2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike, Dr. Martin Luther King’s last struggle, in the course of which his life was cut short.  To commemorate and reflect on these events, a group of organizations linked to the ASA meetings will be doing a showing of At The River I Stand, a documentary about that history.  The movie will be followed by a short panel and discussion featuring Deborrah Dancy, a staff member at Brooklyn College who as a teen took part in support for the strike and in civil rights activism in Memphis, and Glenn Bracey, professor of sociology at Villanova, who will offer broader reflections on the 1968 Memphis campaign and its connections with issues and struggles we face today.
 
The event is cosponsored by the Association of Black Sociologists, and the ASA sections on Labor and Labor Movements, Marxist Sociology, Race/Gender/Class, and Racial and Ethnic Minorities.   It will take place on the evening of Monday, August 13 at the Ibrahim Theater at the International House http://ihousephilly.org/conferencecenter/ibrahim-theater, near the ASA conference venue (about 20 minutes away by transit).  The movie is at 6:30pm, followed by a short panel (with time for audience questions and discussion) 7:30-8:00pm.  The Labor and Labor Movements and Marxist Sociology Sections will also be hosting a joint reception in the same venue up till 9:30, and those attending the movie and panel are welcome to join the reception as well.

Movie and panel marking the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike, Martin Luther King’s last struggle
 
2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike, Dr. Martin Luther King’s last struggle, in the course of which his life was cut short.  To commemorate and reflect on these events, a group of organizations linked to the ASA meetings will be doing a showing of At The River I Stand, a documentary about that history.  The movie will be followed by a short panel and discussion featuring Deborrah Dancy, a staff member at Brooklyn College who as a teen took part in support for the strike and in civil rights activism in Memphis, and Glenn Bracey, professor of sociology at Villanova, who will offer broader reflections on the 1968 Memphis campaign and its connections with issues and struggles we face today.
 
The event is cosponsored by the Association of Black Sociologists, and the ASA sections on Labor and Labor Movements, Marxist Sociology, Race/Gender/Class, and Racial and Ethnic Minorities.   It will take place on the evening of Monday, August 13 at the Ibrahim Theater at the International House, near the ASA conference venue (about 20 minutes away by transit).  The movie is at 6:30pm, followed by a short panel (with time for audience questions and discussion) 7:30-8:00pm.  The Labor and Labor Movements and Marxist Sociology Sections will also be hosting a joint reception in the same venue up till 9:30, and those attending the movie and panel are welcome to join the reception as well.
 
 
Labor and Labor Movement Section Panels (Mostly on Monday, August 13th)
 
3174 - Labor, Labor Movements and the Right
Mon, August 13, 8:30 to 10:10am, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, Franklin Hall 10
 
3468 - Race and Labor and the 50th Anniversary of the Memphis Strike
Mon, August 13, 2:30 to 4:10pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, Franklin Hall 4
 
1456 - Worker Mobilization in China and India
Sat, August 11, 2:30 to 4:10pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, 411
 
Section on Labor and Labor Movements Refereed Roundtable Session
Mon, August 13, 10:30 to 11:30am, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 5, Salon D
 
3281 - Section on Labor and Labor Movements Business Meeting
Mon, August 13, 11:30am to 12:10pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 5, Salon D
 
3568 - Race, Citizenship, and Workers
Mon, August 13, 4:30 to 6:10pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, Franklin Hall 4
 
1255 - Workers' Power in Diverse Contexts
Sat, August 11, 10:30am to 12:10pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, 410

ILR Review: CALL FOR PAPERS Conference and Special Issue on Federalism in US Work Regulation
​
The Industrial and Labor Relations Review is calling for papers for a conference and subsequent special issue devoted to the emergence (or reemergence) of Federalism in US work regulation. Janice Fine ([email protected]) and Michael Piore ([email protected]) will be guest editors of the special issue.

Scholars interested in participating should submit an abstract to the Journal by June 1, 2018. The abstract should be about three pages long and contain a description of the problem addressed and the argument that will be advanced, as well as the methodology and sources of data to be used. If possible, the nature of the arguments and findings should be previewed.

Authors whose abstracts are accepted will be invited to a conference jointly sponsored by the ILR School at Cornell and the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations during the fall of 2018. Conference expenses will be partially subsidized. Papers presented at this conference should be suitable for immediate submission to external reviewers. Based on the reviewers’ recommendations, discussions at the conference, and fit with the issue, a subset of authors will be asked to submit their papers to the ILR Review with the expectation that their papers will be published in a special issue if they pass the external review process. Papers that reviewers deem of good quality but are not selected for the special issue will be considered for publication in a regular issue of the journal.

