Not so exceptional? Prosocial influences on union support among US workers

2021 ◽  
pp. 0143831X2199009
Author(s):  
Jack Fiorito ◽  
Irene Padavic

US unions have often been characterized as ‘exceptional’ in their weakness and conservatism compared to their Western European counterparts. American organized labor is associated with a ‘business unionism’ philosophy that assumes American workers are only pragmatic and materialistic, seeing their unions as vehicles for improving the terms and conditions of employment at their workplaces. Such an analysis omits the potential power of a belief that unions work to improve society. Applying an experimental vignette design based on a survey of over 1000 employed persons, this article examines whether ‘workplace instrumentality’ is the only motivation for workers to support unions. The authors consider the likelihood of voting yes in a union representation election to test the efficacy of two less studied predictors – perceiving unions as positively influencing society and perceiving them as facilitating workers’ voice in union policies and practices. Logistic regression shows that the most influential beliefs associated with union support were that unions improve terms and conditions of employment for represented workers (‘union instrumentality’), that unions positively influence society (‘prosocial unionism’), and that unions offer workers substantial influence on union policies and practices (‘worker say’). Researchers and union organizing campaigns should consider devoting greater attention to the social benefits of unionism and to union democracy.

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
April Rose Panganiban ◽  
Gerald Matthews ◽  
Michael D. Long

Human–Machine teaming is a very near term standard for many occupational settings and still requires considerations for the design of autonomous teammates (ATs). Transparency of system processes is important for human–machine interaction and reliance but standards for its implementation are still being explored. Embedding social cues is a potential design approach, which may capture the social benefits of a team environment, yet vary with task setting. The current study examined the manipulation of transparency of benevolent intent from an AT within a piloting task requiring suppression of enemy defenses. Specifically, the benevolent AT maintained task communication as in a neutral condition, but included messages of support and awareness of errors. Benevolent communication reduced reported workload and increased reported team collaboration, indicating that this team intent was beneficial. In addition, trust and acceptance of the AT were rated higher by individuals tasked with depending on the system to protect them from missile threats. The need for information from ATs is beneficial, however may vary depending on team type.


2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-139
Author(s):  
Monika Jean Ulrich Myers ◽  
Michael Wilson

Foucault’s theory of state social control contrasts societal responses to leprosy, where deviants are exiled from society but promised freedom from social demands, and the plague, where deviants are controlled and surveyed within society but receive some state assistance in exchange for their cooperation.In this paper, I analyze how low-income fathers in the United States simultaneously experience social control consistent with leprosy and social control consistent with the plague but do not receive the social benefits that Foucault associates with either status.Through interviews with 57 low-income fathers, I investigate the role of state surveillance in their family lives through child support enforcement, the criminal justice system, and child protective services.Because they did not receive any benefits from compliance with this surveillance, they resisted it, primarily by dropping “off the radar.”Men justified their resistance in four ways: they had their own material needs, they did not want the child, they did not want to separate from their child’s mother or compliance was unnecessary.This resistance is consistent with Foucault’s distinction between leprosy and the plague.They believed that they did not receive the social benefits accorded to plague victims, so they attempted to be treated like lepers, excluded from social benefits but with no social demands or surveillance.


Author(s):  
Svetlana Yurievna Abdulova ◽  
Olga Anatolievna Gavrilova

The article dwells upon the continued decrease of income level of the Russian population as a result of the financial crisis and rising inflation, which is followed by yearly contraction of needs and savings. The analysis of the income structure of the Russian people confirmed the growth of the share of wages while reducing income from the use of property, business income, and social benefits. The tendencies to changing the income level in the different industries and regions of the Russian Federation have been identified. The average income level of the population of the Astrakhan region has been defined, the finance dynamics for the period from 2016 to 2018 has been evaluated. The tendencies to changing individual components of the population income in the Astrakhan region have been investigated: wages, business income, employment of property, social benefits. There has been estimated the average monthly wage in the region (in nominal and real terms) and the rate of its changes over the studied period. The estimation of the size of social payments to the population of the Astrakhan region has been made. The main part in the total volume of social payments to the population comes to pensions (74.8%). The criteria of the subsistence minimum both in the country and in the region have been given. It has been inferred that the living cost in the country is greatly underestimated, actually, in half, compared to the real living cost, which is related to saving the budget. In the Astrakhan region a great proportion of the population has incomes below the minimum subsistence level: 16.0% of the region’s population is below the poverty line. To reduce the level of poverty, to increase incomes of the population and to reduce the share of citizens with incomes below the subsistence minimum there have been proposed a number of that will help to reach a higher standard of living in accordance with the requirements of the social market economy.


Author(s):  
Mel Cousins

Abstract This chapter focuses on the link between migration and social protection in Ireland. The chapter has two main goals. First, it presents the general legal framework regulating the social protection system in Ireland, paying particular attention to any potential differences in terms of conditions of access to social benefits between national residents, non-national residents, and non-resident nationals. Secondly, the chapter discusses how these different groups of individuals access social benefits across five policy areas: unemployment, health care, family benefits, pensions, and guaranteed minimum resources. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the relationship between migration and social protection policy.


Author(s):  
Irshad Hussain ◽  
Ozlem Cakir

Blockchain, which is also called a distributed ledger technology (DLT), is an emerging and ever advancing technology having flourishing potential for nourishing and revolutionizing higher education. It stems in decentralization and distributed learning with characteristics of permanence of records, pursuit and transfer of knowledge, authority of institutions, and reliability of teaching and learning. These characteristics of blockchain attract educational institutions particularly the higher education institutions to adopt it. However, in spite of all potential and benefits of blockchain technology, the higher education stakeholders currently seem to be less aware of the social benefits and educational/instructional potential of blockchain technology. It can be addressed through proper advocacy and campaign. The complete chapter will demonstrate possibilities of blockchain technologies in higher education along with its issues and challenges.


Author(s):  
Jose Miguel Abito ◽  
David Besanko ◽  
Daniel Diermeier

This chapter introduces a finite-horizon (three-period) model of corporate campaigns in which an activist targets a single firm. The activist cares solely about the social benefits generated by the private regulation the firm is capable of undertaking. A firm can undertake costly effort in each period to improve its reputation in the subsequent period. The activist could undertake costly effort to impair the firm's reputation. As compared to a setting in which the firm faced no activist, the firm chooses a higher level of private regulation in the first period and, in expectation, a higher level of private regulation in the second period as well. The authors interpret this increase as self-insurance against reputational harm. The activist has a strategic effect on the firm in the second period: if the campaign impairs the firm's reputation, the firm will undertake more private regulation than it would have had its reputation remained the same or even improved.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document