FLA Statement in Response to the USAS Website FLA Watch

This document is part of a digital collection provided by the Martin P. Catherwood Library, ILR School, Cornell University, pertaining to the effects of globalization on the workplace worldwide.  Special emphasis is placed on labor rights, working conditions, labor market changes, and union organizing.FLA_Response_to_USAS_Website.pdf: 30 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Who would eat more with a Food Voucher Programme in South Africa?

A Computable General Equilibrium model is used to find the effects of a food voucher scheme on the economy in South Africa. If firms consider the issuing of vouchers as increased remuneration, they will hire fewer labourers. The higher labour cost increases the total cost of production and lowers supply. Real Gross Domestic Product decreases and the economy becomes worse off. However, depending on the size of the government's involvement in such a scheme as well as the tax policies that are used to fund it, a food voucher scheme could benefit the poor, and improve the distribution of wealth in the country.

Fair Labor Association 2007 Annual Report

Assesses the progress made by companies in the move towards sustainable corporate responsibility in their labor standards. Breaks up data by company

Fifty Years of Candidate Pulsar Selection - What next?

For fifty years astronomers have been searching for pulsar signals in observational data. Throughout this time the process of choosing detections worthy of investigation, so called candidate selection, has been effective, yielding thousands of pulsar discoveries. Yet in recent years technological advances have permitted the proliferation of pulsar-like candidates, straining our candidate selection capabilities, and ultimately reducing selection accuracy. To overcome such problems, we now apply intelligent machine learning tools. Whilst these have achieved success, candidate volumes continue to increase, and our methods have to evolve to keep pace with the change. This talk considers how to meet this challenge as a community.Comment: 4 pages, submitted: Proceedings of Pulsar Astrophysics: The Next Fifty Years, IAU Symposium 33

Is Water Shedding Next?

South Africa is in the grip of an electricity crisis marked by a euphemism known as “load shedding”. The demand for electricity has grown to the point that the supply reserve margin is often under threat, necessitating the electricity supplier to cut supply to some areas for various periods of time, or to shed load. This is a condition previously unknown to South Africa since the country has enjoyed electricity security from the mid-1950s. Are we, however, heading in the same direction when considering water? Is water shedding inevitable? We ask these questions since South Africa is a country classified has having chronic water shortages, a condition exacerbated by climate change and the rapidly increasing demand for water. Can we avert a water shedding crisis by being proactive? In this paper we address this issue by applying a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model using an integrated database comprising South Africa’s Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) and sectoral water use balances. We refer to AsgiSA, the governments’ Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative in South Africa, and conclude that continuing business as usual will indeed lead to a situation where water shedding will be inevitable. Unlike electricity, however, water security is much more serious from livelihood, health and socio-economic development perspectives since there are no substitutes for it, although its influence is not directly and immediately visible. This delayed effect can create a degree of comfort and ill-founded complacency leading to non-action, whereas there is an urgent need for proactive measures.

THE COMPETITIVENESS IMPACT OF A MULTILATERAL ELECTRICITY GENERATION TAX

The South African Government announced, in the 2008 Budget Review, the intention to tax the generation of electricity from non-renewable sources with 2c/kWh. This tax is to be collected by the producers/generators of electricity at the source. The intention of the tax is to serve a dual purpose of managing the potential electricity shortages in South Africa and to protect the environment. The primary objective of this paper is to evaluate the impact of an electricity generation tax on the international competitiveness of South Africa. Specifically, different scenarios are assessed to establish whether the loss of competitiveness can be negated through an international, multilateral electricity generation tax. The paper firstly considers the beneficial impact of environmental taxation on the competitiveness of a country. We subsequently apply the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model to evaluate the impact of an electricity generation tax on the competitiveness of South Africa, given multilateral taxes on SACU, SADC and European Union economies. We simulate the proposed tax as a 10 percent increase in the output price of electricity. We assume a closure rule that allows unskilled labour to migrate between sectors and a limited skilled workforce. As expected, a unilateral electricity generation tax in South Africa will adversely affect the competitiveness of the South African economy and slightly improve the competitiveness of the other SACU and SADC economies. However, if a multilateral tax is imposed throughout the SACU and SADC countries, South Africa will experience a marginally greater loss of competitiveness compared to a unilateral tax. At the same time the rest of the SACU and SADC countries will experience a loss of competitiveness. The benefit of emission reduction in South Africa will also be lower under these multilateral tax scenarios. The competitiveness effect on the South African economy as well as emission reduction will be more moderate under a multilateral South Africa/EU electricity generation tax than under a unilateral South African tax.