Bringing Home Recursions

This report is about an explorative co-crafting course applying the notion of recursive publics to adult learning and pro-environmental activation, which aimed to engage a diverse cohort of learners towards patterns of eating, living, and engaging that promoted wellbeing and a healthy environment. This two-month-long, university-endorsed study in Hong Kong saw 22 participants fermenting their urine in which to grow an edible plant (Lactuca sativa), thereby creating a material relationship between their bodies and the environment. Technologies were employed to bring people physically together for greater emancipatory engagement inside the shared material condition. When analyzed, these technologies revealed their potential for opening or restricting the synergies from combined purpose, expertise, and immanent life processes in recursively profound and playful ways. This civic-tech study offers a recursive self-implication approach to design education as a collective negotiation process for navigating unknown territory to converge a myriad of expertise and intended beneficiaries.

Movement-oriented labor organizations in an authoritarian regime: The case of China

How do labor organizations with a movement orientation arise in an authoritarian regime? How do they organize workers collectively in a repressive society? What movement roles do they play? What challenges do they face? To answer these questions, I use synthesized social movement theories to examine movement-oriented labor non-governmental organizations in China. Based on qualitative data collected through triangulated sources, I find that movement-oriented labor non-governmental organizations use political opportunities to promote one type of modular collective labor action, which consists of three tactics, namely the election of worker representatives, collective negotiation, and protest. They guide workers to build mobilizing and connective structures, formulate collective action frames, and amass movement resources. However, the movement roles of this type of labor non-governmental organization have weakened, owing to diminishing political opportunities caused by changes in government administration. This research contributes to our understanding of social movement theories, labor organizations in China, labor non-governmental organizations and worker centers generally, and state–society relations in non-democracies.

Understanding the Role of Standards in the Negotiation of a Healthy Built Environment

A growing number of international standards promote Healthy Built Environment (HBE) principles which aim to enhance occupant and user health and wellbeing. Few studies examine the implementation of these standards; whether and how they affect health through changes to built-environment design, construction, and operations. This study reviews a set of sustainability and HBE standards, based on a qualitative analysis of standard documents, standard and socio-technical literature on normalization and negotiation, and interviews with 31 practitioners from four geographical regions. The analysis indicates that standards can impact individual, organizational, and market-scale definitions of an HBE. Some changes to practice are identified, such as procurement and internal layout decisions. There is more limited evidence of changes to dominant, short-term decision-making practices related to cost control and user engagement in operational decisions. HBE standards risk establishing narrow definitions of health and wellbeing focused on building occupants rather than promoting broader, contextually situated, principles of equity, inclusion, and ecosystem functioning crucial for health. There is a need to improve sustainability and HBE standards to take better account of local contexts and promote systems thinking. Further examination of dominant collective negotiation processes is required to identify opportunities to better embed standards within organizational practice.

Reflections of older people about their experience of fall prevention exercise in the community- a qualitative study exploring evidence-based practice

Background Evidence-based practice (EBP) ensures that clinicians use effective interventions to achieve desired outcomes, thereby contributing to the best quality of care. The perspective of the participants is fundamental in EBP, as they have their own individual and meaningful rationale for participating in fall prevention. This study aims to explore community-dwelling older people reflections about their reflections about EBP in physiotherapy based on their experiences of a fall prevention exercise program. Methods We conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 community-dwelling older people (men = 7; women = 9). Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results The analysis revealed three themes: 1) the tension between knowing and doing, 2) the power of the therapist-participant relationship and the process of putting knowledge into action, and 3) research is interwoven with successful therapy and is an integral component of it. EBP was considered as a collective negotiation and learning process of creating knowledge for clinical practice. The negotiation between different types of knowledge must be performed in a transparent dialogue and through interactive collaboration between the persons involved. The participants appreciated that the research findings indicate that practice gives results. Conclusions EBP was understood and utilized as a seal of approval and a “guarantee of high quality” treatment, and its effects varied based on older people’s preferences, needs, and skills. The therapist’s relational competence appeared to be crucial for the negotiation of various sources of knowledge relative to the older people’s preferences.

