Perry Work Report: work&labour news&research, November 7, 2014

November 7, 2014

Announcement:

The Canadian Industrial Relations Association (CIRA) Announces the Second in a Series of Three Free Webinars on Current Topics of Labour Relations

“Raising Expectations and Raising Hell in the North American Labour Movement” features Jane McAlevey, former organizer for the Service Employees International Union and author of the recent book Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell): My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement, which describes her new approaches to organizing and delivers a stinging critique of traditional trade unionism. 

Click here to register for the webinar which will take place on December 3, 2014 at 2 PM.

 

Follow us on the CIRHR Library Tumblr and on the CIRHR Library Twitter.

The Long-Form Census May Live Again!

"The Commons will debate a private member’s bill to bring back the long-form census, the mandatory questionnaire axed by the Conservative government in 2010."

"Liberal MP Ted Hsu’s proposal would amend the Statistics Act to make the long-form census a permanent feature of the census process every five years."

The Globe and Mail, November 5, 2014: “MPs to debate bill to bring back long-form census axed by Conservatives,” by Jennifer Ditchburn

Ted Hsu, MP -- Bill C-626 -- An Act to Amend the Statistics Act [website]

"Independent reviews of the National Household Survey (NHS) data have revealed its inferior and dubious quality...."
But “[a]n opportunity exists for legislators to right this wrong.”

"Bill C-626 makes the following three principal recommendations: First, it calls for reinstating the mandatory long-form census; second, it recommends that the Chief Statistician, in consultation with the relevant stakeholders, should formulate the policies regarding census, including the means of collecting the data; and, third, the bill proposes a consultative process, which engages experts and political parties, for appointing the chief statistician."

"Unless the amendments proposed in Bill C-626 are implemented, the status quo does not bode well for developing evidence-based public policy or business strategy in Canada."

The Globe and Mail, November 6, 2014: “Poor census data is crippling Canada’s ability to compete,” by Murtaza Haider

From Evidence for Democracy:

“We need to take action now to support the development of evidence-based policies that benefit all Canadians. Bill C-626 gives us a critical opportunity to raise this important issue again.”

"Please take a moment to tell your MP that you support bringing back the long-form census before they debate Bill C-626 today! Send a message to your MP and the party leaders here: https://evidencefordemocracy.ca/census."

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Will Conservative Legislation Put an End to the 'Oldest Profession'?

Well according to the Conservative party it will: “The bill will ‘significantly decrease and ultimately work towards the abolition of the demand for sexual services,’ Conservative Senator Denise Batters said, speaking on her party’s behalf.”

There are other perspectives:

“‘It becomes a strategic choice as to whether or not [to challenge] the obviously constitutionally flawed sections and leave the trickier ones for a later date ... or whether to roll the dice and try to knock everything out on the outset,’ Prof. Young said. He believes ‘a brain dead monkey should be able to successfully challenge’ some parts of the bill, while others are more nuanced.”

The Globe and Mail, November 4, 2014: “Tory prostitution bill gets Senate approval,” by Josh Wingrove

The Globe and Mail, July 15, 2014 (last updated September 9, 2014): “Canada’s new prostitution laws: Everything you need to know,” by Josh Wingrove

The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, enacted by Parliament on Tuesday [November 4, 2014], is an exercise in futility. The exploited persons in question -- prostitutes -- will not be more secure than they were. If anything, they may be less so.”

If the purchase and selling of sex “becomes even more furtive than before, as the bill seems to intend, then prostitutes, who are overwhelmingly women, are very likely to be even more isolated and endangered.”

"The PCEPA makes it extremely difficult for anyone to advertise sexual services... And without prior communications by phone or Internet, it will be difficult for a prostitute to scrutinize potential customers and assess how dangerous they may be."

"It is almost as if the government wanted to force prostitutes onto the streets, making them stand around, implicitly soliciting customers, and diminishing the quality of neighbourhoods -- without protectors and without prospective witnesses to violence."

The Globe and Mail, November 5, 2014: “Bad bill on prostitution -- it’s law, until the Supremes return”

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Bill C-377 Back from the Dead

"Stephen Harper’s backdoor assault on the labour movement, delivered through a private member’s bill from an obscure backbencher, has been rightly labelled hypocritical, punitive and an unprecedented invasion of privacy."

