Union Elections Research Articles

Nurse Unions and Patient Outcomes

The authors estimate the impact of nurse unions on health care quality using patient-discharge data and the universe of hospital unionization in California between 1996 and 2005. They find that hospitals with a successful union election outperform hospitals with a failed election in 12 of 13 potentially nurse-sensitive patient outcomes. Hospitals were more likely to have a unionization attempt if they were of declining quality, as measured by patient outcomes. When such differential trends are accounted for, unionized hospitals also outperform hospitals without any union election in the same 12 of 13 outcome measures. Consistent with a causal impact, the largest changes occur precisely in the year of unionization. The biggest improvements are found in the incidence of metabolic derangement, pulmonary failure, and central nervous system disorders such as depression and delusion, in which the estimated changes are between 15% and 60% of the mean incidence for those measures.

Debt Structure as a Strategic Bargaining Tool

This paper studies the strategic role of debt structure in improving the bargaining position of a firm's management relative to its non-financial stakeholders. Debt structure is essential for strategic bargaining because it affects the ease of renegotiating debt contracts and thus the credibility of bankruptcy threats. Using the airline industry as an empirical setting, we first show that the degree of wage concessions is strongly related to a firm's debt structure. Debt structure is further shown to be adjusted as a response to an increase in non-financial stakeholders' negotiation power. Using NLRB labor union election as a laboratory setting and employing a regression discontinuity design, we find that passing a labor union election leads to an increase in the ratio of public debt to total assets and a decrease in the ratio of bank debt to total assets in the following three years after elections, whereas there is no significant change in the level of total debt. The syndication size of newly issued bank loans increases while creditor ownership concentration decreases once the vote share for unions passes the winning threshold. Further analyses confirm that the debt structure adjustments after union certification are more likely driven by the strategic concerns of management rather than more constrained access to bank loans.

Is Student Union a tokenism of student participation in school governance?

Abstract This article is a report on part of a larger research on student participation in school governance in the Hong Kong context. It addresses the question ‘Is the Student Union a tokenism of student participation in school governance in the context of Hong Kong?’. The research adopts a mixed methodology comprising both quantitative and qualitative methods. For the quantitative study, 3209 valid student questionnaires from 51 secondary schools of different backgrounds were collected. For the qualitative study, four schools of different levels of student participation were involved in in-depth case studies. Semi-structured interviews and field observations with teachers and students were conducted to collect qualitative data. The study revealed that from the questionnaire, the ‘one student, one vote’ policy was an apparently fair, transparent and democratic procedure for Student Union elections, and gave the Student Union a positive image in relation to student participation. However, the in-depth case studies revealed that these were superficial perceptions. Instead, it was found that schools shared very limited powers with their Student Unions, where the Student Union would have power only in trivial school operational matters. The ultimate, real power was in the hands of school authorities, seriously limiting the influence of student participation. Our studies further revealed that whether students were satisfied with this disempowering situation or not, most of them had become ‘positive and passive’. This was because they had been socialized to accept the status quo, without expressing dissident voices, as they did not want to oppose the caring school ethos that they valued. In summary, Student Unions in Hong Kong are, in general, close to tokenism, a representative mechanism that cannot take meaningful action to bring forth genuine changes in important school matters. This may have negative impacts on students’ citizenship development, and ends up with cultivating students to be non-questioning, non-participatory, cynical, passive and docile citizens.

Trade Union Elections at Foreign-Owned Chinese Factories

This article takes a historical perspective about the possibility of democratic grassroots trade union representation in Chinese factories. It documents previous trade union elections at supplier factories of multinational corporations (MNCs), from the first election organised by Reebok in 2001 at a supplier factory in Shenzhen to a recent election instigated by workers. For a decade and a half, a number of high-profile union elections were variously organised by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) on behalf of MNCs, or by the Chinese trade union, or by workers. The article examines the political and social contexts in which these elections took place, the problems encountered by the newly elected trade union branches, their successes and failures, and how these elections prompted China’s trade union federation to hold similar elections at domestically owned Chinese factories. It concludes with an analysis of the current labour scene in China and the prospects of genuine collective bargaining.

Union Would Be “Bad for Business”

The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that an employer committed an unfair labor practice when management warned workers before a union election that bringing in a union could be bad for business.

