This study investigates the impact of labor unionization on stock price crash risk. We find that labor unionization is negatively associated with stock price crash risk. Such negative relation is more pronounced when firms can intimate more credible evidence on unfavorable prospects and when firms face more powerful labor unions. Our findings are consistent with the notion that firms take strategic actions to reduce the bargaining advantages enjoyed by labor unions and that labor unions force (...) firms to take less risky investments and discontinue underperformed projects more timely, which leads to lower stock price crash risk. (shrink)

This paper argues that the vast inequalities in access to migration opportunities and treatment of migrants constitute a structural injustice, and that although states are clearly the most powerful agents in migration injustices, individuals also bear a personal responsibility to ameliorate these injustices. The argument builds on Young's theory of structural injustice and critically applies it to labour migration. The paper argues that wealthy migrants and citizens who benefit from migrant labour have a responsibility to contribute towards ameliorating migration injustice (...) on account of their position of privilege, whereas disadvantaged migrants have a responsibility due to their interest in changing their situation. It then considers how people might discharge such an obligation through collective political action, pointing in particular to non‐governmental organizations, labour unions, and local government. Finally, the paper addresses the objections that positing personal responsibility for labour migration is overly demanding and that the current labour migration regime is meritocratic and fair. The article concludes by showing how this sort of stance can be seen as interest‐driven by privileged groups and argues for the role of disruptive politics in overcoming it. (shrink)

At a time when trade union activity is becoming more global, the article provides a theoretical framework that places a moral obligation on unions towards work migrants from the time they take a first step in the direction of movement, and continuing after they enter the receiving country and throughout the period of their work. The argument is based on theories of global justice and offers a three-axis framework that enables a complex analysis of union responsibility: direct and (...) political responsibility, labour connectedness and solidarity. The moral obligation of unions stemming from global justice differs from the citizenship-based model or that of human rights. Its basis is global. Such an obligation should be recognized by various institutions, including the courts, thereby adding a global dimension to rights relating to collective action, such as the right to unionize, the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike. The article analyses the ECJ’s decisions in the Viking and Laval cases, showing how the court failed to recognize this global dimension, and claiming that if such recognition were to be extended, a more accurate balance could be achieved between rights relating to collective action and economic interests in an era of globalization. (shrink)

This study examines the intersection of individual life-histories, organisational histories and societal histories and reveals how religion, in several different expressions, serves to provide a connection between justice for workers and justice for the environment in the work of trade unionists. The trade union movement is generally seen as secular, and thus in our life-history interviews finding religion as a backdrop to labour activists' formation was unexpected. Religion becomes manifest in various ways, partly through experiences in the present or (...) at formative periods in unionists' lives, but also through its cultural embeddedness in language and collective memory. In this way it serves to provide subtle influences on beliefs, concepts of social justice and daily action. (shrink)

Structures of employment in low-wage industries, a diminished wage and hour inspectorate, and an unworkable immigration regime have combined to create an environment where violations of basic workplace laws are everyday occurrences. This article identifies four “logics” of detection and enforcement, arguing that there is a mismatch between the enforcement strategies of most federal and state labor inspectorates and the industries in which noncompliance continues to be a problem. In response, the authors propose augmenting labor inspectorates by giving (...) public interest groups like unions and worker centers a formal, ongoing role in enforcement in low-wage sectors. In three case studies, the authors present evidence of an emergent system—one that harkens back to a logic proposed by the drafters of the Fair Labor Standards Act but never implemented—of empowering those closest to the action to work in partnership with government. (shrink)

This article discusses the hitherto little-studied question of women workers’ empowerment through access to labor rights in the east African export horticultural sector. It is based on the work carried out by Women Working Worldwide and its east African partners, drawing on primary research on cut-flower farms in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda. The focus in discussions of women’s empowerment has tended to be on individual actors rather than collective strategies. We argue that strategies such as action research, education, (...) organization and advocacy focusing on labor rights are effective in gendered empowerment and can bring positive change to women’s working lives on African farms, and beyond. (shrink)

