Because of the virtual demise of firm centered collective bargaining, many labor partisans have rediscovered a form of wage determination originating in the Progressive Era. Sectoral bargaining encompasses an effort to win better conditions in an entire occupation or industry. Instead of a collective bargaining contract, standard-setting laws or codes are enacted, either by the legislature or a state board that sets wages and working conditions once all the stakeholders have had their say. Just as civil rights laws apply to all US workplaces regardless of the attitude of workers or employers, so too would a wage board promulgate a set of work standards that are equally universal, at least within the industry and region over which the board has jurisdiction.

Ellison served as a cook and baker in the U.S. Merchant Marine during World War II, visited Wales and France, and was a member of the National Maritime Union. This marks a critical turning point in his life and career. This paper considers those experiences as an important context for his life and work. All of his subsequent fiction and some significant nonfiction was informed by and reflects this experience to some extent.

Although the trajectory of Argentina’s tax burden has been more volatile than Brazil’s, today the countries share a similar level of taxation. This similarity reflects the fact that neither has experienced threats to private property profound enough to spur the rise of a powerful anti-statist bloc. The most significant redistributive reform wave in Argentine history occurred under Juan Perón (1946-1955), who mobilized workers and expanded the welfare state. However, like Getúlio Vargas, Perón spared private property and opposed socialism. As a result, he failed to provoke the formation of an anti-statist bloc capable of acting as an enduring constraint on public sector growth. Instead, he aggravated private sector divisions, strengthened labor and forged a broad populist electoral coalition. For decades, military intervention kept statists from wielding power in a sustained fashion. In addition, hyperinflation and the global ascendancy of neoliberalism pushed even a peronista president to adopt neoliberal reforms in the 1990s. Gradually, however, these constraints have fallen away, and the superiority of statist forces has come to be reflected in heavy taxation and social spending.