Review essay — administrative delay at the NLRB: Some modest proposals

V. Conclusion The latest edition of Miller’s Appraisal provides an updated glimpse into the inner workings of the NLRB. Miller’s observations are knowledgeable and understandable, and his book is an important contribution for academics, the labor bar, and the Board itself. We hope it spurs further study of the Board’s administration of the Act and exploration of ways to improve it. Miller’s pessimism about potential reforms, short of his proposed abolition of the five-member Board in favor of a new labor and employment division of the federal district courts, goes too far. We have suggested a few changes that would make the Board more efficient without affecting the Board’s substantive mission. Hopefully, with further efforts like Miller’s in the future, the Board will effect a consistent improvement upon its somewhat spotty record of efficiency and will keep the NLRA vibrant well into this new century. We especially thank former NLRB Regional Director Daniel Silverman for his invaluable contributions to this article.     

Union salting: Reactions and rulings since <Emphasis Type="Italic">Town and Country</Emphasis>

In a difficult organizing environment, unions have adopted growth strategies including organizing for recognition and bypassing the NLRB election process-a top-down approach. Union salting has become a popular tool toward achieving that goal particularly among the building trades unions. I examine labor’s thrust at the top-down approach toward organizing the workplace using the “salting” strategy, employer reactions to salting, and the pattern of rulings coming from the National Labor Relations Board since the seminal Supreme Court case on salting, NLRB v. Town & Country Electric (1995).     

Everytime we say Goodbye: Forced Termination Revisited,a Commentary

The topic of forced termination has received relatively little attention, particularly student interns’ experiences of termination. In this commentary, I will explore some theories that help illuminate the process of ending. Using a case vignette, the worker’s subjectivity and the way that it impacts termination responses is explored. Cathy Siebold, DSW is Training Analyst, Supervisor and Faculty at The Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center and The New Jersey Training Institute for Psychoanalysis and Faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Psychoanalysis. She is an adjunct Faculty, New York University School of Social Work on the Editorial Board of CSWJ, and Education Chair of the National Membership Committee on Psychoanalysis. Author of a Book on the Hospice Movement and articles about termination, object relations theory and attachment theory     

Teachers’ collective bargaining outcomes and tradeoffs

This study uses data from Illinois and Iowa public school districts to examine the factors that influence the wage and nonwage bargaining outcomes negotiated by teachers’ unions. Tradeoffs between wage and nonwage outcomes and among nonwage contract provisions are also examined. The results provide some evidence that tradeoffs exist between wage and nonwage outcomes. The findings also reveal differences in outcome and tradeoff patterns across the states for issues unrelated to union security. I am grateful to the Illinois State Board of Education, the Iowa Department of Public Instruction, and the Iowa Public Employment Relations Board for providing the data analyzed in this study. I am also grateful to the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois and the Columbia University Graduate School of Business for research support, and to Jack Fiorito, David Lewin, Susan Schwochau, Donna Sockell, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

Education Assistance to Africa: We Can Do More and Better

Based on the problems of Global Education Assistance to Africa (GEAA), and combined with China’s rationale and practice of Education Assistance to Africa, this paper proposes a vision and assumption to improve the GEAA, that is, using the assistance rationale of ‘Africa-based’, ‘equal-relationship’, and ‘mutual-benefits’, through ‘multi-stakeholders cooperation’, ‘multi-modes operation’, and ‘multi-goals achievement’ to build one ‘harmonious world’.     

Relationships between Borda voting and Zermelo ranking

There are many situations wherein a group of individuals (e.g., voters, experts, sports writers) must produce an ordered list of ‘best’ alternatives selected from a given group of alternatives (e.g., candidates, proposals, sports teams). Two long established mechanisms that have been used for this task are ‘Zermelo’s Ranking Method’ (1929) and ‘Borda’s Voting Scheme’ (1781). The main purpose of this paper is to point out that they are, under certain common circumstances, identical. We then show that Zermelo’s Method can be used in situations that Borda’s Method is not designed to handle.     

