Our Job Has Never Been Harder

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy J. Minchin
Keyword(s):  
Manufacturing Sector ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Negative Publicity ◽  
Progressive Force ◽  
The Right

During the presidency of George W. Bush, the national political climate turned to the right in a way that hurt the AFL-CIO, and working Americans more generally. Constrained by internal and external resistance, as well as the rapid decline of the manufacturing sector, organizing stalled. A major campaign to secure labor law reform again fell short, while health care reform never got off the ground. Disappointment fed dissension in the ranks. In 2005 Andy Stern took almost 40 percent of the AFL-CIO’s members into Change to Win, a rival federation. This was the biggest schism in organized labor since the 1930s, and it generated plenty of negative publicity. Despite all the problems, the Federation retained a lot of political power, especially during national elections. In 2006, the AFL-CIO played a crucial role as the Democrats regained control of the House and Senate and won a majority of the governorships and state legislatures. In 2008, the Federation launched an unprecedented campaign to help the Democrats regain the presidency, convincing many white members to put aside their racial fears and vote for Barack Obama. These events confirmed that the AFL-CIO was still an important progressive force in American life.

Employers’ Associations and Open Shops in the United States

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chad Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
Right To Work ◽  
Union Status ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Labor Activists ◽  
The Right

Employers began organizing with one another to reduce the power of organized labor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Irritated by strikes, boycotts, and unions’ desire to achieve exclusive bargaining rights, employers demanded the right to establish open shops, workplaces that promoted individualism over collectivism. Rather than recognize closed or union shops, employers demanded the right to hire and fire whomever they wanted, irrespective of union status. They established an open-shop movement, which was led by local, national, and trade-based employers. Some formed more inclusive “citizens’ associations,” which included clergymen, lawyers, judges, academics, and employers. Throughout the 20th century’s first three decades, this movement succeeded in busting unions, breaking strikes, and blacklisting labor activists. It united large numbers of employers and was mostly successful. The movement faced its biggest challenges in the 1930s, when a liberal political climate legitimized unions and collective bargaining. But employers never stopped organizing and fighting, and they continued to undermine the labor movement in the following decades by invoking the phrase “right-to-work,” insisting that individual laborers must enjoy freedom from so-called union bosses and compulsory unionism. Numerous states, responding to pressure from organized employers, begin passing “right-to-work” laws, which made union organizing more difficult because workers were not obligated to join unions or pay their “fair share” of dues to them. The multi-decade employer-led anti-union movement succeeded in fighting organized labor at the point of production, in politics, and in public relations.

Protecting the Desperate: The Regulation of Payday Lending

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-176
Author(s):  
Andrew J Serpell
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Credit ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Payday Lending ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Payday Loans ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right ◽  
Credit Contracts ◽  
The Cost

Payday loans are small-amount, short-term, unsecured, high-cost credit contracts provided by non-mainstream credit providers. Payday loans are usually taken out to help the consumer pay for essential items, such as food, rent, electricity, petrol, broken-down appliances or car registration or repairs. These consumers take out payday loans because they cannot — or believe that they cannot — obtain a loan from a mainstream credit provider such as a bank. In recent years there has been a protracted debate in Australia — and in several overseas jurisdictions — about how to regulate the industry. Recent amendments to the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 (Cth) — referred to in this article as the 2013 reforms — are designed to better protect payday loan consumers. While the 2013 reforms provide substantially improved protection for payday loan consumers, further changes to the law may be warranted. This article raises several law reform issues which should be considered as part of the 2015 review into small amount credit contracts, including whether the caps on the cost of credit are set at the right level, whether the required content and presentation of the consumer warnings needs to be altered, whether more needs to be done to protect consumers who are particularly disadvantaged or vulnerable and whether a general anti-avoidance provision should be included in the credit legislation.

