The impact of right-to-work laws on employer unfair labor practice charges

The expected impact of right-to-work (RTW) laws on employer unfair labor practices is discussed within a resource allocation framework. How RTW laws affect the relative prices of different organizing tactics is also considered. Empirical analysis based on cross-sectional data for 1970, 1975, and 1980 shows that the impact of RTW laws on employer unfair labor practice charges is insignificant. Other variables that affect charge activity are also discussed in terms of their effect on employer/union organizing resource allocation decisions.     

Employer unfair labor practices and union organizing activity: A simultaneous equation model

A model is estimated that simultaneously determines the extent of alleged employer unfair labor practices and the outcomes of union organizing activity using biennial, state-level data for 1968–1982. The results suggest that employers are unlikely to use ULPs as a union-avoidance strategy when unions are expected to win representation elections and that the extent of employer ULPs depends on legislative, industrial relations, and workplace characteristics within a state. ULPs also increase the likelihood that workers will choose union representation. I am indebted to John W. Ballantine, Frederick W. Cleveland, Gil Rutman, and Leo Troy for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Emotional labor in social workers' practice

The meeting between service users and social workers is emotional, since it is centered on significant challenges and changes in the service users' lives. Emotions are thus always at play in social work, but are managed in various ways by the professional. In an explorative qualitative case study at two Danish social services departments, we identified three types of emotional labor: (1) when the social worker shuts off emotions both during and after the meeting; (2) when the social worker defers emotions and processes them at a later time; and (3) when emotions dominate, and a case gets ‘under the skin’ of the social worker. Emotional labor can have both positive and negative effect on the work, and knowledge about different kinds of emotional labor can aid professional discussion about emotions at the work place as well as the psychosocial working environment for the social workers, factors which help improve practice. The study showed that emotional labor is a multidimensional concept, hence it is not just managed in different ways by social workers; it is always related to the specific emotion culture and the community of practice at the work place.     

Contested theories of prison labor practice

In recent years, prison strikes and controversies have brought public attention to the systemic problems with prison labor in the United States. Such labor often exploits people who are imprisoned to do work that is vital to society—including firefighting, farming, or manufacturing consumer goods—with wages that can be less than a dollar per hour in highly coercive working conditions. Although there is call to end prison labor today, theories of prison labor have historically been contested, even among activists and progressive reformers. Accordingly, this review offers a short sociological history of labor in correctional environments, highlights contemporary controversies, and argues for a more fine-grained approach to the relationships among labor, prisons, and reentry. It traces the field of reformers and scholars that have made arguments for punitive, rehabilitative, restorative, and transformative approaches to work. The contested theories of prison labor across time and space suggest that a better understanding is needed of what makes labor exploitative and what forms of labor have the potential to transform the root causes of crime, within and beyond prison walls. Overall, this review has implications for those who study prison and reentry programs, relationships between crime and community, and the political economy of incarceration.     

Changing patterns of wage labor migration in the Kilenge area of Papua New Guinea

Using data obtained from a village census completed in 1977, the authors examine the importance of economic and social factors in migration decisions in the village of Ongaia, Papua New Guinea. The effects on migration of opportunities at place of destination, pressures in place of origin, and connections between town and village are investigated; motivations for return migration are discussed     

Child welfare workers' practice in cases involving domestic violence

This paper reports the findings of an exploratory and qualitative study of child welfare workers' practice in cases involving domestic violence. The research aimed to focus on child welfare workers' interventions with families experiencing domestic violence, elements influencing the child welfare workers' decisions, and the factors facilitating and creating obstacles for intervention. An analysis of the qualitative data showed that child welfare workers have different ways of intervening in cases involving domestic violence. Also, the interventions were especially centred on women victims of violence and they were held responsible for protecting their children. Finally, the dilemmas and difficulties which child welfare workers face in these cases are discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Durkheim'sdivision of labor in society

The source of social life, according to Durkheim, is the similitude of consciousnesses and the division of labor. The former is best evident among primitive societies where a mechanical solidarity, evidenced by repressive law, prevails; the latter in advanced societies where populations evidence greater dynamic density, and juridical rules define the nature and relations of functions. In combating individualism and basing the existence of societies on a consensus of parts, Durkheim refutes his positivistic emphasis which denies the relevance of ends to a scientific study of society. In his discussion of social ends is a latent anti-mechanistic trend. The theory of unilinear development is established on deficient ethnographic data. It assumes the absence of division of labor among primitive societies and of any mechanical solidarity among modern societies. Repressive and restitutive law Durkheim seeks to use as indexes of mechanical and organic solidarity, but he does not establish with any precision the perfect associations which he assumes obtain between his types of solidarity and of law.Reproduced from theAmerican Journal of Sociology, Vol. 40 (1934), pp. 319–328. (© 1934 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved.)     

