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Thinking Outside The Big Box: Food Access, Labor, Landuse, And The Wal-Mart Way, Mark Vallianatos, Amanda Shaffer, Moira Beery, Robert Gottlieb, Abby Wheatley Dec 2015

Thinking Outside The Big Box: Food Access, Labor, Landuse, And The Wal-Mart Way, Mark Vallianatos, Amanda Shaffer, Moira Beery, Robert Gottlieb, Abby Wheatley

Mark Vallianatos

In just four decades, the Wal-Mart Company has transformed the retail sector, infl uenced the way we shop and work and shaped the nation’s rural, suburban and urban communities. Now Wal-Mart Supercenters, vast stores that house full-scale grocery stores within their walls, are beginning to affect the food system. After summarizing Wal-Mart’s labor and land use impacts, this working paper addresses an issue that has received less attention: the implications of the Supercenter model of food retailing on food access. The paper includes an examination of such issues as food selection, pricing and store accessibility, based on a case study …


Toward A Low Wage World: The Development And Limitation Of Taiwan' Labor Regime(1980s~2010s), Wei-Yi Chang, Chih-Lung Huang Dec 2013

Toward A Low Wage World: The Development And Limitation Of Taiwan' Labor Regime(1980s~2010s), Wei-Yi Chang, Chih-Lung Huang

Chih-lung Huang

This article tries to explain why Taiwan’s labor regime has fallen into a low wage environment. A review of literature shows that existing studies consider only the elements of state, capital, labor, or the social environment to explain the low wage within different historical stages. But the literature to date could not answer the question as for why Taiwan’s labor wage did not increase with economic growth after 2000s. In order to bridge the gap, the legislation and amendment of related labor laws from 1980s to 2010s was explored through the perspective of historical institutionalism. It was found that the …


An Analytical Framework For Studying The Politics Of Consumption: The Case Of The National Consumers' League, Wendy A. Wiedenhoft Murphy Mar 2013

An Analytical Framework For Studying The Politics Of Consumption: The Case Of The National Consumers' League, Wendy A. Wiedenhoft Murphy

Wendy A. Wiedenhoft Murphy

Consumption is not often addressed in the literature on social movements even though consumer organizations and consumer tactics have been successful in achieving social change. This paper offers an analytical framework for studying the politics of consumption, which suggests that consumers can be conceived of collectively as active agents rather than passive individuals. I capture this active agency through four concepts: mobilization, problematization, identification, and contention. I focus on one consumer organization, the National Consumers' League, and its three consumer tactics, white lists, white labels, and legislation, in order to demonstrate how the analytical framework I construct can be applied.


Liberation Of, Through, Or From Work? Postcolonial Africa And The Problem With “Job Creation” In The Global Crisis, Franco Barchiesi Nov 2012

Liberation Of, Through, Or From Work? Postcolonial Africa And The Problem With “Job Creation” In The Global Crisis, Franco Barchiesi

Franco Barchiesi

The precarity of employment in an age of globally financialized capital cannot be reduced to the sociological problems of erosion of stable jobs with benefits and proliferation of insecure occupations. It is rather a political issue that interrogates the ability of state and capital to turn multitudes into governable and productive subjects. As such it is underscored by attempts by financial capital to “capture” living labor beyond the confines of production and across the social spectrum. It is also characterized by the widening gaps between official norms that center social inclusion around work ethic and economic activity and material realities …


Precarity As Capture: A Conceptual Reconstruction And Critique Of The Worker-Slave Analogy, Franco Barchiesi Oct 2012

Precarity As Capture: A Conceptual Reconstruction And Critique Of The Worker-Slave Analogy, Franco Barchiesi

Franco Barchiesi

No abstract provided.


The Employee Free Act Choice: Economic Consequences And Political Implications, Peter Dreier Jun 2011

The Employee Free Act Choice: Economic Consequences And Political Implications, Peter Dreier

Peter Dreier

No abstract provided.