This essay tells the story of the development of two of the most significant and controversial entitlement programs in twentieth-century U.S. history—collective bargaining and affirmative action. It focuses on the nexus between them—how New Deal empowerment of labor unions contributed to racial discrimination, and thus fed the Great Society race-based programs of affirmative action. The evolving relationship between the courts and the bureaucracies is emphasized, particularly how the judiciary went from an obstacle to an enabler of the (...) entitlement state. (shrink)

Social responsibility is addressed to corporations, but can also be applied to other powerful organizations. This study tests the impact of labor union social responsibility on key measures of labor union attachment. After developing a scale of labor union social responsibility, craft union apprentice workers were surveyed and their responses analyzed with structural equation modeling. Labor union social responsibility was directly and positively related to union commitment and job satisfaction. (...) class='Hi'>Union commitment and job satisfaction fully mediated the negative relationship between labor union social responsibility and propensity to withdraw from the union, and the positive relationship between labor union social responsibility and union participation. The results suggest that labor union social responsibility can enhance union attachment and inform union strategy. (shrink)

Plantation workers have seemingly little opportunities for labour agency, defined as the worker’s ability to act and improve their conditions. In response to a call for a better understanding of the horizontal dimension shaping labour agency, this article questions what local factors determine the worker’s ability to act by analysing the institutional constraints embedded in the national context through a mixed methods approach. A combination of qualitative and quantitative data is used to understand what shapes and constrains the potential for (...) labour agency in the case of plantation workers in the pineapple sector of Costa Rica. We provide new empirical evidence of the relation between the local opportunity structure—proxied by perceived job security and union awareness—and labour agency in terms of a worker’s intention to choose forthright (voice), evasive (exit) or repressed (loyalty) actions. The model results indicate that a lack of job security and a lack of union awareness significantly reduce the likelihood to use forthright actions (such as voicing concerns, striking or joining a union) compared to evasive (such as leaving the job) or repressed actions (such as doing nothing). In addition, the qualitative analysis of the local opportunity structure identifies four institutional constraints: weak employment protection, vulnerability of migrant workers, limited workers’ representation and insufficient labour law enforcement. Besides overcoming these institutional constraints, empowering workers to make their voices heard also requires awareness raising about their collective bargaining rights and more job security. (shrink)

This paper aims to take stock of the emerging international literature on the role of labor unions in corporate social responsibility (CSR). Where unions are discussed in the North American CSR literature at all, authors see them as foregrounding membership benefits over wider societal interests and hence contributing to systematic environmental degradation. In Europe, the managerialdiscretion of CSR clashes with the more regulated frameworks for employees and labor unions to influence corporate decision-making. Hence many European unions express a (...) considerable degree of skepticism of CSR. On the international scene, companies have become increasingly sensitive to how their labor management activities are perceived by the wider society, yet they may nevertheless continue with even highly controversial labor policies if they do not see a business case for changing these. In other words, CSR commitments by themselves would not seem to be sufficiently powerful to bring about systematic change in the management of labor. (shrink)

The publication of the Fraser Institute's Discrimination, Affirmative Action, and Equal Opportunity offers an occasion to review some of the practical and philosophical issues raised by affirmative action policy. Canadian affirmative action programs derive from the American context, which is here reviewed, but do not have the legal recourse available in the American system. Perhaps as a consequence, most Canadian programs have been carried out by governments acting in their role as employers. The Canadian Union of (...) Public Employees has been especially active in developing union perspectives on affirmative action programs, which do raise special concerns for organized labour. Affirmative action raises several basic questions: the importance of proportionality, merit, compensation and role models in determining who is entitled to opportunities in our society. Differences between the Fraser Institute's attitude about affirmative action and attitudes of other social groups, such as the labour movement, lie in their very different assumptions about what constitutes a free society. (shrink)