Marriage and family therapists and psychotropic medications: practice patterns from a national study

A national sample of marriage and family therapists (MFTs) was used to describe practice patterns of MFTs whose clients use psychotropics and to compare medicated and nonmedicated clients. Marriage and Family Therapists (n=283) reported on 195 medicated and 483 nonmedicated adult clients. Clients (n=375) rated their improvement and satisfaction with treatment. Results showed that 91% of MFTs treat medicated clients, and these clients accounted for 25% of MFT cases. Medicated clients were most often seen in individual therapy, had more serious medical problems, and showed greater cumulative improvement in relational functioning. Therapists from MFT educational backgrounds had fewer medicated clients than MFTs from other educational backgrounds.     

Cost of living and labor force participation: Married women in urban labor markets

I present and test the hypothesis that the cost of living (COL) positively influences the labor force participation (LFP) of married women. Based on housing values and regional variables, I first predict COL for a sample of 150 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) using a smaller subsample for which geographically comparable family budget data are available for 1980. Results from estimating a logistic LFP model using census MSA data confirm my hypothesis and suggest that COL embodies locality-specific amenities rather than “pure” prices. Part of the research for this paper was conducted while the author was Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Economics and the Frederick Douglass Institute, University of Rochester, New York, during 1992–1993. The author thanks Oded Izraeli and Kevin J. Murphy for their helpful comments on earlier drafts and gratefully acknowledges the grant support of the Oakland University Research Committee.     

Peasants in reserve: temporary West Indian labor in the U.S. farm labor market

In the past 10 years, the British West Indies Temporary Alien Labor Program has received widespread judicial and legislative support and criticism. While sugar and apple producers who import West Indians argue that domestic labor is insufficient to harvest their crops, labor organizations and their supporters maintain that domestic labor is adequate. The resulting labor disputes focus primarily on the issue of whether or not West Indians are displacing US workers or undermining wage rates and working conditions. This article examines the relationships among legal issues surrounding the program, the US farm labor market, and the Jamaican peasantry. It argues that continued imports of foreign labor during times of high domestic unemployment, as well as the varied factors which underlie the continued willingness and ability of Jamaican peasant households to supply workers to US producers, can be most clearly understood from an international and historical perspective, rather than focussing on the needs and problems of any 1 nation.     

Economic integration and labor flows: stage migration in farm labor markets in Mexico and the United States

"This article examines the probable effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on migration from Mexico to the United States, disputing the view that expansion of jobs in Mexico could rapidly reduce undocumented migration. To the extent that NAFTA causes Mexican export agriculture to expand, migration to the United States will increase rather than decrease in the short run. Data collected in both California and the Mexican State of Baja California show that indigenous migrants from southern Mexico typically first undertake internal migration, which lowers the costs and risks of U.S. migration. Two features of employment in export agriculture were found to be specially significant in lowering the costs of U.S. migration: first, working in export agriculture exposes migrants to more diverse social networks and information about U.S. migration; second, agro-export employment in northern Mexico provides stable employment, albeit low-wage employment, for some members of the family close to the border (especially women and children) while allowing other members of the family to assume the risks of U.S. migration."     

Discipline and due process in labor unions

This article examines the implications of bureaucratization for discipline and due process within labor organizations. Two perspectives on these relations were developed from the literature on union governance and tested with data from union constitutions and other secondary sources. The extent of due process protections was positively related to both bureaucratization and the number of grounds for discipline. The results support the solidarity perspective, which posits a convergence of union leaders’ and members’ interests.     

Interpreting semilogarithmic regression coefficients in labor research

Labor economists frequently misinterpret coefficients of variables in semilogarithmic regression equations. The proportional rates of change in the dependent variable that are implied by these coefficients are often erroneously assumed to be valid over arbitrarily large intervals. This note provides mathematical and empirical evidence on how serious the error can be. A simple formula is developed for making correct interpretations of semilog regression coefficients. The authors thank David Greenaway for helpful comments.     

The labor market in a socio-economic perspective

This article argues for a socio-economic approach to the analysis of labor markets. Three problems of the traditional economic approach are discussed. It is shown that the most fundamental flaw in the traditional analysis is the failure to analyze the role of time.     

Migrant labor in agriculture: an international comparison

The May 1984 Conference on Migrant Labor in Agriculture at the University of California-Davis discussed papers by 22 farm labor experts from 12 nations. Each industrial nation utilizes a different set of public and private policies to supply workers for labor-intensive agriculture, but none is entirely satisfactory. Labor-intensive agriculture is becoming more dependent on workers who are shut out of labor markets. Some countries have simply accepted foreign workers in agriculture, while others have adopted policies to integrate farm and nonfarm labor markets. Polices to reduce agriculture's reliance on workers-without-options include restructuring employment practices to employ fewer seasonal workers for longer periods, mechanizing production, and importing fruits and vegetables from nearby developing countries. This article explains the salient features of labor-intensive agriculture, the various polices for obtaining seasonal farmworkers, and options to reduce farming's dependence on migrant labor.