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Job Announcement: Department of Sociology at the Universidad del Rosario

3/26/2017

The Department of Sociology at the Universidad del Rosario invites applications for two (2) Principal Professor positions in Sociology (in Spanish):
http://www.urosario.edu.co/Periodico-Nova-Et-Vetera/Actualidad-Rosarista/Convocatoria-Cargo-de-Profesor-Principal-para-el/#ECHTab1
Over the last 20 years our sociology program has made relevant contributions to the social sciences in Colombia and Latin America. The sociology program is part of the School of Human Sciences. This school promotes and practices interdisciplinarity with emphasis on research. The Universidad del Rosario is one of the main universities in Colombia, evidenced by the high qualification of its professors, their membership to important academic networks, the high quality publications and the outstanding performance of its students and Alumni. The university offers a competitive salary at international level. Bogota has a wide offer of services of education, health, housing, culture, and tourism. Application documents will be received until March 31th 2017. In the enclosed call is the information of the two profiles. We will be glad of answering any inquiry regarding this call.

Thanks and regards,

Jairo Baquero-Melo, Dr Phil
Head of the Sociology Department
School of Human Sciences
Universidad del Rosario

Email: jairo.baquero@urosario.edu.co
*****************
Queremos comunicar que tenemos abierto un concurso docente para dos (2) plazas de Profesor Principal para el Programa de Sociología de la Universidad del Rosario (agradecemos la circulación entre posibles interesados(as)):
http://www.urosario.edu.co/Periodico-Nova-Et-Vetera/Actualidad-Rosarista/Convocatoria-Cargo-de-Profesor-Principal-para-el/#ECHTab1
Nuestro programa cumplió 20 años en 2016 y hace parte de la Escuela de Ciencias Humanas. Esta Escuela promueve y practica la interdisciplinariedad y el énfasis en la investigación. La Universidad del Rosario es una de las principales universidades de Colombia, lo que se evidencia en el alto nivel de formación de sus docentes, su pertenencia a importantes redes académicas internacionales y nacionales, las publicaciones de alta calidad de sus docentes, y el desempeño sobresaliente de sus egresados. La universidad ofrece un salario competitivo a nivel internacional y Bogotá tiene una oferta amplia de servicios de educación, salud, vivienda, cultura y turismo. Se recibirán documentos hasta el 31 de Marzo de 2017. En la convocatoria está la información de los dos perfiles y del proceso y estaremos dispuestos a resolver cualquier pregunta de los(as) interesados(as).

Gracias y saludos,

Jairo Baquero-Melo, Dr Phil
Director, Programa de Sociología
Escuela de Ciencias Humanas
Universidad del Rosario
Email: jairo.baquero@urosario.edu.co

SEIU 32BJ New Organizer Training Program

3/26/2017

SEIU 32BJ is pleased to announce the New Organizer Training Program!

The New Organizer Training Program is an opportunity for aspiring organizers to learn and practice the skills the need to organize for change. This program is for individuals who are ready and interested in an organizing career path. Please see the following link for additional information and to apply: http://www.seiu32bj.org/the-2017-32bj-seiu-new-organizer-training-program/
The 32BJ New Organizer Training Program formerly known as the Summer Brigade program offers a unique opportunity for aspiring organizers to learn the basics of workers organizing and about how the labor movement works. The program offers hands-on organizing experience through campaign field work, moving workers to take action, winning change as well as combined regular labor history and skill building workshops.

Participants in the program will build skills in: conversations with low-wage workers at home and in the workplace about the power of a union; identifying workplace leaders; mapping a workplace; mobilizing workers to take action; supporting and planning protests, demonstrations, and actions. The new organizer training program will put your skills into action in our following locations: New York, New Jersey, Boston, Florida, Philadelphia and the Washington DC area. Strengthen and develop your skills for campaigns of all kinds!

Successful participants may be invited to our job-track Organizing Fellowship program upon completion of this program.

