Defending the Standard Contract: Unmeasured Work, Class, and Design Professionalism in United Scenic Artists Local 829

2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-251
Author(s):  
David Bisaha
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Scenic Design ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Theatrical Design ◽  
Labor Activism ◽  
Industry Standards ◽  
Standard Design ◽  
Professional Advocacy ◽  
Artistic Labor ◽  
Work Class

How much is a theatrical design idea worth? Alternatively, how much should a professional theatre designer be paid? For many working today, standard minimum contract scales and “industry standards” help guide fee negotiations. In the United States, United Scenic Artists (USA) Local 829 was among the first bodies to align theatrical design with organized labor activism, and as such, its standard minimum contract for design is an object lesson in the value of artistic labor. These scales were developed nearly a century ago, and were the product of hard negotiation and legal action taken by US-American designers in the interwar period. Lee Simonson and Jo Mielziner are best remembered for their revolutionary use of space, scenery, and lighting, yet their professional advocacy within USA Local 829 provided the basis for today's standard design fees. Further, their defense of fair payment during the Depression and war years preserved scenic design as a form of labor analogous to other backstage crafts and trades.

Silver Miners’ Labor Activism in Pachuca and Real del Monte, 1979–1989

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Mendiola García
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Profit Sharing ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
National Union ◽  
Labor Conditions ◽  
Labor Activism ◽  
System A ◽  
Mexican State ◽  
Mexican Government

The miners of Pachuca and Real del Monte have extracted silver from the mountainous region of what is now the state of Hidalgo for centuries. In the colonial period, these mines were owned by the Spanish. In the modern period, they were owned by British (1824–1849), Mexican (1849–1906), and American (1906–1947) entrepreneurs. The Mexican government bought the mines from the United States Smelting, Refining and Mining Company in 1947 and kept them until 1989. In that year, the Mexican state sold the Compañía Real del Monte y Pachuca, the company that monopolized most of the region’s mines, to Mexican businessmen (Grupo Acerero del Norte) who kept them in operation until 2005. The silver miners who worked for the company belong to Locals One and Two of the Sindicato Nacional de Mineros, Metalúrgicos y Similares de la República Mexicana (SNMMRM). The union was created in 1934 in Pachuca. Miners’ activism, however, goes back to the colonial period. In 1766, miners went on strike to defend the partido system (a profit-sharing payment) under attack by their employer Pedro Romero de Terreros, the first Count of Regla. Subsequent employers, both British and Mexican, also faced strikes, slowdowns, and threats of violence by miners who tried to improve their wages and labor conditions. In 1934, Pachuca and Real del Monte played an important role in the formation of the national union. Most ceased their activism in 1946. It was not until 1979 when these silver miners organized Liberación Minera (Miner Liberation) to fight against their charro (government and employer-aligned) leaders and to defend workers’ rights. By the late 1970s, the miners of Pachuca and Real del Monte lacked access to proper health care, received low wages, and experienced dangerous labor conditions. Miners were under the control of local and national charro leaders, including Napoleón Gómez Sada who directed the national miner union from 1960 to virtually 2001. The dissident current, Liberación Minera, organized a strike in 1980 and a naked protest in 1985. As a result, miners increased their wages, democratized their locals, and gained several benefits. These achievements were short-lived as the Mexican government announced the sale of the company in 1989. As part of Mexico’s embrace of neoliberal policies, the privatization of the company meant the virtual end of the industry and of organized labor in these areas by 2005.

NIOSH AutoROPS Research to Practice: Zero Turn Commercial Mowers

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. A. McKenzie ◽  
J. R. Etherton ◽  
J. R. Harris ◽  
D. M. Cantis ◽  
T. J. Lutz
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Safety ◽  
The United States ◽  
Performance Standard ◽  
Research To Practice ◽  
Safety Device ◽  
Test Procedures ◽  
Critical Function ◽  
Industry Standards ◽  
Low Profile ◽  
Field And Laboratory Conditions

Marketing new safety devices is a critical function on the research-to-practice path. This path to adoption of new safety technology is not always straightforward. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Automatically deployable Rollover Protective Structure (AutoROPS) is a passive safety device developed to protect tractor operators in an overturn event. Tractor overturns kill more than 100 farmers each year in the United States (Myers, 2003). This technology was first designed to target the agricultural low-clearance environments involving “low-profile” tractors where traditional ROPS may not be feasible. These tractors are exempted from ROPS use as stated in OSHA 1928.51(b) (5) (i & ii). The upper portion of the AutoROPS remains retracted under low clearance areas but deploys to full height when an overturn is detected. The AutoROPS has been tested under both field and laboratory conditions prescribed in the ROPS performance standard, SAE J2194. To translate successful research into occupational practice, NIOSH formed a partnership with FEMCO, a ROPS manufacturer, in 2003. FEMCO’s efforts found Scag Power Equipment, a zero-turn commercial mower manufacturer. NIOSH has partnered with them as well. The Scag AutoROPS has been successfully laboratory tested to industry standards. Preliminary field evaluations of the deployment system have been conducted in preparation for field upset tests. Product development, test procedures, test results, and current marketing efforts are presented on this innovative safety device.

Robert W. Cherny, William Issel, and Kieran Walash Taylor, eds.,American Labor and the Cold War: Grassroots Politics and Post War Political Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004. 320 pp. Paper $23.95

2005 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 177-181
Author(s):  
William Mello
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Political Alliances ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
American Labor

Would the existing powerlessness of American unions be much different had organized labor not been the focus of cold-war repression in the late 1940s and 1950s? How did workers experience the anticommunist upsurge and reshape their political alliances in light of what some have called America's darkest political hour? American Labor and the Cold War is a collection of smart and challenging essays that examine the impact of cold war politics on organized labor and the labor-left. The authors explore the historical impact of the cold war and the constraints placed on working class political power in the United States immediately following the Second World War. They argue that the cold war on labor reflected a process that was driven by state-organized repressive measures that were sustained by regional political-cultural traditions and in some cases high levels of working-class conservatism. The essays highlight the efforts of conservative labor leaders to take control of left-led unions, purging Communist Party (CP) activists and their allies and the ways in which communists sought to resist the radical right-wing movement in their unions and surrounding communities.

