Labor Relations Commons^™

Genocide Dressed In Jeans: Does Sharing A Narrative About The Uyghur Population Alter Opinions About Fast Fashion, Danya Radhi

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

One of the most cherished traditions on our University of Arkansas campus is the etching of names onto Senior Walk each year. On any given day, thousands of students stroll across these beautiful sidewalks as they venture to and from class. Dressed in the latest fashions from iconic brands such as Zara, H&M, and Nike, these students are far removed from the tragedy that has befallen the Uyghur population living in the Xinjiang province, 6,914 miles away. Evidence has been mounting that the Uyghur population has been suffering through massive displacement, forced labor camps, and atrocities that we cannot even …

Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the mobility politics of container shipping and argues that technological development, political-economic order, and social infrastructure co-produce one another. Containerization, the use of standardized containers to carry cargo across modes of transportation that is said to have revolutionized and globalized international trade since the late 1950s, has served to expand and extend the power of international coalitions of states and corporations to control the movements of commodities (shipments) and labor (seafarers). The advent and development of containerization was driven by a sociotechnical imaginary and international social contract of seamless shipping and cargo flows. In practice, this liberal, …

Examining Past, Present, And Future Of Agricultural Labor: From The Bracero Program To The Coalition Of Immokalee Workers, Francesca Paradiso

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is a comparative study that examines the Bracero Program and the work of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). The Bracero Program brought Mexican workers into the United States on temporary work visas from 1942-1964. The CIW is an organization of Mexican workers that was founded in 1992 as a response to the horrible working conditions that Mexican tomato pickers faced in Immokalee, Florida. In this thesis, I show that by putting these programs side by side, we can see the exploitation of Mexican farmworkers has relied on changing government tools—different forms of visas, different immigration regimes, different …

“I’Ve Been Working My Ass Off For You To Make That Profit”: Fundamental Information For The Self-Advocation Of Emerging Artists, Layne Hubble

MA Theses

This thesis recognizes the inequity and lack of business autonomy afforded to artists within the greater art market, due in part to socio-economic barriers to entry and professional misconceptions perpetuated through romanticized narratives. Emerging artists are denied accessible forms of education and the relevant tools to develop strong business and marketing skills for entrepreneurial success; competitive atmospheres discourage mentorships at high levels of influence and leave many mid-career and established artists with professional self-reproach.
Results from original surveys and interviews present a cross-section of the artistic profession spanning age, gender, race, ethnicity, medium and level of experience to be analyzed. …

Northeastern Pennsylvania's Forgotten Labor Massacre: Analysis Pf The English Language Record Of The Lattimer Massacre, Jamie C. Costello

Graduate Masters Theses

The Lattimer Massacre occurred on September 10, 1897, in a small anthracite mining town in northeastern Pennsylvania. The bloody conflict erupted when an unarmed group of mostly Eastern European immigrant mine workers lethally clashed with militantly armed sheriff’s deputies who acted on behalf of private coal companies. Nineteen strikers died at the scene and dozens more were horrifically wounded. Despite the outraged shock of the community clamoring for justice which led to a murder trial that made international headlines, the Lattimer Massacre faded from local and national memory in the following decades. A combination of lingering nativist prejudice curated by …

Inaccessible Interpolated Imagery: How Coffee Farmers In The State Of Chiapas Might Access Political Economic Opportunity Through Representation, Paolo Fiann Bicchieri

Master's Theses

Here is a useful parable to boil down the idea of this project and set the tone: when one goes to the bar to tell a story about a fight at the bar, they would never venture to place themselves as the hero of the brawl, taking out three drunkards in a single punch, unless they were really in the bar, at that time, fighting a good fight. One would never do this as the bartender, locals, and regulars would all know if this were the case or not. Yet transnational corporations, governments, and even consumers do this all the …

A Labor Of Love: Extensive Exploitation Of Contract Music Workers, Malia Odekirk

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Workers across the United States are reckoning with unfair labor conditions by unionizing and speaking out. Systemic undervaluing of many workers has created a climate of fear, hidden agendas, and pervasive labor misconduct. The pageantry/marching arts are no exception. As a cultural insider, I conducted interviews, had many informal conversations, and ran a large survey that uncovered how the marching arts exploit instructors extensively despite their experience, education, and efforts. A systematic proclivity toward late payments, abused contracts, egregiously low compensation, and free labor begs the question: how can programs continually mistreat instructors this way? I explore this question through …

Constructing The Perfect Girlfriend: Gender, Class, Race, & Performativity Of Paid Intimacy In Nevada Brothels, Christina Parreira

