Work, Economy and Organizations Commons^™

The Great Resignation: A Content Analysis Of News Sources' Portrayals Of The Covid-19 Labor Shortage., Mackenzie Williams

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

When workers left the labor market in large numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic, proclamations of a labor shortage emerged extensively throughout the news. In this study, I analyze the coverage of the worker shortage among three news sources with different political orientations. Several themes emerged from analyzing a total of 75 articles. The findings showed that the perspective shown in the article, the cause of the labor shortage, restaurant worker portrayal, support of solutions, and opinion of the labor shortage all differed based on the political identity of the news source. This research supports previous findings that show there is …

Miss Lebanon: The Digital Age’S Way Of Maintaining The Gender Gap, Ali Badereddine

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Futurological Fodder: On Communicating The Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, And Employment, Michael E. Samers Dr

Geography Faculty Publications

This article examines the debate concerning the employment implications of the so-called ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (FIR) or the increasing presence of artificial intelligence and robotics in workplaces. I analyze three ‘genres’ associated with this debate (academic studies including neo-classical and heterodox/post-human approaches, the ‘gray literature’, and popular media) and I argue that together they represent ‘futurological fodder’ or discourses and knowledges that ‘perform’ the FIR and its purported consequences. I contend further that these genres involve a complex mix of ethics and politics, and I conclude with a reflection on the political implications of the FIR debate.

Are Participants Good Evaluators?, Jeffrey A. Smith, Alexander Whalley, Nathaniel T. Wilcox

Upjohn Press

Managers of workforce training programs are often unable to afford costly, full-fledged experimental or nonexperimental evaluations to determine their programs’ impacts. Therefore, many rely on the survey responses of program participants to gauge program impacts.

Smith, Whalley, and Wilcox present the first attempt to assess such measures despite their already widespread use in program evaluations. They develop a multidisciplinary framework for addressing the issue and apply it to three case studies: the National Job Training Partnership Act Study, the U.S. National Supported Work Demonstration, and the Connecticut Jobs First Program.

Each of these studies were subjected to experimental evaluations that …

From Tasks To Riches: A Task-Based Approach To The Determinants Of Wages, Samantha Baradas, Aileen Co, Brian Daguman, Martha Delos Santos

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

An empirical investigation of the effects of occupational skills, human capital, and other worker characteristics on labor market outcomes is examined in this study. Using the PSA Labor Force Survey and Philippine Standard Occupational Classification (PSOC), the group offers a task-based measure as a proxy for occupational skills. Such problems in measuring skills arise when skill endowments of workers are underivable in a survey dataset. With this, the analysis includes comparing and contrasting models with task-based measures of occupational skills and Mincerian wage models with occupational dummies. Regression analysis found consistent statistically significant positive returns on a change in computational, …

The Impact Of Temperature On Labor Quality: Umpire Accuracy In Major League Baseball, Eric Fesselmeyer

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Using data from Major League Baseball, I compute an objective measure of the home plate umpire's work quality-the accuracy of his ball and strike calls during a game-and measure how it varies with temperature. I find that an increase in game-time temperature from between 70 and 80 degrees F to above 95 degrees F decreases an umpire's accuracy by a little less than a percentage point, which is a 5.5% increase in the pitch-calling error rate when evaluated at the mean error rate of 13.3%. Restricting the sample to borderline pitches increases the magnitude of the hot-weather effect on accuracy …

The Impact Of Temperature On Labor Quality: Umpire Accuracy In Major League Baseball, Eric Fesselmeyer

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Using data from Major League Baseball, I compute an objective measure of the home plate umpire's work quality-the accuracy of his ball and strike calls during a game-and measure how it varies with temperature. I find that an increase in game-time temperature from between 70 and 80 degrees F to above 95 degrees F decreases an umpire's accuracy by a little less than a percentage point, which is a 5.5% increase in the pitch-calling error rate when evaluated at the mean error rate of 13.3%. Restricting the sample to borderline pitches increases the magnitude of the hot-weather effect on accuracy …

