Tracy F. H. Chang

Corporations Go to Prisons: The Expansion of Corporate Power in the Correctional Industry

Over the last two decades, the U.S. prison population has qua drupled, with some 1.9 million people behind bars in federal and state prisons, and local jails by the year 2000. Corporations are seeking profit-making opportunities from this prison population. In this paper, we examine two major areas through which corpora tions are capitalizing on prison labor: prison privatization and prison industry. We briefly review key explanations of incarceration, re port on the current state of prison privatization and prison indus trialization, examine the impact they have on organized labor, and propose union strategies in fighting against the expansion of cor porate power in the correctional industry.

PACE International Union vs. Imerys Groupe: An Organizing Campaign Case Study

This paper analyzes a case study of a campaign in rural Alabama in 2000, when the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union (PACE) organized against the French-based Imerys Groupe (the product of the 1999 merger of English China Clays and Imetal). Within days of the merger, Imerys withdrew recognition and implemented new terms and conditions of employment at the former Imetal plant where PACE had repre sented the workforce. PACE at once developed a systematic three- part plan of action to counter the companys strategy. The three interdependent parts included: a) the traditional, local campaign in Alabama; b) regulatory challenges through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Europe; and c) the international campaign coordinated through the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine, and Gen eral Workers Union (ICEM) in Washington, D.C., Brussels, Bel gium, Paris, and London. We discuss the tactics and strategy that led to PACEs winning campaign against the multinational corpo rate behavior that U.S.-based unions increasingly face.

Choosing Union Representation: The Role of Attitudes and Emotions

In the United States, most unions are recognised by a majority vote of employees through union representation elections administered by the government. Most empirical studies of individual voting behaviour during union representation elections use a rational choice model. Recently, however, some have posited that voting is often influenced by emotions. We evaluate competing hypotheses about the determinants of union voting behaviour by using data collected from a 2010 representation election at Delta Air Lines, a US-based company. In addition to the older rational choice framework, multiple regression results provide support for an emotional choice model. Positive feelings toward the employer are statistically significantly related to voting ‘no’ in a representation election, while positive feelings toward the union are related to a ‘yes’ vote. Effect sizes for the emotion variables were generally larger than those for the rational choice variables, suggesting that emotions may play a key role in representation election outcomes.

Electoral Activities of Southern Local Unions in the 2000 Election

This paper examines the impact of environmental and organiza tional characteristics on the electoral mobilization activities of local unions in the 2000 presidential election. Based on a sample of 140 southern local unions, the study finds that, externally, the strength of the labor movement relative to competing political interests in the state, along with the organizing and political ac tivities of international unions, promotes the electoral activism of local unions. However, both economic inequalities and racial con flicts seem to discourage the electoral activities of local unions. Internally, the development of rank-and-file leadership and inter nal organizing also supports the electoral activism of local unions. The implications of the results and some directions for future re search are discussed.

Book Review: Global Unions, Global Business. By Richard Croucher and Elizabeth Cotton. London: Middlesex University Press, 2009. 160 pp. £19.95 paper

create a linked analysis of all these phenomena, with a focus on their impact on working people and the continuing theme of increasing precariousness of their employment. Ross focuses on higher education as an industry of increasing importance because of the rapid changes occurring there, including the growing links between the academy and the knowledge corporation. Ross’ history of the past forty years in China is welcome both because this portrayal of its recent past, especially centered on the Cultural Revolution, is not well known and because the role of China in the world of the future is likely only to increase. Whether telling this story, that of the Olympics, or that of the toy industry, Ross is consistently thoughtful, if occasionally a bit too clever and “insider” in his style. His discussion of the antisweatshop movement and its relationship to the anticonsumerist wing of the environmental movement will be thought-provoking to labor educators, as it critiques both their insularity and their failure to take into account the actual needs, longand short-term, of real working people. His discussion of many topics is clearly informed by his own history as an activist who played a role in supporting the unionization movement of grads and non-tenure-track faculty at New York University. His respect for those doing the work on the ground is most welcome. Both of these books would be worth reading for labor educators, since they help us understand some of possible directions for the future labor movement, which will certainly be more focused on creative, knowledge, and professional workers than in the past. The theoretical focus and readability level of both books, as well as the background needed, ensure that they can only be used selectively in noncredit labor education classes. However, in upper-division labor studies classes, both of these books could find a place on the list.

Power at Work: Building a Teamster Member to Member Action Network. Produced by International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 15 minutes

information to members or gather information and ideas from members. More importantly, the personal face-to-face contact builds membership involvement and solidarity. An effective member-to-member communication and action network is critical to successfully mobilizing members in organizing drives, organizing around issues, contract campaigns, and political actions. The video first explains how to set up the one-on-one network. The major task in this first stage is to identify and recruit canvassers. The number of canvassers needed depends on the size of the local. Ideally, there should be one canvasser for every five to ten members. Each canvasser is responsible for contacting each member face-to-face to either fmd out what members think or get their commitment to act and participate. It is important that each canvasser keeps good written records of each member’s response so the leadership can assess the level of participate