This document presents the findings of a qualitative, grounded theory research study on pesticide worker safety education and learning. A variety of factors contribute to the reasons pesticide applicators are not always fully engaged in the education required for them to practice their work safely, resulting in long-term health and environmental…

Gillian Hadfield's astute Rules for a Flat World proposes a private market solution to rule-making because the current legislative or regulatory framework no longer meets the needs of a fast-paced digital economy. Further, lawyers have largely priced themselves out of the reach of many who would benefit from their services. By laying out…

We introduce an exercise designed to make Marx's theory of alienated labor accessible to students in a Sociology of Work class. Through a role-playing activity where students create and sell goods under conditions of both alienated and nonalienated labor, students actually experience the different material and social consequences of these…

Migrant and seasonal farmworkers are typically Spanish-speaking, Latino immigrants with limited formal education and low literacy skills and, as such, are a vulnerable population. We describe the development of the "Pesticides and Farmworker Health Toolkit", a pesticide safety and health curriculum designed to communicate to farmworkers…

In this article, the author talks about labored learning under the auspices of the "outing program" of Sherman Institute, an Indian boarding school in Riverside, California. The outing system functioned as a vital part of a larger federal Indian boarding school system that sought, in the words of historian Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert, to…

Cesar Chavez, who co-founded the United Farm Workers (UFW) with Dolores Huerta in 1962, dedicated his life to grassroots organizing to persuade lawmakers and the public to help improve the working conditions of migrant farm workers. In October 1992, the author had been teaching a unit of study on civics to her sixth grade bilingual students in…

Using semistructured interviews and participant observation, this two-year pilot study of male Mexican migrants in Freehold, New Jersey, explored how day laborers perceive their struggles to support families despite escalating anti-immigrant legislation at virtually all levels of government. In particular, the author looks at efforts by Mexican…

Contingent, non-standard or "casual" work is present in large numbers in virtually every sector of the United States economy. Staffing strategies that use subcontracted or contingent work--strategies that once characterized only some low-wage workers such as garment and agriculture--have now spread to virtually every area of industry, including…

Seasonal migration for work by poor rural families is a phenomenon that is escalating as the agrarian crisis mounts. Millions of families that migrate are compelled to take their children along, leaving school and a normal childhood behind. They spend several months every year at work sites such as brick kilns, salt pans, plantations and stone…

In an effort to understand the nationwide problem of recruitment, training, and retention of farm workers, 28 representative New York farm operators with a reputation for success in dealing with hired workers were interviewed in the summer of 1966. Information obtained included personal and educational characteristics, attitudes and aspirations,…

Post-Fordism suggests that trade work practices are outmoded and industrial restructuring will improve economic outcomes. This view overlooks an important characteristic of industrial trades--the integrity of the work culture--and is oblivious to the merits of the tradespersons' cultural identity. (SK)

In 1983, personal interviews with 38 adult, Mexican American, migrant farmworker, male heads of households working tomato crops in Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan revealed living and working conditions and views and involvement regarding labor rights and the farmworker movement among the estimated 65,000 Midwestern migrant farmworkers. Interview data…

The relationship between satisfaction and need hierarchies as a function of high risk (HR) or low risk (LR) in a job was examined. Results indicated that there were significant differences in satisfaction for a set of 25 job characteristics between HR (N=93) and LR (N=82) workers. In contrast, there were no real differences in need hierarchies for…

This report relates to union workers in five cities, and gives a picture of how the young worker feels about his job, his employer, and his union. (DM)