Legislative Actions on Overtime Pay and Collective Bargaining and their Implications for Farm Employers in New York State, 2009-2010
Agricultural workers in most states are exempt from some labor law provisions that apply to employees in most other workplaces. In New York State agricultural labor advocates and farmers have battled politically over this issue for more than four decades. Two of the most contentious issues are collective bargaining and overtime pay. Currently laws for most other workers grant rights to employees who engage in union organizing activities. In addition, most employers are required to pay an overtime rate of time and one half for hours worked over 40 per week. In New York, labor advocates would like to see both of these exemptions for agriculture removed. Eleven states in the United States have laws that protect agricultural workers who wish to engage in collective bargaining and union organizing activities. In addition, four states have overtime pay provisions for agricultural workers. Introduced in the New York State Legislature in 2009, the Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act would have provided farmworkers with collective bargaining rights and overtime pay. It also contained other provisions viewed as having less impact on the agricultural industry. The proposal reignited a contentious debate and political standoff between farm business interests and the state’s labor advocates. The bill passed the Assembly on June 8, 2009. Leaders in the Senate had difficulty getting the bill to the Senate floor for a vote. Finally, as part of the 2010 state budget battle, Senator Pedro Espada, Senate Majority Leader, was successful in bringing about a vote. The legislation was defeated by a margin of three votes. Seldom has farmworker rights legislation gotten so close to passing both houses of the New York State Legislature with the prospect the Governor would sign it. The future prospects for overtime pay and collective bargaining rights for New York’s agricultural workers will continue to be dependent upon which political party controls the State Senate. The November 2010 elections resulted in the Republican Party recapturing the Senate majority making it unlikely that legislation similar to the Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act will be enacted in the near future. Both sides are extremely well organized and it appears possible this standoff could continue for many more years
Coloniality of power, critical realism and critical consciousness: the three “C” framework
ABSTRACT Typical pedagogical practices center Whiteness, particularly when teaching about racism and racial justice. This article offers a framework that de-centers the White frame using: coloniality of power, critical realism, critical consciousness. The coloniality of power analyzes the order of social relations and embedded hegemonic structures in the US. Critical realism posits a multi-layered construct of reality encompassing subjugated experiences, illustrating how dominant groups can share these experiences. Critical consciousness explains the need for all individuals to identify mechanisms of oppression that maintain, perpetuate, and sustain the exclusion and subjugation of BIPOC. Together, these three concepts create a foundation highlighting accountability and agency.
Strategy and Manipulation in Medieval Elections
There are many goals in developing electoral protocols, including a desire for a system which is transparent, in that it is clear what the rule or procedure to follow is; nonmanipulable, in that it is not in a person’s best interest to misrepresent their preferences; honest, in the sense that it elects the ‘right’ candidate; and not open to strategizing, i.e., bribery or collusion. However, these desiderata are in tension with each other: Often, transparent electoral procedures are the least strategy resistant, and many honest procedures encourage manipulation. Thus a balance between these different goals must be sought. In modern times, since the seminal result on vote manipulation, the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem [5, 6], much attention has been devoted to developing voting rules where manipulation is never in the best interest of the voters [4] or which are computationally too complex for the average bounded agent to be able to manipulate [1]. This focus on computational aspects of electoral methods is one of the hallmarks of modern studies on voting. But pursuit of these goals is not restricted to modern times: Those participating in elections in the Middle Ages also sought transparency, non-manipulability, honesty, and strategyproofness in so far as these properties can be consistently expressed in a single procedure. However, given the lack of computational sophistication in the Middle Ages, alternate approaches were needed in order to promote honesty, discourage strategizing, etc. These approaches can be classified as either external (constraints introduced outside of the electoral procedure, such as incentives for coming to consensus quickly) or internal (constraints introduced within the electoral procedure, such as voting rules which cannot be manipulated without adverse effects, or which are too difficult for the average bounded agent to manipulate). Surveying examples of both approaches in the context of medieval ecclesiastical and secular elections provides an interesting comparison to modern electoral procedures. Elections in the Middle Ages were used for the same reasons that they are today: To select suitable candidate(s) for a particular office, duty, or obligation. However, it is important to note that the term electio was used in the Middle Ages in a broader sense than our modern ‘election’. Its primary sense was ‘selection’ or ‘choice’, and only secondarily ‘election’ in the modern sense. Thus, many records which purportedly discuss elections are not discussing elections of the type which interests us. We can identify four categories of medieval electoral processes: (1) Election by an external authority having no direct interest in the election; (2) Indirect election, where electors name other electors who then select or elect the officials; (3) Election by lot; and (4) Election by ballot. Elections of the first and third types are generally computationally uninteresting; the first type corresponds to dictatorial voting rules, and the third type collapses to probability theory. In general, interesting voting methods are found only in the fourth type, election by ballot, though they can also occur in indirect election.