Why They Want To Kill The Motor Industry, Michael I. Niman Ph.D. Dec 2008

Why They Want To Kill The Motor Industry, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

Mikael I. Niman tells why the Republicans will sacrifice the US auto industry in their bid to kill off the labor unions


Precarious Collaborations. Working-Class Subjectivities, Community Activism, And The Problem With “Social Movement Unionism” In Late-Apartheid East Rand (South Africa), Franco Barchiesi, Bridget Kenny Oct 2008

Precarious Collaborations. Working-Class Subjectivities, Community Activism, And The Problem With “Social Movement Unionism” In Late-Apartheid East Rand (South Africa), Franco Barchiesi, Bridget Kenny

Franco Barchiesi

An influential current in South African labor studies has used the concept of ‘social movement unionism’ to characterize organized labor’s contribution to South Africa’s post-Apartheid democratization. Part of the concept of social movement unionism is the idea that during the 1980s independent black workers’ unions combined workplace struggles with community-based concerns related to social services, repression, and political disenfranchisement. In this way, trade unions came to play a politically transformative role, which implied both innovative labor-community alliances and the appropriation by organized labor of social movements’ mobilizing modalities. After a decline in the immediate post-Apartheid period, when scholars and union …


Ethnic Democracy And Its Ambiguities: The Case Of The Needle Trade Unions, Gerd Korman May 2008

Ethnic Democracy And Its Ambiguities: The Case Of The Needle Trade Unions, Gerd Korman

Gerd Korman

[Excerpt] During the years between World War I and World War II the conduct among well-known Jewish labor leaders seems to have foreshadowed events in the history of America’s nationality following the tumult of the 1960’s. In the 1920’s and 1930’s America’s elected or appointed officials still used a pecking order based on assumed inequalities of race, ethnicity, and gender in making policy decisions. They presumed that their private interests, those of the “insiders,” the “leading groups,” or “controlling minorities,” were the only appropriate ones for determining public policy. It was then, especially in the Depression years, when the New …


Worker Participation In Diverse Settings: Does The Form Affect The Outcome, And If So, Who Benefits?, Rosemary Batt, Eileen Applebaum Jan 2008

Worker Participation In Diverse Settings: Does The Form Affect The Outcome, And If So, Who Benefits?, Rosemary Batt, Eileen Applebaum

Rosemary Batt

[Excerpt] This paper utilizes extensive surveys of workers in three occupational groups (network craft workers, semi-skilled office workers, and semi-skilled machine operators) in two very different industries (telecommunications and apparel)i to examine the outcomes of workplace innovations. Our central . question has two parts. First, what are the outcomes of off-line employee participation programs versus on-line work reorganization experiments? Second, who benefits from which type of innovation: employees, employers, or both? To answer these questions, we consider the effects of off-line versus on-line innovations on workers' satisfaction with their jobs, on their commitment to the companies they work for, and …


Informality And Casualization As Challenges For South Africa’S Industrial Unionism: The Case Of The East Rand/Ekurhuleni Region In The 1990s, Franco Barchiesi Jan 2007

Informality And Casualization As Challenges For South Africa’S Industrial Unionism: The Case Of The East Rand/Ekurhuleni Region In The 1990s, Franco Barchiesi

Franco Barchiesi

No abstract provided.


Labor And Social Citizenship In Colonial And Postcolonial Modernity: South African Perspectives In A Continental Context, Franco Barchiesi Jan 2006

Labor And Social Citizenship In Colonial And Postcolonial Modernity: South African Perspectives In A Continental Context, Franco Barchiesi

Franco Barchiesi

No abstract provided.


Commodification, Economic Restructuring, And The Changing Urban Geography Of Labor In Post-Apartheid South Africa: The Case Of Gauteng Province, 1991-2001, Franco Barchiesi Jan 2006

Commodification, Economic Restructuring, And The Changing Urban Geography Of Labor In Post-Apartheid South Africa: The Case Of Gauteng Province, 1991-2001, Franco Barchiesi

Franco Barchiesi

No abstract provided.