Perry Work Report, February 14, 2014

February 14, 2014

There will be no Perry Work Report next week -- reading week at UofT

 

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2014 Canadian Federal Budget

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tabled the 2014 federal budget in Parliament on Tuesday, February 11, 2014. The Globe and Mail presents some of the highlights.

Causing a stir is the Canada Jobs Grant program.

“Included in the budget is notice that Ottawa is pushing ahead with the Canada Jobs Grant program, regardless of a host of provincial complaints. The program, a centrepiece of last year’s budget, will see roughly $300-million of $500-million in current federal job-training transfers redirected by the time it’s fully implemented. According to the budget, Ottawa will now take on the provincial share of the program and launch it April 1 [2014] in provinces where a deal isn’t reached soon. No province has yet signed on.”

The Globe and Mail, February 12, 2014: “Thirteen must-know items from the 2014 federal budget,” by Jim Wingrove, Kathryn Blaze Carlson, and Kim Mackrael

The Globe and Mail, February 13, 2014: “Kenney moves to quell provincial anger over Canada Job Grant deadline,” by Bill Curry and Jim Wingrove

Government of Canada -- Budget 2014

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Tough Labour Talks Ahead as Workers Push for Wage Hikes

"Wages are set to take centre stage in a tough bargaining climate this year, as unionized workers push for better compensation after seeing pay increases ebb to a 16-year low."

"Average pay hikes fell to 1.4 per cent for unionized workers last year, data compiled by Employment and Social Development Canada show. Public-sector wage settlements fell to their lowest point since 1996."

"Several trends suggest difficult labour talks ahead. Austerity will continue in the public sector as governments seek to balance budgets and, in some cases, impose wage freezes. On the private-sector side, employers aim to contain costs and boost competitiveness. And workers, frustrated by years of tepid wage gains, are hoping for higher pay as the economic outlook improves.”

The Globe and Mail, February 10, 2014: “Tough labour talks ahead as workers push for wage hikes,” by Tavia Grant

Employment and Social Development Canada, February 7, 2014: “Workplace Bulletin: Collective bargaining monthly update December 2013”

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Vanishing Science: The Canadian Conservative Way

“Canadians hoping to gauge the hazards of the Harper government’s ongoing budget cuts need look no further than the impact of the cuts on government science, concludes a new report by the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) titled Vanishing Science, based on recent, separate surveys of federal government scientists and the public.”

"'The Harper government’s efforts to balance the federal budget in time for the 2015 election is being built on deep, unpopular cuts to public science that put at risk Canadians’ health, safety and the environment,' said PIPSC President Debi Daviau. 'These are not cuts to ‘back office operations,’ as the Finance Minister described them in 2012 -- not unless by ‘back office’ he means Canada’s natural environment, air and water quality, the survival of other species, and the health and safety of all Canadians.'”

Downloads:

The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, February 4, 2014: “Harper Government Cuts to Science Overwhelmingly Detrimental and Out of Sync with Public’s Priorities, Say Surveys”

CBC News, February 6, 2014: “Federal science hobbled by cuts and policies, poll says,” by Emily Chung

The Tyee, February 12, 2014: “Report lists top scientists who lost jobs due to federal cuts,” by Andrew Nikiforuk

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Unifor -- Negotiations and an Overview of the Eastern Canada Pulp and Paper Industry

“Unifor, Canada’s largest union in the forestry sector, kicked off preparations for the 2014 pulp and paper pattern bargaining in Eastern Canada at its Industry Bargaining Conference [on February 5, 2014] in Montreal.”

“The union has chosen Resolute Forest Products as the target company for 2014 pattern negotiations by delegates from 50 Unifor local unions in Atlantic Canada, Quebec and Ontario. The agreement to be negotiated with Resolute will set the pattern for some 10,000 Unifor members in the Eastern Canadian pulp and paper industry.”

“‘Unifor has an optimistic vision for forestry and pulp and paper, and we’ll link our bargaining to a sustainable forest industry and better days for forestry communities,’ said [Unifor National President Jerry] Dias, ‘Every successful forest economy in the world is based on a partnership of government, labour and business to promote the industry and take care of their workers and communities. We firmly expect the same here in Canada.’”