Attention to Speech-Accompanying Gestures: Eye Movements and Information Uptake

There is growing evidence that addressees in interaction integrate the semantic information conveyed by speakers’ gestures. Little is known, however, about whether and how addressees’ attention to gestures and the integration of gestural information can be modulated. This study examines the influence of a social factor (speakers’ gaze to their own gestures), and two physical factors (the gesture’s location in gesture space and gestural holds) on addressees’ overt visual attention to gestures (direct fixations of gestures) and their uptake of gestural information. It also examines the relationship between gaze and uptake. The results indicate that addressees’ overt visual attention to gestures is affected both by speakers’ gaze and holds but for different reasons, whereas location in space plays no role. Addressees’ uptake of gesture information is only influenced by speakers’ gaze. There is little evidence of a direct relationship between addressees’ direct fixations of gestures and their uptake.     

Equity market response to union decertification petitions and elections

The effect of union decertification elections on the valuation of corporations is examined using a standard event study methodology. Cumulative abnormal daily common stock returns for 203 NYSE and AMEX listed firms are estimated for the day on which a petition for a decertification election is filed and for the day on which the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) certifies the decertification election outcome. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that successful union decertifications increase firm valuation and unsuccessful ones reduce firm valuation. The primary carrier of valuation information is the date the NLRB confirms the decertification election results. The petition file date yields little, if any, information about the firm’s capitalization. The authors thank the directors of the regional NLRB offices and the editor of this journal for their assistance. The usual caveats concerning errors and omissions apply. Correspondence should be directed to William L. Huth.     

How age discrimination in employment affects stockholders

We analyze the impact on stock prices, and thus on stockholders, of 84 newspaper announcements regarding corporate age discrimination lawsuits. We find that, on average, initial announcements cause a 2 percent decline in stock price, a $40 million average loss in total stock value for the large firms charged. The stock price decreases are consistent with investor concerns about the firms’ ability to attract and retain good employees given the discrimination charges. Though age discrimination in employment is a pervasive and growing problem, such findings may discourage managers from engaging in discriminatory practices. The authors thank Jane Blank and Malcolm Matthew for helpful comments. This research was supported by a University of Windsor Research Board Grant.     

Work–Family Conflict and Fertility Intentions: Does Gender Matter?

Fertility among employed women remains far below their desired preferences. Although research has shown that fertility intentions significantly predict subsequent behavior, little is known about the factors that contribute to intentions. We assess the impacts of perceived self and partner work-to-family and family-to-work conflict on the fertility intentions of both women and men. Using a national probability sample of men and women in dual-earner families (N = 630), we find that men’s perceptions of their wives’ work–family conflict significantly predict men’s fertility intentions, even though men’s own work–family conflict does not. Neither women’s own work–family conflict nor their perceptions of their husbands’ work–family conflict predicts women’s fertility intentions.     

Parents’ Interpersonal Distance and Touch Behavior and Child Pain and Distress during Painful Pediatric Oncology Procedures

Children with cancer and their parents report that treatment-related procedures are more traumatic and painful than cancer itself. Competing hypotheses have emerged regarding relations between parents’ social support and child pain and distress. Little is known about caregivers’ use of nonverbal immediacy behaviors that may function as social support messages. This study describes caregivers’ interpersonal distance and touch behaviors during painful pediatric oncology procedures and examines relations between those behaviors and children’s pain and distress. Caregivers’ total touch time and instrumental (task-oriented) touch time, but not supportive touch time, during the actual procedure covaried with children’s procedural pain and distress. This research was conducted as part of a larger investigation funded by a grant from the National Cancer Institute, “Parental Role in Pediatric Cancer Pain and Survivorship” (NCI R01 CA100027), Terrance L. Albrecht, PI. The authors wish to thank Ellen Jones for her efforts.     

