Neither angels nor heroes: nurse speeches during the COVID-19 pandemic from a Foucauldian perspective

ABSTRACT Objective: to analyze the processes of meaning production, based on the speeches of nursing professionals, about how they feel about the titles of “angels and heroes” given by society during the pandemic of COVID-19. Methods: a qualitative, documentary research. Data was collected in October and November 2020 and analyzed from the perspective of the Discourse Analysis proposed by Michel Foucault. Results: they were organized into two thematic categories: “Angels and heroes? The (not) heroic reality of nursing during the pandemic” and “The search for recognition of the professional work of nursing: between what is said and what is not said”. Final considerations: the nurses’ speeches enunciate the search for decent conditions for the execution of care, fair wages, and recognition of the professional work by society.

On Trade and Exploitation

In this essay I critically engage with Mathias Risse and Gabriel Wollner’s book On Trade Justice: A Philosophical Plea for a New Global Deal. I sketch their general view of the concept of exploitation and of trade exploitation more specifically. I then suggest that, contra Risse and Wollner, exploitation belongs to non-ideal theory. In addition, I argue that Risse and Wollner have not shown that the WTO is exploitative, and argue that their account of fair wages suffers from a number of weaknesses both on the cost and contribution sides.

Quantifying differences in alternative food network supply chain activities and their relationship with socio-economic outcomes

Alternative food networks (AFNs) have the potential to enhance and redistribute value in favour of producers and consumers through novel ways of organizing supply chain activities. What is more, AFNs are often characterized by their ‘sustainability promise’ – or the idea that their networks foster social, ecological or environmental improvements over conventional food networks. Based on a purposive sample of 286 producers across five Swedish AFNs (i.e. community supported agriculture, REKO-rings, farmers’ markets, farm stores and food nodes), we explore how differences in how supply chain activities are managed and relate them to profitability, fair wages, cooperation, logistics efforts, happiness and future beliefs. Using a combination of correlation analysis, linear regression and means comparisons, we challenge the notion that AFNs achieve their sustainability promise or enhance value through novel combinations of supply chain activities. Our findings include several key differences in how supply chain management (SCM) activities are organized across AFNs and their variant importance for profitability. Moreover, we find significant differences in happiness across AFNs that are better explained through beliefs about the future than profitability or fair wages. By exploring happiness and profitability, we offer insights into why some AFN actors thrive despite poor economic returns.

The employee's right to a fair wage that ensures a decent human existence for himself and his family: some implementation problems

The article is devoted to some problems of the implementation of the employee's right to timely and full payment of fair wages, ensuring a decent human existence for himself and his family. Based on the analysis of legislation and judicial practice, the authors concluded that the legal regulation of some provisions of the institution of payment is imperfect, which complicates the implementation of this right.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Justice in the Salary Structure: Practice or Symbolism?

Socially responsible companies should provide fair wages and maintain reasonable internal wage gaps as part of a commitment to workers as primary stakeholders of the organization. Our research seeks to clarify the influence of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) system on the salary level of unskilled workers and the magnitude of internal salary gaps between the highest and lowest levels of the organization. We used a sample of 815 companies that are representative of the Chilean business ecosystem and developed a linear regression model with endogenous treatment. Our results show that the declaration of a CSR program positively influences the wage level of unskilled workers but increases the magnitude of internal organizational wage gaps. These findings suggest a partial adherence of companies declaring CSR in terms of commitment to their employees.

Nourishing Humanity without Destroying the Planet

As part of the roundtable, “Ethics and the Future of the Global Food System,” this essay discusses some of the major challenges we will face in feeding the world in 2050. A first challenge is nutritional: 690 million people (9 percent of the world's population) are currently undernourished, while 2.1 billion adults (28 percent of the population) are overweight or obese. The current global food system is insufficient in ensuring that the nutritious foods that make up healthy diets are available and accessible for the world's population. Moreover, by 2050, as the global population increases, food demand will increase by 50–60 percent. A fundamental challenge is meeting this demand while not wreaking irreversible havoc on natural resources, the environment, and planetary systems. A body of scientific research has coalesced around the need to reduce food loss and waste, adopt environmentally sustainable production practices, and shift toward plant-dominant diets. Other long-standing food system problems include deficits in providing fair wages and decent working conditions for food system workers, threats to smallholder farmer livelihoods, and tens of billions of animals kept in welfare-deficit confinement conditions. These food system challenges are bad states of affairs that matter from a variety of moral perspectives. In other words, there is a robust moral case for addressing these challenges. Yet concerted policy action in this area is insufficient and largely absent, pointing to the underlying challenge and complexity of political inertia.