Collective bargaining is the main vehicle for labour worldwide to negotiate wages, benefits, retirement policies, training and other terms of working with management in both the public and private sectors. Labour economists have long been active in modelling the relations between collective bargaining agreements, labour markets and social welfare conditions. This book presents a theoretical model of unions which offers a unified treatment of the centralisation of bargaining, the credibility of labour contracts, the unionisation of labour markets and the relative (...) bargaining power of the union. Tapio Palokangas develops the microfoundations of bargaining and examines collective bargaining interacting with public policy, investment and growth, and international trade and specialisation. In conclusion Professor Palokangas challenges the commonly held view that collective bargaining has a negative impact on economics welfare, and argues that with the existence of market failure, collective bargaining can be welfare enhancing. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Globalization has brought increased attention to the notion that labor rights such asfreedom of association—the right of workers to organize a union—are fundamental human rights. However, the vigorous opposition to freedom of association by US firms is largely ignored in the business ethics literature and exacerbated by compensatory corporate citizenship rating mechanisms that tend to mask labor rights deficiencies. I argue that because freedom of association is a hypernorm, instrumental to fully realizing basic human rights, labor (...) rights and human rights are largely inseparable. Thus, respect for labor rights is a non-substitutable requisite of corporate citizenship. I conclude by providing examples of corporate labor relations strategies that respect freedom of association and business firms that are leading the way. (shrink)

Over the last decade, successive New Zealand governments have instituted social, political and economic changes that have fundamentally challenged nurses’ sense of themselves and their position in society. Major upheavals in the health service have occurred as a result of reforms promoting competition and contestability. This paper deals with the impact of one aspect of the reforms, that of the deregulation of the labour market through the Employment Contracts Act 1991. More specifically, the way in which discussions and decisions regarding (...) the withdrawal of nursing labour are shaped by the language available to those involved are considered. The intersection of ethics and union discourses may exacerbate feelings of ambiguity and confusion in nurses facing strike action. The result can be unnecessary and unproductive division and conflict: among nurses, between employers and employees, between unions, between nurses and the public, and between nursing organizations and the Government. An examination of some of the discourses of strike action may serve as a tool to elucidate the way nurses see themselves and their clients in the context of social change and social action. (shrink)

The Anthropocene has become an umbrella term for the disastrous transgression of ecological safety boundaries by human societies. The impact of this new reality is yet to be fully registered by political theorists. In an attempt to recalibrate the categories of political thought, this article brings Hannah Arendt’s framework of The Human Condition into the gravitational pull of the Anthropocene and current knowledge about the Earth System. It elaborates the historical emergence of our capacity to “act in the mode of (...) laboring” during fossil-fueled capitalist modernity, a form of agency relating to our collectively organized laboring processes reminiscent of the capacity of modern sciences to “act into nature” discussed by Arendt. I argue that once read from an energy/ecology-centric perspective, The Human Condition can help us make sense of the Anthropocene predicament, and rethink the modes of collectively organizing the activities of labor, work, and action. (shrink)

Over the last decade, successive New Zealand governments have instituted social, political and economic changes that have fundamentally challenged nurses’ sense of themselves and their position in society. Major upheavals in the health service have occurred as a result of reforms promoting competition and contestability. This paper deals with the impact of one aspect of the reforms, that of the deregulation of the labour market through the Employment Contracts Act 1991. More specifically, the way in which discussions and decisions regarding (...) the withdrawal of nursing labour are shaped by the language available to those involved are considered. The intersection of ethics and union discourses may exacerbate feelings of ambiguity and confusion in nurses facing strike action. The result can be unnecessary and unproductive division and conflict: among nurses, between employers and employees, between unions, between nurses and the public, and between nursing organizations and the Government. An examination of some of the discourses of strike action may serve as a tool to elucidate the way nurses see themselves and their clients in the context of social change and social action. (shrink)

