Juridical analysis of policy concerning oil palm estate management in Indonesia

The development of the palm oil industry (CPO) in Indonesia is often confronted by challenges coming from the international community, one of which is the rejection of Indonesian CPO exports declared by the European Union on the grounds of deforestation and land clearing, specifically forest burning, that are aimed to convert the forest areas to oil palm estates. In an attempt to clean such a bad name in palm oil industries in the world and to avert the label ‘unsustainable’ given by European Union, President Joko Widodo issued Presidential Instruction Number 8/2018. However, the implementation of the Presidential Instruction is not without hurdles like the absence of specific guidelines to help to implement the policy at the regional level and the lack of opportunities to involve civilians to guard this policy. Juridical analysis of the policy aimed to improve palm oil management and to hamper deforestation is, thus, required. With the normative-juridical method, this research is aimed to recommend the government to grow the potential of CPO-based biofuel in Indonesia and the application of a one-map policy over the potential of oil palm estates to allow the implementation of transparency principle in the structure of good governance. All these recommendations are mainly aimed to give more opportunities to the members of the public to have meaningful participation as well as sustainable and enviro-friendly in improving the management of palm oil cultivation.

THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE PARIS AGREEMENT

The Paris Agreement has undoubtedly impacted on other more personal environmental policies in each country worldwide. We are trying to explain the dynamics (changes and debates) that occur in the policy-making process by the actors and stakeholders in the Paris Agreement. For instance, with the Trump dismantling policy to leave the Paris Agreement that we called the free-riding strategy that affects not only the members within the Paris Agreement but also the environmental sector globally. We also contemplate the alternatives way to solve the environmental problem through the Paris Agreement, and a solution to the problem occurs within the members by considering the consequences under international law Keywords: Paris Agreement, Environmental Issue, European Union, President Trump

The Teamsters and the American Working Class

During the latter half of the 20th century, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) represented the labor organization most readily recognized by the American public. Rooted in the vital sectors of transportation, warehousing, and distribution, the Teamsters became one of the largest unions in the United States, wielded considerable economic leverage, and used this leverage to improve the lives of low-wage workers across a broad swath of occupations and industries. The union’s reputation for militancy and toughness reached its apotheosis in the controversial career of Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters’ most prominent post-World War II leader. Under the leadership of Hoffa and his immediate predecessor Dave Beck, the union (with some notable exceptions) embraced a business ethos, often engaged in collusive and corrupt practices, and came to symbolize the labor movement’s squandered potential as a transformational social force. Fear of Hoffa and his associations with underworld figures provoked an intense backlash, resulting in the IBT’s 1957 expulsion from the AFL-CIO, concerted legal and legislative action aimed at curbing Teamster influence, and a lingering public perception that the union was a hopelessly corrupt and malign force. Hoffa’s unsolved disappearance in 1975 cemented the Teamsters’ image as a suspect institution, and analysts of the IBT have often offered either superficial or sensational accounts of the organization’s history and operations. With the deregulation of the trucking industry in the 1980s, the IBT suffered serious losses in market share and membership that eclipsed many of the union’s crowning collective bargaining achievements. A series of lackluster, corrupt leaders who followed Hoffa as union president proved unable to counter these developments, triggering the rise of an aggressive internal reform movement (Teamsters for a Democratic Union), federal intervention and monitoring, and the election of a reform slate in 1991 that assumed leadership of the union. However, since the union’s victory in an epic strike against United Parcel Service in 1997, the Teamsters have struggled to regain their ability to assert working-class power, especially within the private sector transportation industry, where they once exercised nearly unchallenged hegemony.

Trump, Carrier, and the Invisible Worker

Chapter 1 analyzes news media coverage of President-elect Donald Trump’s visit to the Carrier furnace assembly plant in Indianapolis in December 2016. The plant became Trump’s symbolic beachhead in his “plan” to save jobs, only after the steelworkers there gained national visibility for efforts to prevent outsourcing of their jobs to Mexico. The news media, including CNN, Fox News, NBC, and the Washington Post, emphasized stories of grateful white men whose jobs had been saved by Trump, playing into his(and the conservative media’s) public relations narrative. A few news organizations continued to follow the story when Trump’s promises to save jobs at Carrier fell short by hundreds of workers and the local union president accused Trump of lying.