CfP: Contesting Markets: How Organizations and Social Movements Shape the Political Economy (Special Issue of Socio-Economic Review)

3/26/2017

Call for Papers

Contesting Markets: How Organizations and
Social Movements Shape the Political Economy

Special Issue of Socio-Economic Review

Guest Editors:
Neil Fligstein (University of California-Berkeley)
Doug McAdam (Stanford University)

Timeline:
Submission deadline: September 1, 2017
Publication of the special issue in the Socio-Economic Review: 2019

Background
For the past 20 years, scholars of social movements and those who study corporations have been in dialogue. We have witnessed a vibrant exchange about how social movements challenge firms to change their strategies, create the conditions to support new industries, and explain the emergence of new markets as reflecting social movement like processes. For example, social movements have successfully altered the tactics of firms in the apparel and forest product industries (Bartley, 2003) and in biotechnology (Weber, Rao, and Thomas, 2009; for a review see King and Pearce, 2010). They have led to the legitimation of new industries like hospice care (Livne, 2014) and the market for insurance viaticals (Quinn, 2008). Scholars interested in the process of market emergence and change have viewed market formation processes as akin to social movements as they require the creation of new products, new firms, new identities, and political solutions to market contentiousness (Haveman, Rao, and Thomas, 2007; Lounsbury, Ventrusca, and Hirsch, 2003). Fligstein and McAdam (2012) have proposed a more general theory of social spaces that explain why these different kinds of links exist between social movements and market fields.

But so far, little work has explored the links between these more meso-level processes and more macro-level political economy approaches, especially the study of comparative capitalisms (see Deeg and Jackson 2007). The purpose of the Special Issue is to bring these literatures into a greater two-way dialogue. The literature on politics, social movements, and markets focuses on selecting cases where the scholars know something has changed. By doing so, these studies fail to locate the particular movement organization in a larger context of competing social movement organizations and larger political structures. Meanwhile, comparative capitalisms scholarship has strengths in understanding macro-level institutional variety, the resulting national models of production, and how existing political and economic institutions face challenges by preserving and extending the power of incumbent actors, albeit often accompanied by incremental change. Yet this literature often misses the dynamics around new emerging actors, the creation of new markets and the role that social movement politics play in shaping capitalism, both nationally and internationally.

What we are hoping to encourage with the special issue is something akin to the comparative literature within social movement studies. Among the most important works in this tradition would be Kriesi et al. (1995) on the variable strength and impact of the “new social movements” across five Western European countries and Brockett (2005) and Almeida (2015) on the way established actors and institutions mediated the trajectory of grass roots movements in Central America. In these works, movements are not simply acting, but acted upon. Our goal is to conceptualize of emergent firms and movement actors within the context of established political economies and institutions. We ask not only if and how they impact this institutional environment, but also how established political actors and firms and institutions constrain or facilitate emergent mobilization by firms and movement actors.

Key Themes
The call is open to all topics that fit the general scope of the Special Issue, but we wish to illustrate potential themes as follows:

· Why do social movement organizations in competition with stable political and market fields either succeed or fail in their contest with other actors like firms, political parties, and government Bailey, 2015; Jung, 2015?
· Why does one of a set of competing social movement organizations impact politics and how does the resistance from firms and states affect which of these organizations is successful and which is not?
· How do social movements shape new markets and affect old ones, like the markets for social media and the production of alternative energy sources?
· How do existing political arrangements, social movements, and firms affect such issues as climate change and environmental regulation?
· How do new actors mobilize support for new markets or transforming existing markets in different countries and what impact does this have on different national models of production?
· How do changing information technologies in new or destabilized markets impact contentious politics and institutional change in different types of capitalism?
· When do transnational processes of social movement change get going and what explains the unevenness of their effects in different countries and regions?
· How are new forms of private regulation and governance related to social movements and firms, on one hand, and existing state policies, on the other?

Submissions
Papers will be reviewed following the journal’s normal double-blinded review process and criteria. The maximum length of articles including references, notes and abstract is 10,000 words. Articles must be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 150 words. The main document has to be anonymous and should contain title, abstract, and strictly avoid self-references. Submissions should be directed through the on-line submission system: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ser

For further guidelines on submissions and the editorial statement of the Socio-Economic Review, please visit our website at: http://ser.oxfordjournals.org

For further information for this Special Issue, please contact one of the Guest Editors: Neil Fligstein (fligst@berkeley.edu) and Doug McAdam (mcadam@stanford.edu), particularly if you have concerns about whether or not your paper fits the Special Issue.

References
Almeida, Paul. 2015. “Democratization and the Revitalization of Popular Movements in Central America.” Pp. 166-185 in B. Klandermans and C. van Stralen, eds., Social Movements in Times of Democratic Transition. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Bailey, David. 2015. “Resistance is Futile? The Impact of Disruptive Protest in the Silver Age of Permanent Austerity.” Socio-Economic Review 13 (1): 5-32.

Bartley, Tim. 2003. “Certifying Forests and Factories: States, Social Movements, and the Rise of Private Regulation in the Apparel and Forest Products Fields.” Politics & Society 31(3):433‐464.