In this Article, I contest on both theoretical and empirical grounds the progressive agenda, as represented by Hanoch Dagan, that seeks to advance the unionization movement in the name of individual autonomy and property. Theoretically, the Article shows that the common-law account of autonomy, which stresses freedom of action from external constraints involving the use or threat of force, provides the best analytical framework, one that undermines the modern progressive case for collective bargaining by workers. The negative account of (...) autonomy applies to all persons; its correlative duties are simple. It applies regardless of the overall level or distribution of wealth. It is scalable from small to large societies. And it forces employers to respect the full range of material and psychological needs in order to recruit and retain their workers. In contrast, the modern progressive alternative imposes no clear correlative duties on employers. It has no obvious way to constrain the dominance of union forces. And its commands are sufficiently complex that they are often not understood by the workers whom they are intended to protect. Empirically, this Article shows that the institutional rigidity of union structures in dynamic markets fails; and it rejects the claim that individual workers are wedded to their current employer, given competitive forces that allow for rapid entry and exit. Given the long-term systematic advantages of the classical liberal model, it is no surprise that unions are generally in decline in major industrial societies. (shrink)

Globally, labor unions have been criticized for being highly gendered, patriarchal organizations that struggle to engage with, and represent, women. In Cambodia, the disparity between women’s activism and organizational power is particularly acute. Women workers are the face of the labor movement, yet they remain excluded from union leadership despite some movement toward more progressive gender policies within unions. Using data from semi-structured interviews with workers and union leaders in the construction and garment sectors, I illustrate (...) how gendered narratives and practices of control are mobilized through gender regimes that operate in the household, the workplace, and unions. I propose an analytical framework that incorporates these three interlocking gender regimes to draw attention to the contradictory role of unions in advocating for worker rights while depoliticizing women’s activism and sustaining gender inequity. I argue that it is the contradictory relationship between these regimes that entrenches women’s subordination within unions despite their numerical strength. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Globalization has brought increased attention to the notion that labor rights such asfreedom of association—the right of workers to organize a union—are fundamental human rights. However, the vigorous opposition to freedom of association by US firms is largely ignored in the business ethics literature and exacerbated by compensatory corporate citizenship rating mechanisms that tend to mask labor rights deficiencies. I argue that because freedom of association is a hypernorm, instrumental to fully realizing basic human rights, labor (...) rights and human rights are largely inseparable. Thus, respect for labor rights is a non-substitutable requisite of corporate citizenship. I conclude by providing examples of corporate labor relations strategies that respect freedom of association and business firms that are leading the way. (shrink)

In the first decade post-1989 no gender policies with clear objectives and specific instruments existed in Romania. The gender mainstreaming was first stated in the two National Action Plans for Equal Opportunities between Women and Men (1996 and 2000). Still, the attention of the various Romanian Governments, concerning women's issues, was focused especially on labour relationships and on related domains, such as social security and health insurance. Other fields, such as education, political participation, family and civil rights, were under- (...) developed, as regards the consideration of women's needs and interests.The legislation and institutions that implement and monitor the observance of equality take no special interest in women's discrimination, as women are treated together with other discriminated categories (the disabled, Rroma, homosexuals). (shrink)

Prior research finds that firms with strong business ethics are less likely to be tax aggressive. Labor union is one of the key stakeholders influencing firm’s tax aggressive behavior, whereas the bargaining process between labor union and firms exhibits ethical dilemma. Although industry-wide labor union coverage is commonly used in prior study to explore the monitoring role of labor unions in constraining management’s aggressive financial and tax decisions of their associated firms, we argue (...) that firm-specific labor unions, which represent a different bargaining power of the employees, do play an important role in determining firms’ tax ethical decisions. Specifically, we examine whether and how the firm-specific labor union coverage impacts firms’ tax aggressiveness decisions over and above industry-wide labor union coverage. We hypothesize and find that firm-specific labor unions influence the associated firms to be more tax aggressive, which results in higher levels of residual cash flows. We also find that industry-wide labor unions influence the associated firms to be less tax aggressive, which is consistent with prior findings. We perform further analyses and find that the results are more pronounced for the firms with greater industry-wide labor unions representation. These results demonstrate that the inclusion of and interaction between the firm-specific and industry-wide labor unions matter in determining corporate’s tax aggressiveness decisions, which highlight firm’s ethical perplexity between tax savings and social commitments. (shrink)

