Perry Work Report, Februrary 28, 2014

Februrary 28, 2014

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Congratulations Tony! See you in Melbourne!

Congratulations Tony! Everyone at CIRHR is looking forward to visiting you in Melbourne, Australia!

Professor Fang has a Ph.D. in Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management from the University of Toronto. Tony Fang is the Director of Master of International Business Program (Australia, Malaysia, South Africa, China) and an Associate Professor of Human Resources Management and Employment Relations at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and an Associate Professor (status only) with the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources Management at University of Toronto.

News from Professor Fang: “Recently I was also invited to serve on an Expert Advisory Committee for the World Bank’s Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development. I will also be the Convenor for the Chinese Economics Society Australia (CESA) 26th Annual Conference at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, July 7-8, 2014. The conference is jointly organized by the Department of Management, Centre for Development Economics, and Nanyang Technological University. In addition, I have received two Natural Sciences Research Grants of China (RMB 530,000 and RMB 220,000).”

IZA: Tony Fang Research Fellow

Forthcoming publication: Fang, T. “Talent Management in China,” in Global Talent Management. Springer

Forthcoming publication: Long R and Fang T. “Is Compensation Actually Strategic: The Case of Profit Sharing,” International Journal of Human Resource Management.

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Tim Hudak Turns Around on Right to Work Plan

"Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak has suddenly backed away from his controversial anti-union right-to-work plan for Ontario that he has been touting since 2012."

"His abrupt change of heart came during an early morning breakfast speech to the Toronto Region Board of Trade where he vowed to scrap labour reforms that included getting rid of the Rand Formula, which requires employees in a unionized shop to pay dues whether or not they join the union."

"The Rand Formula dates back to an arbitration decision by Canadian Court Justice Ivan Rand in 1946, part of the arbitration settlement that ended a United Auto Workers’ strike at the Windsor, Ont. Ford plant. It ensured there are no so-called free riders."

The Toronto Star, February 21, 2014: “Tim Hudak renounces anti-union right-to-work plan,” by Richard J. Brennan

The Globe and Mail, February 21, 2014: “Hudak abandons ‘right-to-work’ proposal,” by Adrian Morrow
 

[Ontario Public Service Employees Union] was glad to see Hudak step back from right-to-work, but doubted the Tories will suddenly become pro-union.”

"‘I thought he might have to back down given early on the divisions within his party, however I don’t believe for one minute
that Hudak is going to give up his fight against organized labour,’ said [OPSEU president Warren] Thomas. ‘They will come back at us another way.’”

CBC News, February 21, 2014: “Tim Hudak backs off PC ‘right to work’ plan”

Ontario Public Service Employees Union -- “Made in the USA: Tim Hudak’s plan to cut your wages” [video documentary]
 

Right to Work Laws: Legislative Background and Empirical Research

"Recent legislative proposals, with substantial numbers of cosponsors, would expand RTW policies nationwide. Advocates of national RTW laws claim that they would enhance personal freedom and employer flexibility. Opponents argue that such laws would weaken workers’ abilities to collectively bargain for more favorable compensation and working conditions. Proposals aiming to expand RTW policies typically strike the provisions of the NLRA that permit union security agreements."

Congressional Research Services, January 6, 2014: “Right to Work Laws: Legislative Background and Empirical Research,” by Benjamin Collins

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Alberta Court Freezes Union Legislation

"The Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench granted an injunction to prevent an Alberta law from coming into force until a Constitutional challenge to the law is decided."

"The Alberta Public Service Salary Restraint Act (“PSSRA”), which imposes wage rate terms on roughly 24,000 members of the Alberta Union of Public Employees (“AUPE”) for the next four years, was set to take effect March 31, 2014.”

Canadian Labour & Employment Law Blog, February 19, 2014: “Alberta Court Freezes Union Legislation,” by Ryan K. Smith

Calgary Herald, February 18, 2014: “Redford vows to launch appeal of injunction against labour law,” by James Woods
 

"In his decision, Justice Thomas stated that the legislation could irreparably harm labour relations, guts the collective bargaining process and effectively emasculates the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees. ‘I conclude on a balance of probabilities that the applicants have established that the membership of AUPE, specifically in the Crown bargaining unit, will experience irreparable harm if the proposed injunction is not granted.’"

