of the affected population that is more accurate and detailed than existing approaches. It also provides high-resolution impact information for urban studies and can be applied easily to other cities and disasters that include road closures. It will help governments to estimate affected populations rapidly and assess indirect economic losses caused by labor disruptions and work delays.

What About India's MSME Sector: COVID-19 Pandemic and Indian MSME Sector Outlook

This paper talks about impact of COVID-19 induced triple crisis (supply chain, demand chain and labor disruption) on India's Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises, which is one of the key driver of Indian Economy. MSME's are the backbone of the economy employing more than 11.10 crore workers in non-agricultural activities across country, and accounts for about half of India's exports. On the background of health emergency, the MSME units are in a distressing situation as severely constrained demand has contracted their revenue. The pandemic further exacerbate myriad of problems to the sensitive MSME sector as their liquidity comes from daily demand for their product, and they don't have huge cash reserves. With sustainability of MSMEs at stake the prospects of economic development of India presents a very gloomy picture considering MSMEs contribute about 30-35% to the GDP. Their closure could lead to a structural problem in economy while widening the inequality gap. The aim of study is to assess the impact of demand, supply and liquidity shock inflicted by corona virus on India’s fragile MSME sector while suggesting recovery measures to the government.

The role of dry ports in solving seaport disruptions: A Swedish case study

This paper analyzes the effects on Swedish hinterland logistics of a port labor disruption that occurred in the Port of Gothenburg's container terminal in 2016–2017. Because of this dispute, several companies initiated mitigation strategies by moving their cargo by truck or rail in the area, thus utilizing the inherent advantages of hinterland locations and dry ports. Researching hinterland logistics in Sweden, this article conducts a case study on a dry port and the warehouse industry. The results show that the traffic share of inland terminals was higher during and soon after the conflict. Thus, this study suggests that dry ports are significant as potential solutions for this kind of disruption.

China's Digital Economy: Opportunities and Risks

China’s digital economy has expanded rapidly in recent years. While average digitalization of the economy remains lower than in advanced economies, digitalization is already high in certain regions and sectors, in particular e-commerce and fintech, and costal regions. Such transformation has boosted productivity growth, with varying impact on employment across sectors. Going forward, digitalization will continue to reshape the Chinese economy by improving efficiency, softening though not reversing, the downward trend of potential growth as the economy matures. The government should play a vital role in maximizing the benefits of digitalization while minimizing related risks, such as potential labor disruption, privacy infringement, emerging oligopolies, and financial risks.

China’s Digital Economy: Opportunities and Risks

China's digital economy has expanded rapidly in recent years. While average digitalization of the economy remains lower than in advanced economies, digitalization is already high in certain regions and sectors, in particular e-commerce and fintech, and costal regions. Such transformation has boosted productivity growth, with varying impact on employment across sectors. Going forward, digitalization will continue to reshape the Chinese economy by improving efficiency, softening though not reversing, the downward trend of potential growth as the economy matures. The government should play a vital role in maximizing the benefits of digitalization while minimizing related risks, such as potential labor disruption, privacy infringement, emerging oligopolies, and financial risks.

How to Integrate Labor Disruption into an Economic Impact Evaluation Model for Postdisaster Recovery Periods.

Evaluating the economic impacts caused by capital destruction is an effective method for disaster management and prevention, but the magnitude of the economic impact of labor disruption on an economic system remains unclear. This article emphasizes the importance of considering labor disruption when evaluating the economic impact of natural disasters. Based on the principle of disasters and resilience theory, our model integrates nonlinear recovery of labor losses and the demand of labor from outside the disaster area into the dynamic evaluation of the economic impact in the postdisaster recovery period. We exemplify this through a case study: the flood disaster that occurred in Wuhan city, China, on July 6, 2016 (the "7.6 Wuhan flood disaster"). The results indicate that (i) the indirect economic impacts of the "7.6 Wuhan flood disaster" will underestimate 15.12% if we do not consider labor disruption; (ii) the economic impact in secondary industry caused by insufficient labor forces accounts for 42.27% of its total impact, while that in the tertiary industry is 36.29%, which can cause enormous losses if both industries suffer shocks; and (iii) the agricultural sector of Wuhan city experiences an increase in output demand of 0.07% that is created by the introduction of 50,000 short-term laborers from outside the disaster area to meet the postdisaster reconstruction need. These results provide evidence for the important role of labor disruption and prove that it is a nonnegligible component of postdisaster economic recovery and postdisaster reduction.