"The bill, actually a tax amendment measure known as C-377, has been gutted and rightly been tossed aside as roadkill on the legislative highway."

"But it’s back from the dead. The reason it won’t die is simple -- the bill has been orchestrated by Harper’s office and an anti-union lobbyist even if it bears the imprimatur of British Columbia backbencher Russ Hiebert."

“Bill C-377 is an anti-union bill,’’ Cowan said in remarks prepared for Senate debate. “It is designed to bury labour unions in so much paperwork that they will not be able to represent their workers as fully and capably as they do now.’’

The Toronto Star, November 4, 2014: An open PMO door for a private anti-union bill: Tim Harper

"Certainly it has been many months -- indeed, it has been more than a year -- since we thought we had disposed of this bill. And now all these months later, we find ourselves back at square one, the parliamentary equivalent of Groundhog Day,” Cowan said in a speech to the Senate Tuesday night.”

“But while Bill Murray’s character in that movie was forced to relive the same day until he changed for better, we’re being forced to redo our consideration of the bill in the hope that we will agree to change it for the worse.”

Ottawa Citizen, November 4, 2014: “The Gargoyle: The Senate’s 'Groundhog Day,' minus Bill Murray,” by Jordan Press

Canadians for Responsible Advocacy, November 4, 2014: “In Focus Report Bill: C-377” (23 pages, PDF)

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Ontario Liberals 'Dropped the Ball' on Worker Protection Bill

“Workers’ rights advocates are warning the Ontario government’s proposed worker fairness bill requires urgent amendments, after the legislature moved on Monday [October 27, 2014] to expedite the passage of the law.”

"... Deena Ladd, of the Workers Action Centre ... said she was concerned that Bill 18 in its current form does not require companies who use temporary employees to take adequate responsibility for them."

"If passed, Bill 18 will make client companies and temp agencies jointly responsible for workers’ unpaid wages and overtime. But all other worker rights under the [Employment Standards Act] will remain under the purview of agencies that often have little to no contact with temporary employees once they are hired by a client company."

"The Workers Action Centre also called on politicians to remove from Bill 18 a proposed grace period that would prevent workers from making wage theft claims of more than $10,000 for six months."

"Liza Draman, a live-in caregiver and volunteer with the Caregivers Action Centre, also took issue with the bill’s migrant worker provisions. Although the proposed legislation will extend the protections that exist for live-in caregivers to all migrant workers in Ontario, including a ban on recruitment fees, the bill won’t require registration by recruiting firms."

“‘Ontario has dropped the ball,’ said Syed Hussan, of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change. ‘This is the province with the largest number of migrant workers and basically the weakest protections.’”

Metro, October 30, 2014: “Ontario Liberals ‘dropped the ball’ on worker protection bill”

Legislative Assembly of Ontario: “Bill 18, Stronger Workplaces for a Stronger Economy Act, 2014”

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How Canada's Privacy Deficit Undermines Our Economy

"International clients have historically had a high level of confidence doing business in Canada, but, sadly, our business climate is becoming increasingly toxic for privacy. It will be difficult for overseas clients to maintain that confidence if our government doesn’t change its tune."

"We have a lot to celebrate in our tech sector, with pioneering Canadian companies like Hootsuite and Shopify boosting employment and making a global impact. Unfortunately, the federal government’s failure to address our privacy deficit undermines trust in our tech sector, and in the wider economy. This failure risks tilting the playing field away from Canadian businesses, and hindering innovation, job creation, and economic opportunity."

Here are some of the ways that “Canadian government policies and actions are creating a privacy deficit... :

  • Spying on trading partners -- CSEC’s spying on Brazil’s mining ministry
  • Data security -- Post-Snowden, individuals and companies are considering where they store their data and who has access to it. Canada, with its weak privacy protections, reckless spy agency, and troubling NSA connections, could be left on the wrong side of an increasingly splintered Internet
  • Harmful spying legislation -- Bill C-13 encourages Canadian companies to engage in warrantless disclosure of their customers’ private information
  • Putting U.S. copyright trolls ahead of Canadian businesses -- Under Bill S-4, U.S. copyright trolls could obtain Canadians’ private information from telecom providers on a massive scale
  • Risky secret trade deals -- The government recently hosted secret talks for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a huge trade deal that could force Canadian tech companies to act as ‘Internet police,’ spying on their customers’ activities, blocking websites, and even disconnecting families from the Internet for allegations of copyright infringement. ”

The Toronto Star, November 4, 2014: “How Canada’s privacy deficit undermines our economy,” by Phillip Djwa

OpenMedia.ca -- Protect our Privacy Coalition [website]

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The Globe and Mail's Report on Business Magazine, Special Issue

"This November, for the first time in Report on Business Magazine’s history, an entire issue has been dedicated to a single subject: Canada’s oil sands.”

