View Of Unions Research Articles

Flexing in the Gig Economy Ripple Effect

The entire gig ecosystem is pioneering the evolution of a workforce based on a simplistic business model of Flexing; of flexible talent or freelancers. Talent and valued skills are made available on free will by the service provider for a task specified by the service seeker. The sentiment of ‘being your own boss’ plays a crucial role in such an economy. The advent of digital technology has not only multiplied its outreach potential but also carved a way for the emergence of growth opportunities across businesses. However, ensuring the sustainability and security of employment is a challenge. The dexterity of gig workers is to be channelised for a secure future for the informal workforce, which is occurring on an incremental basis with small steps in all major industries, shaping the future trends of workforce formalisation. The recomposition of the workforce is underway with government interventions to provide social security. In this article, we aim to furnish insights on the need for formalisation and its impact on India Inc. We focus on areas like employment of women in the formal sector, the role of new-age start-ups, the implications of newly formed labour codes, the point of view of unions and others that are part of this ecosystem. We explore the potential upgrades on policy changes and industry-specific insights on the gig world covering all the major industries. We propose that it is imperative to deliberate the policies required for ensuring the sustainability of this ecosystem.

El Impacto de la huelga en los procesos de politización sindical en Chile

A partir de la constatación de la compleja regulación de la conflictividad laboral en Chile, se revisan las características que tuvieron las 43 huelgas más importantes entre el sector público y el privado de las tres regiones más pobladas del país durante el año 2014, mediante un análisis cualitativo de entrevistas semiestructuradas aplicadas a los dirigentes sindicales que las protagonizaron, con el objetivo de aproximarse al impacto que tuvieron estos eventos sobre los procesos de politización de sus respectivas organizaciones. La indagación en las causas, desarrollo y consecuencias de las huelgas estudiadas desde el punto de vista de los sindicatos, muestran una importante incidencia sobre la valoración negativa de los dirigentes respecto a la legislación laboral, la cual se percibe como favorable a los intereses del empresariado. En muchos casos, esta lectura se proyecta más allá de lo laboral como una politización sindical crítica hacia la institucionalidad en general, aunque sin alternativas concretas de transformación por fuera de las reglas del juego establecidas.

Politicising curriculum implementation: The case of primary schools

Since 2012, the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS) comprise the new National Curriculum Statement currently implemented in South African schools. CAPS encapsulates a series of radical curriculum changes since the dawn of a new democratic dispensation in 1994. This study aims to understand how Grade Three educators in Limpopo, South Africa, approach the implementation of the most recent CAPS. The analysis of data revealed inconsistencies between the ‘optimistic’ view of the Department of Basic Education (DBE) to improve curriculum implementation despite continuously changing the curriculum, and the ‘pessimistic’ scenario where educators consistently refer to obstacles to curriculum implementation. Respondents suggested that CAPS implementation is hampered by inadequate training of educators, a lack of resources, and too much paperwork. The study points to the politicisation of implementation signalled through educators’ dissatisfaction with the DBE and their positive view of trade unions. This article argues that in the highly politicised education context of South Africa, curriculum implementation takes a back seat to institutional and individual political machinations. Keywords: Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS); curriculum change; curriculum implementation; politics; primary school educators; South Africa; teacher unions

Academic Librarians and Labor Unions: Attitudes and Experiences

This research project investigates librarians' attitudes toward unions and collective bargaining through data collected from a nationwide survey of 359 academic librarians in the United States. We found that academic librarians have a generally positive view of unions and collective bargaining agreements, a notable result in a national political atmosphere that is demonstrably anti-union. Union membership is strongly bound to faculty status. Our research results imply that unionization and collective bargaining provide stronger job protections and higher wages than faculty status alone, and suggest that discussions of faculty status in academic libraries may not have provided the best possible way to enhance the status of our profession.

