Financial pros and cons Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Financial pros and cons - Essay Example Capital Budgeting decisions of Debt Financing vis-a-vis Equity Financing and Capital Expenditure The essay analyses the financial viability of setting up a new production plant including the financing decisions and whether Superior Living Inc. should go for an IPO. Financial Analysis of Superior Living Inc. Profitability and solvency position of a company is a direct way to understand how well a company is performing. For the purpose of analyzing let us look at the following ratios and how the company has fared: Net profit margin: The Company has been earning a healthy net profit margin which has been constantly increasing from 10.66% in the year to 11.77% in the year 2003. Operating margin: The Company has a better operating margin in 2003 of 19.60% over the previous years. This indicates the company is very efficient in managing its operating expenses to generate revenue. Return on Capital Employed: The Company have earned handsomely for its investors as return so far on its capita l employed stands at approximately 25% which is far more than the cost of capital, assuming it to be at 10%. Debt Equity ratio: This ratio identifies the solvency of the firm by measuring the leverage position of a company. Higher the ratio the more leverage a company is and vice versa and hence higher financial risk. Superior Living Inc. has a very low debt equity ratio i.e. ... Pros and cons of going public Raising money by going public indicates accepting money from investors in exchange of ownership and control of the company without the obligation of paying back the money. The company as per its convenience benefits the investors by paying dividend from time to time. This sounds like easy money for the company but the flip side is that the ownership and control over the company would be foregone for the amount invested via equity financing. In the case of Superior Inc. the company is comfortably placed in terms of book debts. The debt equity ratio very low which means the company has not used debt to the extent it should have used. Generally the ideal debt equity ratio should be 1:2 but for Superior it’s around 1:40. Therefore, the prudent course of action for Superior Inc. is too raise capital by debt financing route which also brings in tax advantage as interest paid on debts is deductible from profits and dividend paid on equity cannot be deduc ted from profits. Debt financing does not affect the ownership structure of the company; hence the control remains with the owners of the company. Pros and cons of a capital expenditure Superior Living Inc. plans to start a new production plant as part of their expansion plans. To determine the financial viability of the this capital expenditure, various capital budgeting decision tools were used which includes payback period, net present value, internal rate of return and modified internal rate of return. The cost of project is $5,000,000 over a year and cash flow would start flowing in the company only from the second year. The expected cash inflow as a result of new production plant is expected to

Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) Architecture

Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) Architecture   Introduction Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) architecture allows multiple vehicles to communicate with the roads infrastructure. This is then directed towards a central tower that allows multiple vehicles to operate on the same bandwidth. This helps all servers maintain the acceleration and position of all vehicles on streets and roads. This assists in determining everything such as fastest path and/or nearby accidents. Because of this, traffic safety enhancement is the largest factor when it comes to obtaining data from vehicles on and off the road. Also roadside infrastructures are included to provide warnings to vehicles about weather and accidents on its path. For this process to work, gathered speeds and locations within the proximity are reported to the server then to the other vehicles. Because of the large number of vehicles on the road, a central server is needed to relay all the data to each individual vehicle. Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) There are multiple infrastructures that a vehicle can communicate with such as other cars or a control building. Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) lets multiple vehicles communicate with one another on a given network. DSRC works as a two-way short-range wireless connection. It works similar to WiFi since it allows vehicles to exchange data such as speed, distance, position, and mass of separate vehicles [7]. The primary use of DSRC is for collision prevention. These are achieved by frequent data exchanges among vehicles within a certain range. Each vehicle that utilizes DSRC, casts data from the vehicle to neighboring vehicles multiple times per second within a range between 100-1000 meters in a radius based on the technology [8]. Each vehicle also receives safety messages to warn other vehicles of collisions that the vehicle is driving towards to prepare the driver for what is ahead. Even though DSRC is mainly for collision prevention, it can also be used for assisted navigation such as GPS , electronic payments for tolls, improved fuel efficiency and present traffic updates. According to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, there is an allocated 75 MHz of licensed spectrum in the 5.9 GHz band for DSRC [9]. This is what the Dedicated is DSRC refers to. This spectrum is divided into several channels. Safety messages are exchanged on Channel 172 and have been designated for safety among vehicles [12]. The term Short Range in DSRC is meant to convey that the communication takes place over a few hundred meters which is shorter than cellular and WiMax services. DSRC communication relies on a manufacturer based standard among devices from different manufacturers for interoperability. The concept of proposed system architecture is shown in Fig. 1. In the United States, vehicles operate on a 5.9 GHz band to operate DSRC. This is then divided into seven 10 MHz channels [11]. Because its running on a 10 MHz channel, all frames within a modulation takes only half as long to transmit than on a 20 MHz channel. This helps reduce collision probability for every f rame transmission per second. Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET) In VANETs, a vehicle moving along streets in an urban city establishes a network among themselves. Since its development, there have been an increase in commercial and research. In VANETs, mobile nodes are the travelling vehicles since it has high mobility and speed. The main disadvantage of VANET is that the network topology changes rapidly to other forms of vehicle communication. Since VANET equipped vehicles only move on predefined streets, they do not have problems for resource limitation. It is possible for vehicles to obtain a geographic position by using GPS. This can provide good time synchronization through the network. Vehicles within a VANET infrastructure moves within the constraints of traffic flow. This is done while communicating with others. Ad hoc networks use less specialized hardware for infrastructure support. This allows all the stability of the network to be placed on individual nodes. Without dedicated communication hardware, there are other methods placed to attempt to optimize the networks communication to develop a hierarchical based system within the network to help with clustering. To support the VANET environments dynamic nature, clustering must be updated every so often to reflect geographical changes with vehicle movements. The networks clustering must be extremely quick to minimize time lost within the network [13]. VANET has a set of unique characteristics to aid in traditional ad-hoc devices on a mobile network. VANET with high dynamic topology, enough energy and storage space, moving track predictable and diversified automotive network scenarios, has many significant applications in transportation and communication, such as vehicle safety, road traffic efficiency, and information and entertainment [14]. VANET does not have a difficult time when it comes to vehicle shadowing. This happens when a smaller vehicle is shadowed by a much larger vehicle which complicates its communication with infrastructures on the road. In a VANET system, the synchronization between vehicles at a particular speed might be fast due to the networks topology modification [15]. Keeping vehicles anonymous with its data such as the location of vehicles on highways are unidentified to each other. Periodic data exchanges from individual vehicles explain direct infrastructures/vehicles about its position. Yet, the address- position map (APM) will vary frequently because of the relative movements among neighboring vehicles. It is the receivers responsibility to determine the relevance of important messages and decide on appropriate actions [15]. For a VANET system, location based broadcast to other vehicles is the most suitable communication technique when it comes to collision avoidance. Location-based information is an extremely vital measurement when it comes to distance and speed within a VANET system. Geographical routing protocol is important for VANETs since all nodes can determine their own position. All nodes know the position of their direct neighbor. The source node knows the location of the destination. Geographical routing protocol for VANET is more suitable for routing because it doesnt necessarily need route maintenance and does not occupy more bandwidth. Global Positioning System (GPS) The Global Positioning System (GPS) is frequently used in road navigation. Global Position System (GPS) based vehicle tracking is an important application when dealing with mobile Geographic Information system (GIS) in V2V communication. Using GPS for V2V communication has many benefits. One of the main benefits of using GPS is that it is based off of geographic location with a satellite. The main downside of using this technology is that the connection can be lost when driving through a tunnel or a parking garage. There is a plethora of applications to be utilized for GPS vehicle communication. This includes shortest path algorithms based on distance or traffic in a busy city. One of the downsides to GPS is not getting an accurate position for neighboring vehicles to use for data communication with other vehicles. GPS, however, can be used in conjunction with other forms of V2V communication to achieve accurate data that is necessary to relay information to and from one another. One form of this is GPS used in conjunction with DSRC. DSRC gives local data amongst vehicles within a short distance [8], GPS is then used to relay the data that was gathered kilometers away based on the information given from another district that the vehicle is heading towards. In general, GPS devices are used more to navigate rather than to be used for Vehicular communication. It allows needed information such as speed, location, and distance to be communicated from the satellite to the vehicle. Differential Global Positioning Systems (DGPS) can limit the amount of errors from GPS by minimizing or