Expert to speak on global big business and labor

The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies has invited well known experts in international labor and political participation to give two lectures at IU in observance of Hispanic Heritage Month.

“These lectures will be of great interest for IU students because the speaker will address employments, economy changes and social developments in Latin America and how these influence the American population,” graduate assistant Emily Miller said.

The first lecturer will be professor Chris Tilly, a 20-year editor of Dollars and Sense, a
popular economics magazine. He is also the director of University of California Los Angeles’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.

His lecture is titled “Walmart and Beyond: How National Institutions Shape Retail Jobs around the World.”

“Walmart is a tremendously powerful corporation,” said Bradley A. U. Levinson, director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. “It has a huge influence in consumer habits and tastes in Latin America.”

The presentation will discuss the United States and Mexico and will examine the extent to which national differences in labor retail patterns and practices persist and the reasons for that persistence, according to a press release from the center.

Given that Walmart is the largest global retailer, it will offer insights into the convergence and divergence in retail labor outcomes.

“The focus is on Walmart’s effects on local business, local employment and local economy,” Levinson said. “Apart from our education, we need to be aware of where we buy our goods and what effect our buying has.”

He said it is also important for the faculty and students to know the economy and social development in Latin America.

“Though the distance is a little far, but we are connected in many ways,” Levinson said.

Joining Tilly is professor Marie Kennedy, who will present a second lecture titled “Latin’s America’s Third Left: Autonomy and Participation in the New Political Landscape.”

“The other talk is in wider interest to faculty and students,” Levinson said, “because it deals with the new democracy in Latin America, the old political parties and the guerilla revolutionaries.”

He said the United States can learn to reinvigorate democracy by observing the construction of the new kind of democracy in Latin America.

“There are a lot to learn from practices in Latin America,” Levinson said.