Reorganizing School Lunch for a More Just and Sustainable Food System in the US

Public school lunch programs in the United States are contested political terrains shaped by government agencies, civil society activists, and agri-food companies. The particular organization of these programs has consequences for public health, social justice, and ecological sustainability. This contribution draws on political economy, critical food studies, and feminist economics to analyze the US National School Lunch Program, one of the world's oldest and largest government-sponsored school lunch programs. It makes visible the social and environmental costs of the “heat-and-serve” economy, where widely used metrics consider only the speed and volume of service as productive work. This study demonstrates that such a narrow understanding of the labor of lunch devalues care and undercuts the potential for school food provisioning to promote ecological and feminist goals. Further, it proposes a “high road” alternative and outlines an agenda for reorganizing school food provisioning to maximize care in all its dimensions.     

劳动过程理论视角下的劳资关系研究述评

劳动过程理论视角下的劳资关系研究是当代劳资关系研究的三大流派之一,从马克思《资本论》第1卷问世以来,劳动过程理论及其内嵌的劳资关系研究已有众多学者的作品问世,它们从不同层面丰富和发展了劳动过程理论,而嵌入其中的劳资关系研究也随之呈现出多样化和多元化景观。理论的演进伴随实践的发展,其解释力也逐渐增强,劳动过程理论视角下的劳资关系研究为解释当代的弹性劳资关系网络的形成奠定了基础。     

浅谈中等职业学校学生的素质培养

由于社会在不断地发展,就对职校生提出了新的要求。作为职业教育学校所培养的学生,应该具备什么样的知识,具备什么样的素质,这是一个需要探讨的问题。而所谓职业教育,是指对受教育者实施的某种职业或生产劳动所需的知识和技能的教育。1996年5月15日颁布的《中华人民共和国职业教育法》,规定了建立、健全包括职业学校教育与职业培训的职业教育体系。     

农村电子商务发展与农村富余劳动力安置问题研究

随着中国城镇化进程不断推进,农村现代化加速运行,尤其是中国农村土地制度产生了重大的变革,中国农村需要面对的剩余劳动力转移与安置问题愈发严重。怎么将这些劳动力从农业转移到其它生产部门,在安置劳动力保证社会平稳过渡的同时,实现农村经济长期可持续发展,是我国在实现农业现代化与新型城市化中必须要解决的问题。文章为研究我国的富余劳动力安置问题,从中国农村土地流转改革与新型城镇化发展这一重要现实背景出发,分析目前与未来中国产生大量农村富余劳动力的转移安置与可持续发展的前景,在产业不断优化转移的大趋势下以农村电商的发展为突破口,从目前我国农村电子商务的现状、问题以及农村电商的发展出路进行了分析,得出农村电商将成为中国农村剩余劳动力的重要安置路径之一。     

Creating Opportunities for Women in the Renewable Energy Sector: Findings from India

This paper identifies opportunities and constraints that low-income women face in accessing livelihoods in the renewable-energy sector in India through qualitative and quantitative research conducted in collaboration with The Energy Resources Institute (TERI) and the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) in 2012–13. Whereas previous research has focused on women mostly as end users of solar and biomass technologies, this research attempts also to understand women's potential as entrepreneurs, facilitators, designers, and innovators. Findings reveal that although access to technology and employment in the energy sector is limited by inadequate purchasing power and low social status, there is tremendous potential to create livelihoods for women at all levels of the energy supply chain. Broader findings indicate that women can gain optimal traction from employment in the energy sector only if there are wider socially progressive policies in place, including state intervention to create a robust social welfare infrastructure and accessible, high-quality, public services.     

Labor Unions and Forms of Corporate Liquidity

We examine how the presence of labor unions affects a firm's choice of corporate liquidity between bank lines of credit and corporate cash holdings. We find that firms in industries with higher unionization rates hold a higher fraction of corporate liquidity in the form of bank lines of credit. We divide the firms into sub‐groups and find that this positive relationship holds for firms that are not in a state with right‐to‐work legislation and for firms that are financially constrained. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that a firm chooses the forms of corporate liquidity to take advantage of the bargaining benefits associated with bank lines of credit.     

Earnings Instability and Tenure

We study the effect of tenure on earnings instability in Italy using the reforms of temporary employment contracts, which affected the average tenure of workers differentially across cohorts. We develop a model of earnings dynamics, and we exploit the variation of tenure and instability over time and across birth cohorts to estimate policy‐relevant parameters. Our results indicate that each year of tenure on the job reduces earnings instability by 11 percent; the drop is faster in the first three years of the match. Workers on a temporary contract have an earnings instability up to 100 percent higher than workers on a permanent contract.     

Female participation in African labor markets: The role of information and communication technologies

This article investigates the effects of information and communication technologies (ICT) on female labor force participation in a sample of 48 African countries. We specify and estimate linear regression and dynamic panel data models with fixed effects (FE) and system-generalized method of moments (SYS-GMM) estimation over the period 2001–2017. The three main results are that ICT use (mobile phone and internet) significantly stimulates female labor force participation in Africa; this effect is enhanced by financial development and female education; the effect of ICT on female employment in Africa is strongest in the industrial sector. These results remain robust to the provision of social, cultural, and institutional variables.     

Legal evolution of the concept of ‘home base’ for the purpose of determining labour and social security law applicable to European aircrew members

This paper has a dual aim: (1) to outline the legal evolution of the ‘home base’ concept and (2) to map the role of this concept in determining the law applicable (both employment law and social security law) to employment contracts of European aircrew members. An in-depth analysis of the relevant portions of (1) Reg. (EEC) No 3922/91, (2) Reg. (EU) No 465/2012, (3) Reg. (EU) No 83/2014, (4) EASA's 2014 Certification Specifications, and (5) the European Court of Justice's preliminary ruling on joined cases C-168/16 and C-169/16 is conducted.What emerges is that (1) the ‘home base’ definition, due to its subjectivity, has traditionally been susceptible to multiple interpretations and (2) due to regulatory ambiguity, the use of ‘home base’ to identify the labour laws applicable to airline workers has for a long time been inconsistent, ranging from one extreme (being considered a key element for this purpose) to the other (being assigned a secondary role). It was only in the last few years that some improvements were made, with Reg. (EU) No 465/2012 first and the European Court of Justice's 2017 preliminary ruling then, clarifying that the ‘home base’ concept must be assigned a central role in the determination of the law (both social security law and employment law) applicable to employment contracts in the aviation industry.     

Job protection,housing market regulation,and the youth

Young Europeans experience high unemployment rates, job instability, and late emancipation. Meanwhile, they do not support reforms weakening protection on long‐term contracts. In this paper, we suggest a possible rationale for such reform distaste. When the rental market is strongly regulated, landlords screen applicants with regard to their ability to pay the rent. Protecting regular jobs offers a second‐best technology to sort workers, thereby increasing the rental market size. We provide a model where nonemployed workers demand protected jobs despite unemployment and the share of short‐term jobs increases, whereas the individual risk of dismissal is unaffected. Our theory can be extended to alternative risks and markets involving correlated risks and commitment under imperfect information.