The Pressure is On: Organizing Without the NLRB

[Excerpt] Ask the typical union organizer to define success and he or she will probably say, Winning elections. Many labor organizations, including ours, have found out that winning a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election does not mean that the workers involved are going to receive the benefits of a union contract. One third of representation elections won by unions do not result in a collective bargaining agreement. In fact, just winning an NLRB election is a tough proposition. In 1990 the union win rate was only 47.6%. Even more alarming is the drop in the number of elections held in 1990 — 3,423, the lowest since 1984. In the 1960s and \u2770s, there were twice this number of elections each year. This trend is truly alarming when you consider that at the end of 1990 unions represented only 16.1% of the nation\u27s workforce — quite a drop from 35% of workers with a union contract in the mid-1950s. What can the labor movement do to reverse the trend of fewer and fewer workers being represented by unions

LRR Focus: Electoral Success in Michigan, It Takes More Than Money

[Excerpt] It\u27s said that money is the mother\u27s milk of politics. But cash isn\u27t all there is to it. By 1992, my local had achieved the lofty status as the No. 2 local union in raising dollars for the Active Ballot Club (ABC), the United Food and Commercial Workers\u27 equivalent of the AFL-CIO\u27s Committee on Political Education (COPE). Most of the money we raised for our candidates was spent on television ads and other slick media. Because we had never conducted a grassroots voter registration education get-out-the-vote campaign before, I question whether dollars spent on media actually motivated our members to go to the polls

A Comparison of PTSD, AUD, and MDD Symptom Patterns in Different Trauma Types

A Comparison of PTSD, AUD, and MDD Symptom Patterns in Different Trauma Types Elizabeth Crump, Depts. of Biology and Sociology, with Dr. Kaitlin Bountress, Virginia Institute of Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics About 66% of college students have been exposed to a traumatic event (Read et al., 2011). Research thus far suggests that interpersonal trauma (IPT; e.g., physical or sexual abuse or assault) is linked to higher risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), variability in PTSD symptom cluster presentation, and comorbidities with substance use compared to accidental trauma (e.g., natural disaster, motor vehicle accident; Kessler et al. 1995; Kelley et al., 2009; Kilpatrick et al. 2000). There is little research investigating the role of trauma type in the expression of symptoms related to PTSD (both overall severity and symptom cluster presentation), Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD), and Major Depression (MD) in a representative college population. The first aim of this study was to investigate the relation between trauma type (interpersonal and accidental trauma) and PTSD, AUD, and MD symptoms as well as PTSD symptom cluster presentation (avoidance, arousal, negative thoughts and emotions, and reexperiencing). We also sought to test in an exploratory manner whether there was an association between these symptoms and increased trauma type count (i.e., experiencing both IPT and accidental trauma). Results found that those with IPT exposure experienced the highest rate of all symptom outcomes (excluding MD symptoms and PTSD reexperiencing) and had significantly greater symptom severity as compared to the group with both IPT and accidental exposure. The findings suggest that greater intervention measures should be focused on those who experience IPT trauma due to the greater vulnerability to PTSD, Alcohol Use, and Depressive symptoms.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/1307/thumbnail.jp

Information Flow to Front-line Employees

This research is a case study within a large bureaucracy; the physical plant operations of a Tier-one university in the United States. The organization of study received low scores for internal communication in their all-employee surveys in 2012 and 2014 and was cited for “lack of information flow to front-line employees” in a peer audit conducted in 2011. Root causes for these deficiencies are investigated through (1) Activity Theory analysis, (2) Leader-Member Exchange Theory and (3) linear regression analysis of all-employee survey data. No formal initiatives addressing internal communications had been initiated when this study was launched so the research was used to identify areas for improvement within the organization.Human Dimensions of Organization

Mechanical features of the shuttle rotating service structure

With the development of the space shuttle launching facilities, it became mandatory to develop a shuttle rotating service structure to provide for the insertion and/or removal of payloads at the launch pads. The rotating service structure is a welded tubular steel space frame 189 feet high, 65 feet wide, and weighing 2100 tons. At the pivot column the structure is supported on a 30 inch diameter hemispherical bearing. At the opposite terminus the structure is supported on two truck assemblies each having eight 36 inch diameter double flanged wheels. The following features of the rotating service structure are discussed: (1) thermal expansion and contraction; (2) hurricane tie downs; (3) payload changeout room; (4) payload ground handling mechanism; (5) payload and orbiter access platforms; and (6) orbiter cargo bay access

