Estimating the Effect of “Change to Win” on Union Organizing

In a 2005 effort to reinvigorate new-member organizing efforts, seven unions split from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) to form a new union federation, Change to Win. Using ten years of data from the National Labor Relations Board and the National Mediation Board and a difference-in-difference estimator, the author estimates the effect of Change to Win policies on whether a union won its certification election and the number and percentage of workers successfully organized. The results indicate no statistically significant difference in organizing success following Change to Win\u27s implementation of new organizing strategies and practices, relative to the AFL-CIO

Are young workers ready to save the us labor movement?

With union membership rates in the United States declining over the last several decades, many in the labour movement are asking whether the young workers of today could help spark union revitalisation. Members of the Millennial and Gen Z generations have led recent hard-fought union certification victories at an Amazon warehouse in New York, an Apple store in Maryland, and Starbucks outlets across the country, which has reignited the hope that unions have a real future in the hands of today’s young workers. Tina Saksida and Rachel Aleks discuss how young people’s attitudes towards unions have changed over time and what this means for unions

Are young workers ready to save the US labour movement?

With union membership rates in the United States declining over the last several decades, many in the labour movement are asking whether the young workers of today could help spark union revitalisation. Members of the Millennial and Gen Z generations have led recent hard-fought union certification victories at an Amazon warehouse in New York, an Apple store in Maryland, and Starbucks outlets across the country, which has reignited the hope that unions have a real future in the hands of today’s young workers. Tina Saksida and Rachel Aleks discuss how young people’s attitudes towards unions have changed over time and what this means for unions

Immunotherapy with CD25/CD71-allodepleted T cells to improve T-cell reconstitution after matched unrelated donor hematopoietic stem cell transplant: a randomized trial

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Delayed immune reconstitution is a major challenge after matched unrelated donor (MUD) stem cell transplant (SCT). In this randomized phase 2 multi-center trial, Adoptive Immunotherapy with CD25/71 allodepleted donor T cells to improve immunity after unrelated donor stem cell transplant (NCT01827579), the authors tested whether allodepleted donor T cells (ADTs) can safely be used to improve immune reconstitution after alemtuzumab-based MUD SCT for hematological malignancies. METHODS: Patients received standard of care or up to three escalating doses of ADTs generated through CD25+/CD71+ immunomagnetic depletion. The primary endpoint of the study was circulating CD3+ T-cell count at 4 months post-SCT. Twenty-one patients were treated, 13 in the ADT arm and eight in the control arm. RESULTS: The authors observed a trend toward improved CD3+ T-cell count at 4 months in the ADT arm versus the control arm (230/µL versus 145/µL, P = 0.18), and three ADT patients achieved normal CD3+ T-cell count at 4 months (>700/µL). The rates of significant graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) were comparable in both cohorts, with grade ≥2 acute GVHD in seven of 13 and four of eight patients and chronic GVHD in three of 13 and three of eight patients in the ADT and control arms, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that adoptive transfer of ADTs is safe, but that in the MUD setting the benefit in terms of T-cell reconstitution is limited. This approach may be of more use in the context of more rigorous T-cell depletion

AI-based dimensional neuroimaging system for characterizing heterogeneity in brain structure and function in major depressive disorder:COORDINATE-MDD consortium design and rationale