Parents’ Health and Adult Children’s Subsequent Working Status: A Perspective of Intergenerational Transfer and Time Allocation

This paper frames how parents’ health problems may affect a child’s subsequent working status. Parental health problems occurring in their prime working years undermine an adult child’s resources and tend to affect the child’s preferences over time-allocations among leisure, market- and non-market-labor. Empirical applications in this paper focus on a situation with pervasive health problems, lack of social safety network, and a substantial gender gap in labor market return. Exploiting Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) for the period 1994–2004, empirical results indicate that a father’s poor health status is a significant predictor of lowering a daughter’s educational attainment and working probability during her subsequent, adulthood years.     

Pensions and the uses of ignorance by unions and firms

Pensions are contingent claims contracts that are often fashioned by collective bargaining under conditions of asymmetric information and market power. Pensions are not an employer’s or a union’s optimal contract; they represent compromise. Employers use pensions to minimize labor costs and to adjust to market changes. Pensions help unions improve and protect their members’ work lives and help unions to survive as institutions. When workers’ estimations of their pensions differ from their employers’ estimations a moral hazard can exist. Less mobile workers and those with less influence subsidize the pension benefits of other workers or reduce an employer’s costs. Econometric results based on data from the President’s Commission on Pension Policy show that certain workers, namely women, overvalue their plans, which provides an opportunity to lower labor costs and redistribute benefits. Unions have a contradictory effect on information. The author thanks participants in the Cornell University Collective Bargaining workshop and the Harvard Labor Economics workshop. I especially thank James Medoff for his comments.     

The Provider’s Voice: Patient Satisfaction and the Content-filtered Speech of Nurses and Physicians in Primary Medical Care

Two studies examined vocal affect in medical providers’ and patients’ content-filtered (CF) speech. A digital methodology for content-filtering and a set of reliable global affect rating scales for CF voice were developed. In Study 1, ratings of affect in physicians’ CF voice correlated with patients’ satisfaction, perceptions of choice/control, medication adherence, mental and physical health, and physicians’ satisfaction. In Study 2, ratings of affect in the CF voices of physicians and nurses correlated with their patients’ satisfaction, and the CF voices of nurses and patients reflected their satisfaction. Voice tone ratings of providers and patients were intercorrelated, suggesting reciprocity in their vocal affective communication.     

South/non-south differentials in national labor relations board certification election outcomes: Comment

A recent study of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) certification elections concluded that there are no regional differences in the probability of unionization. This paper suggests that it is inappropriate to draw such broad inferences from NLRB data, since elections occur only where an initial preference for unionism has been expressed. Using a national data set on private sector hospitals, we demonstrate that Southern location significantly reduces the probability of having an election and the probability of negotiating a collective bargaining agreement, but it does not affect the probability of a union election victory. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the authors’ institutions. We would like to thank Peter Feuille and James Kuhn for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

Utilities,preferences, and substantive goods

 People’s utility levels are meant to be measures of their well-being. Early utilitarians defined them in terms of people’s happiness. Modern economics defines them in terms of people’s actual preferences. But in ethics they have to be defined in terms of people’s informed preferences. I shall discuss the relationship between people’s desires and preferences, and that between their reasoned and unreasoned preferences. I shall argue that people’s basic desires are much the same, whereas their preferences are often very different. Finally, I shall argue, contrary to Scanlon’s theory, that the things that are good for us are beneficial to us ultimately because they satisfy our biological and psychological needs and our personal interests. Received: 8 July 1996     