Reinforced thermal-shock resistant ceramics

Composite material, made by dispersing short tungsten-rhenium fibers randomly throughout zirconium oxide, is highly resistant to oxidizing environments at temperatures above 2000 degrees F. This reinforced ceramic is also thermal stress resistant

New delivery model for non-profit organisations: shared computing services

Abstract: The current economic climate of funding stringency has intensified the need for non-profit organisations (NPOs) to find new delivery models of their services as a way of creating greater efficiencies and reducing costs. Consideration of improvement to their back-office operations is one way of addressing overheads associated with delivery functions of NPOs so that they can continue to focus on their core business activities. The overheads for back-office functions are much larger for smaller NPOs (by about 10-15 percent) than the larger ones and interest in sharing services could appeal to that sector. One approach to reduce overhead costs is for two or more NPOs to collaborate in sharing office space and office equipment and, in some instances, outsourcing some functions, for example, human resources and information technology. Currently, in New Zealand, there is very little engagement by NPOs in sharing services, particularly back office computing services. It was against this background that meetings with representatives of eight NPOs in Wellington, New Zealand, identified the challenges they were facing. These included funding, client management, compliance with reporting (financial and non-financial), financial management and control, governance, marketing and promotion and retention and management of staff and volunteers. Wellington City Council, as a significant funding agent of some local NPOs, commissioned an online survey with the aim of understanding the interest and readiness of NPOs in adopting shared computing services. The survey was developed collaboratively with the council, a computing charitable trust and a local university. The objectives of the survey were: to provide a snapshot of computing usage within the organisations, identify significant issues challenging the sector and understand their perceptions of shared computing services. The perceptions of the Wellington region NPO representatives (147 valid surveys) regarding shared services are reported in this paper. Results reveal the factors that drive the uptake of shared services within the non-profit sector, the benefits, barriers and priorities of sharing computing services and respondents’ views on their willingness to pay for a shared services arrangement. NPOs were positive regarding potential benefits of a shared services arrangement but recognised potential barriers of privacy and security, a need for contractual relationships, shared vision and compliance and standardisation. Priorities for a proposed shared services model were identified as finance and management of data and knowledge. The majority of respondents indicated they were willing to pay up to five percent of their budget for a shared services arrangement. These results provide a basis for further study as to the type of shared services model that organisations would find acceptable and render efficiencies and cost savings.Authors: Barbara Crump, Raja Peter Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand.Paper to be presented at the 7th European Conference on Information Management and Evaluation, Gdansk, 23-24 September 2013

Graduate employability and the principle of potentiality: an aspect of the ethics of HRM

The recruitment of the next generation of workers is of central concern to contemporary HRM. This paper focuses on university campuses as a major site of this process, and particularly as a new domain in which HRM‟s ethical claims are configured, in which it sets and answers a range of ethical questions as it outlines the „ethos‟ of the ideal future worker. At the heart of this ethos lies what we call the „principle of potentiality‟. This principle is explored through a sample of graduate recruitment programmes from the Times Top 100 Graduate Employers, interpreted as ethical exhortations in HRM‟s attempt to shape the character of future workers. The paper brings the work of Georg Simmel to the study of HRM‟s ethics and raises the uncomfortable question that, within discourses of endless potentiality, lie ethical dangers which bespeak an unrecognised „tragedy of culture‟. We argue that HRM fashions an ethos of work which de-recognises human limits, makes a false promise of absolute freedom, and thus becomes a tragic proposition for the individual

Design and commission of an experimental test rig to apply a full-scale pressure load on composite sandwich panels representative of aircraft secondary structure

This paper describes the design of a test rig, which is used to apply a representative pressure load to a full-scale composite sandwich secondary aircraft structure. A generic panel was designed with features to represent those in the composite sandwich secondary aircraft structure. To provide full-field strain data from the panels, the test rig was designed for use with optical measurement techniques such as thermoelastic stress analysis (TSA) and digital image correlation (DIC). TSA requires a cyclic load to be applied to a structure for the measurement of the strain state; therefore, the test rig has been designed to be mounted on a standard servo-hydraulic test machine. As both TSA and DIC require an uninterrupted view of the surface of the test panel, an important consideration in the design is facilitating the optical access for the two techniques. To aid the test rig design a finite element (FE) model was produced. The model provides information on the deflections that must be accommodated by the test rig, and ensures that the stress and strain levels developed in the panel when loaded in the test rig would be sufficient for measurement using TSA and DIC. Finally, initial tests using the test rig have shown it to be capable of achieving the required pressure and maintaining a cyclic load. It was also demonstrated that both TSA and DIC data can be collected from the panels under load, which are used to validate the stress and deflection derived from the FE model