The Meanings of Deindustrialization

The point of departure for any discussion of deindustrialization must be respect for the despair and betrayal felt by workers as their mines, factories, and mills were padlocked, abandoned, turned into artsy shopping spaces, or even dynamited. While economists and business leaders often speak in neutral, even hopeful, terms such as restructuring, downsizing, or creative destruction, metaphors of defeat and subjugation are more appropriate for the workers who banked on good-paying industrial jobs for the livelihoods of their families and their communities

Introduction to \u3ci\u3eCapital Moves: RCA\u27s Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor\u3c/i\u3e

[Excerpt] This book examines not just RCA\u27s most recent move to Mexico but a whole series of relocations of the company\u27s radio and television manufacturing from the 1930s to the 1990s. Revealing a much longer and more complicated history of capital migration than we tend to hear about in the global era, the story moves through four very distinct places and cultures as it examines the remarkably similar experiences of all of them with a single industry. Beginning with Southern and Eastern European immigrants in industrial New Jersey during the Great Depression, RCA moved production to employ ethnic Scotch-Irish workers in rural Indiana in 1940, briefly employed a combination of African American and white wage earners in Tennessee during the 1960s, and, since 1968, has employed Mexican workers in the border state of Chihuahua. Taken together, the chapters that follow comprise a comparative social history of industrial relocation that explores community life, gender, and labor organization across time and space. Placing the impact of capital migration on these working-class communities in a context that is both historically and internationally comparative, this book shows how social changes at the local level drive the relocation of capital investment

Introduction to \u3ci\u3eStayin\u27 Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class\u3c/i\u3e

[Excerpt] What many pegged as the promise of a working-class revival in the early 1970s turned out to be more of a swan song by decade\u27s end. The fragmented nature of the labor protests—by organization, industry, race, geography, and gender—failed to coalesce into a lasting national presence. The mainstream labor movement failed in its major political initiatives. Market orthodoxy eclipsed all alternatives, and promising organizing drives ended in failure. Deindustrialization decimated the power of the old industrial heartland. The vague class alliances of the major parties began to lose their distinction. As hip-hop writer Nelson George put it, The first story is full of optimism and exalted ideas about humanity\u27s ability to change through political action and moral argument. The next story, the plot we\u27re living right now, is defined by cynicism, sarcasm, and self-involvement raised to art. The turning point was the early seventies. By 1981, Time magazine predicted little more than Gloom and Doom for Workers

Taking exception: Christopher Phelps challenges Jefferson Cowie’s The great exception

A "Point/Counterpoint" interview of historian Jefferson Cowie with deliberately provocative thesis-testing questions

Minimum wage estimates and adjustments in Australia since 1983

This document provides estimates of national minimum wage rates for Australia since 1983. Providing estimates is not always a straight forward matter. We have provided a brief account of each wage decision providing: an estimated weekly minimum wage; an estimated hourly minimum wage based on the relevant standard working week; the relevant dollar increase; and the relevant percentage increase. We have also provided a summary of relevant events and submission from each decision in an endeavour to provide some of the social and political context for each decision

Understanding the training and education needs of homecare workers supporting people with dementia and cancer: a systematic review of reviews

Many people with dementia, supported by family carers, prefer to live at home and may rely on homecare support services. People with dementia are also often living with multimorbidities, including cancer. The main risk factor for both cancer and dementia is age and the number of people living with dementia and cancer likely to rise. Upskilling the social care workforce to facilitate more complex care is central to national workforce strategies and challenges. Training and education development must also respond to the key requirements of a homecare workforce experiencing financial, recruitment and retention difficulties. This systematic review of reviews provides an overview of dementia and cancer training and education accessible to the homecare workforce. Findings reveal there is a diverse range of training and education available, with mixed evidence of effectiveness. Key barriers and facilitators to effective training and education are identified in order to inform future training, education and learning development for the homecare workforce supporting people with dementia and cancer

Achieving consensus through professionalized head nods: The role of nodding in service encounters in Japan

While the interactional functions of head nodding in everyday Japanese conversation have been frequently studied, a discourse on head nodding as a professional communicative practice has yet to be explored. With the method of multimodal conversation analysis, the current study examines the role of nodding in a particular professional-client setting, namely, hair salon interactions. My interest specifically lies in the frequent occurrence of synchronized head nods during the “service-assessment sequence,” where both service provider and customer inspect and determine whether the completed work is adequate. I pursue mechanisms of synchronized head nods by revealing exactly how participants collaborate in producing a nod, and how their verbal actions may at times be designed accordingly. In doing so, the study provides insight into what consensus may look like at service encounters in Japan, and discusses how such nodding practices may contribute to a satisfactory closure of a business negotiation

Right at home: living with dementia and multi-morbidities

Dementia is recognised as the biggest health crisis of our time in terms of high personal and social costs and wider impact on health and social care systems. Increases in people living with dementia and multimorbidities presents critical challenges for homecare worldwide. Healthcare systems struggle to provide adequate home-care services, delivering limited care restricted to a single-condition focus. This study explored the experiences and expectations of homecare from the multiple perspectives of people living with dementia and multimorbidities and homecare workers providing support. Findings draw from qualitative semi-structured interviews with people with dementia (n=2), their partners (n=2), other partners or family carers (n=6) and homecare workers (n=26). Three themes are identified: (a) the preference for and value of home; (b) inadequate homecare provision and enhanced care-burden; (c) limited training and education. Despite continued calls for homecare investment, the focus on reduction in costs hides key questions and further dialogue required exploring how people with dementia can be supported to live independently and flourish at-home. This study considers these complex experiences and care requirements through the prism of disability and human rights frameworks. This paper concludes with consideration of more recent human social rights debate. We critically discuss what this may mean for people living with dementia and consider the implications for corequisite policy development to optimise available homecare support. Keywords: dementia, multimorbidities, homecare, independent-living, social right

The Long Exception: Rethinking the Place of the New Deal in American History

The Long Exception examines the period from Franklin Roosevelt to the end of the twentieth century and argues that the New Deal was more of an historical aberration—a byproduct of the massive crisis of the Great Depression—than the linear triumph of the welfare state. The depth of the Depression undoubtedly forced the realignment of American politics and class relations for decades, but, it is argued, there is more continuity in American politics between the periods before the New Deal order and those after its decline than there is between the postwar era and the rest of American history. Indeed, by the early seventies the arc of American history had fallen back upon itself. While liberals of the seventies and eighties waited for a return to what they regarded as the normality of the New Deal order, they were actually living in the final days of what Paul Krugman later called the interregnum between Gilded Ages. The article examines four central themes in building this argument: race, religion, class, and individualism