Budgetary Obstacles To Police Reform: The Case Of San Francisco, Hayden Anderson

Master's Projects and Capstones

In response to the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement issued a statement calling on cities to Defund the Police. The event sparked a nationwide reckoning that has reshaped the narratives and strategies for remedying the racial bias and police brutality apparent in the criminal justice system. The shift in police reform efforts embraces notions guiding police budgeting decisions. Today's advocates are transforming their approach to police reform to include budgeting decisions by promoting a municipal practice known as police budget reform. This Capstone explores the feasibility of successful police budget reform under current …

Untold Stories Of The African Diaspora: The Lived Experiences Of Black Caribbean Immigrants In The Greater Hartford Area, Shanelle A. Jones

University Scholar Projects

The African Diaspora represents vastly complex migratory patterns. This project studies the journeys of English-speaking Afro-Caribbeans who immigrated to the US for economic reasons between the 1980s-present day. While some researchers emphasize the success of West Indian immigrants, others highlight the issue of downward assimilation many face upon arrival in the US. This paper explores the prospect of economic incorporation into American society for West Indian immigrants. I conducted and analyzed data from an online survey and 10 oral histories of West Indian economic migrants residing in the Greater Hartford Area to gain a broader perspective on the economic attainment …

Barriers To Post-Secondary Success, Douglas Swanson, Najeana Henderson, Maritza Sloan

Dissertations

This study reviews factors that prior studies have identified or failed to consider as barriers to post-secondary success. The three main areas include academic success for Latinx students after high school, organizational systems and their impact on African-American students’ postsecondary readiness, and what workers think of their high school education with regards to career preparedness.

Five factors are identified as major barriers for Latinx students to continue in a higher education system. A survey of former students from Saint Louis, Missouri, and Dallas, Texas, metroplex area identified 56 Latinx students that participated in an initial survey. This led to a …

The Case For Public Investment In Higher Pay For New York State Home Care Workers: Estimated Costs And Savings, Isaac Jabola-Carolus, Stephanie Luce, Ruth Milkman

Publications and Research

This report explores one potential solution to the mounting home care labor shortage in New York State: substantially raising wages for the state's home care workers. The analysis presents detailed projections, based on the best available data, of the economic effects of such an intervention, estimating the costs and benefits that would result. We find that public funding to raise home care wages would require significant resources, but those costs would be surpassed by the resulting savings, tax revenues, and economic spillover effects. The net economic gain would total at least $3.7 billion. Lifting wages would also help fill nearly …

The Productivity Wage Gap, Monopsony, And Labor Share Decline: An Analysis Of Wage Suppression Perpetuated By Power, Alexandra Coulter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that wage suppression along with the decline in the labor share is caused by a rise in monopsony power realized as a significant increase in the profit share. It attributes the rise in monopsonistic behavior to the development and expansion of the modern corporation. This thesis investigates the reasons for wage suppression, identifies causes of the declining labor share left as exogenous in mainstream models, examines traditional economic wage determination and search models, and evaluates the political economy implications. This work reviews literature on imperfect competition, the corporation, contracts, search and match models, and the motivation of …

The Effects Of Racial Capitalism On Poor White Laborers, Amy Whittaker

Liberal Studies (MA) Final Essays

While always remembering that racial capitalism’s very nature ensures that non-white Americans suffer incomparable racial oppression, this paper will endeavor to expose the devastation caused to American society as a whole by explaining the ways in which racial capitalism destroyed poor white labors ability to participate fully in the economic system and strangled its chances of living the American dream. It is my hope that by discussing the missing piece of the poor white laborers’ experience under racial capitalism will unite poor white laborers and poor black laborers to work together to end racial capitalism, policing, and the carceral system. …

Women Workers In The Informal Sector Of The Textiles Industry In Pakistan: A Grounded Theory Approach, Shafi Erum

Student Works (2020-2029)