Brockett, Charles. 2005. Political Movements and Violence in Central America. Cambridge University Press. New York.

Deeg, Richard and Gregory Jackson. 2007. Towards A More Dynamic Theory of Capitalist Variety. Socio-Economic Review, 5(1), 149-180.

Fligstein, Neil and Doug McAdam. 2012. A Theory of Fields. New York: Oxford University Press.

Haveman, Heather, Hayagreeva Rao, and Srikant Parachuri. 2007. “The Winds of Change: The Progressive Movement and the Bureaucratization of Thrifts.” American Sociological Review.72(1):117-142

Jung, Jiwook. 2015. “A Struggle on Two Fronts: Labour Resistance to Changing Layoff Policies at Large U.S. Companies.” Socio-Economic Review doi: 10.1093/ser/mwv015.

King, Brayden and Nicholas Pearce. 2010. The Contentiousness of Markets: Politics, Social Movements, and Institutional Change in Markets. Annual Review of Sociology. 36: 249-67.

Kriesi, Hanspeter, Ruud Koopmans, Jan Willem Duyvendak, and Marco G. Guigni. 1995. New Social Movements in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press.

Livne, Roi. 2014. "Economies of Dying: The Moralization of Economic Scarcity in U.S. Hospice Care." American Sociological Review 79(5): 888-911.

Lounsbury, Michael, Marc Ventrusca, and Paul Hirsch. 2003. “Social Movements, Field Frames and Industry Emergence: a cultural-political perspective on U.S. Recycling. Socio-Economic Review 1(1: 71-104.

Quinn, Sarah. 2008. “The Transformation of Morals in Markets: Death, Benefits, and the Exchange of Life Insurance Policies.” American Journal of Sociology 114(3): 738–80.

Weber, Klaus, Hayagreeva Rao, and L.G. Thomas. 2009. “From Streets To Suites: How the Anti-Biotech Movement Affected German Pharmaceutical Firms”. American Sociological Review 73 (1): 106-127.

Work in Progress: Sociology on the Economy, Work and Inequality

3/26/2017

From section member Matt Vidal, editor of Work in Progress:

Latest from Work in Progress

How policies shape workers’ perceptions of job security (Lena Hipp)
What the experiences of breadwinner workers tell us about work (and home) (Noelle Chesley)
For Mexican migrants skills learned in the United States create new opportunities for business formation and economic mobility (Jacqueline Maria Hagan and Joshua Wassin)
Frontline employee voice through labor-management partnership in the healthcare setting (Ariel C. FrontlineAvgar, Julie Sadler, Paul Clark and Wonjoon Chung)
Safety pins, awareness ribbons, and the challenges of new symbols (Terence E. McDonnell)

Book Announcement: Andrew Kolin, Political Economy of Labor Repression in the United States.

3/26/2017

Andrew Kolin, Political Economy of Labor Repression in the United States. (Rowman &Littlefield, Lexington Books 2017)

This book presents a detailed explanation of the essential elements that characterize capital labor relations and the resulting social conflict that leads to repression of labor. It links repression to the class struggle between capital and labor. The starting point involves an historical approach used to explore labor repression after the American Revolution. What follows is an examination of the role of government along with the growth of American capitalism to analyze capital-labor conflict. Subsequent chapters trace US history during the 19th century to discuss the question of the role assumed by the inclusion/exclusion of capital and labor in political-economic structures, which in turn lead to repression. This book explains how and why labor continues to confront repression in the 20th and 21st centuries.

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498524025/Political-Economy-of-Labor-Repression-in-the-United-States.

Trump and the Working Class: Lessons for Activists and Scholars

3/26/2017

Trump and the Working Class:
Lessons for Activists and Scholars

Thanks to Chris Rhomberg and Labor Section for including a serious discussion of the relationship of the Trump electoral victory to the working class in the latest issue of In Critical Solidarity. And especially to Shannon Gleeson, Peter Evans, and Jeff Rothstein for insights and arguments that frame an urgent discussion that has only just begun. Of course– if the history of the academic left’s analyses of U.S. electoral politics is any guide – it will probably continue for the next four years (or eight) without any real resolution.