Topics a Union President Visited to Mobilize Members

We analyze four calls to action issued by the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) president, Jim Iker. These appeals sought to mobilize members during the 2013-2014 collective bargaining that pitted the BCTF against the British Columbia government and the direct employer, the British Columbia Public School Employers’ Association. We apply a “theory of rhetoric” developed by Chaim Perelman to locate and analyze the topics the BCTF president used to persuade his members to adhere to his arguments about the merit of collective action.We argue that the president constructed his rhetoric by visiting five topics—urgency, fairness, futility, agency, and integrity. The first three promoted a utilitarian logic for collective action. Iker used them to persuade teachers, and other stakeholders, that collective action was necessary for addressing the problem—the futility of the bargaining process to produce a negotiated fair agreement due to the government’s reluctance to bargain in good faith. The last two topics—agency and integrity—comprised a rhetoric of comfort and reassurance offering an affective logic for acting collectively. At least some union members, as well as other stakeholders, might have felt that teachers are expected to care for their charges in the classroom rather than on the picket line, by withdrawing services they monopolize. Iker used the topics of agency and integrity to remind everyone that defending students, young teachers, the teaching profession, and the education system was commendable, and reassured them that collectively they would not be ignored and nor would they fail.In short, we have pointed out five topics that the president visited to mobilize his members to collective action. They highlight a unique rhetoric that aimed to persuade teachers to become agents of protest. Our case study methodology did not allow us to generalize our findings, which more research is, thus, needed to corroborate.

Celebrating the 2017 Class of Fellows

American Geophysical Union President-elect Robin Bell will present the newly elected class at the upcoming AGU Fall Meeting.

Strained Solidarities

This chapter examines the dramatic changes within the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA)—once the most powerful force in American organized labor. By the end of the twentieth century, the UMWA seemed incapable of organizing nonunion mines, even in the region that once provided its strongest support. Over its lifetime, the UMWA has moved through three distinct eras: confrontational organizing, labor brokerage, and crisis management. John L. Lewis' legacy as union president transformed the union from a fractured organizing body to a streamlined labor broker, negotiating contracts and winning the best possible wages and benefits. However, in Coal River, the community and environmental activism of the late 1990s emerged as a challenge to the leadership of the UMWA, this time demanding a strong stance against mountaintop removal.

Lee Teng Hwee, Ho Pao Jin, and Educational Reform in Malacca, Singapore, Shanghai and Beyond, 1885–1945 (李登輝、何葆仁和麻六甲、新加坡、上海各處的教育改革及其它,一八八五-一九四五)

This essay focuses on Lee Teng Hwee and Ho Pao Jin, two “trans-local” activist educational reformers, in order to explore the interaction between changing social networks, governments, and educational reform movements in Shanghai, Singapore, and Malacca at critical moments between the 1880s and 1930s. Lee, as Fudan University President, and Ho, as Shanghai Student Union President, were key actors in the 1919 protest movement. Both were sons of families engaged in trans-regional trade, Lee moving from Batavia to Singapore, America, and Shanghai and Ho moving from Xiamen to Singapore, Shanghai, America, and Malacca. My purpose is to show how the shifting socio-economic networks and political structures and the activities of these educational reformers influenced each other, drawing on and contributing to local and trans-local experience. As these contributors were flexible in adapting to circumstances as they pursued their goals, we should also be flexible in our analysis of them.本文聚焦在李登輝、何葆仁這兩位「跨越地域」（trans-local）的行動派教育改革者，從而探討在一八八零年代到一九三零年代的關鍵時刻，發生在麻六甲、新加坡和上海各地社會網絡、政府和教育改革運動之間的交流。兩位在一九一九年抗議運動時皆是活躍份子：李氏當時是復旦大學的校長，而何氏則是上海學生會的主席。兩人亦皆出身於從事跨區域貿易的商人家庭：李氏自巴達維亞移居到新加坡、美國和上海；而何氏則自廈門移往新加坡、美國和麻六甲。我的目的是要突顯出變動的社會經濟網絡、政治結構和這些教育改革者的活動之間彼此的影響，特別是一地的經驗如何在另一地被承續。由於這些貢獻者是探取相當彈性的方式在追求其目標，會因不同的情境而做出調整，我們對他們的活動之分析也應是彈性的。 (This article is in English).