Overview and Submission Procedures
The symposium is in response to a sharp increase in labor regulation at lower levels of government. Over the course of the past 10 years, 33 states and 16 cities and counties have adopted minimum wage laws higher than the federal level; 5 states, 23 cities, and 1 county have enacted paid sick leave laws; 6 states have passed domestic workers bills of rights; and 100 cities and counties have “banned the box,” removing conviction history questions on job applications. Efforts are also underway to create local policies to tackle unfair scheduling practices and to expand paid family leave. In addition, there is a longer tradition of decentralization and federalism in health and safety regulation, of particular interest because it predates the pressures that are producing federalism today. Washington State has mandated health and safety committees since 1943. In recent years, these issues have also arisen in other domains, in particular immigration policy, as state and local officials have begun to pursue policies distinct from those of the federal government, either to moderate the impact of aggressive enforcement or to amplify it.

These developments represent a reversal of patterns established in the 1930s, when labor and work regulation began to be driven by the federal government. But they also reflect a much broader approach in regulatory policy and have parallels in a variety of other policy domains including federal health insurance, environmental regulation, income support programs, and social services. Decentralization of authority, as well as responsibility, has been advocated by conservatives opposed to government regulation in general. But it has also been supported by liberals and progressives, as substantive federal policy has been blocked in recent years by political impasse and the ideological turn against regulation, trends that are accelerating under the Trump administration and the Republican congress.

While action on policy has shifted from the federal to the state and local levels, with the exception of a few cities that have been establishing offices of labor standards enforcement, there has been relatively little innovation in the area of enforcement strategy by state agencies. Paradoxically, at the federal level, while standards themselves have atrophied, there have been important developments in enforcement strategy. At the US Department of Labor, strategic enforcement, which targets highly non-compliant industries and takes advantage of industry- specific dynamics and structures to affect networks of interconnected employers, became a significant programmatic focus during the Obama administration. 

These developments raise a number of topics about the nature of the system that appears to be emerging, its impact, and its operation. Topics include: 

1. The diffusion of substantive standards, enforcement strategies, and administrative structures across jurisdictions;
2. The variation in administrative procedures across jurisdictions and its impact on prevailing working conditions and upon economic conditions;
3. Coordination across state and local jurisdictions and between lower level jurisdictions and federal agencies;
4. The variation in practice across different types of labor standards and the relationship between practices and procedures for the promulgation of labor standards and other standards and practices in other regulatory domains (e.g., building codes, environmental standards, consumer products, and so forth);
5. Comparison of local regimes across different standards;
6. Emergent conflicts between immigration and labor regulation and enforcement regimes;
7. The relationship between government standards, union organization, and collective bargaining as well as other types of worker organizations;
8. Whether shifts in enforcement authority affect business strategy or compliance;
9. What kinds of additional tools are available at the local level (e.g., bonding, restaurant licensing, building permits, and so forth); and
10. Whether and how the total funding for enforcement activity is affected by decentralization of power and authority, for example, whether the federal enforcement budget is reduced or state and local budgets expand as authority shifts to lower ​government jurisdiction. 

The symposium also aims to link these emergent themes to earlier research traditions. One tradition in legal scholarship is about conflicts of law. The other is in industrial relations scholarship about the appropriate level of collective bargaining given conflicts between labor and management, between labor and the state, and within the labor movement itself. 

We encourage submissions from all social science disciplines—anthropology, economics, history, industrial relations, law, sociology, and political science. We particularly encourage perspectives that recognize the different cultures of government agencies and seek to understand their impact on labor standards. 

http://www.rc44labour.org/the-rc44-call-for-abstracts-for-the-xix-isa-world-congress-in-toronto-15-21-07-2018/


We invite paper proposals to be submitted for the RC44 sessions during the XIX ISA World Congress in Toronto, 15-21.07.2018. The full list of sessions is available on the Congress website:
The topics of the RC44 sessions include:

• International Labour Solidarity in the Americas: Exploring New Research and Developments
• Labour Movements Under Rekindled Nationalism
• Academic Labour in Times of Authoritarianism, Violence and Injustice 
• Assessing the Supranational Strategies of International Labour Movement Organizations
• Authors Meet Critics
• China’s Labor in Global Services and Transnational Production 
• Connections Between Indigenous Peoples’ Movements and Labour Movements
• Free Trade, Labour Movements and the Search for Alternatives
• Informal and Precarious Worker Organizing Under Global Capitalism 
• Labour and Populism: Trajectories, Dilemmas, and Opportunities
• Labour and the Forces of Nature: Prospects, Paradoxes and Perspectives
• Learning from Migrant Labour Struggles: Innovative Initiatives of Precarious Workers
• Organizing in a Gig Economy: Atomized Work and the Labor Movement 
• Precarious Labour, Life and Urban StruggleRC44 Roundtable
• The Employment Standards Enforcement Gap in Ontario (Joint Session with RC44 Labour Movements)
• Trade Unions in Transformation: Acquiring and Applying Power Resources
• Xenophobia, Anti-Migrant Politics, and Workers’ Movements

Participants must submit abstracts on-line from April 25, 11:00 GMT through September 30, 2017, 24:00 GMT. The detailed instructions are available on the ISA website.
​
The RC44 Program Coordinator is Bridget KENNY, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa:  [email protected]

Call for Streams
http://www.ilpc.org.uk/

The International Labour Process Conference (ILPC) is broadly focused on work and employment relations in the context of the broader political economy, with an emphasis on workers perspectives and theory-led empirical research. Most proposals for papers are submitted to the general conference and are only themed by the organisers for the final programme at a later stage.
During the past few years, the conference has begun to incorporate streams into the program. While there is no intention to become a fully streamed event, we have found that additional streams have been an important and intellectually stimulating aspect of our conference.

We are formally setting forth a call for streams to be included in the 2018 conference to be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 21-23 March 2018. Since streams only represent a portion of our conference, we may not be able to accept all stream proposals

Acceptance of streams is based on a review process in which streams are evaluated based on two main criteria (in addition to the substantive focus of the proposed stream):

 The focus of the stream is on issues or topics not normally covered in the Conference (see the Call for Papers for such a list); or treats traditional topics in a novel way.
 The stream will broaden the audience for the conference and attract scholars who may be new to the event.

Considering this year conference special theme on Class and the Labour Process we particularly welcome stream submissions that can address this and overlapping themes in an interdisciplinary way and with contributions from both the Global North and the Global South.  Some stream topics incorporated into recent ILPC conferences are as follows.

 Precarious work and workers organisation
 Work, labour and employment in China
 The role of the state
 Integrating labour with global value chains
 Migrant labour and employment relations
 Climate change, Green jobs and Labour Movement responses
Stream proposals should include:
 Detailed description of the proposed stream (including title and key conveners)
 A discussion of how the stream will address the criteria for inclusion listed above

If you are interested in organizing a stream for the 2018 conference please send a proposal not more than 750 words to [email protected] by July 1st 2017. Decisions on acceptance will be made by July 31st 2017(this email address can also be used for informal queries and advice). The organisers will consult with the ILPC Steering Group and a decision will be made in time for the second, amended Call for Papers.

Visit http://www.irle.ucla.edu/events/PrecariousWork.php for more information this exciting event!

Friday, August, 19, 2016
Seattle Central College
Seattle, Washington
 
Broadway Performance Hall
1625 Broadway, Seattle, WA 98122
(Adjacent to the Seattle Central College campus)

Today precarious work presents perhaps the greatest global challenge to worker well-being, and has become a major rallying point for worker mobilization around the world.  This conference focuses on analyzing the growth of precarious employment and informal labor, its consequences for workers and their families, the challenges it poses to worker organizing and collective mobilization, and how workers and other social actors are responding to precariousness. We seek to understand the patterns of social and economic domination of labor shaped by the state, capital, gender, class, age, ethnicity, skills, and citizenship, and examine the manifestations of labor resistance and acquiescence in their specific contexts.
 
The conference is initiated by the American Sociological Association (ASA)’s Labor and Labor Movements Section, the International Sociological Association (ISA)’s Research Committee on Labor Movements (RC44), and the Chinese Sociological Association’s China Association of Work and Labor (CAWL). It builds in part on an ongoing scholarly exchange between the ASA Labor Section and the CAWL. The conference program will focus on the United States and China, but will include a range of global cases and perspectives. Interdisciplinary approaches and innovative research methods are welcomed.
 

http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/advancing-worker-rights

Advancing Worker Rights Conference (April 17 - 18)
The Worker Institute at Cornell invites your participation at Advancing Worker Rights, a major conference marking the 80th anniversary of the National Labor Relations Act, the 70th anniversary of the ILR School, and the 150th anniversary of Cornell University.

Register today to take advantage of our early bird registration and special discounts on travel and hotels!

The signing of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1935 was a watershed moment for workers and the American labor movement. The NLRA established a legal framework to govern union recognition, collective bargaining, and collective action - and most importantly, it guaranteed the rights of workers to organize and put the federal government on record as supporting collective bargaining as a public good.