I nevertheless think the Gleeson-Evan-Rothstein trialogue is a good start, and I want to build on it by further commenting on what I think is an implicit disagreement around the issue of how to address the immense bigotry within the white working class that Trump harnessed and activated – and at the same time win over the white working class to Consider first Peter Evan’s comment on Nevada as a bright light in the otherwise dark election:

Labor must take the sources of Trump’s success and turn them around. If racism and xenophobia are key resources for reaction, the energy and determination of workers of color are key resources for the labor movement. The success of the Las Vegas Culinary Union Local 226 in the 2016 election in Nevada illustrates the point concretely.   The “Culinary” is not only the largest union in Nevada; it is also the largest immigrant organization and the largest African-American organization in Nevada. The Culinary’s 60,000 members knocked on 350,000 doors and talked to 75,000 voters. They helped turn a “battleground state” into one of the few 2016 bright spots. Trump lost the state and Nevada elected the first Latina to the U.S. Senate.

Evans’ (almost explicit) argument here – that electoral success could be (or could have) been achieved by doubling down on the strength and militance of the minority (racial and gender) groups that have been the target of the Trump campaign – is quite different from the (almost explicit) argument contained in Jeff Rothstein’s analysis of the negative results in rust belt states, most notably Michigan and Wisconsin.

In some ways we’ve come full circle. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton and his Democratic Leadership Council kissed-off the working class, selling NAFTA and trade with China as opportunities to open foreign markets for American goods – though they knew the economic calculus was far more complicated than that. Instead, here in the upper mid-west, we got WalMart, meager support for displaced workers, and declining standards of living for many. So a couple of decades later the working class threw their support behind the guy who said it had all been a big mistake.

These two commentaries can both be correct, if we acknowledge that the Rothstein reference to the “working class” refers it the white (and mainly male) portion of the Michigan working class. The equation is simple: in both states, a large majority of the white male working class – acting as much on bigotry as on economic issues – voted for Trump. The difference was simply that there were more – and better organized (by the Culinary) – (largely female) minority votes in Nevada, enough to overcome the tidal wave of white (mainly male) working class support for Trump.

But this perfectly reasonable logic is simply not true. In reality, Nevada and Michigan have almost equal proportions of white voters (82% to 79%); and historically white Nevadans are GOP affiliated, while white Michiganders are Democrats. The big difference was that a substantially larger proportion of the white male working class voted against Trump in Nevada than in Michigan (and Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania).

This fact creates a paradox and brings us back to an almost-aside in Evans’ comment: “the energy and determination of workers of color are key resources for the labor movement.” Apparently, the canvassing and high visibility advocacy by the Culinary not only brought out the Latino and Black vote, but also mobilized (a substantial part of) the white male working class in Nevada. And this also fits with Shannon Gleeson’s contribution to the In Critical Solidarity trialogue: that the victory of Trump requires more energetic activism by “women, Muslims, LGBTQ individuals, and persons of color all over [who] have come under attack.”

But really, why did and why should minority activism win over white workers, imbued as they are with racism and focused as they are on their own economic difficulties. I think the answer lies in a bit of history of the Culinary. Evans did not mention that the Culinary recently forced the Trump Organization to accept unionization in both its Las Vegas and Washington DC hotels, the first labor union victory over Trump that I have heard of. The high profile strugglethat led to this victory surely damaged Trump’s image with the white male working class just because it undermined his image of omnipotence. But a far more important result was the way it was received in Nevada: as a victory for the entire working class, and not just for Latino and Black workers who make up the majority (but by no means all) of the union members.

Much more important than the Trump victory was and is the Culinary’s remarkable decade-long record in organizing and sustaining living-wage unionization in Las Vegas. Evans mentioned that the Culinary is the largest union, the largest immigrant organization, and the largest African-American organization, but he failed to emphasized that it is also the most powerful and successful representative of the (white!) working class in Nevada, and has been for a long time. The Culinary unionization drive – including the victory of Trump – has directly benefited the union’s many white members; many other Las Vegan non-union (white) workers have experienced cascading increases in wages and benefits deriving from the unionization of the core local industry; and large numbers of (white) workers have reaped the benefits of Culinary’s political activism around government services.

When the Culinary campaigned against Trump, they brought to the table the credibility of their successes in producing changes that benefited the (white) working class. As a consequence, they overcame and maybe even dissipated the bigotry that Trump customary harnesses. In Nevada, large chunks of the (previously and currently racist) white working class have experienced personal and collective benefits that derive from “the energy and determination of workers of color,” and have learned that their own interests lie with a union led by minority women, and not with a billionaire capitalist – if given power – will pay immiserating wages to (even his white male) workers.