removing them. These include ionospheric effects which affect the propagation of radio waves to and from the vehicle and the tropospheric delay which receives and processes an algorithm to attempt to model or predict the impact of the signal travel time. DGPS is accurate compared to GPS since it gets the information of the vehicle up to a miniscule accuracy. DGPS assists autonomous vehicles with other peripherals to help vehicles accomplish driving tasks such as staying in lane, collision prevention, and checking for speed limits. Even though DGPS is only off by a few centimeters, there are ways to improve its performance. A common solution is integrating with an Inertial Navigation System (INS) [16]. The most common configurations integrate DGPS with high performance 6 degree of freedom INS units. Existing methods for this includes separated INS and GPS units and embedded GPS with INS hardware [17]. GPS/INS integration is typically some form of a Kalman filter (KF), which uses a series of measurements over time. KF based GPS/INS integration can be classified into two categories. GPS-aiding INS where each state in the EKF are INS sensor errors; and the inputs to the EKF are measured between INS and GPS. And INS-aiding GPS where the extended KF states are the INS integration states and the extended KF inputs are GPS measurements [18]. Medium Access Control (MAC) The default MAC layer protocol in V2V Communications uses CSMA/CA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Avoidance) to avoid collision. A node within the networks infrastructure can sense the communication channel and begin to send out messages once the channel becomes free. However, if two nodes cannot sense each other attempt to send messages to a similar destination concurrently, then both transmissions will fail and retransmissions will be needed. This problem is called the hidden terminal problem. Another type of delay comes from redundant transmission. A vehicle may receive the same message multiple times from different senders. These redundancies will postpone the transmission of other emergency messages. Many solutions have been proposed to reduce the V2V Communications delay. For the interference delay, the key is to let nodes in the interference range transmit at different time, i.e., assigning different transmission slots to these nodes. Decentralized MAC protocols are suitable for vehicular networks due to the dynamically changing set of vehicular nodes [19], and the MAC protocol combining the aspects of centralized and decentralized protocols is proposed in [20]. Each cycle begins with a beacon message from an access point (AP), where the message contains information on the AP and the number of backoff slots. A cycle consists of reassociation slots, data contention slots, and data transmission slots. Based on the slot occurrence information on the previous cycle, the estimation of the number of active nodes and the decision of contention slot size are performed. The MAC protocol is designed for single-rate wireless networks.

Against Legalizing Homosexual Marriages Essay -- Gay Lesbian Marriage

Against Legalizing Homosexual Marriages The legalized marriage of individuals with the same gender is drawing more attention these days. When asked, most people want to avoid the subject of homosexuality altogether or they have a very strong opinion on it. The debate over whether the United States should allow homosexual couples to marry legally is giving rise to a new social dilemma in our country. This question has courtrooms nervous, churches wavering and equal rights activists angry. Courtrooms should be nervous though. "Our courts, which have mishandled abortion, may be on the verge of mishandling homosexual marriages" (Wilson 34). The judges of the Supreme Court of Hawaii might possibly legalize gay marriages in the near future. Once legalized in Hawaii, "gay marriage -- like quickie Nevada divorces -- will have to be recognized 'under the full faith and credit clause of the constitution' throughout the rest of the U.S." (Krauthammer). Make no mistake about it, however, we must not grant the protection and p rivileges of legalized marriage to people involved in homosexual relationships. Period! For clarification purposes, "gay" shall refer to all homosexual people, whether male or female. The definition of "Marriage" is two individuals, bound to each other through a legal union that stresses the rights and obligations of the state of marriage. If the government legalizes homosexual marriages in Hawaii, homosexual couples will be able to fly to Hawaii, get married, and then return to their home state as a lawfully wedded couple. According to the "full faith and credit clause" in the United States Constitution, states such as Kansas would have to honor these unions. Homosexuality in itself does not seem to be ... ...der to stop this degradation to our society. Our children are counting on us to make intelligent decisions about their futures. Bibliography: Works Cited Anonymous Author. "Homosexuality Acceptance Increases According To Poll." Jet Magazine. 15 April 1996: 8. Ettelbrick, Paula L. "Marriage Is Not a Path to Liberation." Homosexuality: Opposing Viewpoints. Ed. William Dudley. Chicago: Greenhaven, 1993. 177-183 Frame, Randy. "Seeking a Right to the Rite." Christianity Today. 4 March 1996: 64-66, 72-73. Knight, Robert. "Homosexuals Should Have Greater Parental Rights." Homosexuality: Opposing Viewpoints. Ed. William Dudley. Chicago: Greenhaven, 1993. 192-197 Krauthhammer, Charles. "When John and Jim say, I do." Time Magazine. 22 July 1996: 102. Wilson, James Q. "Against Homosexual Marriage." Commentary. March 1996: 34-39.

