Ending shareholder monopoly: why workers’ votes promote good corporate governance

A consensus is emerging that votes at work promote good corporate governance, argues Ewan McGaughey. Here he outlines behavioural, qualitative and quantitative evidence, and explains that votes at work in Britain have among the longest, richest histories in the world

Dilepton Production at Fermilab and RHIC

Some recent results from several fixed-target dimuon production experiments at Fermilab are presented. In particular, we discuss the use of Drell-Yan data to determine the flavor structure of the nucleon sea, as well as to deduce the energy-loss of partons traversing nuclear medium. Future dilepton experiments at RHIC could shed more light on the flavor asymmetry and possible charge-symmetry-violation of the nucleon sea. Clear evidence for scaling violation in the Drell-Yan process could also be revealed at RHIC.Comment: 5 pages, talk presented at the RIKEN-BNL Workshop on 'Hard Parton Physics in Nucleus-Nucleus collisions, March 199

The codetermination bargains: the history of German corporate and labour law

Why does codetermination exist in Germany? Law and economics theories have contended that if there were no legal compulsion, worker participation in corporate governance would be ‘virtually nonexistent’. This positive analysis, which flows from the ‘nexus of contracts’ conception of the corporation, supports a normative argument that codetermination is inefficient because it is supposed that it will seldom happen voluntarily. After discussing competing conceptions of the corporation, as a ‘thing in itself’, and as an ‘institution’, this article explores the development of German codetermination from the mid-19th century to the present. It finds the inefficiency argument sits at odds with the historical evidence. In its very inception, the right of workers to vote for a company board of directors, or in work councils with a voice in dismissals, came from collective agreements. It was not compelled by law, but was collectively bargained between business and labour representatives. These ‘codetermination bargains’ were widespread. Laws then codified these models. This was true at the foundation of the Weimar Republic from 1918 to 1922 and, after abolition in 1933, again from 1945 to 1951. The foundational codetermination bargains were made because of two ‘Goldilocks’ conditions (conditions that were ‘just right’) which were not always seen in countries like the UK or US. First, inequality of bargaining power between workers and employers was temporarily less pronounced. Second, the trade union movement became united in the objective of seeking worker voice in corporate governance. As the practice of codetermination has been embraced by a majority of EU countries, and continues to spread, it is important to have an accurate positive narrative of codetermination’s economic and political foundations

Churches of Christ Salute You with a Herald of Truth

HoT Sermon #023 - The New Testament Churc

Pension strike: university staff are getting a 'die quickly' pension plan. It won't work.

What is at stake in the ongoing university strikes? To answer this question, Ewan McGaughey explains how the pension system works, who governs it, and their conflicts of interest. He argues that there is a need to rebuild the university and pension governance system so that it is more democratic and just. Otherwise the same issues will keep returning

Donald Trump is fascism-lite. We have the US Supreme Court to thank for it.

The 2016 election campaign and the seemingly authoritarian tendencies of President Donald Trump to have led many to raise the specter of the rise of an American form of fascism. Ewan McGaughey argues that Trump is what he terms, “fascism-lite”, and has made what has been generally implicit in Republican and Supreme Court politics up to now – high levels of corporate influence, and a general disdain for democracy and social justice – explicit

Discovering the last Triassic giant: Insights from the marine Late Triassic of Nevada and a new ichthyosaur locality from New York Canyon, Nevada, USA.

Ichthyosaurs are a large group of marine reptiles that first appeared in the Early Triassic Period and continued to be an integral part of marine ecosystems into the Middle Cretaceous Period. At the end of the Triassic, ichthyosaurs were devastated by the end-Triassic Extinction, and never again reached the giant scale or diversity of forms seen in the Triassic. The lead up to this extinction is riddled with gaps in the fossil record. The record of ichthyosaurs in Nevada ranges from the early Triassic to the first appearance of Shonisaurus in the latest Carnian, but the rocks of the latest Triassic have been largely underexplored. The Pilot and Cedar Mountains, and the Garfield Hills to the South of Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park were surveyed for vertebrates to further explore the Triassic marine rocks of Nevada. In the Pilot Mountains, nearly 30 new fossil localities were located within the lower member of the Luning Formation, which is assigned an early Norian age. Most of the material is likely referable to Shonisaurus and consists of partly to completely disarticulated vertebrae, rib, girdle, and limb elements, with rarer cranial material. Isolated bones from the upper member of the Luning Formation show potential for further discoveries into the middle Norian. Outside of the Pilot Mountains, additional Shonisaurus material was located within Luning Formation exposures in the Cedar Mountains near previously reported localities. Reconnaissance in the Garfield Hills found no vertebrate material in the Late Triassic rocks exposed there. Moreover, a recent discovery of in-situ vertebrate fossils from the latest Rhaetian in New York Canyon (NYC) in the Gabbs Valley Range of Nevada, provides clear evidence of the persistence of giant ichthyosaurs into the latest Rhaetian. Previous studies have reported isolated ichthyosaur elements from NYC, but these have never been adequately studied or described. The specimen comprises at least 17 semi-articulated ribs and two centra from a giant ichthyosaur, comparable in size and shape to the largest known examples of Shonisaurus. Strong controls on ammonite biostratigraphy and organic carbon isotope geochemistry confirm that this specimen is the youngest shastasaurid ichthyosaur reported to date and indicates that these giant ichthyosaurs did not go extinct during the Norian. Instead, they persisted until the end-Triassic extinction, likely perishing as a casualty of the mass extinction event