China's Digital Economy

China’s digital economy has expanded rapidly in recent years. While average digitalization of the economy remains lower than in advanced economies, digitalization is already high in certain regions and sectors, in particular e-commerce and fintech, and costal regions. Such transformation has boosted productivity growth, with varying impact on employment across sectors. Going forward, digitalization will continue to reshape the Chinese economy by improving efficiency, softening though not reversing, the downward trend of potential growth as the economy matures. The government should play a vital role in maximizing the benefits of digitalization while minimizing related risks, such as potential labor disruption, privacy infringement, emerging oligopolies, and financial risks.

China's Digital Economy: Opportunities and Risks

China’s digital economy has expanded rapidly in recent years. While average digitalization of the economy remains lower than in advanced economies, digitalization is already high in certain regions and sectors, in particular e-commerce and fintech, and costal regions. Such transformation has boosted productivity growth, with varying impact on employment across sectors. Going forward, digitalization will continue to reshape the Chinese economy by improving efficiency, softening though not reversing, the downward trend of potential growth as the economy matures. The government should play a vital role in maximizing the benefits of digitalization while minimizing related risks, such as potential labor disruption, privacy infringement, emerging oligopolies, and financial risks.

Anxious Uncertainty and Reactive Approach Motivation (RAM) for Religious, Idealistic, and Lifestyle Extremes

Reactive Approach Motivation (RAM) theory proposes that the personal uncertainty arising from motivational conflict causes anxiety, and that anxiety draws people to extremes because extremes activate approach‐motivated states that automatically downregulate anxiety. Five new studies consolidate existing evidence for the RAM view of uncertainty‐related threats and reactive extremism. In Studies 1–3, religious, idealistic, and RAM reactions after agentic, communal, and mortality threats were most extreme when threat‐relevant goals had been implicitly primed to create motivational conflict. In Study 4 uncertainty predicted extreme reactions only if goal conflict had been experimentally manipulated. In Study 5 personal uncertainty uniquely predicted lifestyle extremes among undergraduates whose educational goals were conflicted by a labor disruption at their university. Results converge on the conclusion that uncertainty‐related threats cause defensively extreme RAM reactions only if they arouse personal uncertainty about active goals. Results suggest that policies and programs to support the prosocial and/or nonextreme goals, ideals, and identifications of at‐risk people would reduce their motivation for antisocial extremism.