"This special edition of Report on Business Magazine combines Canada’s best business and resources journalists from The Globe and Mail with the in-depth financial insight of Thomson Reuters to produce the first ever issue devoted entirely to an industry that is having a profound impact on Canada’s economic prosperity.”

“With 170 billion barrels of recoverable oil, it is Canada’s biggest resource, but it also presents the country with its biggest quandary - how do we steward its development responsibly while continuing to enjoy the economic rewards it provides?”

“Given the tremendous reach and impact of the oil sands, every Canadian is a stakeholder. We hope this depth of coverage helps inform your position on this complex and controversial sector.”

The Globe and Mail’s, Report on Business Magazine -- Canada’s Oil Sands (100 pages, PDF)

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A Number is Never Just a Number: Minimum Wage Mythology

"The [Centre for Policy Alternatives’] Trish Hennessy has long been a fan of Harper Magazine’s one-page list of eye-popping statistics, Harper’s Index. Instead of wishing for a Canadian version to magically appear, she’s created her own -- a monthly listing of numbers about Canada and its place in the world. Hennessy’s Index comes out on the first of each month -- and reminds us that a number is never just a number.”

This month’s topic: minimum wage.

Highlights include:

  • 4: Number of decades that the average of provincial minimum wages in Canada has remained unchanged in real terms. (Source)
  • $10.14: The average of all provincial minimum wage rates in Canada in 2013 -- about the same value as the 1975 average of minimum wage rates ($10.13 expressed in 2013 dollars). (Source)
  • 1 cent: Hourly minimum wage gain for Canada’s lowest-paid workers over the past four decades: a single red penny. You know, that currency we thought so useless it’s no longer issued? (Source)

rabble.ca, November 3, 2014: “A number is never just a number: Minimum wage mythology,” by Trish Hennessy

Centre for Policy Alternatives -- Hennessy’s Index [website]

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Canada's Top 100 Employers -- UofT Makes the 2015 List

"Canada’s Top 100 Employers is a national competition now entering its 16th year. Any employer with its head office or principal place of business in Canada may apply...."

"While the selection process to choose the winners of Canada’s Top 100 Employers has evolved to include new questions in response to changes in the workplace -- such as working from home and commuter workstations -- the underlying methodology has not significantly changed since the project began in 2000. The competition remains a catalogue of best practices, which Richard Yerema, managing editor for Canada’s Top 100 Employers, considers to be a great strength."

The Globe and Mail, November 4, 2014: “Canada’s Top 100 Employers make their workplaces exceptional,” by Diane Jermyn

Search Jobs at Canada’s Top 100 Employers

"Some of the reasons why University of Toronto was selected as one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers for 2015:

  • provides generous maternity and parental leave top-up payments for employees who are mothers, fathers, or adoptive parents -- all programs include same-sex partners
  • manages onsite daycare facilities at each campus location, which employees can take advantage of when they are ready to return to work, as well a generous offsite daycare subsidy, to $2,000 per child
  • encourages employees to maintain a healthy balance between their work and personal life through a variety of alternative work options including flexible hours, telecommuting, shortened and compressed work week options, and reduced summer hours
  • helps employees save for the future with generous contributions to a defined benefit pension plan and offers retirement planning assistance as well as phased-in work options
  • is committed to the professional development of its employees and provides a range of in-house and online training programs as well as rigorous year-long mentoring programs”

Canada’s Top 100 Employers -- University of Toronto

Canada’s Top 100 Employers [website]

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The 2015 Maclean's University Rankings and Canadian Business School Education

“McGill. Simon Fraser. Mount Allison. Year after year, these universities top the Maclean’s University Rankings, and this year is no exception. McGill retains its first-place position in the Medical Doctoral category for the 10th year in a row -- these institutions have a medical school and a broad range of research and Ph.D. programs. The University of Toronto moves back to second place after one-upping UBC, which was No. 2 last year, while Laval University moves up three positions to tie in 10th with Universite de Montreal due to higher scores on faculty awards and reputation.”

