Labor and the tobacco institute's labor management committee in new york state: the rise and fall of a political coalition.

In 1984 the Tobacco Institute and the Bakery, Confectionary and Tobacco Workers Union formed a Labor Management Committee. From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, this LMC worked to elicit labor support in New York by framing issues in terms that made them salient to unions: tobacco excise taxes as regressive taxation, workplace smoking restrictions as an intrusion into collective bargaining. By the late 1990s, however, most of labor in New York had shifted to support for anti-tobacco policies. The reasons for this shift include the growing size and influence of public-sector unions, and their generally favorable stances on tobacco control issues; the policy-making autonomy of the unions; the growing body of scientific knowledge concerning the dangers of tobacco use; and the rise in public awareness of such dangers. Nevertheless, for two decades, the LMC contributed to mutual suspicion between labor and tobacco control advocates that prevented collaboration between them.

Reducing occupation-based disparities related to tobacco: roles for occupational health and organized labor.

BACKGROUND: Persistent and growing occupation-based disparities related to tobacco pose a serious public health challenge. Tobacco exacts a disproportionate toll on individuals employed in working class occupations, due to higher prevalence of smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke among these workers compared to others. METHODS: We provide an overview of recent advances that may help to reduce these disparities, including research findings on a successful social contextual intervention model that integrates smoking cessation and occupational health and safety, and a new national effort to link labor unions and tobacco control organizations around their shared interest in reducing tobacco's threat to workers' health. CONCLUSIONS: Implications of these efforts for future research and action are discussed.

What do regions want?: A case study of university-community relations.

We hear more and more about the necessity of "sustainable regional development" as an alternative to and defense against globalization. While we certainly agree with this notion, we ask what might prevent it from becoming yet another "top-down" development scheme with good intentions but dubious results. We would argue that no road to development is sustainable if it is not deeply democratic and reliant on an informed, concerned public; the expressed needs of the public must be an essential aspect of regional development. Our focus here is on the university, the main supplier of the experts and technologies utilized by the undemocratic processes of globalization, but it might also be a partner in a democratic process of regional sustainable development. To do this, however, experts in academia must resist the temptation to assume they know what is best and work in concert with community forces to define and create sustainable development. To put it simply, if experts and planners in the university want to know what a region wants and needs, they have to ask. What follows is a report on the experience of one university's attempt to do just that.