“To Change the Fundamental Law of the State”: Protective Labor Provisions in U.S. Constitutions

2010 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Zackin
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Union Organizing ◽  
Worker Rights ◽  
Constitutional Development ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
Labor Activism ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Labor Legislation

As the United States industrialized, its state constitutions began to include protections for laborers. In this article, I describe the origins of these constitutional provisions and ask why labor organizations and other reformers pursued their inclusion in state constitutions. I argue that they saw state constitutions as a vehicle to prompt reluctant legislatures to pass protective statutes, to entrench existing protections against future legislatures, to safeguard labor legislation from constitutional challenges in state courts, and to facilitate further union organizing. Labor activism in this arena is particularly interesting in light of the literature on constitutional change, which contends that constitutional development is a tool through which actors attempt to usher courts into political conflicts; in contrast, I will argue that unions turned to constitutional change in large part to exclude courts from policymaking. Further, the union activism on behalf of constitutional change serves as a challenge to the prominent view among many scholars of American political development and law that judicial hostility to worker rights and union organizing discouraged unions from demanding state protection or institutionalizing their demands through law.

Latino Workers

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emiliano Aguilar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Service Work ◽  
Economic Sectors ◽  
Labor Activism ◽  
Latino Workers ◽  
American Society ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The U.S

Since the U.S. acquisition of Northern Mexico in the 19th century, Latinas and Latinos have played an ever-growing role as workers in the United States. The continued migration from Latin American countries has increased the importance of Latinas and Latinos across various economic sectors. As diverse as the Latina/o community itself, the array of jobs Latinas/os/xs have held has been enormously varied. As an increasing demographic of workers, Latina and Latino workers have also played a pivotal role in the labor movement in the United States. Their labor activism has been a response to the persistence of oppression and marginalization in the workplace. The presence of Latinas/os/xs in a variety of occupations offers a glimpse into the overall transitions of the U.S. economy, from agricultural to manufacturing to service work. Their movement from farm to factory to service work is of course not universal, as Latinas/os/xs still have a considerable presence in agricultural and industrial employment. Yet the transition from one kind of work to another remains a useful way of understanding the history of Latina/o/x labor over time. Latinas/os/xs have often stood at the forefront of shifts in the economy as they have followed the need for workers into new industries, which has placed them among some of the most vulnerable workers in American society.

Saint-Venant torsion constant of modern precast concrete bridge girders

PCI Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 23-31
Author(s):  
Richard Brice ◽  
Richard Pickings
Keyword(s):  
Prestressed Concrete ◽  
High Performance Concrete ◽  
Precast Concrete ◽  
The United States ◽  
Bridge Girders ◽  
Concrete Bridge ◽  
Approximate Methods ◽  
Standard Design ◽  
Prestressed Concrete Bridge ◽  
Precast Prestressed Concrete

Many bridge owners have developed new precast, prestressed concrete bridge girder sections that are optimized for high-performance concrete and pretensioning strands with diameters greater than 0.5 in. (12.7 mm). Girder sections have been developed for increased span capacities, while others fill a need in shorter span ranges. Accurate geometric properties are essential for design. Common properties, including cross-sectional area, location of centroid, and major axis moment of inertia, are generally easy to compute and are readily available in standard design references. Computation of the torsion constant is a different matter. This paper presents the methods and results of a study to determine the torsion constant for many of the modern precast, prestressed concrete bridge girders used in the United States and compares the results with values from the approximate methods of the AASHTO LRFD specifications.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Jarod Roll
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Government Regulation ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Labor History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Non Union

The metal miners of the Tri-State district (Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma) opposed social democratic unions and government regulation for nearly a century. Historians of organized labor in the United States have neglected workers like these, opting instead to focus on workers who joined unions. This introduction outlines how this study of the non-union and anti-union miners of the Tri-State district changes the field of labor history. The story of the Tri-State miners shows how some American workers rejected the protections of working-class solidarity because they inherited and embraced a faith in capitalism, white supremacy, and aggressive masculinity.

scholarly journals When Do Unions Matter to Social Policy? Organized Labor and Leave Legislation in US States

Social Forces ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassandra Engeman
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Event History Analysis ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Event History ◽  
Policy Adoption ◽  
Us States ◽  
Democratic Control ◽  
Leave Policy

Abstract Trade union institutions are historically and comparatively weak in the United States, and union membership has been in steady decline over several decades. Scholars thus question the contemporary relevance of organized labor to social policy. Yet, there is considerable state-level variation in social policy and union institutional strength that remains underexamined. Focusing on variability across US states, this paper uses mixed-methods analysis to examine relationships between organized labor and parental and family leave legislation under varying political conditions. Event history analysis of state-level leave policy adoption from 1983 to 2016 shows that union institutional strength, particularly in the public sector, is positively associated with the timing of leave policy adoption. These findings are robust to the inclusion of other factors, including Democratic control of state houses, which is also shown to facilitate leave policy adoption. Comparative case studies support event history findings and illustrate how state house partisanship informs the level of government that leave advocates target for policy change. The paper concludes by suggesting further attention to subnational policies and investigation into the social movement practice of target-shifting and its effects. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates the operation of power resources at the subnational level within a liberal market national context.

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