Negative Effects of Aggressive Advertising Essay

Advertisements are everywhere, traveling by all ways possible, infiltrating the privacy that every person holds important to themself and their family. Ads may travel inconspiciously, while the final message they deliver through radio, tv, or billboards, is a harmful nuisance, and one that may root itself unscrupulously into the unconcious minds of honest people. Companies have taken on such aggressive promotional measures that advertising has become degrading, disruptive, and destructive. One of the most corrupt forms of advertising comes from cigarette companies. Cigarette advertisements are degrading not only because the products behind them are proven to be a health hazard, but because the advertisements are focused toward younger generations. Many advertisements use young, attractive, healthy looking models when advertising for a brand of cigarettes or beer. Company promotions have led people to affiliate certain products with feelings of happiness or euphoria. There is no doubt that people smoke the most heavily advertised brands of cigarettes. â€Å"Tobacco advertising increases young people’s risk of smoking by using themes that appeal to them, such as fun times, action, and being popular and attractive.† (Family Education 1). Ads that supply the Surgeon General’s warning along with the main body of the message are blatantly contradictive. These ads prove that there are many forms of advertising without any morals, and that companies will g o to great lengths to have their name and image promoted regardless of the results. The nation’s companies have put themselves before the children. Visual product promotions may not only corrupt viewers, they may also be financially destructive to the communities surrounding them. A billboard can negatively impact the visual character of the area as well as financially lower the surrounding property values. Local economies don’t suffer when communities control billboards. â€Å"A study in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania found that property values rose as much as two hundred fifty five percent after the removal of nearby billboards† (â€Å"Scenic America† 3). Negative aspects of billboards greatly outway the very few, positive, economic upturns a sign  may provide. Billboards may advertise products from television companies to tacos. A sign that fufills its purpose may only provide an increase in profit for one individual business, but in turn will cause a much greater loss in local property values and visual pollution. Visual pollution is the obstructing presence of objects that do not compliment their surroundings. These include stratigically placed advertisements on roads and highways that hinder the aesthetic beauty of consistent, natural surroundings. â€Å"I do not think the short term gain such signs would bring to my business are worth the permanent degradation to our scenic roadsides or the insult to our citizens and visitors who have come to expect more of us† (Scenic America 3). Yet, the degenerative billboard industry flagrantly continues to defeat attempts at regulation. Once again, aggressive advertising has demonstrated that some companies will resort in placing themselves before the community. Not only can advertising be destructive and degrading, it can easily be disruptive. Annoying phone calls may not be considered a dangerous menace, but they do severely disrupt the daily flow of business and personal life. The feeling of invasion is commonly felt when a telemarketer interupts a family dinner, or disturbs a Sunday afternoon nap. The phone call becomes an intrusive cloud that no one cannot hide from. Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon said, â€Å"Ever since the founding of this country you’ve been able to put a no-trespassing sign on your property. With the invention of telemarketing, that no-trespassing zone no longer includes your dinner table† (Savoye 2). There is no purpose for an advertising operation so aggressive that it breaches the privacy of the American home. This type of disturbance indicates corporations are stepping over the boundaries. When people do nothing to stop the actions of telemarketers, it indicates that control is lost and that th is sort of aggressive advertising is accepted. It is the lack of rigid control over ruthless telemarketers that implies society has been completely enveloped into a world of infinite, disruptive, worthless persuasion. E-mail has created a new form of quick, reliable communication, but recently has been shadowed by another form of troublesome advertisement, spam e-mail. Spam has increased so drastically within the past five years that it has  created a burden that affects almost any person with an e-mail address. It has even come to hinder the very foundation it was built on. â€Å"The explosion of spam today threatens to flood the critical arteries of the networks that carry all e-mail, whether consumers want it or not† (Wenzel 1). Spam has elevated product promotion to a different level where quantities are so tremendous that they block all potential of decent communication. E-mail boxes are so often emptied without the content being reviewed that the advertising email has already destroyed the opportunity of being effective and now poses a hindrance to the efficiency of the entire world network. Perhaps if the nation depended on a much weaker economy, such