So much of the recent popular media discourse has been devoted to advising the progressive and labor organizers to move away the issues of racial and gender minorities because such identity demands do not appeal to either the interest or morality of the (racist and misogynist) white male workers. The continued pursuit of these identity issues will insure that the (white, mainly male) working class will be available to Trump and other demagogues, who will harness their bigotry not only to defeat the identity demands, but also to institute amplified discrimination, ethnic cleansing, and worse. Instead, the perspective argues, progressive and labor activist should press for “classwide” demands that directly address the economic and material grievances of the (white male, as well as non-white and female) working class. Adopt issues like repairing the infrastructure, free college tuition, and repatriation of industrial jobs to the United States.

By now we should be fully aware of the double trap that this logic produces. On the one hand, as Shannon Gleeson made clear in her commentary, now is the time when defending “identity” demands is most urgent, because the period of amplified discrimination, ethnic cleansing, and worse is upon us, so we have to understand how to stop it now. And, on the other hand, the option of “classwide demands” that do not raise the hackles of the white working class has been tried for just about four centuries now – ever since the first African “indentured servants” arrived at Jamestown in 1619. So often progressives have pursued “class wide demands,” – including union recognition, social security, unemployment insurance, affordable home ownership, etc. etc. etc. And we have discovered that the “classwide” services and concessions were delivered to white male workers, while gender and racial minorities (as domestic or agricultural workers for example) were systematically excluded.


The process of paying even greater attention to these “identity” movements while trying to “win back” the white working class appears to be a hopeless contradiction until we consider the that the Culinary example allows us to square this circle. Progressives and labor activists have to emulate the Culinary Workers, who harnessed the strength, militance, and commitment of Latino and Black workers to establish a strategy for simultaneously redressing discrimination against minorities and class oppression.   And it’s not so hard to see how this can be done. IN addition to the Culinary example, consider the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina, another minority led movement that has mobilized a surprising number of white workers who appreciate that that voter suppression, educational corruption, and multiplex discrimination impacts that their lives and livelihood. And beyond this, consider prison reform movement and the Black Lives Matter movement’s demands for the transfer of resources from violent police to reformed education. Both of these should find important support in white communities that are impacted by these issues.

What needs to happen is that progressives and labor activists have to deliver the message the urgent issues currently being raised by gender and racial minorities are indeed “classwide” issues and they need, require, and will reward the activism of white male workers.

We should not accept the media’s presentation of Super incarceration and educational failure is a major issue for white working class families. This is the route for winning white workers away from their engrained racism, and making them allies – instead of enemies – in the class struggle.

Michael Schwartz
Distinguished Teaching Professor, Emeritus
Founding Director, College of Global Studies
Past President, University Senate
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook NY 11794

UMass Amherst Labor Center has opened applications for their new, accelerated master's degree in Labor Studies

3/26/2017

The UMass Amherst Labor Center is accepting applications for our new, accelerated master’s degree in Labor Studies. Beginning in Fall 2017, students can complete the program with only one year of residency.

For over fifty years, we have built one of the premiere graduate programs in Labor Studies in the United States. With a near 100% placement record, our graduates join over 1,000 alumni in key positions in the labor movement and other social justice organizations.

We are delighted to report that the overwhelming support by our allies has strengthened our program and we are now fortunate to offer up to 10 teaching assistantships and internships for the Fall. These positions cover tuition costs and provide a stipend. Students with assistantships and internships are members of the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO), a union affiliated with the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2322.

Earning your master’s degree in Labor Studies at the UMass Labor Center puts you right at the center of the issues and debates around labor, work, and social justice. Labor is changing. As the attacks on labor have intensified, unions have been taking bold new directions. They have also combined efforts with a wide variety of alt-labor organizations, building strong connections with new social movements in broad-based coalitions for justice.

Become one of our graduates who is at the forefront of many of these exciting developments to build justice and dignity in the workplace and the community, here and abroad.
We would appreciate if you could circulate this message widely and help us to find the next group of activists for our incoming class in September.

More information on the program is available at www.umass.edu/lrrc/graduate, or you may contact me directly at juravich@lrrc.umass.edu or 413-545-5986.

Thank you,
Tom Juravich, Interim Director
UMass Labor Center
University of Massachusetts Amherst

Job Announcement: Department of Sociology at the Universidad del Rosario

SEIU 32BJ New Organizer Training Program

CfP: Contesting Markets: How Organizations and Social Movements Shape the Political Economy (Special Issue of Socio-Economic Review)

Work in Progress: Sociology on the Economy, Work and Inequality

Book Announcement: Andrew Kolin, Political Economy of Labor Repression in the United States.

Trump and the Working Class: Lessons for Activists and Scholars

UMass Amherst Labor Center has opened applications for their new, accelerated master's degree in Labor Studies

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