Unifor, February 7, 2014: “Unifor chooses Resolute Forest Products to lead sector negotiations”

Unifor -- Wage Policy Conference, February 5-7, 2014: “Economic and Financial Overview of the Eastern Canada Pulp and Paper Industry” (31 pages, PDF)

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A Statement by 70 Canadian Economists against Austerity

"We, the undersigned, strongly urge the federal government to stop implementing fiscal austerity measures just to achieve its political goal of budgetary balance by 2015."

"We believe that such austerity policy is terribly misguided. Not only are cuts in government spending completely inappropriate in the current context, but also the primary macroeconomic concern of the federal government ought to be the achievement of high levels of incomes and full employment for all Canadians, rather than the attainment of an elusive political target of budgetary balance that condemns the Canadian economy to remain stuck in a state of long-term stagnation."

The Progressive Economics Forum, February 11th, 2014: “Economists Against Austerity,” by Erin Weir

UPDATE (Feb. 12): “Carol Goar reports this statement on page A17 of today’s Toronto Star. To add your signature to it, please e-mail your name, title and institution to Mario Seccareccia at mseccare@uottawa.ca”

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Employment and Labour Update: A Year in Review 2013

"Our Employment and labour year in review assembles a number of important cases, recent developments in legislation and cases to watch for in 2014, all of which could potentially have an impact on the management of your human resources. You will find a summary of these 2013 cases and monthly developments."

Norton Rose Fulbright, February 2014: “Employment and labour update: A year in review,” (42 pages, PDF) -- This document provides links to the relevant cases for more detailed information

Norton Rose Fulbright, February 2014: “Employment and labour update: A year in review 2013”

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The Best "Management Lessons" Story You'll Ever Read

The Shortlist has compiled a list of entertaining and random blog posts from around the Internet related to management for your reading pleasure.

This excerpt from Christopher Mim’s article entitled Everything I Need to Know About Management I Learned from Playing Dungeons and Dragons captures the spirit of this shortlist:

“Often, the best candidate for a given job isn’t the person who’s most skilled at fulfilling its primary requirement, but instead is a more well-rounded individual, a lesson learned from character creation in D&D, writes Christopher Mims: ‘A complete set of ‘perfect’ stats [in a new character] is vanishingly improbable, and most of the time you’ll have a mix of strong and weak ones.’ And: A diverse team is essential to survival, a point underscored by the impossibility of winning in D&D unless you have a warrior to beat things up and absorb damage, a wizard to fight magical foes and occasionally drop the hammer on something big, a cleric to heal your party members, and so on.”

The Shortlist -- Harvard Business Review Blog Network, January 31, 2014: “The Best “Management Lessons” Story You’ll Ever Read,” by Gretchen Gavett

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The Wolf of Sesame Street: Corruption inside PBS's News Division

"With PBS’s ‘Pension Peril’ series echoing many of the same pension-cutting themes that the Arnold Foundation [headed by former Enron trader John Arnold] is promoting in the legislative arena, and with the series not explicitly disclosing the Arnold financing to PBS viewers, the foundation’s spokesperson says her organization is happy with the segments airing on stations throughout the country. However, she says the foundation reserves ‘the ability to stop funding’ the series at any time ‘in the event of extraordinary circumstances.’”

"The news of PBS actively soliciting financing from billionaire political activists -- and custom tailoring original program proposals for those financiers -- follows a wave of damning revelations about the influence of super-wealthy political interests over public broadcasting. Thanks to collusion with PBS executives, those monied interests are increasingly permitted to launder their ideological and self-serving messages through the seeming objectivity of public television.”

"The stealth Arnold-PBS connection, however, represents a major escalation in the larger trend. In this particular case, PBS seems to be defying its own rules and regulations about conflicts of interest. At the same time, the fact that PBS is obscuring the financial arrangement suggests the network may be deliberately attempting to hide those conflicts from its own viewers."