Experience with Company Unions and their Treatment under the Wagner Act: A Four Frames of Reference Analysis

This paper reexamines American experience with company unions (also known as nonunion employee representation plans) before they were banned by the Wagner Act (1935). For the half‐century following the passage of the act, labor historians and industrial relations scholars painted a bleak portrait of company unions as anti‐union sham organizations. Since the 1980s, additional research has documented a more positive side; similarly, concern has grown that the Wagner Act's ban is stifling legitimate employee participation programs. This paper brings new theoretical and empirical evidence to both historical and legal parts of this debate, including examination of company unions through individualist, unitarist, pluralist, and radical frames; demonstration that the pluralists’ view of company unions was more diverse and positive than conventionally portrayed; presentation of new historical evidence and testimony on the company union experience; and a substantially revisionist assessment of the merits of the Wagner Act's ban. In particular, the conclusion is that, given any reasonable weighting of the four frames, the company union ban is overly restrictive and should be modified so companies can implement the positive side of nonunion employee committees but not the negative. The paper ends by noting that the unbalanced and narrowly critical treatment of company unions in the mainline industrial relations tradition is a case study of the field's perhaps fatal post–World War II core intellectual‐normative contradiction—professed inclusiveness of all frames of employment relations but, in practice, attention to and preference for a narrow union‐centric version of one frame.

Globalization, Restructuring and Unions: Transnational Co-ordination and Varieties of Labour Engagement

This paper considers the various ways in which unions respond to transnational restructuring in their longer-term planning and at different levels of action. To this extent, it avoids simply falling into a workplace-based view of mobilizing, or a national and state level view of union lobbying and mobilizing, but instead looks at how different (multi) levels of union action develop (or otherwise) a portfolio of sustainable longer term planning approaches. More concretely, it examines the way that unions activate their learning capacity at various levels in order to develop and use coordination and networking to respond to transnational restructuring. We approach restructuring not only from the point of view of unions’ external organizational relations (employers, members, community, etc.), but also their internal organizational requirements and relations that build a more proactive union response. To reframe the context in which union coordination capability is built up, transnational restructuring should be examined. We start from a conceptual distinction between “influencing” (external) and “communication” (internal) union strategies. Specifically, four different strategies, which take place at different levels of union action, are identified and presented in the paper. They reflect different dimensions of coordination as a feature of long term union learning and preparation in relation to restructuring: (1) lobbying and campaigning to influence the macro-level regulatory environment; (2) organizing and coordinating action in relation to influencing micro-level change; (3) developing informational and learning strategies about skills and training development to prepare individuals for negotiating change at the micro-level; and (4) developing communication and exchange of information with each other to create greater levels of awareness and focus in relation to restructuring at the macro-level. Conclusions identify that the structure and content of union coordination in the context of cross-border restructuring is a complex issue that cannot be reduced to simple historical binaries of bureaucracy-activist or employer facing versus membership facing. Our findings demonstrate that coordination works across various sets of dimensions (i.e. “influencing” and “communicating”), relations (internal and external) and levels (i.e. micro and macro). Therefore, it requires complex sets of organization and agendas.

The Marxist View of the Labor Unions: Complex and Critical

Since the world economic crisis of 2008 and governments' increasing demands for austerity in countries around the globe, labor unions have failed to provide leadership to the working class. This has led to a debate about the value of unions and their role in social change. Longstanding socialist organizations and emerging nonstate socialist and anarchist groups have begun an important discussion of the nature of the labor unions, the character of their leaderships, and their relationship to employers and the state. Marx and Engels are often referred to or cited as authorities in these debates, though seldom do we have an overview of how they arrived at their complex understanding of labor union structures, leaderships, politics, and behaviors. This essay is meant to contribute to this important discussion by examining Marx's and Engel's involvement in the workers' movement, including with the labor unions, as well as their writings about labor unions, placing them in the broader context of their revolutionary socialist strategy and vision. We trace the development of these ideas from their first involvement with the workers movement in the mid‐1840s until the death of both by the 1890s. Finally, we conclude by making a summary of their considered opinion.