This article integrates theory and concepts from the business and society, business ethics, and labor relations literatures to offer a conceptualization of labor union social responsibility that includes activities geared toward three primary objectives: economic equity, workplace democracy, and social justice. Economic, workplace, and social labor union stakeholders are identified, likely issues are highlighted, and the implications of labor union social responsibility for labor union strategy are discussed. It is noted that, (...) given the breadth of labor unions in a global work environment, labor union social responsibility also has implications for NGOs, corporations, and how corporate social responsibility is viewed going forward. This article concludes by noting that the nexus of labor relations and corporate social responsibility warrants more attention in management and labor relations literatures. (shrink)

The paper argues that an ethical firm has cause to realize and to respect, in good faith, the decision of workers regarding labor unions, and proceeds along the following lines. First, the employer is due appropriate deference the bounds of which should be determined in conjunction with employees, as they are the most closely affected party. Second, employee preferences for defining the employment relation and appropriate deference are best reflected through autonomous voice. Third, autonomous voice is assured by the (...) right to free association and generally achieved through labor unions. Fourth, because employment is so important to a dignified existence, an economically just system of employment requires respect for workers’ choice regarding labor unions. And fifth, there are concerns and contradictions that arise from labor union operations, but they do not justify impeding a morally valid prerogative. (shrink)

Japanese nurses, like their counterparts in many other countries, are suffering from staff shortages and severe working conditions. The Japan Federation of Medical Workers’ Unions launched a campaign in 1989 for nurses called the ‘Nurse Wave’. Their demands were many: to increase the numbers of nursing staff, the regulation of night shifts, the implementation of a five-day working week everywhere, a fair appraisal of nurses’ work, better vocational training, etc. Nurses in white uniforms assembled at meetings, marched and took part (...) in nationwide strikes. They collected over 5.4 million petition signatures, which they submitted to Parliament. After three years of campaigning, they won the enactment of a law for securing sufficient numbers of nursing personnel. This struggle, which highlighted the most pressing demands of nurses and was supported by the general public, was a new experience for Japanese nurses. It was a militant movement which demanded that the Government should change its health policy. Against the sluggish image of the Japanese labour movement, strikes and demonstrations organized by nurses dressed in white have made a strong impression on the Japanese people. As health care is a public service on which the life and death of people depend, a strike at a health institution naturally has constraints and must follow specific procedures. In this article, the measures taken by Nihon Iroren to minimize the consequences of strikes on patients and the local community, the impact of the nurses’ movement on the society, as well as the lessons drawn from the campaign, are presented. (shrink)

Las transformaciones acontecidas en el mundo del trabajo en los últimos años, instituyeron un modelo laboral caracterizado por la transitoriedad y la alta rotación, en donde la condición laboral del trabajador aparece individualizada y despolitizada: son proveedores de servicios con obligaciones y no trabajadores con derechos. Esta situación los desvincula de los marcos reguladores tradicionales de las relaciones laborales y a su vez, genera un obstáculo a las posibilidades de organización alternativa como forma de modificar la situación de precariedad. En (...) esta ponencia nos propusimos indagar la posibilidad de generar procesos organizativos partiendo de esa condición y presentamos la experiencia de la Coordinadora de Trabajadores/as Precarizadas/os que reúne a trabajadores ligados a los nuevos servicios de la economía que experimentan la precarización laboral, quienes se propusieron problematizar esa condición, construir una identidad común de trabajadores en ese mundo laboral fragmentado y precarizado en donde ellos desarrollan su actividad. (shrink)

This article reviews the theoretical and political history of the concept of precarity, used to describe various forms of insecurities, primarily those related to conditions of labor, employment, and wage. Precarity and the related neologism precariat have recently gained ground in Anglophone intellectual and political discussions. It is the premise of the article that, with an increasingly globalized economy, discussions and movement action based on precarity may be of growing importance in a Danish context. The aim of the (...) article is to show how the history of these concepts has unfolded in sociological discussions and social movement practices since the turn of the century. I begin with the sociological discussion about the concept of the precariat, a class formation based on the conditions and experiences of precarity. I then show how the concept of precarity has a history in activist thought beyond these sociological discussions and how social movements, based on this thought, throughout the 2000s have mobilized around the concept, primarily in the so-called EuroMayDay parades. In the last section, I discuss how the economic crisis has affected social movement practices and how labor unions have begun paying attention to the predicaments of precarity. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Arendt's singular project Defining the deed Hierarchy and interdependence in the vita activa Praxis in the professions.