Post liberalisation firm-level strategic decisions are an issue of concern in developing markets, particularly since the post Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) phase of the textile industry. The issue of workers’ well-being, the post ATC phase, is well documented in terms of the employment and wage aspects for women workers. There is, however, a dearth of knowledge in understanding women workers’ experiences following from firms’ strategic decisions in the informal labour market setting, despite the rise in informal women workers. Further, the position of informal women workers, which is where they “fit” given their “voice” with their employers, has …

Human Rights And Economic Democracy: Reinvigorating The Human Rights Movement, Curtis T. Kline

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

A 2018 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that in order to avoid a seemingly inevitable ecological collapse that would bring intense suffering especially on the most marginalized and excluded sectors; the world needs to develop “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”. There are many local experiences which demonstrate the possibilities of achieving these needed changes. There are a number of community organizations and associations, social movements, and municipal efforts, among others, with creative visions on this front. In Jackson, Mississippi, for example, Cooperation Jackson strives to be a means …

El Empoderamiento Económico De Las Mujeres Y Los Programas Del Estado Argentino / The Economic Empowerment Of Women And Programs Of The Argentinian State, Kate Fulshaw

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Esta investigación estudia dos programas nacionales del Estado argentino en relación al empoderamiento económico de las mujeres. Tiene un marco específico de economía feminista que reconoce el cargo del cuidado y los trabajos no remunerados de las mujeres, especialmente en los sectores populares. Este marco de economía feminista está usada para analizar cómo los programas del Estado, los comedores nacionales y Hacemos Futuro, interactúan con el empoderamiento económico de las mujeres. A través de entrevistas y revistas de literatura, identificó las maneras en que las mujeres participan en cada programa y los impactos cada tiene. Se encuentra que los dos …

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 …

The Oppressive Pressures Of Globalization And Neoliberalism On Mexican Maquiladora Garment Workers, Jenna Demeter

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

The international economic trends of globalization and neoliberalism have exposed and enabled the exploitation of Mexican workers, especially women in the maquiladora garment industry. During the 1950s, globalization gave rise to the new international division of labor and transnational corporations (TNCs) that have offshored labor-intensive phases of production to developing countries, many of which have pursued export-led industrialization. Export processing in Mexico was encouraged in the 1960s by Item 807 of the U.S. Tariff Code and Mexico’s Border Industrialization Program. Especially following the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, advanced capitalist countries and International Financial Institutions foisted neoliberal structural …

The Pain In Spain: Examining Andalusia's Youth Unemployment Crisis, Bianca D. Lennon

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

This paper examines the youth unemployment crisis in the autonomous community of Andalusia by assessing employment policies that are currently in place. Since the economic crisis nearly a decade ago, there has been very little change in the high rates of Andalusian youth unemployment, which as a whole, has left the region, the country and the European Union at risk due to a lack of inefficient policies. By utilizing anecdotal evidence paired with facts and figures released by the European Union, recommendations to adjust employment policies such as the Youth Guarantee and PRAEM are given in order to shine a …

The Critical Need For Mental Health Education To Be Mandated In New Mexico's Public Schools, Bonnie L. Murphy

Shared Knowledge Conference

Based on a review of research and best practices in mental health awareness and skills, this inquiry project argues for state legislative policies that would require mental health awareness and skills in the K-12 curriculum. Mental health affects individual accomplishments in every stage of people’s lives beginning in early childhood and throughout the life cycle. Prevention and treatment of mental illness plays a key role in the ability of an individual to cope with loss and develop resiliency and perseverance in challenging times and to make better decisions that improve the individual’s life and the lives of those around them. …

Making It Pay To Be A Fan: The Political Economy Of Digital Sports Fandom And The Sports Media Industry, Andrew Mckinney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a series of case studies and sociological examinations of the role that the sports media industry and mediated sport fandom plays in the political economy of the Internet. The Internet has structurally changed the way that sport fans access sport and accelerated the processes through which the capitalist actors in the sports media industry have been able to subsume them. The three case studies examined in this dissertation are examples of how digital media technologies have both helped fans become more active producers and consumers of sports and made the sports media industry an integral and vanguard …

Effects Of Senate Bill 4 On Wage-Theft: Why All Workers Are At Risk In Low-Income Occupations, Daniella Salas-Chacon

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming

Entrepreneurship Education Empowers Youth To Change Their Lives, Marianna Brashear, Jason Riddle

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) aims at equipping Title 1 schools with free, hands-on, engaging materials that any teacher can facilitate either individually or in a classroom setting with no background in entrepreneurship necessary. These versatile lessons, courses, and workshops teach the entrepreneurial mindset optimizing opportunities for grades 8-12 students no matter which life/career path they choose.

