The Labor Movement’s Framework for Comprehensive Immigration Reform

[Excerpt] Immigration reform is a component of a shared prosperity agenda that focuses on improving productivity and quality; limiting wage competition; strengthening labor standards, especially the freedom of workers to form unions and bargain collectively; and providing social safety nets and high-quality lifelong education and training for workers and their families. To achieve this goal, immigration reform must fully protect U.S. workers, reduce the exploitation of immigrant workers and reduce employers’ incentive to hire undocumented workers rather than U.S. workers. The most effective way to do that is for all workers— immigrant and native-born—to have full and complete access to the protection of labor, health and safety and other laws. Comprehensive immigration reform must complement a strong, well-resourced and effective labor standards enforcement initiative that prioritizes workers’ rights and workplace protections. This approach will ensure that immigration does not depress wages and working conditions or encourage marginal low-wage industries that depend heavily on substandard wages, benefits and working conditions

Metaphors we die by? Geoengineering, metaphors and the argument from catastrophe

Geoeengineering the climate by reflecting sunlight or extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has attracted increasing attention from natural scientists, social scientists, policy makers and the media. This article examines promotional discourse related to geoengineering from the 1980s to 2010. It asks in particular how this option for dealing with the problems posed by climate change were framed through the use of conceptual and discourse metaphors and whether one can argue that these are metaphors we ‘live by’ or metaphors we might ‘die by’. Findings show that an overarching argument from catastrophe was bolstered by three conceptual master-metaphors, namely The Planet is a body, The Planet is a machine and The planet is a patient/addict, linked to a variety of discourse metaphors, older conceptual metaphors and clichés. This metaphorical landscape began to shift while the article was being written and will have to be closely monitored in the future

Pharmaceutical pricing policies in European countries

European policy makers have been struggling to fulfil the partially conflicting policy goals of (1) granting equitable and timely access to medicines to their citizens, (2) rewarding innovation to pharmaceutical industry and (3) containing costs in order to ensure long-term financial sustainability of the health care system. From 2007/2008 on, Europe was affected by the global financial crisis that hit the countries in the region to different extents. Several countries had to take strict austerity measures, also in the pharmaceutical. Such measures are intended to address market participants such as pharmaceutical industry, wholesalers and pharmacies. Cost-containment is likely to also target patients and consumers by impacting accessibility and affordability of medicines. Change to Win, a US-based non-profit labor organization, addressed Gesundheit Österreich Forschungs- und Planungsgesellschaft GmbH, a legal subsidiary of Gesundheit Österreich GmbH (GÖG/Austrian Health Institute) for non-profit clients, to submit a report about pharmaceutical pricing in European countries in order to investigate measures taken during the global financial crisis and to provide an outlook on planned and future policy measures. The report is intended to be used by CtW Investment Group, which works with pension funds sponsored by unions affiliated with the Change to Win labor federation. In the results section, we start by providing an outlook on the current pattern and expected trends related to pharmaceutical policies as well as a forecast on pharmaceutical expenditure in the European countries over the next years . This is followed by information about most frequently applied policies related to pharmaceutical wholesale, pharmaceutical pricing in general and the commonly applied pricing policy of external price referencing