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

While most research on commodified intimacy, especially in the sex industry, has explored gender dynamics, sex work researchers are beginning to also explore intersectional dynamics in the industry. But little research has examined whether or how workers may navigate these dynamics differently through the ways in which they understand and perform service labor. Much research has explored commodified intimacy in different settings, but very little attention has been paid to the different ways that workers in the same setting perform intimacy. In this dissertation I ask how do different performances of intimate service in the brothels- the girlfriend experience (GFE) …

[Dis]Assembling Race: The Fepc In Oklahoma, 1941-1946, Arley Ward

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

On the World War II home front in Oklahoma the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) succeeded in securing defense jobs for African Americans. The efforts of the committee, The Oklahoma Eagle, the Oklahoma City Black Dispatch, and the State Conference of Branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) advanced civil rights in Oklahoma throughout World War II and beyond. The efforts of the FEPC in Oklahoma connect civil rights efforts in the 1940s directly to Brown v Board of Education, (1954) and the classic civil rights movement.

Improving Veteran Access; Status Of Operations Of The United States Department Of Veteran Affairs Work-Study Program, Kirk Allen

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The usage status of The U.S. Department Veterans Affairs Work-Study Program is examined. Beneficiary numbers from the Global, Unites States, State, and Local/County perspective are reviewed. While of essential value, the program suffers from a lack of scholarly research and government oversight, and is further hindered by restrictive administrative rules lived first-hand. Research suggests that the program is operating outside of accountability to the taxpayer, presents as unnecessarily/overly-restrictive in accessibility, and is underutilized. The program appears to not be serving all veterans to full potential.

The Work-Study Program is codified in Veterans Benefits', Title 38 United States Code, Part III, …

The Frontier Of The Labor Movement: Latinas And The Longest Strike In Twentieth-Century Las Vegas, Maribel Estrada Calderón

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

After the mid-twentieth century, the American labor movement began to decline. Across the U.S., Union memberships and the rate of work stoppages decreased. In the hospitality-industry-driven city of Las Vegas, Nevada, however, the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 more than doubled its membership. In 1989, the Elardi family purchased the Frontier Hotel and Casino and began to eliminate workers’ benefits. Led by the Culinary Union, workers went on strike on September 21, 1991, beginning one of the longest strikes in twentieth-century Las Vegas. Latina workers played critical roles in organizing and maintaining this successful, six-year-long battle against the Elardis. Positioning …

Hello Girls On Strike: Telephone Operators, The Fort Smith General Strike And The Struggle For Democracy In Great War Arkansas, Kyra Schmidt

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In September 1917, Fort Smith telephone operators formed a local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Soon after, company leaders dismissed two of the women who were instrumental in the formation of the union. After many attempts to meet and negotiate with the company leaders, the remaining operators walked out and began striking on September 19. This strike lasted almost four months and brought chaos into the city including the indictments, trials, and convictions of the mayor, J. H. Wright, and chief of police, Jim Fernandez. The election after Wright’s conviction saw the first female votes in Arkansas history. …

Contextualizing Filipina/O Experiences Through The Life And Lens Of Virgil Duyungan, Benjamin Huff

History Undergraduate Theses

This paper serves a dual purpose: to examine the world of Filipina/o immigrants and Filipina/o Americans during the 1930s in the Puget Sound region, as well as look at the life and death of Filipina/o labor leader Virgil S. Duyungan. Incorporating these two different aspects into one paper reveals how Duyungan’s experiences contextualize and highlight key issues of the greater Filipina/o community in the region at the time, such as racial identity and tensions, labor rights, corruption and exploitation, and socio-economic conditions. By utilizing a body of primary and secondary sources, such as books, journal articles, government documents, images and …

Runaway: A History Of Postwar New York In Four Factories, Andy Battle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At midcentury, New York City was among the preeminent manufacturing centers in the United States. Within a generation, this manufacturing economy suffered an extraordinary collapse. Beginning in the 1950s, workers and their unions began to use the term “runaway” to describe factories that pulled up stakes in New York and set them back down in other climes. This dissertation explores the deindustrialization of New York City through case studies of “runaway” plants, or factories that left New York for the American South or abroad between the years 1945 and 1975.