Unbundling Freedom In The Sharing Economy, Deepa Das Acevedo

Faculty Articles

Courts and scholars point to the sharing economy as proof that our labor and employment infrastructure is obsolete because it rests on a narrow and outmoded idea that only workers subjected to direct, personalized control by their employers need work-related protections and benefits. Since they diagnose the problem as being our system’s emphasis on control, these critics have long called for reducing or eliminating the primacy of the “control test” in classifying workers as either protected employees or unprotected independent contractors. Despite these persistent criticisms, however, the concept of control has been remarkably sticky in scholarly and judicial circles.

This …

Minimum Houses For Minimum Wages: Are Tiny Houses A Solution For Low-Wage Workers?, Edward Sauve

Social Justice and Community Engagement

No abstract provided.

Network Effects On Labor Contracts Of Internal Migrants In China- A Spatial Autoregressive Model, Badi H. Baltagi, Ying Deng, Xiangjun Ma

Center for Policy Research

This paper studies the fact that 37 percent of the internal migrants in China do not sign a labor contract with their employers, as revealed in a nationwide survey. These contract-free jobs pay lower hourly wages, require longer weekly work hours, and provide less insurance or on-the-job training than regular jobs with contracts. We find that the co-villager networks play an important role in a migrant’s decision on whether to accept such insecure and irregular jobs. By employing a comprehensive nationwide survey in 2011 in the spatial autoregressive logit model, we show that the common behavior of not signing contracts …

Labor Unions And Occupational Safety: Event-Study Analysis Using Union Elections, Ling Li, Shawn Rohlin, Perry Singleton

Center for Policy Research

This study examines the dynamic relationship between union elections and occupational safety among manufacturing establishments. Data on union elections come from the National Labor Relations Board, and data on workplace inspections and accident case rates come from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The results indicate that union elections improved occupational safety. First, workplace inspections trended upwards before the election, then decreased immediately after the election, due almost entirely to employee complaints. Second, accident case rates were relatively stable before the election, then trended downwards after the election, due to accidents involving days away from work, job restrictions, and job …

Disrespecting The Minimum Wage: How States Limit The Opportunity For Restaurant Workers To Support Themselves, Samantha Pereira

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

This paper examines the inequality in the restaurant industry in America. It focuses specifically on the tipped minimum wages in different states compared to the real minimum wage and looks into the gender and racial inequality present in restaurants. The first section analyzes the history of tipping and what it has become in the United States. The paper then moves to describe different struggles that tipped workers in the restaurant industry have to face. The paper also discusses different arguments to raising the tipped minimum wage and compares states with a tipped minimum wage and states without a tipped minimum …

Facing Racial Discrimination In The Labor Environment, Ya Xu

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

Almost 50 years after the signing of the 1968 Civil Rights Act, and over 150 years after the official end of slavery in the US, the labor market is still far from equal. Minorities, especially those who racially identify as black and Latino, still face higher unemployment rates, lower median salaries (Wilson, 2015), and higher difficulty in obtaining interview opportunities (Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004). The overarching question for my Capstone is as follows: How does perceived racial discrimination affect a person in the labor environment1? To investigate this question, I conducted a survey for Bryant University alumni which asked the …

Garment Workers In Kentucky Oral History Project (Fa 865), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project FA 865. Interviews conducted by Lisa Karen Miller containing details about the lives of garment workers in Kentucky and Tennessee. Some of the topics included were technological changes, job layoffs, and labor unions.