Well-Founded Unions

Given two or more well-founded (terminating) binary relations, when can one be sure that their union is likewise well-founded? We suggest new conditions for an arbitrary number of relations, generalising known conditions for two relations. We also provide counterexamples to several potential weakenings. All proofs have been machine checked.J. Dawson—Supported by Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP140101540

Multilateral Versus Regional Trading Arrangements: Substitutes Or Compliments?

We summarise salient developments in the interaction of the multilateral trading system and multilateral trading agreements (MTAs) on the one hand and regional trading agreements (RTAs) on the other. We then consider the economic effects of RTAs, comparing customs unions with free trade agreements. We argue, contrary to much received wisdom, that either may produce more economic benefits than the other, depending on the specific context in which they are introduced. There follows a discussion of the political economy effects of RTAs. Some of these have unfavourable, some neutral and some favourable effects on the progress of further MTAs. We conclude that the case against RTAs as eroding the MTS and inhibiting further MTA negotiations, as expounded by such economists as Krueger and Bhagwati, is not well founded. There remain grounds for optimism that the process of competitive liberalisation in RTAs will lead eventually to further multilateral liberalisation.customs unions, free trade areas, multilateral agreements, multilateral trading system, regional agreements, rules of origin, scale economies, trade creation, trade diversion.

Airline Unions Since Deregulation: The Views of Selected Airline Unions

The airline industry in the United States has passed through a crucial period of post-deregulation adjustments. One of those adjustments has been in its relationship with the unions representing a large portion of the industry employees. One view of this situation that is commonly presented is that unions are “losers” in this post deregulation period. The common wisdom in the U.S. airline industry is that labor unions are the biggest losers from deregulation and the dash into consolidation. Certainly there is plenty of evidence for this view. Deregulation spawned split wage scales, futile strikes at United and Pan American, Chapter 11 bankruptcies, and the emergence of a handful of super-carriers which, on the surface at least, handed management oligopolistic bargaining powers\u27 (Gaudin). This is certainly a negative view of how unions have weathered the storm of deregulation, but is it well-founded, and is it a view shared by the airlines unions, themselves? The direction of this study is to describe the airline union viewpoint, the impact deregulation has had on their viability and on their future attitudes toward bargaining issues

Elementary totally disconnected locally compact groups

We identify the class of elementary groups: the smallest class of totally disconnected locally compact second countable (t.d.l.c.s.c.) groups that contains the profinite groups and the discrete groups, is closed under group extensions of profinite groups and discrete groups, and is closed under countable increasing unions. We show this class enjoys robust permanence properties. In particular, it is closed under group extension, taking closed subgroups, taking Hausdorff quotients, and inverse limits. A characterization of elementary groups in terms of well-founded descriptive-set-theoretic trees is then presented. We conclude with three applications. We first prove structure results for general t.d.l.c.s.c. groups. In particular, we show a compactly generated t.d.l.c.s.c. group decomposes into elementary groups and topologically characteristically simple groups via group extension. We then prove two local-to-global structure theorems: Locally solvable t.d.l.c.s.c. groups are elementary and [A]-regular t.d.l.c.s.c. groups are elementary.Comment: Accepted version. To appear in The Proceedings of the London Mathematical Societ

Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream

[Excerpt] Through their service provision, advocacy, and organizing work, worker centers are helping to set the political agenda and mobilize a growing constituency to make its voice heard on fundamental labor an immigration reform. This work, in and of itself instrumental to a brighter future for low-wage workers in the United States, is also indispensable to the revitalization of organized labor and progressive politics in America

New Labor in New York: Precarious Workers and the Future of the Labor Movement

[Excerpt] This book includes thirteen case studies of recent efforts by both unions and worker centers to organize the unorganized in the New York City metropolitan area. Home to some of the first U.S. worker centers and to thirty-seven of the 214 that exist nationwide at this writing, New York has the single largest concentration of this new form of labor organizing.1 In recent years, as part 4 of this volume documents, New York also has become a launching pad for efforts to expand the scale of worker centers by building national organizations, such as the TWAOC. However, most worker centers, in New York and elsewhere, remain locally based and modest in size—especially relative to labor unions, which despite decades of decline still had over fourteen million dues-paying members nationwide in 2012 (Hirsch and Macpherson 2013)

Up In The Air: How Airlines Can Improve Performance by Engaging Their Employees

[Excerpt] In the chapters that follow, we explore the competitive strategies and employment-relations strategies found in the United States (chapter 2) and in a range of other countries (chapter 3), before and after deregulation. In chapter 4 we analyze recent trends in quality, productivity, and costs, as well as employee outcomes. In chapter 5 we look more closely at selected new-entrant airlines and find a wide range of competitive and employment-relations strategies being used in this segment of the industry. In chapter 6, we examine several legacy airlines and identify the distinct strategies they have adopted to respond to competitive pressures from new-entrant airlines. These chapters each focus on selected U.S. airlines and those based in some other countries. In chapter 7, we summarize the strategies of new-entrant and legacy airlines, and offer lessons about how airlines can and do change their strategies over time in their efforts to compete more effectively. We offer recommendations, using our historical and comparative analyses to discuss whether a path forward can be identified that can provide a better balance in stakeholder outcomes. We end on a positive note, arguing that if the parties learn from their experiences and from each other, in the United States and other countries, there is a path that deals with the pressures building up in the airline industry, offering hope for a better balance between investor, employee, customer, and societal interests. Key questions are whether and from where the leadership will come to get the industry moving down this path or whether the main parties might not take such action before there is a perfect storm

Family Problems. Debates over Coupling, Marriage, and Family within the Italian Lesbian Community, 1990s

In the European context, Italy is currently an anomaly. It has no legislative instrument with which to regulate same sex relationship , despite the fact that in the last twenty-five years the Italian LGBTIQ movement (at least in its mainstream manifestation) has continued to call for a law on the subject (civil partnerships, regulation of de facto cohabitation, PACS, and marriage, are a handful of the solutions that have been proposed). In the political elaboration of certain radical sectors of the movement there has been an attempt to critique, or at least question, the imaginaries produced by the investment in the gay family. There has never been a stage of the Italian LGBTIQ movement in which positions regarding the concept of the family were homogeneous. Instead often it was precisely regarding this issue that the radical or reformist dialectic contrasted

Artisan Culture and the Organization of Chicago\u27s German Workers in the Gilded Age, 1860 to 1890

This essay evaluates the nature of German artisan culture in gilded-age Chicago and its role in the organization of modem working-class institutions. Three examples- the Workingmen\u27s Associations of Chicago\u27s German workers in the 1850s and 1860s, the Bakers\u27 Mutual Benefit Society, and the tradition of tool ownership among the city\u27s German cabinetmakers- illustrate particular resources that artisan culture provided to German craftsmen, whether it be fellowship, intellectual stimulation, organizational strength, or a sense of personal independence. At the same time, artisan culture became anachronistic amidst the rapidly expanding industries of Chicago, as systematic mechanization destroyed the central role that artisans had played in the production process. When speed and depth of economic change made German craftsmen a receptive constituency for the period\u27s radical political movements, artisan culture played an indispensable role for German workers in their efforts to found Chicago\u27s modem labor institutions