aggressive advertising could be relevant even if it destroys the privacy of individuals, the beauty of the nation’s landscapes, or attempts to promote unhealthy habits among children. Some view billboards as nothing more than a harmless structure of posts and panels. Many believe that signs are necessary to provide consumers with the perpetual temptation of newer products. It is understandable that entrepreneurs want to make money, but, morally, these aggressive actions by companies should not be endured even if the economy did make a turn for the worst, and they certainly should not be commonplace now. Aggressive advertising is an infestation of termites knawing at the honest framework of society. Much of the work in promoting products involves a dishonest form of thinking, and one that strives to root itself into the next generation. Advertisements have infiltrated almost every part of the nation and have manipulated the very core of society. Corporations have been to the extremes of advertising, only to create ads that disrupt, degrade, and destroy the quality of life. Works Cited Wenzel, Elsa. â€Å"Spam Wars Get Serious† PC World 2 June 2003 24 June 2003 Savoye, Craig. â€Å"States Spare Residents From Telemarketers† google.com 22 December 2000 24 June 2003 Scenic America â€Å"Billboard Control: Fighting Visual Pollution† yahoo.com 24 June 2003 Family Education Network â€Å"Cigarettes — Don’t Believe the Hype† yahoo.com 24 June 2003

Hard Work: Remaking the American Labor Movement By Rick Fantasia and Kim Voss Essay

Hard Work: Remaking the American Labor Movement, by Rick Fantasia and Kim Voss, was published by the University of California Press in 2004. It runs to 259 pages. This book deals with the failures of the American Labor Movement to keep pace with the needs of American workers. It explains how the movement failed when it seemed like it was on the road to success and why it is in the lethargic state in which it finds itself today. It chronicles the attempts being made today to salvage what is left of the movement and its attempts to become a force fighting for social justice in America. One recurring theme of this book is that the people who consider themselves to be both progressive and liberal are constantly amazed that so little they have done and/or advocated has come to fruition or made any difference. They seem stunned to learn that their theories do not work in actual practice. The book documents the actions being initiated in today’s society in an attempt to get off high-center and get on the road to success necessary to keep the American Dream alive. What is now known as the New Economy as proposed by the Neo-liberals has contributed to the steady erosion of worker’s rights and benefits. Fantasia and Voss examine the dot com industry with particular scrutiny, blaming it for the loss of enormous numbers of jobs. The book examines such companies as Amazon, demonstrating how a vast corporation, doing millions in business can be operated with the use of relatively few unskilled and low paid employees, giving them obscene profits and very little overhead. The authors believe that such companies are the wave of the future and if allowed to truly globalize they will be extremely deleterious to workers around the world. They call the New Economy a ‘direct attack on labor’. This book reveals that a key element in many industrialized nations, which is lacking here, is that labor gains are not on a national level, meaning that unions and workers must fight for each concession on a company-by-company basis. In much of the rest of the world a gain by workers is held to be a gain for every worker in that country. The authors trace the history of the union movements for over one hundred years in America. They show that any sort of radicalism displayed by unions or workers was systematically eradicated. They show that what was left in place in each case was a tepid version of what could have been and the result was, intrinsically, a labor union which was in bed with the big corporations, allowing them to strip workers of their rights and fair benefits. This, the authors say, gave labor leaders the idea they were in some sort of perverse partnership with management to the ruin of the workers. Out of this rose the duality of leadership seen in this country. There came to be leadership that ruled by one of two ways, one, a strongman leader, whose ruled a personal fiefdom by decree and the other the bureaucrat in what the authors called the era of tame unionism, which was benign in an era when it should have stood shoulder-to-shoulder in solidarity with its members. During the Reagan era employers realized they were in the drivers’ seats and stripped rights and benefits to the bone while the government stood by or actively abetted them, as did the union leadership. The major premise of this book is that labor must re-invent itself in order to be relevant again. Corporate America is committed to the New Economy, which will never do anything for the worker but further erode any gains made in the past century. American unions and American workers must, the premise goes, regain their initiative and hang solidly together or they will, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, all hang separately, so to speak. There are numerous ways of going about rebuilding labor into a potent force for the good of the workers and some of these methods are