At the same time, many workers were excluded from the NLRA from the start, and in subsequent decades, the NLRA was reinterpreted and amended to make it even harder for workers to join unions or strike, and further restricting the categories of workers covered by those protections. Today, fewer workers than ever are protected under the NLRA as our economy increasingly relies on precarious, contingent, and part-time workers.

On the 80th anniversary of the NLRA, with worker rights increasingly under attack, we turn to some of the most innovative thinkers and leaders in the world of labor to address the pressing question: Where do we go from here?

We have assembled leading labor activists, policy makers, labor lawyers and academics to address pressing contemporary issues, including prospects for reform, especially to enhance collective and individual rights of workers covered by or excluded from the Act.

By convening experts spanning a broad spectrum of perspectives, we hope to spark a lively discussion that will illuminate creative solutions to the challenges faced by labor. We hope you'll join us at the Advancing Worker Rights conference on April 17 - 18 and add your voice to this critical conversation on the future of the labor movement!

Please explore our site to find information about our speakers, conference agenda and schedule, and special discounts on accommodations and travel. For a limited time only, we are offering early bird registration for just $37 - click here to register today!

Evolving Workplace Relations: Connecting Research to Best Practices
LERA 67th Annual Meeting, May 28-31, 2015, Pittsburgh, Pa.
 
Labor relations play an integral role in the fabric of society. Listen and meet the influential voices on the topics of minimum wage, immigration, worker rights, and other workplace policies.
 
50 sessions focus on the continuing evolution of workplace relations from all perspectives: labor, management, government, policy makers, arbitrators, and mediators. LERA specializes in connecting all stakeholders with research and experiences from in the workplace.
 
Highlights Include...
 
Featured Plenary Speaker
Leo Gerard
President of the United Steelworkers and vice president of the AFL-CIO, Gerard focused the United Steelworkers (USW) on strategic contract bargaining in paper, steel, rubber and other key sectors, while at the same time fighting unfair trade and building clout through political action and domestic and international alliances.
 
Meet the Author
Michael Piore author of the seminal work "Birds of Passage" and the impact of migrant labor in Industrial Societies 
 
Voices From the Evolving Workplace Featuring
                UAW/Ford
      •       James (Jimmy) Settles, Jr., UAW National Ford Department
      •       Bill Dirksen, Ford Motor Co.
 
Visit www.leraweb.org/67thannualmtg to register and for the full program.
 
Other sessions of interest:
      •       International Perspectives on Vulnerable Workers
      •       An Open Forum on Sharing and Reusing Social Science Data
      •       The Changing Workplace in Public Schools
      •       Work in a Democratic Society
 
Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services training sessions
      •       How Technology and Labor Relations Might Work Together
      •       The New Generation of Alternative Bargaining Models
      •       The Case Study of Elliott Turbine and the Steelworkers
      •       Labor Dispute Systems Design and Capacity Building Abroad

Hello all,

An interesting mini-conf. on work and labor markets.  Please contact Sean O Riain ([email protected]) if you have questions.

Best,

Steve McKay

Dear colleagues

We would welcome abstracts for the mini-conference on "The Political
Economy of Work and Labor Markets: Workplace Regimes in Comparative
Perspective" at the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics
(SASE) in Chicago.

This mini-conference is designed to bridge the gap between micro
analyses of the workplace and macro political economy by fostering
dialogue across disciplinary and sub-disciplinary boundaries. We invite
papers that address different aspects of workplace organization (e.g.
working time, security, pay, career ladders, the labor process,
collective action, etc), their connections with macro-political
institutions and actors, and adopt a comparative perspective.
Submissions may use a range of methodological approaches (including case
studies, quantitative methods, and qualitative comparative analysis),
operate at different levels (national, regional, sectoral, corporate,
etc.), and explore a wide variety of relevant topics.

Further details are available at:
https://sase.org/mini-conferences/themes_fr_182.html#MC6

Paper abstracts must be submitted by January 20, 2014. Candidates will
be notified by February 17, 2014. Please note that Mini-Conferences
require an extended (~1,000 word) abstract, and ask that you submit a
full paper by March 31, 2014.

Please don't hesitate to contact us with any questions you might have.

Best wishes,

Rossella Ciccia, National University of Ireland Maynooth
([email protected])
Seán Ó Riain, National University of Ireland Maynooth ([email protected])
Andrew Schrank, University of New Mexico ([email protected])

https://sase.org/mini-conferences/themes_fr_182.html#MC6