Organized Labor’s Check on Rising Economic Inequality in the U.S. States

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura C. Bucci
Keyword(s):  
Union Membership ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Income Distributions ◽  
National Framework ◽  
The U.S

Recent demonstrations of growing economic inequality in the United States raise normative concerns about the political representation of all but the very wealthiest citizens. Building on existing cross-national work on the roles of unions in welfare states, I provide evidence that organized labor, as a political institution, limits unequal income distributions in the U.S. states. The states are useful to our understanding of labor’s influence on inequality as states differ in their acceptance of labor unions, base levels of inequality, political preferences, industries, and levels of development but are all nested within a single overarching national framework. Over the 39-year period examined, states where unions maintain more members remain more equal within the labor market and after redistribution via government transfer. These effects persist after accounting for state-level policy, demography, and economic conditions. However, states where union membership has the largest influence on inequality have also seen growing attempts to reduce unionization rates. Overall, I find that unions are still able to limit the growth of economic inequality in spite of declining levels of union membership.

Human Trafficking, Immigration Regulation, and Subfederal Criminalization

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Chacón
Keyword(s):  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Trafficking In Persons ◽  
International Regulation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Comparative Treatment ◽  
Systemic Problems ◽  
Trafficking Victims ◽  
The U.S

In the fifteen years since the enactment of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act—the U.S. legislation implementing the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children—every state in the United States has enacted its own, state-level antitrafficking law. This paper presents a multistate survey of state-level antitrafficking laws and the criminal prosecutions that have been conducted pursuant to those over the past decade. The comparative treatment of noncitizens and citizens in antitrafficking prosecutions is of particular concern. This research reveals that while subfederal implementation of antitrafficking laws has the potential to complement stated federal and international antitrafficking objectives, it also has the power to subvert and undermine those goals. State-level enforcement both mirrors and amplifies some of the systemic problems that arise when the criminal law is used as a tool to combat trafficking, including the manipulation of antitrafficking tools and rhetoric to perpetuate racial subordination and migrant criminalization. Ultimately, this research offers broader theoretical insights into the promises and pitfalls of overlapping criminal jurisdiction both within federalist systems and within frameworks of international regulation.

scholarly journals Maritime unions and the U.S. merchant marine

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 16-24
Author(s):  
Richard L Clarke
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Union Wage ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Historical Role ◽  
The U.S

U.S. maritime unions have played a vital historical role in both the defense and the economic development of the United States. The economic and the political forces that helped shape and promote the growth of U.S. seafaring labor unions changed dramatically in the 1990s. Maritime union membership in the United States has fallen by more than 80 per cent since 1950. Inflexible union work rules and high union wage scales have contributed to this decline. Recent regulatory and industry changes require a new union approach if U. S. maritime unions are to survive the next decade.

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.

scholarly journals OLD AND FORGOTTEN? CARE FOR ELDERS IN MEXICO AND THE U.S.

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S64-S65
Author(s):  
Emma Aguila ◽  
Jaqueline L Angel ◽  
Kyriakos Markides
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Health Care Financing ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Government ◽  
The U.S

Abstract The United States and Mexico differ greatly in the organization and financing of their old-age welfare states. They also differ politically and organizationally in government response at all levels to the needs of low-income and frail citizens. While both countries are aging rapidly, Mexico faces more serious challenges in old-age support that arise from a less developed old-age welfare state and economy. For Mexico, financial support and medical care for older low-income citizens are universal rights, however, limited fiscal resources for a large low-income population create inevitable competition among the old and the young alike. Although the United States has a more developed economy and well-developed Social Security and health care financing systems for the elderly, older Mexican-origin individuals in the U.S. do not necessarily benefit fully from these programs. These institutional and financial problems to aging are compounded in both countries by longer life spans, smaller families, as well as changing gender roles and cultural norms. In this interdisciplinary panel, the authors of five papers deal with the following topics: (1) an analysis of old age health and dependency conditions, the supply of aging and disability services, and related norms and policies, including the role of the government and the private sector; (2) a binational comparison of federal safety net programs for low-income elderly in U.S. and Mexico; (3) when strangers become family: the role of civil society in addressing the needs of aging populations; and (4) unmet needs for dementia care for Latinos in the Hispanic-EPESE.

Who Writes Criminal Laws? Actors, Values, and Institutions in Criminal Law-Making / Wer schreibt das Strafrecht? Akteure, Werte und Institutionen der Strafrechts-gesetzbegung

2014 ◽  
Vol 34 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Hammel
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Structural Difference ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Expert Control ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
Penal Law ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Law Making

AbstractThe responses of the U.S. and Europe to increased crime from the 1960s to the 1990s differed starkly: the U.S. enacted a punitive agenda, while penal polity and incarceration rates in Western (and Eastern) Europe remained gener­ally stable. To explain this divergence, many commentators invoke cultural or historical factors such as America’s ‘frontier mentality” or Calvinist religious heritage. This article proposes another focus: differing cultures of criminal law-making. During the Enlightenment, a pattern of expert control over penal law emerged in most European nation-states. The pattern still holds - even today, major changes to penal polity are still entrusted to groups of elite professors, jurists and senior civil servants, who create coherent codes covering the entire national territory. In the United States, no tradition of expert control took hold. Criminal law is made at the state level, there is little emphasis on logical code-drafting and shifting local majorities can pass new criminal laws almost at will This structural difference in who writes criminal laws has far-reaching effects not only on the how crime is defined, but on other factors such as public expectations of the criminal justice system and the values penal legislation is thought to express.

