Union Efforts to Reduce COVID-19 Infections Among Grocery Store Workers

Grocery store workers are essential workers, but often have not been provided with appropriate protection during the current pandemic. This report describes efforts made by one union local to protect workers, including negotiated paid sick leave and specific safety practices. Union representatives from 319 stores completed 1612 in-store surveys to assess compliance between 23 April 2020 and 31 August 2020. Employers provided the union with lists of workers confirmed to have COVID-19 infection through 31 December 2020. Worker infection rates were calculated using store employees represented by the union as the denominator and compared to cumulative county infection rates; outcome was dichotomized as rates higher or lower than background rates. Restrictions on reusable bags and management enforcement of customer mask usage were most strongly associated with COVID-19 rates lower than rates in the surrounding county. Stores that responded positively to worker complaints also had better outcomes. The union is currently engaging to promote improved ventilation and vaccination uptake.

Synthesizers, Virtual Orchestras, and Ableton Live: Digitally Rendered Music on Broadway and Musicians’ Union Resistance

As Broadway musicals embrace contemporary popular music styles, orchestrators must incorporate the digital technologies necessary for producing convincing simulations of genres like hip hop and electronic music. At the same time, as production values soar, producers work to minimize their budgets, often putting downward pressure on the size of the orchestra. Although digital and electronic music technologies can expand the sonic register of the Broadway orchestra, they can also replace traditional acoustic instruments and save money. The Broadway musicians’ union, Local 802, has regularly sought to control the use of digital technologies and ensure that live musicians produce as much music as possible. Thus, Local 802's advocacy for the employment of their members can limit the sounds heard on Broadway.The following narrative considers three digital technologies—synthesizers, virtual orchestras, and Ableton Live—and examines case studies and controversies surrounding their use in Broadway orchestras and implications for liveness in performance. Informed by interviews with industry professionals, author observation of pit orchestras in rehearsal and performance, archival research, popular and industry media, and previous scholarship, I argue that the union's entrenched interests and antiquated regulations can stifle musical innovation on Broadway by resisting the use of digital music technologies.

Geneza i pojęcie żywności lokalnej w powiązaniu z ideą zrównoważonejkonsumpcji

This paper reviews the conceptual apparatus and the genesis of local food, on the basis of definitions and with respect to legal conditions, as well as the popular ways of interpretation of local food and scientific research performed by different centers and institutions – both domestic and foreign. On the basis of that, the paper presents the author’s own proposition concerning the abovementioned issue. The aim of the paper is to present the genesis and the definition of local food in the perspective of sustainable consumption. While conducting the research, the scientific literature concerning the subject was reviewed, and the findings were documented with available statistical and market information. The research showed that public institutions see the potential of local food and hope that it can drive the development of rural areas in the European Union. Local food is an alternative approach to the way in which food consumption can be turned into a sustainable one. Informed and responsible consumers, who are aware of their own limitations and value tradition, provide some new quality to the society (as they constitute a specific form of social capital), what translates into bigger local food production possibilities and is the basis for the further development of sustainable consumption.

Occupational Health Internship Program at a Metropolitan Transit Authority: Exploring Split Shifts as a Health and Safety Concern for Bus Operators

Bus operators are exposed to many occupational hazards, ranging from workplace violence to air pollution to biohazards. Through a summer project, Occupational Health Internship Program students explored bus operators’ health and safety concerns at the Amalgamated Transit Union Local #265 in San Jose, CA. Pilot surveys and individual interviews were used to identify operators’ perspectives on split shifts. A majority of a small sample of 109 bus operators reported dissatisfaction with split shifts, experience with physical and mental fatigue, stress from working these shifts, and inability to focus on immediate tasks due to working split shifts. Some operators preferred split shifts for various reasons, including having time to perform errands, eat lunch, and rest. Operators’ suggestions to improve route scheduling include split shift observations by management, upward communication with senior management, and improvement of bus yard and relief point facilities where operators take their breaks between shifts.

From voluntary private to mandatory state governance in Indonesian forest certification: Reclaiming authority by bureaucracies

Forest certification has been introduced by non-state actors as a voluntary and market-based instrument addressing forest problems, which state policies failed to resolve. Lately, however, state-driven forest-related certification schemes can be observed, e.g. in Indonesia, through the EU FLEGT-VPA negotiation process. It is argued, specific state agencies in a struggle for power and authority develop mandatory certification schemes which are directly competing with private ones. Before this background, the aims of this study are: (i) describing the current trend from voluntary private to mandatory state certification schemes in Indonesia, (ii) mapping the main actors involved in certification politics, and (iii) explaining this trend with the interests of the main actors. The results confirm a trend from voluntary private to mandatory state-driven certification of forest management. The Ministry of Forestry, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Industry, wood producer and processing associations, European Union, local funding organizations, environmental organizations, certification bodies and international buyers are detected as the main coalitions and actors in the certification politics. The stronger coalition develops a mandatorily-timber legality verification system as strategies to counter their voluntary private competitor schemes.

9to5

This chapter is about 9to5, an association founded by women office workers in Boston in 1973 who pioneered a new form of labor organizing. The young women built on new consciousness from the women’s movement to use affirmative action suits, public opinion, and novel organizing tactics to win power in Boston’s banks, insurance companies, and universities. In 1975, the women formed a sister union, Local 925, with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). They then replicated this dual structure on a national level by the end of the 1970s.

History of a children’s home

The paper is devoted to history of childrens home 25 established in 1946 on the territory of the Kuibyshev Region. Children of Russian emigrants living in Austria were accommodated there. These children were transferred to representatives of the Soviet authorities by the American administration. Under the terms of the agreements between the USSR, the USA and Great Britain signed at the Yalta conference (1945) people with the Soviet nationality were transferred to the Soviet Union. Children of Russian emigrants born in Austria didnt belong to this category but despite it they were transferred to the Soviet Union. Local authorities didnt know what to do with repatriated children. That is why the childrens home was established in a remote rural area; life and material conditions of its inhabitants were heavy: there was no necessary furniture or school supplies. Its tutors and staff were in a more difficult situation. Some of them lost their jobs. Some children were returned to parents. Unfortunately, available documents do not allow tracking the future of the children from this childrens home.

“A Bunch of Fellows Who Have Taken the Declaration of Independence Seriously”

This chapter examines how Harold Gibbons gained credibility as a union leader in St. Louis and discovered a group of workers with whom he could begin to implement his emerging vision of total person unionism, as well as how Ernest Calloway's odyssey took a more dramatic turn with his refusal to serve in a Jim Crow military during World War II. The chapter first considers Gibbons's leadership of St. Louis's warehouse workers and his conflict with the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU). It then discusses accusations that Gibbons was a member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) due in part to his denunciations of the wartime labor relations regime, insistence on the need for direct action, and attacks on the Communist Party (CP). It also describes how Calloway became one of the first African Americans to seek conscientious objector status solely on the basis of racial discrimination, and how he actively red-baited Food, Tobacco, Agricultural, and Allied Workers Union Local 22.