Many United States companies have, unfortunately,

made the search for legal protection from import

competition into a major line of work. Since 1980 the

United States International Trade Commission (ITC)

(5) has received about 280 complaints alleging damage

from imports that benefit from subsidies by foreign

governments. Another 340 charge that foreign companies

“dumped” their products in the United States at

“less than fair value.” Even when no unfair practices

(10) are alleged, the simple claim that an industry has been

injured by imports is sufficient grounds to seek relief.

Contrary to the general impression, this quest for

import relief has hurt more companies than it has

helped. As corporations begin to function globally, they

(15) develop an intricate web of marketing, production, and

research relationships, The complexity of these relationships

makes it unlikely that a system of import relief

laws will meet the strategic needs of all the units under

the same parent company.

(20) Internationalization increases the danger that foreign

companies will use import relief laws against the very

companies the laws were designed to protect. Suppose a

United States-owned company establishes an overseas

plant to manufacture a product while its competitor

(25) makes the same product in the United States. If the

competitor can prove injury from the imports—and

that the United States company received a subsidy from

a foreign government to build its plant abroad—the

United States company’s products will be uncompeti-

(30) tive in the United States, since they would be subject to

duties.

Perhaps the most brazen case occurred when the ITC

investigated allegations that Canadian companies were

injuring the United States salt industry by dumping

(35) rock salt, used to de-ice roads. The bizarre aspect of the

complaint was that a foreign conglomerate with United

States operations was crying for help against a United

States company with foreign operations. The “United

States” company claiming injury was a subsidiary of a

(40) Dutch conglomerate, while the “Canadian” companies

included a subsidiary of a Chicago firm that was the

second-largest domestic producer of rock salt.

Milankovitch proposed in the early twentieth century

that the ice ages were caused by variations in the Earth’s

orbit around the Sun. For sometime this theory was

considered untestable, largely because there was no suffi-

(5) ciently precise chronology of the ice ages with which

the orbital variations could be matched.

To establish such a chronology it is necessary to

determine the relative amounts of land ice that existed

at various times in the Earth’s past. A recent discovery

(10) makes such a determination possible: relative land-ice

volume for a given period can be deduced from the ratio

of two oxygen isotopes, 16 and 18, found in ocean sediments.

Almost all the oxygen in water is oxygen 16, but

a few molecules out of every thousand incorporate the

(15) heavier isotope 18. When an ice age begins, the continental

ice sheets grow, steadily reducing the amount of

water evaporated from the ocean that will eventually

return to it. Because heavier isotopes tend to be left

behid when water evaporates from the ocean surfaces,

(20) the remaining ocean water becomes progressively

enriched in oxygen 18. The degree of enrichment can

be determined by analyzing ocean sediments of the

period, because these sediments are composed of calcium

carbonate shells of marine organisms, shells that were

(25) constructed with oxygen atoms drawn from the surrounding

ocean. The higher the ratio of oxygen 18 to

oxygen 16 in a sedimentary specimen, the more land ice

there was when the sediment was laid down.

As an indicator of shifts in the Earth’s climate, the

(30) isotope record has two advantages. First, it is a global

record: there is remarkably little variation in isotope

ratios in sedimentary specimens taken from different

continental locations. Second, it is a more continuous

record than that taken from rocks on land. Because of

(35) these advantages, sedimentary evidence can be dated

with sufficient accuracy by radiometric methods to

establish a precise chronology of the ice ages. The dated

isotope record shows that the fluctuations in global

ice volume over the past several hundred thousand years

(40) have a pattern: an ice age occurs roughly once every

100,000 years. These data have established a strong

connection between variations in the Earth’s orbit and

the periodicity of the ice ages.

However, it is important to note that other factors,

(45) such as volcanic particulates or variations in the amount

of sunlight received by the Earth, could potentially have

affected the climate. The advantage of the Milankovitch

theory is that it is testable: changes in the Earth’s orbit

can be calculated and dated by applying Newton’s laws

(50) of gravity to progressively earlier configurations of the

bodies in the solar system. Yet the lack of information

about other possible factors affecting global climate does

not make them unimportant.

Prior to 1975, union efforts to organize public-sector

clerical workers, most of whom are women, were somewhat

limited. The factors favoring unionization drives

seem to have been either the presence of large numbers

(5) of workers, as in New York City, to make it worth the

effort, or the concentration of small numbers in one or

two locations, such as a hospital, to make it relatively

easy, Receptivity to unionization on the workers, part

was also a consideration, but when there were large

(10) numbers involved or the clerical workers were the only

unorganized group in a jurisdiction, the multioccupational

unions would often try to organize them regardless

of the workers’ initial receptivity. The strategic

reasoning was based, first, on the concern that politi-

(15) cians and administrators might play off unionized

against nonunionized workers, and, second, on the

conviction that a fully unionized public work force

meant power, both at the bargaining table and in the

legislature. In localities where clerical workers were few

(20) in number, were scattered in several workplaces, and

expressed no interest in being organized, unions more

often than not ignored them in the pre-1975 period.

But since the mid-1970’s, a different strategy has

emerged. In 1977, 34 percent of government clerical

(25) workers were represented by a labor organization,

compared with 46 percent of government professionals,

44 percent of government blue-collar workers, and

41 percent of government service workers, Since then,

however, the biggest increases in public-sector unioniza-

(30) tion have been among clerical workers. Between 1977

and 1980, the number of unionized government workers

in blue-collar and service occupations increased only

about 1.5 percent, while in the white-collar occupations

the increase was 20 percent and among clerical workers

(35) in particular, the increase was 22 percent.

What accounts for this upsurge in unionization

among clerical workers? First, more women have entered

the work force in the past few years, and more of them

plan to remain working until retirement age. Conse-

(40) quently, they are probably more concerned than their

predecessors were about job security and economic benefits.

Also, the women’s movement has succeeded in legitimizing

the economic and political activism of women on

their own behalf, thereby producing a more positive atti-

(45) tude toward unions. The absence of any comparable

increase in unionization among private-sector clerical

workers, however, identifies the primary catalyst-the

structural change in the multioccupational public-sector

unions themselves. Over the past twenty years, the occu-

(50) pational distribution in these unions has been steadily

shifting from predominantly blue-collar to predominantly

white-collar. Because there are far more women

in white-collar jobs, an increase in the proportion of

female members has accompanied the occupational shift

(55) and has altered union policy-making in favor of organizing

women and addressing women’s issues.