Leadership Experiences Within Civil Organizations and Candidacy in Public Elections: Causal Evidence from a Quasi-Experimental Approach

Standing as a candidate in public elections has been characterized as the ultimate act of political participation. We test the hypothesis that acquiring office within civil organizations increases the probability of becoming a candidate in public elections. In order to take self-selection problems into account, we provide quasi-experimental evidence using election discontinuities, in which we compare the likelihood of being nominated for public office between closely ranked winners and losers in Swedish student union (SU) elections. Our original data cover 5,000 SU candidates and register data on their candidacies in public elections (1991–2010). The analysis provides support to the hypothesis: Students elected to SU councils were about 34 percent (6 percentage points) more likely to become a candidate in a public election than SU council candidates who were not elected. The causal impact is fairly stable over time. The analysis makes important contributions to two interrelated bodies of literature: First, it provides political recruitment literature with causal evidence that acquiring leadership experiences at arenas outside of representative democratic institutions facilitate entry into election processes. Second, it provides strong evidence to an increasingly contested issue within political participation research by showing that certain organizational activities increase individuals’ political involvement.

Hard Marriage with Heavy Burdens: Labor Unions as Takeover Deterrents

We examine how labor power affects a firm’s takeover exposure and merger gains. Using a regression discontinuity design that relies on “locally” exogenous variation in labor power generated by close-call union elections, we find that increased labor power significantly reduces a firm’s takeover exposure, reduces target offer premium and announcement returns, and prolongs deal completion duration. The results are stronger when unions are more powerful and conflict-provoking. Bidders of unionized targets are experienced, tough negotiators, and face less union threat by themselves. Our paper provides new insights into the real effects of shareholder-employee conflict regarding the market for corporate control.

Organized Labor and the Cost of Debt: Evidence from Union Votes

Arguments that worker unionization leads to changes in productivity, employment, or business survival find little support in the literature. While unionization may have limited impact in good states, unionized workers are entitled to special treatment in bankruptcy court. This shift in bargaining power can be detrimental to other corporate stakeholders in default states, with senior, unsecured creditors standing to lose the most. We gather data on union elections covering several decades and employ a regression discontinuity design to identify the effect of worker unionization on bondholders' wealth. Closely-won union elections lead to significant losses to bond values but do not lead to poorer firm performance or higher default risk. Critically, unionization is associated with longer proceedings in bankruptcy court, with more bankruptcy emergences and subsequent refilings, and with higher fees and expenses paid to lawyers and financial experts in court. All of these costs diminish corporate asset values, aggravating bondholders' losses. The value effect of unionization is weaker in states where unions have been undermined by right-to-work laws.

Working-Class Power and Spirituality

Working-Class Power and Spirituality

The Quantum States of Unionism

Members’ involvement in unions follows a characteristic pattern: years of low participation punctuated by short periods of high participation. Low participation is reflected in poor attendance at union meetings and low turnout in union elections. During high participation periods—generally labor negotiations and strikes—participation can run close to 100 %. Membership participation rarely exists in an intermediate state. This two-state pattern favors election of leaders who are more effective during the long periods of relative quiescence and less effective during the short periods of labor-management conflict. The behaviors of these peacetime union leaders has sometimes been interpreted as a reflection of their political conservatism, but is better understood as an outgrowth of unionism’s two-state existence. The two-state pattern fosters tensions within the union, such as those between more and less active members and between union organizers and business staff.

Predicting Elections for Multiple Countries Using Twitter and Polls

The authors' work focuses on predicting the 2014 European Union elections in three different countries using Twitter and polls. Past works in this domain relying strictly on Twitter data have been proven ineffective. Others, using polls as their ground truth, have raised questions regarding the contribution of Twitter data for this task. Here, the authors treat this task as a multivariate time-series forecast, extracting Twitter- and poll-based features and training different predictive algorithms. They've achieved better results than several past works and the commercial baseline.

NLRB Nullifies a Workplace Violence Memo

Management Report for Nonunion OrganizationsVolume 38, Issue 3 p. 7-8 Campaign Workshop NLRB Nullifies a Workplace Violence Memo First published: 18 February 2015 https://doi.org/10.1002/mare.30044Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Abstract Your intentions may be pure, but your actions during or after union organizing activity could lead to your company running afoul of the law. The National Labor Relations Board has recently reiterated this message. In yet another 2–1 decision, it ruled that an employer's attempt following a union election to restore a harmonious workplace by posting a memorandum and workplace violence policy, and asking employees to treat each other with respect and dignity, was an unfair labor practice (Care One at Madison Ave., 361 NLRB No. 159 (2014))! Volume38, Issue3March 2015Pages 7-8 RelatedInformation

