Organizing to Win: Introduction

[Excerpt] The American labor movement is at a watershed. For the first time since the early years of industrial unionism sixty years ago, there is near-universal agreement among union leaders that the future of the movement depends on massive new organizing. In October 1995, John Sweeney, Richard Trumka, and Linda Chavez-Thompson were swept into the top offices of the AFL-CIO, following a campaign that promised organizing at an unprecedented pace and scale. Since taking office, the new AFL-CIO leadership team has created a separate organizing department and has committed $20 million to support coordinated large-scale industry-based organizing drives. In addition, in the summer of 1996, the AFL-CIO launched the Union Summer program, which placed more than a thousand college students and young workers in organizing campaigns across the country

Justice on the Job: Perspectives on the Erosion of Collective Bargaining in the United States

This volume presents an influential group of researchers who examine the current state of workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain collectively. All of the researchers present empirical evidence to support their innovative ideas for advancing workers\u27 rights.https://research.upjohn.org/up_press/1168/thumbnail.jp

When the going gets tough: the “Why” of goal striving matters

No prior research has examined how motivation for goal striving influences persistence in the face of increasing goal difficulty. This research examined the role of self-reported (Study 1) and primed (Study 2) autonomous and controlled motives in predicting objectively-assessed persistence during the pursuit of an increasingly difficult goal.\ud \ud In Study 1, 100 British athletes (64 males; Mage = 19.89 years, SDage = 2.43) pursued a goal of increasing difficulty on a cycle-ergometer. In Study 2, 90 British athletes (43 males; Mage = 19.63 years, SDage = 1.14) engaged in the same task, but their motivation was primed by asking them to observe a video of an actor describing her/his involvement in an unrelated study.\ud \ud In Study 1 self-reported autonomous goal motives predicted goal persistence via challenge appraisals and task-based coping. In contrast, controlled goal motives predicted threat appraisals and disengagement coping which, in turn, was a negative predictor of persistence. In Study 2 primed autonomous (compared to controlled) goal motives predicted greater persistence, positive affect, and future interest for task engagement.\ud \ud The findings underscore the importance of autonomous motivation for behavioral investment in the face of increased goal difficulty

Introduction: The Context for the Reform of Labor Law

[Excerpt] It has become increasingly clear that the U.S. system of collective bargaining is no longer a realistic option for a large and growing proportion of American workers, and the situation will continue to worsen absent a major redirection of public policy. The decline in union density rates in this country is alarming to those who value and promote unionization. The extent to which this decline is due to management resistance and the failure of the law to promote collective bargaining is an important question that requires continued study and debate. Opinion polls reveal that for millions of nonunion American workers, workplace representation is an unfulfilled goal. These and other concerns about the inadequacy of U.S. labor law motivated the Clinton Administration to create the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations, chaired by John Dunlop and charged with examining the laws that govern and shape relations in America\u27s workplaces. In the same spirit, the Department of Economic Research of the AFL-CIO and the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University convened a conference on labor law reform in October 1993. Nearly forty papers and speeches advanced a variety of ways to correct the inadequacies in our system of union-management regulation. This volume contains a selection of the papers from that conference, chosen to reflect the diversity of opinion and thought represented. While all of the views and policy recommendations expressed in the papers are not necessarily fully shared by the, editors, the AFL-CIO, or Cornell, they are stimulating and provocative and deserve the widest possible discussion and debate. Our aim in producing this book is to stimulate public awareness about the need for fundamental reform of the legal and institutional underpinnings of the U.S. system of workplace representation and to offer proposals for the content of that reform

Opposing selection and environmental variation modify optimal timing of breeding

Studies of evolution in wild populations often find that the heritable phenotypic traits of individuals producing the most offspring do not increase proportionally in the population. This paradox may arise when phenotypic traits influence both fecundity and viability and when there is a tradeoff between these fitness components, leading to opposing selection. Such tradeoffs are the foundation of life history theory, but they are rarely investigated in selection studies. Timing of breeding is a classic example of a heritable trait under directional selection that does not result in an evolutionary response. Using a 22-y study of a tropical parrot, we show that opposing viability and fecundity selection on the timing of breeding is common and affects optimal breeding date, defined by maximization of fitness. After accounting for sampling error, the directions of viability (positive) and fecundity (negative) selection were consistent, but the magnitude of selection fluctuated among years. Environmental conditions (rainfall and breeding density) primarily and breeding experience secondarily modified selection, shifting optimal timing among individuals and years. In contrast to other studies, viability selection was as strong as fecundity selection, late-born juveniles had greater survival than early-born juveniles, and breeding later in the year increased fitness under opposing selection. Our findings provide support for life history tradeoffs influencing selection on phenotypic traits, highlight the need to unify selection and life history theory, and illustrate the importance of monitoring survival as well as reproduction for understanding phenological responses to climate change

The role of religion in the longer-range future, April 6, 7, and 8, 2006

This repository item contains a single issue of the Pardee Conference Series, a publication series that began publishing in 2006 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. This conference that took place during April 6, 7, and 8, 2006. Co-organized by David Fromkin, Director, Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, and Ray L. Hart, Dean ad interim Boston University School of TheologyThe conference brought together some 40 experts from various disciplines to ponder upon the “great dilemma” of how science, religion, and the human future interact. In particular, different panels looked at trends in what is happening to religion around the world, questions about how religion is impacting the current political and economic order, and how the social dynamics unleashed by science and by religion can be reconciled.Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affair

Open string instantons and superpotentials

We study the F-terms in N=1 supersymmetric, d=4 gauge theories arising from D(p+3)-branes wrapping supersymmetric p-cycles in a Calabi-Yau threefold. If p is even the spectrum and superpotential for a single brane are determined by purely classical ($\alpha^\prime \to 0$) considerations. If p=3, superpotentials for massless modes are forbidden to all orders in $\alpha^\prime$ and may only be generated by open string instantons. For this latter case we find that such instanton effects are generically present. Mirror symmetry relates even and odd p and thus perturbative and nonperturbative superpotentials; we provide a preliminary discussion of a class of examples of such mirror pairs.Comment: 22 pages, harvmac big; v2, corrected some typo

Microclimate buffering and thermal tolerance across elevations in a tropical butterfly

Microclimatic variability in tropical forests plays a key role in shaping species distributions and their ability to cope with environmental change, especially for ectotherms. Nonetheless, currently available climatic datasets lack data from the forest interior and, furthermore, our knowledge of thermal tolerance among tropical ectotherms is limited. We therefore studied natural variation in the microclimate experienced by tropical butterflies in the genus Heliconius across their Andean range in a single year. We found that the forest strongly buffers temperature and humidity in the understory, especially in the lowlands where temperatures are more extreme. There were systematic differences between our yearly records and macroclimate databases (WorldClim2), with lower interpolated minimum temperatures and maximum temperatures higher than expected. We then assessed thermal tolerance of ten Heliconius butterfly species in the wild and showed that populations at high elevations had significantly lower heat tolerance than those at lower elevations. However, when we reared populations of the widespread H. erato from high and low elevations in a common-garden environment, the difference in heat tolerance across elevations was reduced, indicating plasticity in this trait. Microclimate buffering is not currently captured in publicly available datasets but could be crucial for enabling upland shifting of species sensitive to heat such as highland Heliconius. Plasticity in thermal tolerance may alleviate the effects of global warming on some widespread ectotherm species, but more research is needed to understand the long-term consequences of plasticity on populations and species