THE LEGAL SIGNIFICANCE OF LABOR CONTRACTS UNDER THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS ACT

The National Labor Relations Act was passed, as it declares in its first section, to encourage the practice and procedure of collective bargaining\u27\u27 and to give workers freedom to designate representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment ; and the last of the unfair labor practices named in section 8 is for an employer to refuse to bargain collectively. Bargaining and negotiating, the National Labor Relations Board has repeatedly declared, must be done in good faith. Discussion is not true negotiation or bargaining. For the employer to bargain in good faith he must intend to reach agreement; and be ready to have such agreement embodied in a writing signed by the parties. A signed contract is then the end-all of the process, so far as the National Labor Relations Act is concerned; for regarding the observance of contracts the National Labor Relations Board, to which the act entrusts the application of its standards, has no responsibility. It is the practice and procedure of collective bargaining that is the board\u27s concern. The formation of the contract is the culmination of collective bargaining. At that point the legislative process in labor relations is over, and the executive process of application and interpretation begins

A Discourse of True and False: An Analysis of the Publications of the AFL-CIO Between 1955-1965 as Archived in the Tamiment Library

In 1955 the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations healed their twenty-year schism. Provisions of the NIRA and the Wagner Act had given promising opportunities for union organization in the early 1930’s. Unions in coal and steel saw possibilities in organizing vertically entire industries, rather than according to traditional crafts. In 1935 some unions left the AFL to form more aggressive organizations under the banner of the newly formed CIO. The public perception of aggressive strikes led to anti-labor laws, most noticeably the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. The increasingly hostile political climate, as states enacted the “right to work” laws permitted by Section 14(b) of Taft-Hartley, created the conditions for reuniting labor. This thesis examines the decade following that reunion. Using theories of Foucault, Bourdieu, and Habermas, it looks at the historical background of labor’s perception of itself in the century leading up to the topic period, but focuses primarily on the AFL-CIO’s documents of the decade 1955-1965, how those documents defined the role of unions in a democracy, the battle of discourse in claiming the mantle of “individual freedom”, and the compromises involved in the process of “collective bargaining.

Incidence of insulin-requiring diabetes in the US military

The aim of the study was to determine age- and race-related, and overall incidence rates of insulin-requiring diabetes in adults in the US military. Electronic records for admissions to US military and Tricare hospitals during 1990–2005 and visits to military clinics during 2000–2005 were identified using the Career History Archival Medical and Personnel System at the Naval Health Research Center, San Diego, CA, USA. Population data were obtained from the Defense Manpower Data Center and Defense Medical Epidemiology Database. In men there were 2,918 new cases of insulin-requiring diabetes in 20,427,038 person-years at ages 18–44 years (median age 28 years) for a total age-adjusted incidence rate of 17.5 per 100,000 person-years (95% CI 16.4–18.6). Incidence rates were twice as high in black men as in white men (31.5 vs 14.5 per 100,000, p < 0.001). In women there were 414 new cases in 3,285,000 person-years at ages 18–44 years (median age 27 years), for a total age-adjusted incidence rate of 13.6 per 100,000 (95% CI 12.4–14.9). Incidence rates were twice as high in black women as in white women (21.8 vs 9.7 per 100,000, p < 0.001). In a regression model, incidence of insulin-requiring diabetes peaked annually in the winter–spring season (OR 1.46, p < 0.01). Race and seasonal differences persisted in the multivariate analysis. Differences in incidence rates by race and season suggest a need for further research into possible reasons, including the possibility of a contribution from vitamin D deficiency. Cohort studies using prediagnostic serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D should be conducted to further evaluate this relationship

Energy and Flux Measurements of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays Observed During the First ANITA Flight

The first flight of the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment recorded 16 radio signals that were emitted by cosmic-ray induced air showers. For 14 of these events, this radiation was reflected from the ice. The dominant contribution to the radiation from the deflection of positrons and electrons in the geomagnetic field, which is beamed in the direction of motion of the air shower. This radiation is reflected from the ice and subsequently detected by the ANITA experiment at a flight altitude of 36km. In this paper, we estimate the energy of the 14 individual events and find that the mean energy of the cosmic-ray sample is 2.9 EeV. By simulating the ANITA flight, we calculate its exposure for ultra-high energy cosmic rays. We estimate for the first time the cosmic-ray flux derived only from radio observations. In addition, we find that the Monte Carlo simulation of the ANITA data set is in agreement with the total number of observed events and with the properties of those events.Comment: Added more explanation of the experimental setup and textual improvement

Modern optical astronomy: technology and impact of interferometry

The present `state of the art' and the path to future progress in high spatial resolution imaging interferometry is reviewed. The review begins with a treatment of the fundamentals of stellar optical interferometry, the origin, properties, optical effects of turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere, the passive methods that are applied on a single telescope to overcome atmospheric image degradation such as speckle interferometry, and various other techniques. These topics include differential speckle interferometry, speckle spectroscopy and polarimetry, phase diversity, wavefront shearing interferometry, phase-closure methods, dark speckle imaging, as well as the limitations imposed by the detectors on the performance of speckle imaging. A brief account is given of the technological innovation of adaptive-optics (AO) to compensate such atmospheric effects on the image in real time. A major advancement involves the transition from single-aperture to the dilute-aperture interferometry using multiple telescopes. Therefore, the review deals with recent developments involving ground-based, and space-based optical arrays. Emphasis is placed on the problems specific to delay-lines, beam recombination, polarization, dispersion, fringe-tracking, bootstrapping, coherencing and cophasing, and recovery of the visibility functions. The role of AO in enhancing visibilities is also discussed. The applications of interferometry, such as imaging, astrometry, and nulling are described. The mathematical intricacies of the various `post-detection' image-processing techniques are examined critically. The review concludes with a discussion of the astrophysical importance and the perspectives of interferometry.Comment: 65 pages LaTeX file including 23 figures. Reviews of Modern Physics, 2002, to appear in April issu