The Impact of China’s Labor Contract Law on Workers

ILRF\u27s report examines the impact of the Labor Contract Law on workplaces in China’s export manufacturing hubs. ILRF argues for various strategies, from a greater emphasis on collective bargaining to community-based legal education, to ensure full implementation of the Labor Contract Law

The Relationship Between The Development Of Math Operation Proficiency And Student Confidence

The research question of this study was, What is the relationship between math operation fluency and a student’s confidence and perception of math in general? A multi-faceted intervention was developed to address both students’ multiplication fact proficiency and student confidence, with middle school students in Special Education. Pre and post assessment data was analyzed to determine the effect of this intervention on student fact proficiency and confidence. Findings suggest that students that progressed throughout the intervention period by mastering multiplication fact families also generally had an increase in math confidence. Implications for future work include determining how to improve this intervention for Special Education students with more severe deficits in math, both in terms of improving fact proficiency and confidence

The Theft: An Analysis of Moral Agency

Adam and Eve’s theft marks the beginning of the human career as moral agents.   This article will examine the assumptions underlying the notion of moral agency from the perspective of three unremarkable human beings who found themselves in situations of moral difficulty.  The article will conclude that these three people could not have acted differently than they did.  It will conclude that it is unreasonable to assume that ordinary human beings will inevitably possess the resources to address difficult moral decisions

Opportunities for Food Sovereignty and Urban Agriculture in Lewiston

Although there is heightened attention being paid to the importance of access to good, healthy, and locally produced food, there are many barriers and challenges faced by growers in Lewiston’s food system. Many of these barriers are in the form of federal, state, and municipal regulations surrounding licensing, permitting, zoning, and land use. Two of the biggest tools available to municipalities to increase flexibility and accessibility in food systems are urban agriculture and food sovereignty legislation. Urban agriculture legislation works towards an increase in food accessibility on the zoning and land use while food sovereignty deals with the licencing and permitting end of food systems. In this report we examine food sovereignty and urban agriculture examples from other municipalities in combination with stakeholder interviewers in order to develop a set of recommendations for food sovereignty and urban agricultural reform in Lewiston. In interviews with local stakeholders, including farmers and other producers, we identified baseline barriers they face in their businesses. We then examined food sovereignty ordinances that have been passed in other Maine municipalities in response to Maine’s Food Sovereignty Act. This research informed our drafting of a food sovereignty ordinance for Lewiston by allowing us to identify the vital parts of other municipalities’ ordinances. Additionally, we explored multiple cities’ zoning and land use codes related to urban agriculture from around the country and compared them with Lewiston’s to inspire potential reforms. We identified several large opportunities for increasing the accessibility of zoning codes in Lewiston including increasing the flexibility of density and setback requirements for bees and chickens on residential properties. Additionally, we recommend the addition of the term “market garden” to Lewiston’s zoning codes in order to bridge the barrier between agriculturally zoned areas and residentially zoned areas. We also believe that the creation of an urban agricultural overlay with solid guidelines to limit residents complaints, would allow for agriculture to thrive in this urban setting. The suggestions outlined in this report and in our deliverables are meant to guide the Good Food Council of Lewiston and Auburn and eventually Lewiston city staff towards making improvements in food accessibility, the local agricultural economy, and food security within the city

Class and Precarity:An Unhappy Coupling in China’s Working Class Formation

In refuting Guy Standing’s precariat as a class, we highlight that employment situation, worker identity and legal rights are mistakenly taken as theoretical components of class formation. Returning to theories of class we use Dahrendorf’s reading of Marx where three components of classes, the objective, the subjective, and political struggle, are used to define the current formation of the working class in China. Class is not defined by status, identity or legal rights, but location in the sphere of production embedded within conflictual capital-labour relations. By engaging with the heated debates on the rise of a new working class in China, we argue that the blending of employment situation and rights in the West with the idea of precarity of migrant workers in China is misleading. Deconstructing the relationship between class and precarity, what we see as an unhappy coupling, is central to the paper

On the Transformative Growth of the UOIT Automotive Centre of Excellence (ACE) from Industry Research to Collaborative Industry/Academic Research and Experiential Learning

The Automotive Centre of Excellence (ACE) at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology is a research and development facility that offers chambers and technology for thermal management and aerodynamics including structural durability and life-cycle testing. Facilities include one of the largest and most sophisticated climatic wind tunnels (CWT) on the planet. ACE is a university-owned and operated research and development facility that commenced operations in 2011. Its original mandate was focused on the research and engineering development of automotive systems with an emphasis on Industry partnerships. Over the years ACE has diversified its market sectors and increased its community involvement and education. This paper will present examples of how ACE has interacted with the community and education sector to help transform the educational experience of not only students but the community at whole. It will discuss how revenue generation has been balanced to support educational and training needs. ACE also promotes research projects with the university and its impact and challenges in this area will be presented in the paper

Resistance, Repression, Responsiveness: Workers and the State in China

This dissertation examines the impact of labor unrest under authoritarianism. It uses evidence from China to explore the possibility that autocracies, especially state socialist and post-socialist ones, are uniquely vulnerable to worker resistance and therefore react to it in a dual manner, at once repressive and responsive. Drawing on an original dataset of strikes, protests, and riots by Chinese workers, I find that increases in unrest are correlated with both increases in public security spending (repression) and pro-labor rulings in formally adjudicated employment disputes (responsiveness). Using a “most similar” case comparison informed by field theory, I then show how in Jiangsu’s portion of the Yangtze River Delta, moderate industrial contention is paired with governance that can be characterized as preemption, caution, and nudging, while in Guangdong’s portion of the Pearl River Delta, high contention is paired with reaction, experimentation, and crackdowns. Thus, consistent with the dissertation’s quantitative analysis, repression and responsiveness are stronger where resistance is more widespread, but governance is also qualitatively different. I argue that, at the level of local governments and local officials, there is a logic to this divergence between the cases: militant workers make a liability of the state’s commitment to stability, thereby threatening the careers of officials, who must, as a consequence, demonstrate grit and creativity. Two issues remain: the role of regional political elites and diffusion between regions. I find that the ideologies of particular local politicians do not alter the protest-policy relationship. However, even as protest tactics diffuse outward from the country’s hotspots of contention, official counter-measures against protests also spread. Worker resistance thus profoundly influences authoritarian rule, but not in a linear manner