Maclean’s, October 31, 2014: "The 2015 Maclean’s University Rankings,” by Rachel Browne

Do rankings only count if you come out on top?

“In the Financial Times 2014 Global MBA Ranking, Rotman was rated No. 51 in the field of 100, a drop from 46th place in 2013 but still the top Canadian school. And in Bloomberg Businessweek’s most recent ratings, from 2012, Rotman placed No. 11 of 184 in the international full-time MBA category (excludes U.S. schools).”

The Globe and Mail, November 5, 2014: “Rankings are not No. 1 in some schools’ hearts,” by Shannon Moneo

The B-school Gender Gap:

“Indeed, following some promising leaps forward over the past 15 years, recruitment of women into Canadian full-time MBA programs appears to have flatlined in the mid to low 30-per-cent range.”

“By comparison, Harvard Business School had a 41-per-cent intake of women into the school’s MBA class of 2016, a figure slightly above the North American average of 37 per cent.”

The Globe and Mail, November 5, 2014: “How B-schools are responding to the persistent gender gap,” by Darah Hansen

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The Most Innovative Companies 2014

"While innovation continues to be a top-three priority for three-quarters of the companies in BCG’s 2014 global innovation survey, fewer executives are confident in their organizations’ innovation skills. Innovation is hard. Breakthrough innovation is harder. What sets breakthrough innovators apart? And who are the most innovative companies of 2014? The following articles tell the story."

bcg.perspectives, October 28, 2014: “The Most Innovative Companies 2014: Breaking Through Is Hard to Do,” by Kim Wagner, Andrew Taylor, Hadi Zablit, and Eugene Foo

The Boston Consulting Group, October 2014: “The Most Innovative Companies 2014: Breaking Through is Hard to Do,” by Kim Wagner, Andrew Taylor, Hadi Zablit, and Eugene Foo (28 pages, PDF)

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The Art of Not Working at Work

"Does having a job necessarily entail work? If not, how and why does a job lose its substance? And what can be done to make employees less lazy -- or is that even the right question to ask in a system that’s set up in the way that ours is? After talking to 40 dedicated loafers, I think I can take a stab at some answers."

Click here to continue reading.

The Atlantic, November, 3 2014: “The Art of Not Working at Work,” by Roland Paulsen

So, when do workers usually start to slack off? According to researchers, apparently around noon.

"People in the Big Apple are pretty productive in their mornings but social media distractions solidly take hold by lunchtime -- and the rest of the day is really a wash after that."

"That, at least, is one observation from a new Twitter heat-map that aims to take the pulse of the bustling metropolis by analyzing New Yorkers’ Twitter activity over a 5-month timeframe."

"So what does this all mean? Tracking the movements of large populations of people has been hampered by the lack of large-scale data flows of people and their activities. Now, Twitter is making that much more possible."

"Researchers say ... Twitter data can help us rethink the way people move and interact within their urban environments."

Discover, November 4, 2014: “The Exact Moment When New York Office Workers Start Slacking Off,” by Carl Engelking

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The Internet of Things: The Third Wave is Creepy

"Rifkin’s vision that people will occupy themselves with more fulfilling activities like making music and self-publishing novels once they are freed from work, while machines do the heavy lifting, is offered at a moment when a new kind of structural unemployment born of robotics, big data, and artificial intelligence takes hold globally, and traditional ways of making a living disappear."

"Rifkin’s claims may be comforting, but they are illusory and misleading. (We’ve also heard this before, in 1845, when Marx wrote in The German Ideology that under communism people would be ‘free to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, [and] criticize after dinner.’)”

“The New York Times this past summer made clear, employment in the sharing economy, also known as the gig economy, where people piece together an income by driving for Uber and delivering groceries for Instacart, leaves them little time for hunting and fishing, unless it’s hunting for work and fishing under a shared couch for loose change.”