Results without Rancor or Ranking Ontario's Success Story

In many parts of the world, education change might have the right goals--better outcomes for students, including students from groups that had previously lagged behind average achievement levels. But many of these efforts have used wrongheaded approaches or failed to pay enough attention to what we are learning about effective large-scale change. In particular, many strategies place too much emphasis on test results as the main way to drive improvement. In contrast, Ontario's education change strategy embodies vital principles, grounded in research, that are associated with meaningful and sustainable change. Changes are respectful of professional knowledge and practice, and their main elements are coherent and aligned at the provincial, district, and school levels. Key partners--the provincial Ministry of Education, school boards, schools, and provincial and local organizations of teachers, principals, and others--work together. Change strategies are comprehensive and emphasize building capacity for improvement through professional learning, strong leadership, necessary resources, and effective engagement of parents and the broader community. Great emphasis is placed on public communication so that people know what is happening and support the schools. Most of all, there has been a relentless focus over several years on the same basic strategy. We believe this is an example of large-scale change that is effective and sustainable. Ontario has about 2 million children in its public education system. The provincial government provides essentially 100% of the funds for all four sets of locally elected school boards, reflecting Canada's constitutional requirement for public support of minority-language and Catholic schools. School boards (the equivalent of a school district in the U.S.) range in size from a few hundred students to about 250,000 in the Toronto District School Board. The province has nearly 5,000 schools extending across 400,000 square miles--the size of the eight southeastern states put together. The average elementary school has about 350 students; the average secondary school, fewer than 1,000. Ontario also has a very diverse enrollment, with 27% of the population born outside of Canada and 20% visible minorities. Ontario's 120,000 or so teachers and most of its support staff are unionized. There is a mandatory provincial curriculum. Thus, education in Ontario has all the challenges one might anticipate--large urban areas and very remote rural areas, significant urban and rural poverty levels, high levels of population diversity, areas with sharply dropping enrollment and others with rapid growth. During the 1990s, Ontario education was troubled. The province had significant labor disruption, lots of public dissatisfaction, increasing private school enrollment, and poor morale leading to high teacher turnover. However, in 2003, a new government was elected with the renewal of public education as one of its highest priorities. A premier with a deep commitment to education and talented ministers brought strong political leadership to bear. The Ontario education strategy that began in 2003 has two main components: * A commitment to improve elementary school literacy and numeracy outcomes, and * A commitment to increase high school graduation rates. These priorities were chosen because public confidence in and support for education depend on demonstrated achievement of good outcomes for students. These core goals are supported by a large-scale strategy based substantially on Michael Fullan's work. (1) The core strategies are also complemented by a range of other initiatives. Some of these initiatives, such as strengthening school leadership or renewing curricula, are necessary to support the key goals. Of particular importance was a commitment to reduce class sizes in the primary grades. Other initiatives, including provincial support for negotiating four-year collective agreements with all Ontario teachers in 2005, were necessary so that all parties could focus on improving student outcomes instead of being distracted by labor issues. …

Critical Infrastructure at U.S. West Coast Intermodal Terminals

Intermodal terminals in U.S. West Coast ports have experienced remarkable growth in container processing, from 14.2 million containers in 2001 to 22.6 million in 2006. This growth, however, has not come without difficulties. Larger container ships, growing container volumes, and the implementation of new technologies adversely affected West Coast intermodal terminals in their ability to process peak-season container volumes efficiently. In addition to these difficulties, there were major labor disruptions in 2002 and again in 2004. The combination of growing container volumes and the possibility of additional labor disruptions focused attention on diverting containers from West Coast container terminals to container terminals in ports in Canada or Mexico. This review examines the impact of growing container ship size on intermodal terminal infrastructure and explains the labor disruptions in 2002 and 2004. Critical terminal infrastructure at U.S., Canadian, and Mexican container terminals is then summarized. Terminal infrastructure on the west coasts of Canada and Mexico is found to be significantly less than U.S. West Coast terminals and to be capable of processing only a small percentage of containers bound for the West Coast in the event of another major disruption.

Oxytocin in the Circadian Timing of Birth

BackgroundThe molecular components determining the timing for birth remain an incompletely characterized aspect of reproduction, with important conceptual and therapeutic ramifications for management of preterm, post-term and arrested labor.Methodology/Principal FindingsTo test the hypothesis that oxytocin mediates circadian regulation of birth, we evaluated parturition timing following shifts in light cycles in oxytocin (OT)-deficient mice. We find that, in contrast to wild type mice that do not shift the timing of birth following a 6-h advance or delay in the light cycle, OT-deficient mice delivered at random times of day. Moreover, shifts in the light-dark cycle of gravid wild type mice have little impact on the pattern of circadian oxytocin release.Conclusions/SignificanceOur results demonstrate oxytocin plays a critical role in minimizing labor disruption due to circadian clock resetting.