Right to Parental Care

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asha Bajpai
Keyword(s):  
Law Reform ◽  
Best Interest ◽  
Family Courts ◽  
Custody Of Children ◽  
The Family ◽  
Shared Parenting ◽  
The Right ◽  
A Minor ◽  
And Control ◽  
Physical Care

Custody refers to the physical care and control of a minor whereas guardianship is a wider term and includes rights and duties with respect to the care and control of minor’s person and property, and includes the right to make decisions relating to the minor. The present legal regime relating to guardianship and custody of children is discussed, including the Guardians and Wards Act, 1890, the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, 1956, the personal and matrimonial laws, and relevant provisions in the Family Courts Act and Protection of Women against Domestic Violence Act, 2005. The emerging concepts of shared parenting, joint custody, and the interparental child removal or abduction of child is included. There is review and analysis of some major reported judicial decisions. A comparative survey of international laws and trends has been done. Suggestions for law reform in the best interest of the child have been given.

scholarly journals When Does Income Inequality Cause Polarization?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Jacob R. Gunderson
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Economic Elites ◽  
The Right ◽  
Issue Content

Scholars have long been concerned with the implications of income inequality for democracy. Conventional wisdom suggests that high income inequality is associated with political parties taking polarized positions as the left advocates for increased redistribution while the right aims to entrench the position of economic elites. This article argues that the connection between party positions and income inequality depends on how party bases are sorted by income and the issue content of national elections. It uses data from European national elections from 1996 to 2016 to show that income inequality has a positive relationship with party polarization on economic issues when partisans are sorted with respect to income and when economic issues are relatively salient in elections. When these factors are weak, however, the author finds no relationship between income inequality and polarization.

scholarly journals State Legislatures Have the Courage to Pass Antiabortion Laws and Test the Ideology of the “New” United States Supreme Court

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-150
Author(s):  
Jill Oeding
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Undue Burden ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
Reported Data ◽  
The Right

Many state legislatures are racing to pass antiabortion laws that will give the current Supreme Court the opportunity to review its stance on the alleged constitutional right to have an abortion. While the number of abortions reported to be performed annually in the United States has declined over the last decade, according to the most recent government-reported data, the number of abortions performed on an annual basis is still over 600,000 per year. Abortion has been legal in the United States since 1973, when the Supreme Court recognized a constitutional right to have an abortion prior to viability (i.e. the time when a baby could possibly live outside the mother’s womb). States currently have the right to forbid abortions after viability.  However, prior to viability, states may not place an “undue burden” in the path of a woman seeking an abortion. The recent appointments of two new Supreme Court justices, Neil Gorsich and Brett Kavanaugh, give pro-life states the best chance in decades to overrule the current abortion precedent. The question is whether these two new justices will shift the ideology of the court enough to overrule the current abortion precedent.

scholarly journals Los límites de la participación política en una democracia excepcional: migrantes en Costa Rica

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Luicy Pedroza
Keyword(s):  
Costa Rica ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Emigrants And Immigrants ◽  
Local Elections ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Latin American Region ◽  
Support For Democracy ◽  
Right To Vote ◽  
The Right

In comparison to other countries in the Latin American region, especially in Central America, support for democracy in Costa Rica is high –despite ups and downs in recent years. Still, regarding the challenges that immigration poses for the principles of democratic inclusion and representation, Costa Rica lag behind 11 countries in Latin America –and 35 democracies in the world– where immigrant residents have the right to vote in local elections. In Chile and Uruguay, the only countries in the region where support for democracy tops that observed in Costa Rica, the right to vote of immigrant residents even reaches national elections. With such a comparative background, this article addresses the question: how to explain that this democracy ignores the tendency to give the right to vote to resident migrants? The study reveals a society in which the narrative of exceptionality with respect to other countries of the continent and the formal primacy of nationality to political citizenship, allow tolerating a clear inequality between the political rights of emigrants and immigrants.

scholarly journals Institutional Dynamics of Municipal Solid Waste Management in the Bamenda Metropolis

2021 ◽  
pp. 63-78
Author(s):  
Victor Konfor Ntoban ◽  
Mbanga Lawrence Akei ◽  
Clarkson Mvo Wanie
Keyword(s):  
Waste Management ◽  
Solid Waste ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Solid Waste Management ◽  
Economic Incentives ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Municipal Solid Waste Management ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Institutional Dynamics ◽  
The Right

