National Labor Relations Board

In many ways, the early twenty-first century is strikingly different from the early twentieth; but in more than few respects, it is radically the same.Wealth inequality and the concentration of corporate power mirror or exceed their peaks in the 1920s, 1 dislocating person from place, fraying social bonds, and destroying prior land stewardship. 2Union participation is stymied at every corner, depressing wages. 3 Authoritarianism is rising around the globe. 4 The "united" states are engaged in a vitriolic cultural battle over how to deal with their bloody history of racialized violence. 5A pandemic has taken millions of lives and exposed global health inequities. 6 And war rages in continental Europe.

We describe salient aspects of the idioculture of videogame play, based on interviews conducted with 20 devoted videogame players and several hours of observation of small‐group game play. We explore the meaningfulness of videogame play for participants, specifically through an examination of the social quality of play, interaction during play, the enactment of status differences in and through play, and players’ desire to play games perfectly and/or completely. We elicit players’ comments about acceptable and unacceptable forms of cheating, and we explore their management of the stigma attached to playing violent games and playing excessively. We conclude by highlighting game players’ penchant for finding moral content in their favorite games and game characters.

Today, some sixty years after passage of the Taft‐Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act, it seems that the centerpiece of the Act has become the right to refrain from protected, concerted or union activity. The original 1935 legislation was enacted, of course, to protect the right to engage in that activity, and to encourage the practice of collective bargaining. For nearly sixty years after Taft‐Hartley added the “right to refrain” to Section 7's employee protections, the Board has struggled to reconcile the sometimes competing statutory goals of promoting the stability of collective bargaining relationships and the individual freedom of choice, preserved by Section 7. That has changed, however, as the National Labor Relations Board, in several recent decisions, has said for the first time, that freedom of choice—which is to say, the freedom to reject union representation—prevails in the statutory scheme. It is as if the law, in abandoning the primacy of achieving economic justice through collective action, has been turned inside out. The stakes for this shift in policy are great.

Summary. Neither industrial nor nonindustrial rehired workers were markedly aided by the decisions. Union officials and fellow workers both displayed open hostility to reinstated employees, particularly to those who had breached union‐fixed working rules. Furthermore, with the exception of the factionalists, rehired workers were unlikely to overcome union hostility. As one subject reported in graphic terms, “the NLRB case turned into a fight to the finish, and when I won the union did not surrender but just continued fighting me.” Given such conditions, discriminated workers could hardly be expected to re‐establish and reassert their membership rights.We need further study here, but it seems that among industrial subjects there was a correlation between unwilling union membership and discrimination. It appears more than mere chance that industrial workers who cared little for unions, tried to evade paying dues, subverted union rules, and were independent‐minded found themselves the victims of union‐caused discrimination. When rehired, they rarely changed their attitudes and conduct, and locals were unlikely to welcome them with open arms.By contrast, labor pool subjects in the main were staunch unionists before discrimination and after reinstatement. The data suggest that either certain types of workers enter craft occupations or the characteristics of the industries they work in tend to compel employees to behave in a certain manner within their unions. Since such workers looked to their unions for employment and the enforcement of standards and working rules, strong internal cohesion was not surprising.Two reservations should be noted to the above generalizations. Where the subjects suffered discrimination because they had been protecting group rights or supporting factions or rival unions, their reinstatement led them to even greater union participation. Where the local was dominated by a single, powerful leader, the reinstated worker's union activity tended to decrease.

BROADLY speaking there are two important aspects to the present international labor problem. The first is definite, concrete and immediate. It has to do principally with the formulation and adoption of certain labor standards, agreement as to which has slowly developed through the medium of international conferences and discussions by socialist organizations, labor unionists and other agencies during the years preceding the war. The conferences which have recently been held directly or indirectly in connection with the Peace Conference have finally resulted in the crystallization and formal announcement of these standards. The other feature of the international labor problem while more intangible and remote is in reality far more significant and is fraught with more far-reaching consequences. It shows clearly the development of a change in the fundamental attitude of labor towards industry in general. It carries with it a more or less definitely developed program of constructive action which contemplates extreme modification or revolutionary change in the relations between industrial workers and industrial institutions and between the state and industry.-It holds forth the hope of a more complete democracy which is to be attained both by the use of political action and by the exercise of economic power or pres-