Irving S. Wright Award of Distinction Lecture, Vincent Cristafalo Award Lecture, and Terrie Fox Wetle Award Lecture

The Irving S. Wright Award of Distinction Lecture will feature an address by the 2021 recipient Malene Hansen, PhD of the Buck Institue for Research on Aging. The Vincent Cristofalo Rising Star Award in Aging Research lecture will feature an address by the 2021 recipient, Morgan Levine, PhD, of Yale University. This award is given by the American Federation for Aging Research, Inc. The Terrie Fox Wetle Award lecture will feature an address by the 2020 recipient, Kali Thomas, PhD, FGSA of Brown University and an address by the 2021 recpient, Andrea Gilmore-Bykovskyi of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. These awards are given by the American Federation for Aging Research, Inc.

Nationalism, Secessionism, and Autonomy

This chapter examines three additional cases: the Basque Country, Puerto Rico, and Québec. The objective behind these supplemental case studies is twofold. First, for the Basque Country, the goal is to understand why there has not been a strengthening of secessionism like in Catalonia. The chapter explains that Basque nationalism is exceptional for its history of political violence, which renders extremely difficult the type of alliance between nationalist forces that has occurred in Catalonia. Next, the chapter looks at Puerto Rico and Québec to assess how a focus on the nature of autonomy to explain the strength of secessionism travels beyond Western Europe. The case of Puerto Rico, where secessionism has always been marginal, helps to tease out the potential importance of perceptions on autonomy. Although Puerto Rican autonomy has not been adjusted, political debates over the constitutional future of the island, namely through multiple referendums on status, have likely fed perceptions that Puerto Ricans can change their autonomy, either through an enhancement of the current status or by becoming a state of the American federation. In Québec, the weakening of secessionism in the last decades has corresponded with a switch from constitutional reform to intergovernmental agreements as instruments for managing the position of the province within the federation. Constitutional change is difficult in Canada; consequently, Québec’s autonomy has been static constitutionally. As a result, when the focus for managing autonomy is placed on constitutional negotiations, secessionism in the province strengthens. When autonomy is managed through intergovernmental agreements, secessionism weakens.

Does Exclusion Follow the Flag? Merchant Sailors and US Imperial Expansion, 1895–1906

This paper examines how class conflict affected US imperial expansion between 1898 and 1906. It focuses on West-Coast-based white merchant sailors and relies on union publications, legislative records, and congressional testimony to reveal how domestic class conflict shaped the boundaries, both internally and externally, of the emerging US empire. The struggle of the sailors’ unions over these imperial boundaries illustrates the real-life consequences they held for working people. These were not just abstractions. These lines often determined the type of labor systems under which workers would toil. Specifically, this article centers on the American Federation of Labor's successful effort to apply the Chinese Exclusion Act to the United States’ empire on the Pacific in 1902 as well as the Sailor's Union of the Pacific's unsuccessful attempt to apply exclusion to US-flagged merchant vessels. With that in mind, I argue that the line between domestic and foreign or nation and empire was a contested space of racially inflected class conflict. For white working people, the most pertinent question in the aftermath of the Spanish American War was not, does the constitution follow the flag? But rather, does exclusion follow the flag?

“I Want to Know How to Protect Myself without Scaring Our Patients”

Drawing on union convention proceedings, reports, newspapers, speeches, and internal memoranda, this article uses the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) as a case study to explore organized labor’s response to the HIV/AIDS crisis. One the one hand, it shows that AFSCME eventually embraced an ambitious, two-pronged program that fought both for strong workplace safety measures for its members and against discrimination toward those most affected by HIV/AIDS. On the other, it highlights the ways in which the union’s campaign was constrained by a narrow focus on workplace hazards. Prioritizing workers’ protections over patients’ demands for privacy in diagnosis and treatment, AFSCME ultimately subsumed its rhetorical commitment to working-class solidarity beneath what many members saw as a practical need for somatic surveillance and segregation—marginalizing the very communities that the union claimed to protect.

Citadel of Labor

This chapter surveys the role of Civil War memory in the construction of labor patriotism in the American Federation of Labor. Mirroring its anti-revolutionary leadership, notably Samuel Gompers, the AFL moved increasingly away from labor militancy and electoral strategy. The rise of national blue-gray reconciliation paralleled the Federation’s maturation, as well as the establishment of Jim Crow unionism. Labor Day, Decoration Day, and Fourth of July marches were incubators of nationalist pageantry in which white workingmen venerated the veteran alongside the industrial soldier and the union label alongside the American flag. By World War I, the Federation had used Civil War memory to embrace class conciliation and nationalism as leaders, and “respectable” workers complied with government repression of the labor left.

Postural ergonomics and work-related musculoskeletal disorders in neurosurgery: lessons from an international survey

Background Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) affect a significant percentage of the neurosurgical workforce. The aim of the current questionnaire-based study was to examine the prevalence of WMSDs amongst neurosurgeons, identify risk factors, and study the views of neurosurgeons regarding ergonomics. Methods From June to August 2020, members of the “European Association of Neurosurgical Societies,” the “Neurosurgery Research Listserv,” and the “Latin American Federation of Neurosurgical Societies” were asked to complete an electronic questionnaire on the topics of WMSDs and ergonomics. Results A total of 409 neurosurgeons responded to the survey, with a 4.7 male to female ratio. Most of the surgeons worked in Europe (76.9%) in academic public hospitals. The vast majority of the participants (87.9%) had experienced WMSDs, mainly affecting the shoulder, neck, and back muscles. The most common operations performed by the participants were “Craniotomy for convexity/intrinsic tumors” (24.1%) and “Open lumbar basic spine” (24.1%). Neurosurgeons agreed that ergonomics is an underexposed area in the neurosurgical field (84.8%) and that more resources should be spend (87.3%) and training curricula changes should be made (78.3%) in order to alleviate the burden of WMSDs on neurosurgeons. Univariate analysis did not reveal any associations between the development of WMSDs and age, gender, tenure, average duration of operation, operating time per week, type of operation, and surgical approach. Conclusions The problem of WMSDs ought to be more closely addressed and managed by the neurosurgical community. More studies ought to be designed to investigate specific ergonomic parameters in order to formulate practice recommendations.

Organized Labor and Commercial Advertising

The J. Walter Thompson Company (JWT) collection at Duke University’s Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing outlines the swift changes that a revitalized organized labor culture made to music-making in the advertising industry between 1954 and 1960, as groups like the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists (AFTRA), and the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) negotiated for updated talent guidelines. The papers of John F. Devine, JWT’s Vice President of Radio and Television during this period, are especially illuminating, as he served as a representative for the advertising industry in several union negotiations through the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) and was further responsible (in collaboration with JWT contracts officer Marion Preston) for enacting JWT’s operational responses to the new rules. This chapter traces, with a specific focus on issues faced by advertisers during this period, Devine and the AAAA’s role in talent negotiations, SAG and AFTRA’s tussle over jurisdiction regarding videotaped material, the significant transitional period the AFM endured as its contentious Music Performance Trust Fund was challenged by both its members and their employers, and JWT’s in-house responses to resulting talent contract changes.