National Union of Public and General Employee, February 21, 2014: “Indefinite injunction granted against Alberta’s Bill 46”

Alberta Union of Provincial Employees -- Bills 45 and 46: What You Need to Know

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Judge Strikes Down Re-Enacted B.C. Legislation Curbing Teachers' Collective Bargaining Rights

"On January 27 [2014], a British Columbia judge ruled that Bill 22, the Education Improvement Act, a law limiting teacher collective bargaining on class size which re-enacted the provisions of Bill 28 -- a statute that had previously been declared unconstitutional -- likewise violated the guarantee of freedom of association in s.2(d) of the Charter. Concluding that there was no basis for distinguishing the new legislation from the old, the judge declared Bill 22 void, and ordered the government to pay the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation $2 million in damages.”

"Although the B.C. government has expressed its intention to appeal the ruling, the decision is likely to have some immediate impact because negotiations for a renewal collective agreement are currently underway between the [British Columbia Teachers’ Federation] and the government."

Lancaster House, February 26, 2014: “Judge strikes down legislation re-enacted by B.C. government curbing teachers’ collective bargaining rights, and awards teachers’ union $2 million damages”

The Tyee, January 27, 2014: “BC court rules in favour of teachers’ union on Bill 22,” by Katie Hyslop

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Reinventing Unions

"From Right-to-Work proposals to Back-to-Work legislation and shrinking workforces in manufacturing, unions are under pressure to adapt to a new Ontario labour landscape. How does the union movement reshape itself for the 21st century and win the support of young workers and new Canadians?"

TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin, February 18, 2014: “Reinventing Unions” [video, 53:55 min.]

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Generation Screwed

"The Bottom Line panel continues its look at ‘Generation Screwed’ by exploring jobs, schooling and the skills gap.”

CBC’s The National, The Bottom Line, February 18, 2014: Youth Unemployment
 

Daria: “You know, as stupid as both places are, I see now that they could be a lot worse.”
Jane:  “Why, Daria, are you becoming an optimist?”
Daria: “Hmm, I’m not sure. Hold up your glass. Nope, still half empty.”

Dazed, February 2014: “Why this generation needs a Daria,” by Trey Taylor

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UAW Effort to Organize Volkswagen Plant Fails Amid Cultural Disconnect

"The failure of the United Auto Workers to unionize employees at the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee underscores a cultural disconnect between a labour-friendly German company and anti-union sentiment in the South."

"The multiyear effort to organize Volkswagen’s only U.S. plant was defeated on a 712-626 vote Friday amid heavy campaigning on both sides."

"Workers voting against the union said while they remain open to the creation of a German-style "works council" at the plant, they were unwilling to risk the future of the Volkswagen factory that opened to great fanfare on the site of a former Army ammunition plant in 2011."

CTV News, February 16, 2014: “UAW effort to organize Volkswagen plant fails amid cultural disconnect,” by Erik Schelzig and Tom Krisher

The Wall Street Journal, February 16, 2014: “VW Labor Officials to Push for Works Council at Tennessee Plant,” by William Boston

The Economist, February 22, 2014: “Chattanooga shoo-shoo: union movement misses a big opportunity to halt its decline.”

The Bullet, Socialist Project, February 23, 2014: “The UAW at Volkswagen: Workers, Unions and the Left,” by Sam Gindin

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Open Access, Free Access to Law and Access to Canadian Legal Scholarship

[This is the second of a two-part column on open access and public access to Canadian legal scholarship. The first part is available here.]

"There is an overwhelming public good and social benefit to be obtained from open access publishing. The principle that the results of research that has been publicly funded should be freely accessible in the public domain is itself a compelling one, and fundamentally unanswerable. Arguments in support of mandatory open access publishing are even more compelling when the university is a public one and the researcher’s salary is supported by public funds..."

"In Canada, though almost all our law school-published law journals are available on commercial digital services, only ten (listed below) are available open-access. None is available through CanLII or any other publicly-accessible collection.

