Labor, Management, and Government Interactions

[Excerpt] Labor, management, and government engage in complex interactions in emerging countries, and these interactions strongly influence the evolution of labor relations in those countries. For example, unions and other workers’ movements in some countries have aligned with a particular political party or in some cases are the core constituents of a labor party that is active in the political arena. This chapter will discuss cases where particular unions were aligned with the governing leaders or party. Another way unions and workers have influenced governments is through their involvement in protests or other political actions that are part of democratization campaigns or movements. As will be discussed in this chapter, some of these efforts to promote democracy have succeeded in recent years and have led to major political transformations in particular countries

The Role of the Economic, Technological, and Demographic Environments

[Excerpt] This chapter examines how various forces in the environment influence labor relations in emerging countries. We focus in particular on how factors in the economic, technological, and demographic environments influence the bargaining power of both labor and management. In doing so we are moving downward in our three-tiered framework by examining how external environmental factors influence the functional level of labor relations

Global Pressures: Multinational Corporations, International Unionism, and NGOs

[Excerpt] The globalization of product, financial, and labor markets has made it easier for companies to produce many of the goods and services they sell wherever in the world the right skills can be found at the lowest cost. The desire to sell products worldwide has also created incentives for firms to have a presence in multiple countries. Together these facts have made labor relations in many industries global in scope. Globalization is of particular importance to emerging countries. Nearly 50 percent of the world’s manufacturing employment is now located in emerging countries. Globalization poses significant challenges to labor relations practices. Historically the laws, markets, institutions, norms, and practices of labor relations have developed on a national basis. Globalization has weakened, though not eliminated, the role of national systems of labor relations and given rise to a number of new institutions, structures, and processes for dealing with all of the labor relations functions discussed in previous chapters. In this chapter we will discuss these new arrangements and the challenges globalization poses to labor relations. To do so we will use the framework laid out in chapter 1 for analyzing labor relations

The Negotiations Process and Structures

[Excerpt] This chapter examines the process by which unions and employers negotiate collective agreements and the structures they use for those negotiations, continuing the analysis of the middle (functional) level of labor relations activity. It explains the dynamics of negotiations and the factors that lead to strikes and then goes on to discuss the different bargaining structures used in negotiations

An Introduction to U.S. Collective Bargaining and Labor Relations

[Excerpt] This comprehensive textbook provides an introduction to collective bargaining and labor relations with a focus on developments in the United States. It is appropriate for students, policy analysts, and labor relations professionals including unionists, managers, and neutrals. A three-tiered strategic choice framework unifies the text, and the authors’ thorough grounding in labor history and labor law assists students in learning the basics. In addition to traditional labor relations, the authors address emerging forms of collective representation and movements that address income inequality in novel ways. Harry C. Katz, Thomas A. Kochan, and Alexander J. S. Colvin provide numerous contemporary illustrations of business and union strategies. They consider the processes of contract negotiation and contract administration with frequent comparisons to nonunion practices and developments, and a full chapter is devoted to special aspects of the public sector. An Introduction to U.S. Collective Bargaining and Labor Relations has an international scope, covering labor rights issues associated with the global supply chain as well as the growing influence of NGOs and cross-national unionism. The authors also compare how labor relations systems in Germany, Japan, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa compare to practices in the United States

Coupling mechanism of gain-guided integrated semiconductor laser arrays

It is shown that a gain-guided laser array couples via propagating fields rather than the evanescent mode coupling typically responsible for directional coupling in passive (directional couplers) and active (laser array) devices. We show that these phase-locked modes exhibit an interference pattern, in the junction plane, which arises from the curvature of the phase fronts of optical fields of the interacting lasers. The experimental results are interpreted with the aid of a simple theoretical model, and the effect of the observed mode pattern on the coupling of gain-guided lasers is discussed

Chirped arrays of diode lasers for supermode control

We propose nonuniform structures of phase-locked diode lasers, which make it possible to discriminate efficiently against all the higher order array supermodes (lateral modes). In these nonuniform arrays, the effective mode index in each channel varies across the array. Consequently, the envelopes of the various supermodes, including the highest order one, differ significantly from each other. Thus, by proper tailoring of the gain distribution across the array, one can conveniently select the fundamental supermode. Such fundamental supermode oscillation is essential in order to obtain single lobe, diffraction limited beams and minimal spectral spread from phase-locked laser arrays

Gravitational energy

Observers at rest in a stationary spacetime flat at infinity can measure small amounts of rest-mass+internal energies+kinetic energies+pressure energy in a small volume of fluid attached to a local inertial frame. The sum of these small amounts is the total "matter energy" for those observers. The total mass-energy minus the matter energy is the binding gravitational energy. Misner, Thorne and Wheeler evaluated the gravitational energy of a spherically symmetric static spacetime. Here we show how to calculate gravitational energy in any static and stationary spacetime for isolated sources with a set of observers at rest. The result of MTW is recovered and we find that electromagnetic and gravitational 3-covariant energy densities in conformastatic spacetimes are of opposite signs. Various examples suggest that gravitational energy is negative in spacetimes with special symmetries or when the energy-momentum tensor satisfies usual energy conditions.Comment: 12 pages. Accepted for publication in Class. Quantum Gra

Control of mutual phase locking of monolithically integrated semiconductor lasers

The mutual coherence of two coupled semiconductor lasers is investigated experimentally. It is demonstrated that by varying the gain in the overlap region, the degree of phase coherence can be continuously controlled. The quantitative characterization of the degree of phase coherence by fringe visibility is demonstrated

Single-growth embedded epitaxy AlGaAs injection lasers with extremely low threshold currents

A new type of strip-geometry AlGaAs double-heterostructure laser with an embedded optical waveguide has been developed. The new structure is fabricated using a single step of epitaxial growth. Lasers with threshold currents as low as 9.5 mA (150 µm long) were obtained. These lasers exhibit operation in a single spatial and longitudinal mode, have differential quantum efficiencies exceeding 45%, and a characteristic temperature of 175° C. They emit more than 12 mW/facet of optical power without any kinks