"So here comes the Internet’s Third Wave. In its wake jobs will disappear, work will morph, and a lot of money will be made by the companies, consultants, and investment banks that saw it coming. Privacy will disappear, too, and our intimate spaces will become advertising platforms...."

The New York Review of Books, November 20, 2014: “The Creepy New Wave of the Internet,” by Sue Halpern

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What Years of Working the Night Shift Could Do to Your Brain

"Hourly shift work has been linked to all kinds of ills, from obesity to heart attack, and now a new study shows it might also have serious implications for your brain."

"The study in Occupational & Environmental Medicine looked at more than 3,000 people living in France, about half of whom had experience working shifts. Those who had done so, either in the past or present, had lower scores on tests of memory, processing speed and overall brain power than those who worked normal office hours, the study finds.”

"So why does shift work appear to be so bad for the brain? The authors stress that the study is observational, so it can’t determine that shift work causes brain decline. But they do have a favorite theory: ‘If it’s not sleep,’ says Dr. Philip Tucker, study co-author and senior lecturer in the psychology department at Swansea University in the U.K., ‘the strongest candidate would be destruction of circadian rhythms.’"

"Shift workers, who sleep during the day, may also have a vitamin D deficiency, the study authors say, or may be more prone to metabolic disorder -- but the disruption of circadian rhythms is still the main contender."

TIME, November 4, 2014: “This Is Your Brain on 10 Years of Working the Night Shift,” by Mandy Oaklander

CBC News, November 3, 2014: “Night shift effects on brain comparable to chronic jet lag”

Occupational & Environmental Medicine, November 2014: “Chronic effects of shift work on cognition: findings from the VISAT longitudinal study,” by Jean-Claude Marquie, Philip Tucker, Simon Folkard, Catherine Gentil, and David Ansiau

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UN Climate Change Report: Hope Amid Stark Warnings

"Climate change is happening, it’s almost entirely man’s fault and limiting its impacts may require reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero this century, the United Nations’ panel on climate science said Sunday [November 2, 2014]."

The UN’s report “underlined the scope of the climate challenge in stark terms. Emissions, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, may need to drop to zero by the end of this century for the world to have a decent chance of keeping the temperature rise below a level that many consider dangerous. Failure to do so, which could require deployment of technologies that suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, could lock the world on a trajectory with ‘irreversible’ impacts on people and the environment, the report said. Some impacts are already being observed, including rising sea levels, a warmer and more acidic ocean, melting glaciers and Arctic sea ice and more frequent and intense heat waves.”

However, “[a]mid its grim projections, the report also offered hope. The tools needed to set the world on a low-emissions path are there; it just has to break its addiction to the oil, coal and gas that power the global energy system while polluting the atmosphere with heat-trapping CO2, the chief greenhouse gas.”

"The report is meant as a scientific roadmap for the UN climate negotiations, which continue next month in Lima, Peru. That’s the last major conference before a summit in Paris next year, where a global agreement on climate action is supposed to be adopted."

"The biggest hurdle is deciding who should do what, with rich countries calling on China and other major developing countries to take on ambitious targets, and developing countries saying the rich have a historical responsibility to lead the fight against warming and to help poorer nations cope with its impacts."

CBC News, November 2, 2014: “UN climate change report offers stark warnings, hope”

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- Fifth Assessment Report

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Book of the Week

Homer Economicus: The Simpsons and Economics, edited by Joshua Hall. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2014. 241 p. ISBN 9780804791717 (pbk.)

From the publisher: "In Homer Economicus a cast of lively contributors takes a field trip to Springfield, where the Simpsons reveal that economics is everywhere. By exploring the hometown of television's first family, this book provides readers with the economic tools and insights to guide them at work, at home, and at the ballot box.

Since The Simpsons centers on the daily lives of the Simpson family and its colorful neighbors, three opening chapters focus on individual behavior and decision-making, introducing readers to the economic way of thinking about the world. Part II guides readers through six chapters on money, markets, and government. A third and final section discusses timely topics in applied microeconomics, including immigration, gambling, and health care as seen in The Simpsons. Reinforcing the nuts and bolts laid out in any principles text in an entertaining and culturally relevant way, this book is an excellent teaching resource that will also be at home on the bookshelf of an avid reader of pop economics."

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