In general, the manufacturers that remained in New York at …

“Mixed Up In The Coal Camp”: Interethnic, Family, And Community Exchanges In Matewan During The West Virginia Mine Wars, 1900-1922, Lela Dawn Gourley

History Theses & Dissertations

The West Virginia Mine Wars are etched in the popular memory of West Virginians, who view these events as an important part of their identity as Mountaineers; yet, there is still much historians do not know about the Mine Wars, especially when concentrating on the perspectives and experiences of the working-class miners. These everyday miners and their families are the topic of this thesis. Using oral histories from the Matewan Development Center Records housed in the W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, this thesis argues that community-building across ethnic and racial lines within Matewan’s …

Did Hollywood Take Theatre "By Hook Or By Crook?", Catherine S. Wright

MSU Graduate Theses

Hollywood and Theatre have been partners in producing entertainment for over 100 years. The relationship was fruitful for both parties, but Hollywood moguls and playwrights battled over ownership of the work and crafting of its creative nucleus, story and character. Theatre was the dominant entertainment right before the rise of motion pictures. Once Hollywood’s talkies closed the curtain on silent films, playwrights had a high creative worth to movie makers. In the cinema, story and dialogue were essential for its survival and growth. Playwrights were courted by the Hollywood studio heads but were not offered equal partnership as they were …

Invisible Labour: Support-Service Workers In India’S Information Technology Industry, Indranil Chakraborty

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The dissertation investigates the life, working conditions and urban experience of support-service workers in the Information Technology (IT) sector of India: the janitors, security guards, fast food delivery service professionals and car pool drivers who work in and around technology parks that develop software applications for a world-market. The common experiences of these employees are migration from rural contexts to a radically modern employment setting, where they work long hours with minimal benefits in informal conditions that often violate basic labour laws. The thesis draws on quantitative and qualitative research, and in particular on analysis and interpretation of hundred and …

Good Game, Greyory Blake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis and its corresponding art installation, Lessons from Ziggy, attempts to deconstruct the variables prevalent within several complex systems, analyze their transformations, and propose a methodology for reasserting the soap box within the display pedestal. In this text, there are several key and specific examples of the transformation of various signifiers (i.e. media-bred fear’s transformation into a political tactic of surveillance, contemporary freneticism’s transformation into complacency, and community’s transformation into nationalism as a state weapon). In this essay, all of these concepts are contextualized within the exponential growth of new technologies. That is to say, all of these semiotic …

School Day Extension And Female Labor Supply: The Case Of The Dominican Republic, Patricia Mones

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Since 2012 the Dominican education authorities have been transitioning the schools from a four-hour to an eight-hour per day schedule. As time spent in school is a proxy of childcare, the extension translates into a childcare cost reduction for participating families. Considering the long-studied relationship between childcare costs and mothers’ labor decisions, this study explores the effect of the implementation of the new school schedule on female labor supply both to the extensive and to the intensive margins in the Dominican Republic. Results suggest higher shares of students attending the new schedule within a municipal district are associated with a …

The Sleeping Giant: The Effects Of Housing Titan Ii Missiles In Arkansas And Kansas From 1962 To 1987, Michael Johnson Anthony

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

During the Cold War, thirty-six sites across Kansas and Arkansas were selected to house Titan II intercontinental missiles. These devices could strike enemy targets 8,000 nautical miles away all while hitting inside an area of one square mile. These technological marvels quickly became an indispensable part of President Kennedy and Defense Secretary McNamara’s ‘flexible defense’ strategy. While many authors have studied the ramifications of these devices on American foreign policy, few have researched the domestic implications of the missiles. This work looks to fill this void by investigating the Titan II missile program in Arkansas and Kansas from its construction …

Workers Of The Word Unite!: The Powell's Books Union Organizing Campaign, 1998-2001, Ryan Thomas Wisnor

Dissertations and Theses

The labor movement's groundswell in the 1990s accompanied a period of intense competition and conglomeration within the retail book sector. Unexpectedly, the intersection of these two trends produced two dozen union drives across the country between 1996 and 2004 at large retail bookstores, including Borders and Barnes & Noble. Historians have yet to fully examine these retail organizing contests or recount their contributions to the labor movement and its history, including booksellers' pioneering use of the internet as an organizing tool. This thesis focuses on the aspirations, tactics, and contributions of booksellers in their struggles to unionize their workplaces, while …

The Politics Of Shorter Hours And Corporate-Centered Society: A History Of Work-Time Regulation In The United States And Japan, Keisuke Jinno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Shorter working hours drew much attention as a means of fighting unemployment and crisis in capitalism during the first half of the twentieth century. Nowadays, shorter work-time is rarely considered a policy option to fix economic or social issues in the United States and Japan. This dissertation presents a history of work-time regulation in the United States and Japan to examine how and why its developments and stalemate took place.