Sacked labour activist continues to push for workers' trade unions

oped and progressed in just a few short years: ‘Since the time when I first started at Hitachi Metals as a teenager, I have witnessed first-hand how workers’ activism has grown. Back then, most workers were from rural areas and we felt content just to earn more than our cotemporaries down on the farm. When our rights were violated , we didn’t know what to do or who to turn to. But today we see the new generation of workers staging strikes, bargaining with management, and demanding trade union elections. On top of that, they are organising and spreading news on their smartphones all the time!’. One of Zhu’s key roles at the Panyu Workers Centre is training the worker activists who emerged from the labour disputes the centre handled , and helping to turn them into the trade union leaders of tomorrow. She explained: ‘China’s workers are learning from the history of the trade union movement both at home and abroad. It is only a matter of time before we become part of the history of labour movement ourselves. I once told a representative of the Guangzhou sanitation workers who felt she was not educated enough and was not confident enough to join the trade union leaders’ trainings: “arm yourself, so you can arm the others”. Chinese workers have huge potential. Many are still unorganised but once we are given the right tools, such as collective bargaining and workplace union elections, we will bounce back with amazing force’. Zhu Xiaomei is just one of a growing number of labour activists based in Guangdong who have come to the fore in recent years. Like Zhu, many played a leading role in labour disputes at their own workplace before being sacked or even arrested in retaliatory attacks by management and the local authorities: ■ Meng Han spent nine months in jail after leading a protest by hospital security guards in Guangzhou. He now works with Zhu at the Panyu Centre. ■ Yu Wucang was sacked after lobbying for a better deal for his fellow street cleaners in Guangzhou. Not only did he get his own job back, he has been instrumental in organis’ing other sanitation workers in the city. ■ Wu Guijun was detained for one year by the authorities in Shenzhen after representing his co-workers at a furniture factory in their dispute with management. He was released when all charges were dropped in June last year and has been active in helping other workers in Shenzhen ever since. Today we see the new generation of workers staging strikes, bargaining with management, and demanding trade union elections Zhu was arrested in December (see note below) INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 12 Volume 22 Issue 4 2015 G etting sacked was just the beginning for Zhu Xiaomei. For close to two years now, Zhu has used her own struggle and experience in standing up to her former employer to help drive China’s workers’ movement forward and emerge as one of most dynamic labour activists in the Pearl River Delta today. Zhu was fired from her job at the Hitachi Metals factory in Guangzhou in January 2014 after she campaigned for the establishment of an enterprise trade union. But she refused to go quietly or meekly accept her fate and retreat to her hometown in Henan; instead she took the company to arbitration court in Guangzhou. The labour dispute arbitration committee initially ruled against her in April 2014 but Zhu kept fighting and appealed the decision. Eventually, the district civil court ruled in her favour and Hitachi Metals agreed to an out-of-court settlement in which Zhu would get 230,000 yuan as compensation for illegal dismissal. Signing the settlement deal was an emotional moment, Zhu said: ‘It was never about the 230,000 yuan; it is about respect. It is about the respect employers in China have failed to show for so long. It is about the respect that I, and every worker who stands up for their rights, deserve’. Zhou added, ‘I smiled at the managing director on my way out. He once yelled at me “if you hire a lawyer, we will hire ten!” Well, in the end...

Sindicalismo y política : la Central de Trabajadores de la Argentina en tiempos kitchneristas

Este artículo analiza la experiencia de la Central de Trabajadores de la Argentina, surgida como alternativa a la tradicional Confederación General del Trabajo y como respuesta a las condiciones históricas impuestas en Argentina de la década del noventa. A partir de una mirada enfocada en las lógicas políticas (gremial, político-partidaria, hegemónica, populista), reconstruimos la historia de la CTA para contribuir a la comprensión de su configuración como actor y de su ruptura en dos luego de las elecciones sindicales de 2010.

Effects on Voter Participation and Unionization Activity from Changes in Railway Labor Act Election Rules

In 2010 the National Mediation Board changed the process by which airline and railroad employees certify a union. To install a collective bargaining entity, new election rules require that the majority of ballots cast be in favor of unionization. This procedure differed from the previous one, which required the majority of a craft or class of laborers to vote in favor of unionization. This study investigated the effects of the voting change on unionization and voter participation for industries covered under the Railway Labor Act. Data from airline- and railroad-related union elections were mined before and after the procedural change and analyzed. Chi-square analysis revealed no significant change in union certification efforts. The t-test results indicated a significant increase in voter participation in Railway Labor Act elections under the new election rules (p < .001).

The case for policy-relevant conservation science.