being seen. There is a tactic known in labor jargon as â€Å"‘bargaining to organize’ and it has become one important tactic of social movement unionists,† (Fantasia, Voss 2004 p 154). During the 1990s labor struck some of Las Vegas’ casinos with mixed results, but what was telling in that situation was that the city’s Black population sided with labor and did much in solidarity with the workers. The strike won at one of the casinos but a second strike dragged on for over six years, making it the longest strike in American history, post World War II. The strike had its moments of high drama and on one occasion a mass demonstration of over twenty thousand people. The unions in Las Vegas actively recruited new members even during the height of the strike. It drew worldwide attention and favorable press for the unions. This, the authors say, is going to continue to be necessary in the future and unions are going to have to actively recruit and actively promote their message. With a strong recruiting drive and overt actions to revitalize what has become a moribund movement in the last few years. Unions must secure leadership from within their own ranks and see that these leaders are not in bed with Corporate America. Fantasia and Voss paint a rather bleak picture of American Labor, as it now exists. They seem to be somewhat optimistic for the future, however, by assuming that a social conscience will develop in this country and the unions will begin to make inroads into the New Economy, forcing corporations to deal with the rights of the working man. They detail some specific innovations designed to fight the domination by the large corporations, addressing such matters as working hours and conditions as well as the incredible disparity between workers’ salaries and executive compensation. There must come a new type of union for workers to be protected in the New Economy and the globalization of corporations. The authors refer to this new union, expected to rise like a phoenix from the ashes the old unions, as more a social order than what is generally thought of as a true labor union. Not to draw parallels, but it was the Polish Union, Solidarity, which brought down the communist government and freed Poland of its mind boggling bureaucratic red tape and the morass of regulations which kept the Polish workers in virtual servitude to the state. The future is not all sunshine and lollipops, however. â€Å"†¦labor retreats from movement building and the percentage of unionized labor force continues to fall,† (162). Not only will this be a disaster for workers, for it will soon reach the point where only a privileged few will have any union strength, such as government employees and professional athletes, with the rest of the workers vanishing off the radar screen. American labor, once the beacon of hope to workers around the world, will become like that of a third world nation and the workers will fight for the peanuts tossed about by their corporate masters. Not only will the worker lose all that he once had in the workplace, the unions’ once powerful voice in American politics, notably in the Democratic Party will cease to exist and the party will no longer pay any attention to the demands of the working man and woman for parity and job security. There will no incentive for them to bow to any demands for the union will no longer be able to deliver on either the threat of the carrot or the stick. The authors point out that not only will labor lose its clout on such social issues as minimum wage and job safety, but will eventually lose any ability to weigh in on such matters as free trade agreements and other policies directly affecting the American worker. This country has changed drastically since September 11, and has taken on a siege mentality. It is virtually being ruled by decree of a man who has assumed war-time powers and seems to believe that if something he does is unconstitutional then obviously the constitution needs to be changed. During his first (and disputed) term in office he was abetted by a rubber stamp congress of Republicans and dragged the nation into a disastrous foreign war for dubious reasons which have since been found to be lies and intentional obfuscations. Primarily, however, the union has much more difficulties in such a political climate for it is always difficult to organize and foment change in times of social upheaval and economic downturn (163). The national debt is in the trillions of dollar. â€Å"The context of severe national emergency has been the pretext for invoking the mantle of national security against unions in an effort to accomplish the long term Republican Party goal of denying the right of federal employees to join unions,† (163). The current administration is actively engaged in what Fantasia and Voss refer to as ‘a low intensity war’ on American labor and workers are seeing the result of this ongoing battle. The outcome of this attempt to revitalize labor is by no means certain. One ray of sunshine is that college students today are beginning to see what is happening and they are developing a social conscience such as they have demonstrated in the past for other causes. They have made a difference before. The Labor Union is not dead although it is severely bloodied. Fantasia and Voss seem to think there are two possible futures and which one will occur is largely up to the success or failure of the labor movement.