Rapid and uncontrolled urbanization in several parts of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), has introduced a plethora of urban development challenges. This has left city governments ‘standing in their sleep’, as they strive to deal such issues. A classic example is solid waste management – with waste considered to be principally an urban problem. While the issue of waste has been belaboured in the literature, there is a dearth in geographical literature on the institutional dynamics of solid waste management. Viewed as structures and processes, institutions demonstrate potentials to determine the intentions and actions of urban waste managers and urban dwellers, within the waste management spectrum. Taking the case of Bamenda – a primate city par excellence – this paper explores the dynamics of institutions and their implications for solid waste management. Specifically, it explores the waste management institutional transition and its bearing on current and potentially, future waste management practices. Household surveys, complemented by expert interviews provided data for the study. Through narratives and descriptive statistics, we observed that despite the litany of institutions involved in solid waste management and their related institutional frameworks, their effectiveness remains questionable. This rests, in part, on the inadequacy in personnel, and the lack of law enforcement in the courts and city judiciary systems. The ineffectiveness of these instruments in the Bamenda Municipality is as a result of weak legal institutional setup, the absence of courts and a city judiciary system to handle environmental issues (solid waste), irregular or poorly enforced laws, inaccessible neighbourhood, and organizational lapses. Furthermore, the socio-political climate, characterised by insecurity, mars the effective implementation of waste management approaches. This paper argues that the institutional change process in waste management should strive towards the introduction of economic incentives that can motivate urban dwellers to fully engage in the process. Further empirical evidence on the right business-oriented waste management models are required to ground this claim.

Populism in Bulgaria

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-86
Author(s):  
Blagovesta Cholova ◽  
Jean-Michel De Waele
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
Supply Side ◽  
Demand Side ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
Populist Movements

This article explores the success of populist parties in Bulgaria during the last decade. The first section focuses on the definition of populism and identifies the main populist parties in this country. The second part presents the development of these parties and their specific characteristic as well as the evolution of the “three waves” of populism in Bulgaria. The last section addresses the reasons for the success of these parties both in terms of supply side (the electorate) and the demand side (the strategy of the parties). The main conclusion is that this country is a fertile ground for populist movements due to the attitude of the electorate and the niche on the right-side of the political spectrum and that newly created parties use this opportunity of win elections but they remain short-lived because they cannot continue to mobilize populist rhetoric when they are in office and often face rapid decline.

Refining the Right to Information in Vietnamese Consumer Law: Insights from Australia

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-83
Author(s):  
Lam Uyen Lu ◽  
Niloufer Selvadurai
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Protection ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Consumer Welfare ◽  
Regulatory Framework ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Consumer Law ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Right To Information ◽  
The Right

AbstractIn upholding a consumer's right to information, regulations prohibiting misleading or deceptive conduct perform a critical role in supporting consumer welfare and encouraging equity in business and commerce. While Vietnam enacted a Law on Consumer Protection in 2010, its provisions in this area are limited in ambit and application. In order to improve the effectiveness of a consumer's right to information in Vietnam, it is useful to examine the Australia Consumer Law which has a sophisticated regulatory framework in this area. By comparing the laws prohibiting misleading or deceptive conduct in the Vietnamese Law on Consumer Protection and the Australia Consumer Law, this article identifies certain similarities and differences between the two legal systems, thereby clarifying shortcomings that can lead to inadequacies and inefficiencies of this area of the law and providing a platform for law reform in Vietnam.

Make in India and Labour Reforms

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (02) ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Srivastava
Keyword(s):  
Human Resource ◽  
State Government ◽  
Manufacturing Sector ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Employment Generation ◽  
Forced Labour

India is a labour surplus country with 47 million unemployed below the age of 24 years and 12-13 million youths joining the labour market every year. To avoid the growing unemployment, India strongly needs labour intensive and labour friendly industries. Labour being in the concurrent list of the constitution, both central and state government legislate on it. But the State Governments have limited space to enact labour laws to address their own requirements-promoting investment and employment generation. Labour law reform is currently on the political agenda in India, particularly in the wake of the election of the new Modijee led government at the centre. The first set of initiatives, announced in October 2014, were the “unified labour and industrial portal” and “labour inspection scheme”. Our constitution has many articles directed toward their interests for eg. Article 23 forbids forced labour, 24 forbids child labour (in factories, mines and other hazardous occupations) below age of 14 years. Further, Article 43A was inserted by 42nd amendment – directing state to take steps to ensure worker’s participation in management of industries. (Gandhi ji said that employers are trustees of interests of workers and they must ensure their welfare.) India is expected to generate 51 million jobs till 2019, it is imperative to streamline all laws, to facilitate manufacturing sector in India so as economy could absorb new human resource inflow.

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