3,175 research outputs found
Global Unions, Local Power: The New Spirit of Transnational Labor Organizing
[Excerpt] This book is about two parallel stories. First, it relates the account of the most aggressive campaign ever waged by a global union federation (GUF), a years-long effort of private security guard unions to organize against Group4 Securicor (G4S), the world\u27s largest private employer after Walmart. What began as an isolated battle in the United States blossomed into a worldwide struggle for global unionism impacting hundreds of thou sands of workers from over twenty countries. But the global effort also gave rise to deep local struggles. Consequently, the narrative moves among dif ferent scales of action, from the global arena, to the national-level context, to the local union office. Throughout the campaign, workers in different places won wage increases, union recognition, benefits, an end to abusive workplace discrimination, and, most importantly, a greater degree of control over their employer\u27s business model. In the United States, security guard union density (8 percent as of late 2012) is now slightly higher than the national private-sector average, and the campaign settlement provides the union with a dearer path to bring more workers into the fold. Rarely have global campaigns meant more than superficial changes in workers\u27 lives-this struggle set a new standard.
The second story describes a transition to a new spirit of transnational labor activism. The word spirit implies a shifting idea about how labor should best confront the problems posed by global capital. In a context of rising corporate power and declining or unenforceable worker rights (publicly enforceable claims), many of labor\u27s tried and true strategies have proven wholly ineffective. In response, since the early 1970s unions have engaged in what I call governance struggles, a panoply of strategies to subordinate the rules-based logic of private companies to democratic oversight by workers and their unions. The significance of the fight against G4S is the complex and contradictory ways in which those gains at the global level were articulated onto the local context, enhancing worker mobilization and transforming local union movements.
Most global union campaigns seek to assert universal labor standards and core values within a given company. But the inability to transfer any gains to the local context has often meant that workers\u27 lives remain unchanged. Rather than insist on the incompatibility of global and local levels of activism, the findings in this book suggest a paradox—effective global unionism requires reciprocity with local actors. The conclusions also permit cautious optimism about the prospects for authentic labor internationalism where others have asserted an overriding pessimism (see Burawoy 2010). The question therefore posed here is simple: How can global unions build local power
Differential thermal analysis and solution growth of intermetallic compounds
To obtain single crystals by solution growth, an exposed primary
solidification surface in the appropriate, but often unknown, equilibrium alloy
phase diagram is required. Furthermore, an appropriate crucible material is
needed, necessary to hold the molten alloy during growth, without being
attacked by it. Recently, we have used the comparison of realistic simulations
with experimental differential thermal analysis (DTA) curves to address both
these problems. We have found: 1) complex DTA curves can be interpreted to
determine an appropriate heat treatment and starting composition for solution
growth, without having to determine the underlying phase diagrams in detail. 2)
DTA can facilitate identification of appropriate crucible materials. DTA can
thus be used to make the procedure to obtain single crystals of a desired phase
by solution growth more efficient. We will use some of the systems for which we
have recently obtained single-crystalline samples using the combination of DTA
and solution growth as examples. These systems are TbAl, PrNiSi,
and YMnAl.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure
New results on heavy hadron spectroscopy with NRQCD
We present results for the spectrum of b-bbar bound states in the quenched
approximation for three different values of the lattice spacing. Results for
spin-independent splittings are shown to have good scaling behaviour;
spin-dependent splittings are more sensitive to discretisation effects. We
discuss what needs to be done to match the experimental spectrum.Comment: 3 pages, contribution to Lattice'9
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