BACKGROUND: Efforts to develop neuroimaging-based biomarkers in major depressive disorder (MDD), at the individual level, have been limited to date. As diagnostic criteria are currently symptom-based, MDD is conceptualized as a disorder rather than a disease with a known etiology; further, neural measures are often confounded by medication status and heterogeneous symptom states. METHODS: We describe a consortium to quantify neuroanatomical and neurofunctional heterogeneity via the dimensions of novel multivariate coordinate system (COORDINATE-MDD). Utilizing imaging harmonization and machine learning methods in a large cohort of medication-free, deeply phenotyped MDD participants, patterns of brain alteration are defined in replicable and neurobiologically-based dimensions and offer the potential to predict treatment response at the individual level. International datasets are being shared from multi-ethnic community populations, first episode and recurrent MDD, which are medication-free, in a current depressive episode with prospective longitudinal treatment outcomes and in remission. Neuroimaging data consist of de-identified, individual, structural MRI and resting-state functional MRI with additional positron emission tomography (PET) data at specific sites. State-of-the-art analytic methods include automated image processing for extraction of anatomical and functional imaging variables, statistical harmonization of imaging variables to account for site and scanner variations, and semi-supervised machine learning methods that identify dominant patterns associated with MDD from neural structure and function in healthy participants. RESULTS: We are applying an iterative process by defining the neural dimensions that characterise deeply phenotyped samples and then testing the dimensions in novel samples to assess specificity and reliability. Crucially, we aim to use machine learning methods to identify novel predictors of treatment response based on prospective longitudinal treatment outcome data, and we can externally validate the dimensions in fully independent sites. CONCLUSION: We describe the consortium, imaging protocols and analytics using preliminary results. Our findings thus far demonstrate how datasets across many sites can be harmonized and constructively pooled to enable execution of this large-scale project

Union Strategies and Potential Targets for New-Member Organizing in the United States

This dissertation focuses on attempts by labor unions in the United States to prioritize new-member organizing as a means of reversing the decline in union density. In three papers, I look at strategic organizing efforts and opportunities at three distinct levels of analysis: the federation level, the national and local-union levels, and the level of the individual potential member. In the first paper, I look at efforts by seven unions that split from the AFL-CIO in 2005 to form a new union federation, Change to Win. I estimate the effect of Change to Win policies on whether the union won the certification election and the number and percentage of workers successfully organized, using data from the National Labor Relations Board and the National Mediation Board from September 2000 through September 2010 and a difference-in-difference estimator. The results indicate no statistically significant difference in organizing success, following Change to Win's formation and implementation of new organizing strategies and practices, relative to the AFL-CIO. The second paper of my dissertation analyzes recent attempts to organize the growing number of professional workers into historically blue-collar unions using a combination of data from the National Labor Relations Board and data from a national survey that I designed and administered to national and local unions throughout the country. Using a series of interactions, I test whether the effect of key strategies and tactics differ across professional-worker status. My results show that the effect of some typical union and employer strategies and characteristics does differ for professionals versus nonprofessionals. Finally, the third paper examines youth attitudes towards unions, since young workers are underrepresented in union membership. I examine how youth attitudes towards unions have changed over time using a generational approach and data from the 1976-2010 nationally representative Monitoring the Future survey of twelfth graders. I find that beginning with the Baby Boomers, each generation (i.e., Gen X and Gen Y) has had more favorable attitudes towards unions than the previous generation. Furthermore, I find that the antecedents of youth attitudes towards unions, including work values, socio-political beliefs, background, and employment history and expectations, have changed over each generation.Ph.D.2016-11-16 00:00:0

Hero or Villain? A Cohort and Generational Analysis of How Youth Attitudes Towards Unions Have Changed over Time

Our study examines youth attitudes towards unions over a 40‐year period to try and understand whether today’s young workers might be the ‘hero’ or the ‘villain’ in the tale of declining union membership rates in the United States. Using nationally representative time‐lag data from high‐school seniors (N = 104,742) spanning 1976–2015, we conducted time trend, birth cohort and generational analyses to provide an ‘apples to apples’ comparison of how youth have felt about unions at different points in time. We found that contemporary youth (or Millennials) hold similar union attitudes to those who came before them, though what predicts those attitudes has changed over time. Strikingly, we also found that the proportion of young people who hold no opinion about unions has more than doubled over the period under study, steadily rising from 14 per cent in 1976 to 33 per cent in 2015. This sizeable proportion of ‘agnostic’ youth should be alarming to unions, yet it also provides them with opportunities to shape youth attitudes through targeted outreach efforts.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167848/1/bjir12571.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167848/2/bjir12571_am.pd