In the big picture, developments of work-time regulation during the first half of the twentieth century were a part of concessional modifications of class relations, a common phenomenon in many …

Protests, Pageants, And Publications: Narratives Of Labor Agitators, 1913-1914, Jayme Edmund

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

In the vast historiography on the American labor movement workers have been treated as noble artisans, brave unionists, martyrs to the cause of unionization, and losers in the triumph of the “free market”. They have not been treated as historians producing their own stories. In crafting their own narratives labor activists acted as historians, reaching beyond recent events to contextualize their struggles and create a narrative that would mobilize both labor and non-labor audiences behind their goals. They offered a vision of the past as leading to present or recent problems and framed unions or labor solidarity as the solution …

Collisions Of Local And Global: Transnationalizing A South African Domestic Workers' Union, Moriah Elise Shumpert

Institute for the Humanities Theses

This thesis explores how domestic worker trade unions’ functions have experienced a shift in their priorities as a result of the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Convention 189, which standardizes rights for domestic workers worldwide. The adoption of this policy has diverted local unions’ efforts away from their original goals of mobilizing workers in this marginalized sector to focus instead on implementing this international policy. I argue that this shift reflects a larger tension where goals defined by international governance institutions and the dynamics of a larger transnational movement collide with the objectives and aspirations of a once autonomous grassroots trade …

Fashioning Desire At B. Altman & Co.: Ethics And Consumer Culture In Early Department Stores, Tessa Maffucci

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We live in an age of fast fashion. Clothing is produced in greater volumes than ever before and the lifecycle of each garment keeps getting shorter and shorter. Many items are manufactured to be worn only one time and then thrown away—as disposable as a cup of coffee. There is much to be learned about our current fashion ecosystem by looking into the past. Beyond the garments themselves we must understand the larger historical and sociological context in which these articles of clothing were produced. How does the shopping environment shape the buying habits and fashion trends of an era? …

United In Diversity? The Political Implications Of Intra- Eu Migration, Isabel Monteleone

Senior Theses and Projects

Intra-EU migration is a phenomenon innate to the structure of the European Union. A politico-economic union of twenty-eight countries, the EU does what no other alliance of countries has endeavored before, serving as a unique product of globalization and integration, in every sense of the word. Bound almost entirely by a common currency, the European Union is established in the belief that economic cooperation in Europe can be achieved through the principle of free movement, despite each member states’ individual way of life, language, and political, religious, and cultural ideology.

Since intra-EU migration allows for the possibility of EU integration …

Sex, Labor, And The American Way: Detroit Aesthetic In Mid-Twentieth-Century Literature, Jenna F. Gerds

Wayne State University Dissertations

The essay analyzes Sinclair Lewis short fiction in If I Were Boss, U.S.A. by John Dos Passos, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans, and Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr. The primary literature is juxtaposed with a study of visual texts and historic research with a locational and thematic basis in Detroit. Ford Times and early automobile advertisements, Diego Rivera's mural Detroit Industry, photographs of the Sojourner Truth housing project riots, and the accounts of gay union workers comprise a framework for each of the central texts. Detroit aesthetic is gritty, realist, …

Unionization And Income Inequality: The Impact Of Labor Union Participation On Income Inequality In The United States, Terence Finnigan

Honors Theses

Using Current Population Survey data in the period from 1996 -2011, this paper analyzes the relationship between labor union participation and income inequality in each of the 50 U.S. states. Since the 1970s the income gap in the United States has grown steadily and today the United States is the most unequal of all OECD countries (with the exception of Mexico and Turkey). In the past ten years alone, the disposable income for middle class families in the United States has shrank by a figure of 4 percent. In addition to rising income inequality, labor union participation has been on …

Does Hispanic Oriented Safety Training Impact Current Construction Industry Safety Rates, Esteban Corrales Villalobos

Open Access Theses

Construction is an industry of risk, both physical and economical. Any and all occurrences can have implications on both these factors. One of the largest issues over the last years that has affected both these areas is construction safety. Labor accidents and illness can have a major impact on a company's bottom line and on their labor's ability to provide for their family. Hispanic labor over the years has been the fastest growing ethnicity and has had the highest injury rates in the construction industry. Cultural and language differences have caused this workforce to have a communication gap between them …

The State Of The Anti-Union Address: A Rhetorical Critique Of Select Service Worker Training Methods, Richard Ries

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This is an interdisciplinary master's level thesis that explores links among technical writing, training manuals, surveillance, and anti-union rhetoric used with service workers in select American chains and franchises. Brief histories are provided, including those of technical writing, the rise of unions in America, and how technical writing became inextricably linked with labor. A major shift occurred in the 20th century when workers began interacting less with products and more with the public. The research focuses on training manuals, techniques, and rehearsed dialogues of McDonald's, Wal-Mart, Starbucks, Whole Foods, Panera, and Publix, though similar organizations are referenced. Service worker language, …