Drawing on the “evidence-based” (Sutherland et al. 2013) versus “evidence-informed” debate (Adams & Sandbrook 2013), which has become prominent in conservation science, I argue that science can be influential if it holds a dual reference (Lentsch & Weingart 2011) that contributes to the needs of policy makers whilst maintaining technical rigor. In line with such a strategy, conservation scientists are increasingly recognizing the usefulness of constructing narratives through which to enhance the influence of their evidence (Leslie et al. 2013; Lawton & Rudd 2014). Yet telling stories alone is rarely enough to influence policy; instead, these narratives must be policy relevant. To ensure that evidence is persuasive alongside other factors in a complex policy-making process, conservation scientists could follow 2 steps: reframe within salient political contexts and engage more productively in boundary work, which is defined as the ways in which scientists “construct, negotiate, and defend the boundary between science and policy” (Owens et al. 2006:640). These will both improve the chances of evidence-informed conservation policy.El Caso para la Ciencia de la Conservación con Relevancia PolíticaResumenA partir del debate “con base en evidencia” (Sutherland et al. 2013) versus “informado con evidencia” (Adams & Sandbrook 2013), debate que se ha vuelto prominente en la ciencia de la conservación, argumento que la ciencia puede ser influyente si mantiene una referencia dual (Lentsch & Weingart 2011) que contribuya a las necesidades de quienes hacen la política a la vez que mantiene un rigor técnico. En línea con dicha estrategia, los científicos de la conservación cada vez reconocen más la utilidad de construir narrativas con las cuales pueden mejorar la influencia de sus evidencias (Leslie et al. 2013; Lawton & Rudd 2014). Sin embargo, sólo contar historias rara vez es suficiente para influir sobre la política; en su lugar, estas narrativas deben ser políticamente relevantes. Para asegurar que la evidencia sea persuasiva junto con otros factores en un proceso complejo de fabricación de políticas, los científicos de la conservación pueden seguir dos pasos: rediseñar el marco de trabajo a partir de contextos políticos salientes y participar con mayor productividad en el trabajo fronterizo, que se define como los métodos con los cuales los científicos “construyen, negocian y defienden la frontera entre la ciencia y la política” (Owens et al. 2006:640). Estos pasos incrementarán la oportunidad de políticas de conservación informadas con evidencias.

Beyond the Union‐Centred Approach: A Critical Evaluation of Recent Trade Union Elections in China

AbstractMany Western scholars have regarded union democracy and elections as affairs that are internal to trade unions and unconnected with outside forces. Going beyond the mainstream union‐centred approach, this study critically assesses one significant type of union election that has been emerging in China since 2010 and that has been driven by different forces from previous elections. Previous workplace union elections had been ‘top‐down’ — initiated by the party‐state or its apparatuses, or else transnational corporation‐induced — but this newer type of election has been driven by workers' strikes. This study illustrates how the dynamics among the quadripartite actors — party‐state, higher‐level trade unions, capital and labour — have shaped these strike‐driven elections. Contrary to the claim that these elections have been ‘direct’ and ‘democratic’, our case studies show that they have been indirect and quasi‐democratic in nature.

University of Hyderabad Student Union Elections 2012: An Analysis in the Light of Lyngdoh Committee Recommendations

Student politics in India has had a bearing on national politics since colonial times. In contemporary times, student politics is closely connected to student union elections across the country. Although always controversial, student elections have become even more contentious, especially after the Lyngdoh Committee Recommendations (2006). The objective of this article is therefore to analyse these contentions with Student Union Elections in the University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, as an example and to attempt at possible ways forward.

Big Brother Unionism? The Landrum-Griffin Act and the Fight for Afscme's Future, 1961 – 1964

In this article, Joseph Hower examines the regulation of union elections by the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (commonly known as the Landrum-Griffin act) through a case study of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). Drawing on local and national union records and oral history transcripts, he reconstructs Jerry Wurf's campaign for the union presidency (1961–64) and shows how Wurf and his dissident caucus were reluctant to invoke Landrum-Griffin's protections, even in the midst of a fiercely contested election campaign, for fear that it would legitimize the anti-union intentions of the law's architects. Instead, Wurf and the other dissidents turned the law to their own ends, holding out the threat of legal action to force incumbent president Arnold Zander to curb his worst excesses, while using his administration's misdeeds to underscore their broader case for union reform. Narrowly defeated in 1962, Wurf managed to unseat Zander at the union's 1964 convention. The successful challenge, a rarity in twentieth-century labor history, ratified a more militant vision of the union, setting the stage for AFSCME's impressive growth during the second half of the twentieth century.

Voting Advice Applications: How Useful and for Whom?

The use of voting advice applications (VAAs) has increased steadily in recent years. VAAs have been developed for elections taking place in individual countries as well as for region-wide European Union elections. In this article, we study the determinants of the perceived usefulness of VAAs for their users, with data from the EU Profiler—a voting advice application developed by the European Union Democracy Observatory (EUDO) that was first applied to the 2009 European Parliamentary elections. We use a multilevel latent variable approach that allows us to study underlying evaluations based on ratings of multiple features of the EU Profiler, taking into account country-level heterogeneity in evaluations of the system. The results of this study improve our understanding of the benefits of VAAs for different segments of the population, and should be of interest to scholars and policy-makers who are interested in improving the experience of individuals who use VAAs to inform their voting decisions.