Vocational Higher Education and Training in Brazil and the Quality Control

This research focuses the sequential courses, a way of vocational higher education introduced in Brazil in 1999. The aim of this study is to show a general overview on vocational education in Brazil, the development of sequential courses, about the Brazilian universities and the representative institutions of category (syndicates, regional counseling, federations and confederations) and the quality control. These courses, with two years lasting, were implemented to develop in the students older than sixteen the professional background. These sequential courses are in the beginning phases of implementation, so there are not researches about them yet. However, the interest in sequential courses is increasing since they were implemented. Data from Ministry of Education point that in 1999 were offered one hundred seventy-eight courses in Brazil, meantime in 2002 the offering was six hundred twelve courses. Although the data show the sequential courses have been well accepted by Brazilian students, it is not possible to notice, if they fulfill the students’ expectations. The methodology to this work was developed through a bibliographic review about vocational education. Beyond the students, this research considers other important institutions or involved elements with this pattern of education and sequential courses, among them the government, the representative counseling of category, the teachers and the universities. We observed that there are many relevant questions those deserve some reflection related to different parts of these courses such as: a) the lack of links between the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Labour, which leads to problems of recognition of the sequential courses in the labour market; b) the different points of view of trade unions, with some against and others in favour of this new kind of training workforce in Brazil; and c) the controversy among universities whether it is their role to offer sequential courses in addition to regular undergraduate degrees, partly because of their concerns regarding the quality of these courses.
 
 Key words: vocational education - sequential courses - workforce.

Discrimination in hiring against immigrants and ethnic minorities: the effect of unionization

There has been a long debate concerning whether unions are exclusive or inclusive with respect to immigrants and ethnic minorities. In the exclusive view of unions, unionization is expected to increase the likelihood of employers asking questions that discriminate against immigrants and ethnic minorities and decrease the likelihood of employers asking Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) questions related to immigrant or ethnic minority status. The contrary is expected for the inclusive view. Our analysis, using New Zealand data for job applications, provides some support for the inclusive view of unions, as the higher the unionization rate, the more likely EEO information is sought, but no relationship is found between unionization rate and discriminatory questioning. This suggests that unions are probably helpful in promoting diversity but not yet in combating discrimination against immigrants and ethnic minorities in hiring.

What unions do: Insights from economic theory

I have attempted to distill a quite sizable body of literature written by modern economists on the theory of labor unions, with particular emphasis given to the “two faces” view of unions developed by Freeman and Medolf in What Do Unions Do? Many important ideas and contributions have necessarily been omitted, but hopefully the main contours and implications are captured.

Radio general managers and news directors in the United States: A descriptive analysis

A national survey of radio station general managers and news directors explored their demographic characteristics and stands on social issues. News directors’ support for a national health care program, their lack of support for unregulated business, their lack of trust in private enterprise to look out for the workers’ welfare, and their less negative view of labor unions may be explained through their own experience, as well as those of their newsroom employees.

Chemical labor set to take hard line

With organized labor generally on the defensive in the U.S., unions are seeing an increasing number of legislative defeats, more court decisions going against them, and a public view of unions as corrupt monoliths with over-the-hill leadership. Just what labor is going to do to counter this trend toward antiunionism is a question most union leaders are trying to answer. A. F. (Al) Grospiron, the outgoing long-time president of the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers International Union (OCAW), worries deeply about what he agrees is a lessening union movement in the U.S., most apparent in the decline of union membership. Grospiron talked at length on the subject with C&EN at OCAW's national convention in Hollywood, Fla., earlier this month. In the U.S., the organized labor force has been shrinking. Although OCAW itself has maintained its membership and has had improvement in some areas, the overall shrinking membership in U.S. unions worries Grospiron—not only for what ...