"The point is expanding and improving access to legal literature for the benefit of all who have a stake or interest in the research and its results, enhancing access to justice by facilitating access to legal information. So far, people outside law schools and large law firms... have yet to see the benefits that the online environment could bring in providing access to legal research and its results. Barriers to access... are increasingly unacceptable in an online, born-digital world. The principle that the results of research that has been publicly funded should be freely accessible in the public domain is a compelling one, and fundamentally unanswerable."

Slaw, February 20, 2014: “Open Access, Free Access to Law and Access to Canadian Legal Scholarship (Part 2),” by Louis Mirando

For information on open access publisher copyright policies and self-archiving see Sherpa/Romeo.

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Male (Job) Insecurity

"Defenders of the broadening inequality insist that average family incomes have been nonetheless increasing. They have. Critics of the broadening inequality insist that earnings have been flat or dropping. They have -- for men."

Boston Review, February 10, 2014: “Male (Job) Insecurity,” by Claude S. Fischer
 

"Finally, we find that shifts in industry and occupation composition can account for the decline in tenure among men and never-married women before 1996 but not afterward. We situate these diverging trends in two broad shifts in expectations, norms, and behaviors in the labor market: the end-of-work discourse and the revolution in women’s identification with paid work. Our findings support the view that job tenure is declining for all groups, but women’s greater labor force attachment, especially their more continuous employment around childbirth, countered and masked this trend."

American Sociological Review, February 2014: “Unmasking the Conflicting Trends in Job Tenure by Gender in the United States, 1983-2008,” by Matissa N. Hollistera and  Kristin E. Smith

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The Just-In-Time Professor

"It’s time for Congress to pay attention to the abuse of adjunct faculty members, and the way their poor working conditions impact not only them, but their students, says a new report from the House Education and the Workforce Committee. While the report largely endorses previous studies on the subject, ‘The Just-In-Time Professor’ document marks the first time Congress has so formally acknowledged a situation that adjunct activists have long deemed exploitative."

Inside Higher Ed, January 24, 2014: “Congress Takes Note,” by Colleen Flaherty

U.S House of Representatives, January 24, 2014: “The Just-In-Time Professor: A Staff Report Summarizing Responses on the Working Conditions of Contingent Faculty in Higher Education,” by House Committee on Education and the Workforce Democratic Staff (36 pages, PDF)

Coalition on the Academic Workforce, 2012: “A Portrait of Part-Time Faculty Members: A Summary of Findings on Part-Time Faculty Respondents to the Coalition on the Academic Workforce Survey of Contingent Faculty Members and Instructors” (2012)

 

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Money Does Buy Attitude: Right Wing and Inegalitarian

"The causes of people’s political attitudes are largely unknown. We study this issue by exploiting longitudinal data on lottery winners. Comparing people before and after a lottery windfall, we show that winners tend to switch towards support for a right-wing political party and to become less egalitarian. The larger the win, the more people tilt to the right. This relationship is robust to (i) different ways of defining right-wing, (ii) a variety of estimation methods, and (iii) methods that condition on the person previously having voted left. It is strongest for males. Our findings are consistent with the view that voting is driven partly by human self-interest. Money apparently makes people more right-wing."

IZA, January 2014: “Does Money Make People Right-Wing and Inegalitarian? A Longitudinal Study of Lottery Winners,” by Nattavudh Powdthavee and Andrew J. Oswald (56 pages, PDF)
 

"In most data sets, rich people typically lean right. The fact that high income and right-wing views are positively correlated in a cross-section has been repeatedly documented in quantitative social science (recently, for example, by Brooks and Brady and Gelman et al. in US data, and by Evans and Tilley in British data). An analogous result is reported, using quite different kinds of methods, by Loukas Karabarbounis. Economists such as Di Tella and MacCulloch have also studied political views and their implications, and other influences have been examined using causal evidence on political views (such as in our 2010 paper and in a paper by Erikson and Stoker).”

British Politics and Policy at LSE blog, February 18, 2014: “Money makes people right-wing and inegalitarian,” by Andrew J Oswald and Nick Powdthavee

 

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Modern Day Communication Technology: Empowerment or Enslavement?