PandoDaily, February 12, 2014: “The Wolf of Sesame Street: Revealing the secret corruption inside PBS’s news division,” by David Sirota

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The Rising Cost of Not Going to College

"For those who question the value of college in this era of soaring student debt and high unemployment, the attitudes and experiences of today’s young adults -- members of the so-called Millennial generation -- provide a compelling answer. On virtually every measure of economic well-being and career attainment -- from personal earnings to job satisfaction to the share employed full time -- young college graduates are outperforming their peers with less education. And when today’s young adults are compared with previous generations, the disparity in economic outcomes between college graduates and those with a high school diploma or less formal schooling has never been greater in the modern era."

Report materials:

PewResearch, February 11, 2014: “The Rising Cost of Not Going to College”

PewResearch, September 24, 2013: “The growing economic clout of the college educated” by Richard Fry

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Income Inequality in the United States

From the executive summary: “This report examines trends regarding  poverty, the middle class, income inequality and economic mobility in the United States. It also suggests policy changes that can be implemented to ensure that our economy provides good opportunities for all workers.”

"Policy suggestions include: 

  • Ensuring a fair minimum wage;
  • Helping workers train for and find jobs;
  • Helping students acquire necessary workforce skills;
  • Making college affordable for all Americans;
  • Solidifying the social safety net for working families;
  • Guaranteeing fair tax treatment for all workers;
  • Aiding workers in fighting pay discrimination; and
  • Improving corporate governance”

Joint Economic Committee, January 2014: “Income Inequality in the United States,” by Amy Klobuchar (15 pages, PDF)

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Hate Sinks -- The Work of Internet Moderators is Gendered

"[Moderators] absorb the excess affects in a period of political dysfunction, and allow institutions to appear stable and unchallenged. They maintain the semblance of civility after older infrastructures have fallen into disrepair. They suck up discursive heat so that political communications systems can keep flowing according to their archaic fantasies of civil, public discourse. If computers have such heat sinks, moderators are hate sinks."

"In my qualitative research, I found that the overwhelming majority of moderators were women, and most were relatively recent graduates. This is consistent with the high ratios of female to male graduates in journalism and communication degrees in the U.S. (about three to one) and Australia (up to four to one in some degrees), and also with the disproportionate number of men occupying full time and prominent positions, further up the chain. In the era of social media, this adds up to a cruel equation: Not only do women face streams of hate directed at themselves on personal accounts, they also scrub similar threads clean for their employers."

"For many women, as Amanda Hess has shown, encountering hate online is an everyday reality. But if some spaces appear devoid of such abuse, it is because there are women absorbing still more negative affect in order to preserve a zombie version of liberal civility. Dispelling the lonely silences of moderation will not only let us recognize workers’ labor but will also allow us to better understand how politics fails to satisfy in liberal democracies. And when we better appreciate who bears the costs of our vaunted communicative freedoms, we may be less inclined to see democracy as the ability to sound off, and more insistent on defining it as the capacity to speak together as equals."

The New Inquiry, February 6, 2014: “Hate Sinks,” by Jason Wilson

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The Massive Liberal Failure on Race

"The nature of affirmative action is that it skims. It elevates the best and the brightest of a disadvantaged group while doing nothing to eliminate the root causes of that group’s disadvantage. Just as cherry-picking all the black kids with good SAT scores hasn’t brought about the end of racism, cherry-picking all the poor kids with good SAT scores isn’t going to do much to end poverty."

"Right now, the Democratic party and the racial justice movement are sitting on a junk heap of racial preference programs that aren’t doing anyone much good, and they lack the substantive programs they need: a true, New Deal-style reformation that repairs the infrastructure of our cities, ends mass incarceration, provides access to early education and paid family leave and job training and other programs that put all of black America on more solid footing.”

Slate, February 10, 2014: “The Massive Liberal Failure on Race,” by Tanner Colby

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Rent-a-Crowd? Crowdfunding Academic Research

From the abstract: “This paper examines the use of crowdfunding platforms to fund academic research. Looking specifically at the use of a Pozible campaign to raise funds for a small pilot research study into home education in Australia, the paper reports on the success and problems of using the platform. It also examines the crowdsourcing of literature searching as part of the package. The paper looks at the realities of using this type of platform to gain start-up funding for a project and argues that families and friends are likely to be the biggest supporters. The finding that family and friends are likely to be the highest supporters supports similar work in the arts communities that are traditionally served by crowdfunding platforms. The paper argues that, with exceptions, these platforms can be a source of income in times where academics are finding it increasingly difficult to source government funding for projects.”