Measuring Global Inequality

2016 ◽  
Vol 68 (6) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Yates
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Global Inequality ◽  
Monthly Review ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Structures ◽  
The U.S

It is by now well known that significant and growing economic inequality is a central feature of the U.S. economy, as previous articles in Monthly Review have shown. However, the same is also the case for much of the rest of the world. Inequality arises in other countries for reasons similar to those in the United States, but each nation has its own history, along with widely divergent economic and political structures. Here we will look first at the most recent data on global inequality, and then at its causes and consequences.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

scholarly journals The Spread of Anti-Union Business Coordination: Evidence from the Open-Shop Movement in the U.S. Interwar Period

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Kuo
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Open Shop ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
American Business ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Labor Literature ◽  
The U.S

What explains the development of repressive employer coordination? Classic historical American business and labor literature focuses on institutions of labor repression and employer associations, but little systematic examination of such associations exists, particularly during the interwar period. Similarly, recent political science literature on the origins of industrial institutions underemphasizes the importance of repressive employer associations. I use new quantitative subnational evidence from the U.S. interwar period, with data from the open-shop movement in the United States at the local level after World War I. I test a variety of families of hypotheses regarding variation in repressive employer coordination, with specific data measuring the threat posed by organized labor. I find that such threats posed by unions are correlated to repressive employer associations. The results have implications for understanding local-level variation in the business repression of labor movements in the early twentieth century and contribute to our understanding of labor repressive institutions and the incentives of firms to collectively act.

scholarly journals Analysis of Determinants Affecting Organic Production: State Evidence from the United States

2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 503
Author(s):  
Yongrui Hou ◽  
Tianyuan Luo ◽  
Jing Hao
Keyword(s):  
Organic Farming ◽  
Organic Agriculture ◽  
Large Population ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organic Production ◽  
Vegetable Production ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The U.S

As the demand for organic products quickly grows in the U.S., the domestic supply of organic commodities has stagnated and failed to meet the increasing needs. To expand the organic supply capacity in the country, it is crucial to identify the key factors that could effectively promote the scale of organic farming in the U.S. Using a multivariate analytic model and state level data from multiple sources and years, this study examines a wide range of determinants that could affect organic agriculture. The results show that research funding would significantly increase organic vegetable production and the number of organic farms. The development of organic farming could be greatly encouraged by the support of research institutions. In addition, the evidence shows that abundant farm workers are essential for the organic farming sector, which is labor-intensive. Finally, a large population base could create a more stable consumer group that would promote the development of organic agriculture. These results suggest the importance of exploring and expanding consumer groups for organic commodities. These findings provide insightful implications that research support, labor availability, and a solid consumer base are crucial to boost the organic sector in the U.S. and other countries.

Looking for Rights in All the Wrong Places

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Zackin
Keyword(s):  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
Positive Rights ◽  
History Of ◽  
Constitutional Tradition ◽  
Fundamental Values ◽  
The U.S

Unlike many national constitutions, which contain explicit positive rights to such things as education, a living wage, and a healthful environment, the U.S. Bill of Rights appears to contain only a long list of prohibitions on government. American constitutional rights, we are often told, protect people only from an overbearing government, but give no explicit guarantees of governmental help. This book argues that we have fundamentally misunderstood the American rights tradition. The United States actually has a long history of enshrining positive rights in its constitutional law, but these rights have been overlooked simply because they are not in the U.S. Constitution. The book shows how they instead have been included in America's state constitutions, in large part because state governments, not the federal government, have long been primarily responsible for crafting American social policy. Although state constitutions, seemingly mired in trivial detail, can look like pale imitations of their federal counterpart, they have been sites of serious debate, reflect national concerns, and enshrine choices about fundamental values. This book looks in depth at the history of education, labor, and environmental reform, explaining why America's activists targeted state constitutions in their struggles for government protection from the hazards of life under capitalism. Shedding light on the variety of reasons that activists pursued the creation of new state-level rights, the book challenges us to rethink our most basic assumptions about the American constitutional tradition.

Art Loans and Immunity from Seizure in the United States and the United Kingdom

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence M. Kaye
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Good Faith ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
World War ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The U.S

AbstractSome countries' laws favoring good-faith purchasers over the victims of theft make it difficult to recover stolen artworks. Nonetheless, the loan of such artworks for exhibition abroad may create opportunities to utilize the host country's legal system for recovery. This article examines representative cases illustrating legal options available to plaintiffs in the United States and the United Kingdom. In the United States, laws at the federal and state level may prevent the seizure of artworks loaned for temporary exhibition, but recent cases show that immunity is not absolute and that such artworks may be subject to suit in the United States. The United Kingdom recently enacted a similar law. That law, however, has been criticized, and future interpretations by U.K. courts will be needed before its true affect can be seen. The article also discusses the backgrounds against which the U.S. and U.K. laws were enacted, illustrating the link between the laws and Russian concerns about protecting cultural artifacts that were nationalized after the Russian Revolution or taken by Soviet troops during World War II.

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