“The tools of our work -- cell phones, smart phones, email, the internet- have profoundly changed in recent decades. They have paved the way for working far more flexibly and in many ways productively than ever before. Simultaneously, these incredible tools enable us to work anytime and from anywhere, but the boundaries between work and other parts of our lives are eroding -- and at times vanishing altogether. Modern-day information and communication technology (ICT) is clearly a double-edged sword and we are grappling, individually and collectively, with using these tools in ways that enable rather than overwhelm us."

Work and Family Researchers Network, February 1014: “Modern Day Communication Technology: Empowerment or Enslavement?,” by Lisa Levey and Karen Murphy (4 pages, PDF)

 

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American Association of Retired Persons: AARP Attitudes of Aging Study

"[This was a] two-part study commissioned by AARP the Magazine. Part one was comprised of a Research Day with two three hour sessions consisting of six simultaneous focus groups.  The Research Day’s intent was to help direct the quantitative portion of the research by better understanding:

  • How adults age 45+ feel about aging
  • What defines age.  Is it the way one looks or the way one feels
  • The impact of the prejudices of aging (ageism)
  • The influence of society’s opinions on their perception of aging
  • The impact of life events on their perception of aging
  • How social connectedness and technology impact their perceptions of aging”

"Part two was an online survey of 1800 respondents consisting of attitudinal questions to answer the question, ‘What aging attitudes drive the overall satisfaction with life’?  Attitudinal questions centered around the following items that were uncovered in part one of the research:

  • Psychological growth and loss
  • Health and physical changes
  • Discrimination and prejudices
  • Physical appearance
  • Traditional and online social networks
  • Technology
  • Treatment from others”

AARP Attitudes of Aging Study, February 2014: “AARP Attitudes of Aging Study,” by Patty David and Gretchen Anderson

AARP Magazine, February March 2014: “You’re Old, I’m Not”

 

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Gender at Work: A Companion to the World Development Report on Jobs

Gender at Work: 10 Global Facts 

  • Women’s labor force participation has stagnated, in fact decreasing from 57 percent in 1990 to 55 percent in 2012.
  • Women on average earn between 10 and 30 percent less than working men.
  • Women are only half as likely as men to have full-time wage jobs for an employer.
  • In only five of the 114 countries for which data are available have women reached or surpassed gender parity with men in such occupations as legislators, senior officials, and managers; namely, Colombia, Fiji, Jamaica, Lesotho, and the Philippines. 
  • Women spend at least twice as much time as men on unpaid domestic work such as caring and housework. 
  • A total of 128 countries have at least one sex-based legal differentiation, meaning women and men cannot function in the world of work in the same way; in 54 countries, women face five or more legal differences.
  • Across developing countries, there is a nine percentage point gap between women and men in having an account at a formal financial institution.
  • More than one in three women has experienced either physical or sexual violence by a partner or non-partner sexual violence.
  • In 2010-12, 42 countries reported gender gaps in secondary school enrollment rates exceeding 10 percent.
  • One in three girls in developing countries is married before reaching her 18th birthday.

World Bank, February 2014: “Gender at Work: A Companion to the World Development Report on Jobs”

World Bank, February 2014: “Gender at Work: A Companion to the World Development Report on Jobs” (91 pages, PDF)

 

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Book of the Week

The Duty to Accommodate and Disability Management: Human Resources Guide and Toolkit, by Barbara G. Humphrey. Toronto, Ontario : Canada Law Book, 2013. 442 p. ISBN 9780888046130.

From publisher: "Managing disability and accommodation issues presents a constant challenge for Canadian employers; both in the context of managing absenteeism and in the context of making adjustments to the workplace or work demands. The current and future demographic challenges presented by an aging workforce and escalating issues of work/life conflicts are fuelling the growth of accommodation demands related to age and family status. The significance of the foregoing is that Canadian employers and the HR professionals and managers in those workplaces require significant knowledge, skills, strategies and tools to successfully manage current and future new demands of accommodation and disability issues. This book and toolkit delivers the knowledge, strategies and most importantly tools and resources required to support HR professionals, managers and supervisors in successfully meeting the growing challenges of managing accommodation and disability issues..."

Visit the Recent Books at the CIRHR Library blog.

 

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