Today’s low-wage workforce is mostly ignored by the national political parties and largely untouched by organized labor. Over the last twenty years, “community unions” have emerged to try to fill the void. They are modest-sized community-based organizations of low-wage workers that, through a combination of service, advocacy, and organizing, focus on issues of work and wages. Community unions have so far had greater success at raising wages and improving working conditions via public policy rather than direct labor market (...) intervention. This is because low-wage workers in America today have greater political than economic power. (shrink)

Conflicts between labor unions and nongovernmental organizations often impede private labor regulatory attempts to protect worker rights at supplier factories. Based on a study of a failed private regulatory attempt for Swedish garment retailers, we contribute to existing research into union–NGO relations by demonstrating how conflict arises because unions and NGOs act upon different institutional logics. We also contribute to the institutional logics perspective by challenging the current emphasis on either coexistence or conflict among multiple logics, and (...) showing the heterogeneity in how multiple logics manifest on a local level, how this could shift over time, and suggesting an empirically derived typology of manifestations of multiple logics. (shrink)

According to the reports in the past decade, some Asian subcontractors, mainly Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea transnational corporations, tend to be labor abusive in their overseas investment destinations like China or Southeast Asia. Taking Vietnam as an example, this paper raises questions as to why Taiwanese transnational companies can control workplace unions in a trade-union-supportive regime. Given the government s constraint of political rights, and the individualized workplace unions, the function of trade unions in Vietnam is destined (...) to be limited. The trade unions turn out be an arm of management, rather than representing workers interests in these transnational companies. This article also explores the influence of the newly developed codes of conducts from Western buyers. In the survey of three companies which are required to follow the codes of conduct by buyers, trade unions had no more freedom than those in companies without codes of conduct. The paper discusses the implications of this research, offering strategies for labor rights improvements. (shrink)

This paper examines the development and technological mediation of the concept of solidarity. We focus on the workplace as a focal point of solidarity relations, and utilise a phenomenological approach to describe and analyse those relations. Workplace solidarity, which has been historically concretised through social objects such as labor unions, is of particular political relevance since it has played an outsize role in the broader struggle for social, economic, and political rights, recognition, and equality. We argue that the use (...) of automated decision support systems in labor process management may negatively affect the formation of these relations. As solidarity motivates collective political action and risk-taking, the mediation and potential obstruction of solidarity relations by ADS is politically significant. We contribute to the growing literature on the “future of work” problem in elucidating the technological mediation of workplace solidarity. (shrink)

An action is a pair of sets, C and S, and a function \. Rothschild and Yalcin gave a simple axiomatic characterization of those actions arising from set intersection, i.e. for which the elements of C and S can be identified with sets in such a way that elements of S act on elements of C by intersection. We introduce and axiomatically characterize two natural classes of actions which arise from set intersection and union. In the first class, (...) the \-actions, each element of S is identified with a pair of sets \\), which act on a set c by intersection with \ and union with \. In the second class, the \-biactions, each element of S is labeled as an intersection or a union, and acts accordingly on C. We give intuitive examples of these actions, one involving conversations and another a university’s changing student body. The examples give some motivation for considering these actions, and also help give intuitive readings of the axioms. The class of \-actions is closely related to a class of single-sorted algebras, which was previously treated by Margolis et al., albeit in another guise, and we note this connection. Along the way, we make some useful, though very general, observations about axiomatization and representation problems for classes of algebras. (shrink)