This study examines the effective implementation of a 1981 decision by the San Jose City Council to pay its AFSCME‐represented workers $1.45 million iri comparable worth adjustments over the two years. Following a description of expected obstacles, seven reasons for effective implementation are discussed: four beyond the control of implementors–economic health, political climate, collective bargaining context, and scale of the decision–and three within the control of implementors–realism and clarity of policy directive, agency resources and support, and leadership skills.
The poultry farms are successful producers of large quantities of eggs but oftentimes experience difficulties caused by inefficient farm management practices. The general purpose of this study was to evaluate the technical efficiency of layer farms in San Jose, Batangas using the following objectives: a) to describe the socio-economic profile of the layer farmers; b) to assess the technical knowledge of the farmers on layer farming; c) to determine the sources of inefficiency of chicken egg production; d) to analyze the profitability of layer farms; and e) to identify the problems encountered by layer farms in Batangas and provide possible solutions to improve the efficiency of chicken egg production. The technical efficiency analysis was determined by using the Stochastic Frontier Production Funtion Approach in selected layer farms in San Jose, Batangas. The technical efficiency analysis included: a) the socio-economic profile of the layer farmers; b) the technical knowledge of farmers on layer farming; c) the sources of inefficiency of chicken egg production; d) the profitability of layer farms; and, e) the problems encountered by layer farms in Batangas. In order to determine the profitability of the layer farms, Rate of Return on Assets was computed by using the Cost and Return Analysis. The farmers with a higher level of education performed better as they are able to adopt new technologies and employ effective farm practices. A longer farm experience definitely provided a distinct advantage in farm operation and this positively affects production. Farmers with a large household size can tap its members to contribute additional manpower in farm management and operations with the least cost. These technical and social factors provided positive effects on the increased productivity of the farms. These farms readily gained higher profits which, in turn, financed the use of quality inputs, such as feeds, farm technology and marketing schemes. This study determined that the significant factors that positively influenced the technical efficiency were the level of education, the number of years in the business, and the household size. The Department of Agriculture should provide complementary and practical trainings and seminars for the farmers. Farm owners should require their permanent workers, farm supervisors and certain members of their households who are involved in the farming operations to attend and participate in these training activities. Sufficient and current information derived from relevant researches made by the government agencies should be made accessible, specially the updated technologies that a farmer can readily adopt and apply on his farm. Farmers and workers could gain additional skills and essential understanding of the poultry business with the help of government and nongovernment institutions.
Over the past 40 years, the city of San Jose, in the Santa Clara Valley of northern California, has experienced explosive population and economic growth, fueled by the development of the high-technology industries. Along with the need for large numbers of engineering, technical, and managerial workers, the rapid industrialization of the Santa Clara Valley generated a huge demand for workers in unskilled, low-wage occupations, especially in the manufacturing assembly and maintenance service sector. This vast supply of unskilled, low-wage jobs played a central role in attracting immigrant workers to the region, especially from Mexico and Central America. As Latino immigrant workers have settled in San Jose, there has been an expansion of low-income urban enclave, especially in the Eastside where most of these workers live. In contrast to urban slums resulting from economic decline, these poor immigrant enclaves are the relatively new result of the successful, but highly unequal, economic development generated by the so-called Silicon Valley's high-technology industries. This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork; it seeks to describe and analyze the experiences of a group of Mexican immigrant workers and families who live in low-income barrio in San Jose that we call Benfield. The study reveals that Mexican immigrant workers, both legal and undocumented, in Benfield are concentrated in precisely those labor-intensive, low-income jobs that since the early 1980s have proliferated at one of the highest growth rates in the region. We argue that the use of immigrants as a source of flexible, disposable labor in several light-manufacturing and service industries in Silicon Valley is the primary factor that keeps a large segment of immigrant families trapped in poverty, despite there being more than one full-time worker in the family. We show that the subsistence of immigrant workers and their families depends on several strategies for coping with poverty: extended households and dense social networks; informal income-generating activities supplementing the low wages in the formal sector; and material and economic assistance from charities and, residents are eligible, government institutions. We argue that in the absence of state and local government policies, today's Latino immigrant poor could become further impoverished and their communities evolve into areas of concentrated poverty. The challenge is to develop a comprehensive set of coherent, well-orchestrated state policies that address not only the complex consequences but also the root causes of the problems that afflict working poor immigrant families and the barrios where they live. Our policy recommendations have two goals: first—and this is the main front where the battle against the growth in the number of working-poor immigrants must be fought—to decrease the comparative advantage of exploiting undocumented immigrant labor, second, to develop specific state policies tailored to low-income Latino immigrant communities, policies that, in light of the economic and demographic changes that have been taking place in California over the past few decades, are long overdue.
Development and change in traditional societies is strongly affected by interactions between humans and their natural environments. Management practices used by most low-input, rural societies represent an amalgamation of technologies, social rules and organisational structures that have been tested over time and found suitable for sustainable exploitation of resources. In many cases, however, changes in population, social values, market opportunities, government policies or technology alter a delicate balance between humans and sustainable resource use. Given these critical relationships, a thorough knowledge of the biophysical environment is essential to comprehend and attempt to improve low-input production systems such as SJL. Our overall purpose in this chapter is to characterise the environment and natural resources of the Cantón of SJL. This is accomplished in two steps. First the climate, surficial geology, hydrology, soils and vegetation are described. Descriptions include brief accounts of land use (i.e., cultivation, grazing, fuel wood collection, etc.) for broadly defined geomorphic units. Second, an analysis is presented concerning selected aspects of ecosystem dynamics at various spatial and temporal scales. ; https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/sustaining_agropastoralism/1002/thumbnail.jpg