Introduction
Literature review
Academic work in a Web 2.0 world
Whose community is it anyway?
Conclusions and implications

First Monday, January 2014: “Rent-a-crowd? Crowdfunding academic research,” by Rebecca English

CrowdFundBeat, January 2014: “Rent-a Crowd? Crowdfunding Academic Research,” by Rebecca English

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Teamwork: Lessons from the 2014 Winter Olympics

Gilmore Junio decided to take one for the team and gave up his spot in February 12, 2014’s 1000-metre speed skating final for Canadian teammate Denny Morrison.

“The three-time Olympian Morrison failed to qualify at the 1,000 distance at the Olympic trials in Calgary last month, falling just 50 metres short of the finish.”

“But Junio, who finished 11th on Monday [February 10, 2014] in his Olympic debut in the men’s 500, said Tuesday [February 11, 2014] it’s the right thing to do.”

“‘How Denny is skating now, I believe it’s in the best interest of the team if he races,’ Junio said in a statement released by Speed Skating Canada. ‘To represent Canada at the Olympics is a huge honour and privilege but I believe that as Canadians, we’re not just here to compete; we are here to win. Denny has proven to be a consistent medal threat in the distance.’”

Morrison went on to win the silver medal.

CBC News, February 11, 2014: “Gilmore Junio puts Team Canada first, gives 1,000m spot to Denny Morrison,” by Chris Iorfida

CBC News, February 12, 2014: “Denny Morrison wins silver in 1,000m speed skating,” by Dean Campbell

“Smart employers can be strategic and use the Olympics as a team-building exercise to boost morale by making certain allowances during the Games.”

“‘There obviously will be a decline in productivity,’ said Richard Leblanc, a business professor at York University.”
“However, productivity is more than pumping out work hours.”

“‘What about people bonding, what about morale? These softer elements of productivity are overlooked,’ said Leblanc. ‘Just because you can’t measure it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a powerful effect. Good employers will understand that.’”

“...David Zweig, associate professor of organizational behaviour and human resources at the University of Toronto, said any loss of productivity will be short-lived.”

“‘This is not going to have a long-term effect on productivity,’ he said. ‘In fact, allowing people to enjoy the event could actually enhance their satisfaction with their employer, and that could have more positive effects on productivity than making them hide at their desks.’”

The Toronto Star, February 13, 2014: “The key to a happy workplace? Let employees watch the Olympics,” by Curtis Rush

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Book of the Week

The Real Deal on People: Straight Talk on How the CHRO Creates Business Value, by Les Dakens. Toronto : Carswell, 2013. 448 p. ISBN 9780779860647

From the publisher: “The Real Deal on People chronicles the 30 [plus] year accumulation of industry-leading best practices and thought leadership in the realm of human resource management in the C-suite by one of North America's top Chief Human Resource Officers (CHRO). The critical role of the HR executive in achieving a company's overall business objectives is a relatively new development -- especially compared to more established C-suite roles such as CEO, CFO, CMO, etc.; with responsibilities ranging from workforce strategy and labor relations to executive compensation, succession planning, and board member selection. Increasingly the CHRO reports directly to the CEO and is a member of the most senior level committees of the company; and the CHRO's strategic role continues to rapidly expand and evolve as 21st century workforce challenges threaten corporate success. The Real Deal on People is complete in offering insight into all of the critical CHRO functions and interactions, including labor and industrial relations in a multi-national environment, and brings life to the theory and philosophy with real-world examples that illustrate the concept as only real companies, real executives and real situations can. Included in the book are great perspectives about the CHRO role from leading CEO's, accomplished Board Directors, key external consultants and successful CHRO's. Based on the author's long-standing international leadership position as a mentor and coach, The Real Deal on People chronicles a personal journey of growth and discovery that in many ways has led the evolution of the CHRO role -- offering personal insights, expert guidelines and real-world examples in a warm, engaging, easy to read conversational format, that will appeal to readers around the world.”

Visit the Recent Books at the CIRHR Library blog.

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