Contested canon: Simmel scholarship at Columbia and the new school

The history of sociology exhibits what might be called, after Gallie (1956), an “essentially contested “ canon. The key figures, sacred texts, and central ideas that constitute the sociological tradition are inherently in dispute. This essay examines the “contested canon “ within a historical framework to provide at least a partial explanation for the restricted interpretation of Georg Simmel as a structuralist sociologist. The sites of this contest are two New York City institutions, Columbia University and the New School for Social Research, both of which offered mid-century readings of Simmel’s works. At Columbia in the mid-1950s, Robert K. Merton advanced a structural reading of Simmel’s work. During the same broad period, the New School’s Albert Salomon championed a phenomenological reading of Simmel in his classes and seminars. Despite penetrating insights into Simmel’s links to the phenomenological tradition, Salomon’s interpretation has had less salience than the approach advanced by Merton. The differential success of these competing interpretations is explained in large measure by the institutionalization and dominance of Merton’s research tradition relative to Salomon’s.     

Beyond the antinomies of structure: Levi-Strauss,Giddens, Bourdieu,and Sewell

In this article, I attempt to address some enduring problems in formulation and practical use of the notion of structure in contemporary social science. I begin by revisiting the question of the fidelity of Anthony Giddens’ appropriation of the idea of structure with respect to Levi-Strauss. This requires a reconsideration of Levi-Strauss’ original conceptualization of “social structure” which I argue is a sort of “methodological structuralism” that stands sharply opposed to Giddens’ ontological reconceptualization of the notion. I go on to show that Bourdieu’s contemporaneous critique of Levi-Strauss is best understood as an attempt to recover rather than reject the central implication of Levi-Strauss’ methodological structuralism, which puts Bourdieu and Giddens on clearly distinct camps in terms of their approach toward the idea of structure. To demonstrate the—insurmountable—conceptual difficulties inherent in the ontological approach, I proceed by critically examining what I consider to be the most influential attempt to resolve the ambiguities in Giddens structuration theory: Sewell’s argument for the “duality of structure.” I show that by retaining Giddens’ ontological focus, Sewell ends up with a notion of structure that is at its very core “anti-structuralist” or only structuralist in a weak sense. I close by considering the implications of the analysis for the possibility of developing the rather neglected “methodological structuralist” legacy in contemporary social analysis.     

A piece of lost history: Max Weber and Lowell L. Bennion

This article discussesMax Weber’s Methodology, Lowell L. Bennion’s (1933) published doctoral dissertation from the University of Strasbourg, France. This book is important because it is the first systematic English language treatment of Weber’s work. It also suggests an early link between Weberian and Durkheimian scholarship and foreshadows later debates regarding Talcott Parsons’ interpretation of Weber. Additionally the book provides a unique contribution by applying Weber’s “Calvinism-Capitalism” thesis to the development of Mormonism. We explore the academic context in which the book was written and its reception by American sociologists at the time. After summarizing the text, we examine its perspective on the issues later raised about Parsons’ account of Weber. We conclude by looking at Lowell Bennion as a sociologist and a devout Mormon, and the unique connection that he forged between his religion and Max Weber’s ideas. Her field is organizational behavior and theory; her primary area of research is the relationship between organizational hierarchy and managerial leadership. He is currently investigating the modes of white collar resistance in public bureaucracies.     

‘One and a Half Dimensional’ Preferences and Majority Rule

I examine a model of majority rule in which alternatives are described by two characteristics: (1) their position in a standard, left-right dimension, and (2) their position in a good-bad dimension, over which voters have identical preferences. I show that when voters’ preferences are single-peaked and concave over the first dimension, majority rule is transitive, and the majority’s preferences are identical to the median voter’s. Thus, Black’s (The theory of committees and elections, 1958) theorem extends to such a “one and a half” dimensional framework. Meanwhile, another well-known result of majority rule, Downs’ (An economic theory of democracy, 1957) electoral competition model, does not extend to the framework. The condition that preferences can be represented in a one-and-a-half-dimensional framework is strictly weaker than the condition that preferences be single-peaked and symmetric. The condition is strictly stronger than the condition that preferences be order-restricted, as defined by Rothstein (Soc Choice Welf 7:331–342;1990).