China Collective Negotiation in COVID-19: What We learn from a Comparative Analysis of China, the United States and Germany

Labor conflicts can be solved by an efficient collective bargaining system with consensus-based. Since the economic uncertainty caused by COVID-19, employers have been shut down or have had to reduce operations drastically and many employers want to furlough or dismiss employees under certain circumstances in China. Meanwhile, many workers have lost income. Since workers have gone back to the worksite in March 2020, labor unrest has spread out in order to ask for wage arrears in the manufactory, construction, and service sectors in terms of strikes map from China Labor Bulletin. The paper targets on three different countries with top economies, and examines its bargaining models to keep industrial peace. The paper argues that China bargaining model under state-control strongly depends on government intention for intervention where there is labor unrest, and the system less focuses on self-governance which may result in a hard time to maintain industrial resources, even though the state issued the related policies to highly encouraged companies to hold a negotiation before the lay off workers, reduce wages or work time in order to be employed. While fewer polices and China traditional command-and-control regulation models could not provide an efficient approach to relief labor unrest in the pandemic, Germany's bargaining model is more flexible to provide an example for new governance and co-determination. Also, the bargaining model with sector-level reforms could do more for the United States private sectors in order to the corporation instead of adversarialism. From a comparison among three collective bargaining models, the paper concludes the approaches to protect workers’ rights from global perspectives.

Bargaining for Security with Flexibility in Toronto’s Attendant Services

This chapter studies Toronto's attendant services. In attendant services, workers had considerable labor market security through relatively high wages, benefits, and job protection. Managers did not willingly support workers' security but rather the union pushed them to do so. This security coincided with limited flexibility at the labor market level in that consumers had little influence over which attendant helped them on a given shift. Nevertheless, attendants and consumers alike gave many examples of bargaining for flexibility and security at the intimate level. Interviews with consumers, attendants, union activists, disability activists, and employers support the claim that, overall, attendant services included a process of collective negotiation marked by representative and participatory democracy for both groups and an outcome of compromises.

REFORMA TRABALHISTA: precarização do trabalho e os desafios para o sindicalismo

<p><span>O artigo se propõe a identificar os impactos iniciais da reforma trabalhista sobre o sindicalismo em um contexto desfavorável aos trabalhadores e à ação coletiva, dado o crescimento da precariedade e da informalidade no mercado de trabalho. A análise trata da reconfiguração das classes trabalhadoras e da fragmentação sindical, bem como dos impactos da reforma sobre as estratégias e ações sindicais e sobre as negociações coletivas. A metodologia combinou pesquisas quantitativas sobre mercado de trabalho com análise documental (instrumentos normativos, matérias de imprensa comercial e sindical) e observação participante. Os resultados mostram que os sindicatos buscam se adaptar ao novo contexto, com pequenas inovações substantivas na ação e organização, e que as negociações têm sido tanto espaço de resistência quanto de legitimação do conteúdo da reforma.</span></p><p> </p><div><p class="trans-title"><strong>LABOR REFORM: precarious work and the challenges for unions</strong></p><p>The paper proposes to identify the initial impacts of the labor reform on trade unionism, in a context that is unfavorable to workers and to collective action, resulting from the transformations in the reconfiguration of the working classes, with the growth of precariousness and crisis of the labor market. The analysis focuses on the impacts of this reconfiguration of the working classes and the fragmentation of trade unions, as well as the impacts of the labor reform on union strategies and actions and on collective negotiation. The methodology combined quantitative labor market research with documents (collectives work contracts, commercial and trade union press materials) and participant observation. The results show that the trade unions are searching to adapt to the new context with some substantive innovations in action and organization. The latest negotiations have been, at the same time, spaces of resistance and legitimization of the content of the reform.</p><p><strong>Key words: </strong>Trade unionism; Labor reform; Precariousness; And collective bargaining</p><p> </p></div><div><p class="trans-title"><strong>RÉFORME DU TRAVAIL: le travail précaire et les défis du syndicalisme</strong></p><p>L’article propose d’identifier les impacts initiaux de la réforme du travail sur le syndicalisme, dans un contexte défavorable aux travailleurs et à l’action collective, en raison du développement de la précarité et de l’informalité dans le marché du travail. L’analyse porte sur la reconfiguration de la classe ouvrière et de la fragmentation syndicale, aussi bien que sur les impacts de la réforme sur les stratégies et actions des syndicats et sur la négociation collective. La méthodologie combine une étude quantitative du marché du travail avec des documents (contrats de travail collectives, matériel de presse commerciale et syndicale) et de l’observation participante. Les résultats montrent que les syndicats essayent de s’adapter au nouveau contexte, avec de petites innovations substantielles dans l’action et l’organisation, et que les négociations sont autant des espaces de résistance comme de légitimation du contenu de la réforme.</p><p><strong>Key words: </strong>Syndicalisme; Réforme du travail; Précarité; Négociation collective</p></div>