March 28, 2014
work&labour news&research -- follow us on the CIRHR Library Tumblr and on the CIRHR Twitter
- PSAC Launches Legal Challenge of Budget Bill's Anti-Strike Provisions
- AMAPCEO Members Overwhelmingly Vote 'Yes' in Strike Vote
- Vancouver Port Truckers Reach Deal to End Strike
- Talks to Avert Nurses Strike in Halifax Reach an Impasse
- Employee's Blog Defends Recently Questioned PHS Leadership
- How Kijiji's Data Threw Off Ottawa's Math on Skills Shortages
- Canada's Top 100 Non-Profit Organizations
- College Athletes Can Unionize
- New Strategy Would Drop College Textbook Costs to Zero
- 2014 PayScale College ROI Report
- Google is Right: We Work Better When We're Happy
- Is Surging Inequality Endemic to Capitalism?
- World Top Incomes Database
- Index of Economic Freedom and the Crony Capitalism Index
PSAC Launches Legal Challenge of Budget Bill's Anti-Strike Provisions
"Canada’s largest federal public sector union is taking the federal government to court over provisions in last fall’s omnibus budget legislation that limit strikes by federal workers deemed by the government to provide essential services."
"The Public Service Alliance of Canada filed its court challenge with the Ontario Superior Court on Tuesday [March 25, 2014]."
"PSAC, with the support of more than a dozen other public sector unions, wants parts of Bill C-4 thrown out, claiming that they violate workers’ charter rights: freedom of expression and freedom of association."
"The documents filed this week ask the court to declare the provisions are of no force or effect. They also demand that if the court finds that union members’ charter rights have been violated, it must order the ‘reopening of any collective agreements negotiated while the above provisions... were in force, to allow the parties to exercise their right to collectively bargain with full recourse to the right to strike.'"
"Bill C-4 included amendments to the Public Service Relations Act that make it illegal for any bargaining unit to strike if 80 per cent or more of the positions in that unit are declared necessary for providing an essential service."
"It also says the government has the ‘exclusive right to determine that a service is essential and the number of positions required to provide that service.’ PSAC argues that violates its members’ right to associate, which includes the right to strike."
CBC News, March 27, 2014: “PSAC launches legal challenge of budget bill’s anti-strike provisions,” by Karina Roman
Read Bill C-4 on openparliament.ca or the Parliament of Canada’s LEGISinfo.
AMAPCEO Members Overwhelmingly Vote 'Yes' in Strike Vote
Update from WorldNews as of March 27, 2014: "Angered by demands for punishing concessions, members of AMAPCEO, the second largest bargaining agent in the Ontario Public Service, have given their union the authority to stage job actions and workplace disruptions. In a historic first-time ever strike vote, over 94% voted in favour."
The background: "AMAPCEO and its Employer, the Government of Ontario, began negotiations for a new Collective Agreement in February of this year. Government negotiators have made a mean-spirited series of demands that would result in devastating cuts, including to their members’ health and wellness benefits, retiree benefits, sick leave, disability provisions and salary progression."
"AMAPCEO has always considered the financial constraints of the government and it is willing to be reasonable at the bargaining table, but it insists public servants deserve fairness. These proposed cuts pose real hardships for employees and Ontario families, and members have said enough is enough."
AMAPCEO, March 24th 2014: "AMAPCEO Vote Yes Rally - Monday, March 24th 2014" [video]
AMAPCEO, March 20, 2014: "Public Servants Take Unprecedented Strike Vote"
Bargaining 101: "A legal overview of the AMAPCEO-OPS bargaining process by Steven Barrett, legal counsel with Sack Goldblatt Mitchell LLP"
Vancouver Port Truckers Reach Deal to End Strike
"Container truck drivers servicing Port Metro Vancouver are expected to return to work on Thursday [March 27, 2014] morning after reaching a deal to end a prolonged strike."
"Late Wednesday [March 26, 2014] afternoon, B.C. Premier Christy Clark announced an agreement was reached between the members of the United Truckers Association and Unifor and the province, the federal government and Port Metro Vancouver."
"As part of the agreement reached Wednesday [March 26, 2014], the port will rescind any license suspension introduced during the strike. The federal government will also implement a 12 per-cent hike in round-trip rates and a $25.13 minimum rate for hourly drivers."
"Port Metro Vancouver also committed to consulting with the trucking industry on an overhaul of the current port licensing system in order ‘to create a more stable trucking industry.’"
CBC News, March 27, 2014: "Vancouver port truckers reach deal to end strike"
The Globe and Mail, March 26, 2014: "Clark, Vancouver truckers reach labour agreement," by Justine Hunter and Ian Bailey
Click here to read our coverage of the earlier threatened back-to-work legislation.
Talks to Avert Nurses Strike in Halifax Reach an Impasse
"Joan Jessome, the president of the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union, tweeted Sunday night [March 23, 2014] that mediation had not been able to reach an agreement between the two sides."
"Earlier in the negotiations, the union said the two sides couldn’t agree on the issue of nurse-to-patient ratios, something the union says would improve patient safety."
"Nova Scotia Premier McNeil has said back-to-work legislation is a possibility if there is a strike."
"Earlier this month, 420 striking home-care workers were ordered back to work after McNeil’s government passed essential service legislation."
Cape Breton Post, March 24, 2014: “Talks to avert strike by nurses in Halifax area reach an impasse”
CTV News, March 20, 2014: “Halifax nurses threaten to quit en masse if forced back to work”
The Guardian, March 27, 2014: “Halifax nursing strike could have significant impacts for P.E.I.,” by Teresa Wright
"In light of the Essential Services legislation passed by Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil [on March 1, 2014] and the Liberal government... the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union (NSGEU/NUPGE) now plans to launch a legal challenge in the courts.”
National Union of Public and General Employees, March 5, 2014: “NSGEU to launch legal challenge on Essential Services Legislation”
"A favourable outcome for the union representing 2,300 registered nurses in the Halifax area could have big implications a year from now when the province is expected to merge its district health authorities."
Herald News, March 25, 2014: “Capital Health labour dispute: Is something bigger at play in nurse fight?,” by Michael Gorman
Employee's Blog Defends Recently Questioned PHS Leadership
"A blog entry posted on the weekend shows how the PHS expenses scandal has impacted segments of the Downtown Eastside community. Read an excerpt below then click through to the full article:
''We are/ were led by a few radicals, the radically compassionate, eccentric characters themselves, but driven to overachieve in creating an integrated workplace and neighbourhood where they themselves live. That happened by providing housing, food, inventive health care models (including but not limited to Insite), creative access to employment, banking services, gathering places, identification cards (seriously! the most basic of barriers) but mostly an engaged, uncondescending workforce who laugh, love, bandage, hug, and ultimately mourn, grieve, celebrate and simply be with these, the beloved Unwelcomed. These who we assume will always be a major part of our lives. Yes, I have a crush on all who I work alongside, people who daily commit themselves to providing dignity to our own lives, mine. The dignity that we are a people who do not ignore the Unwelcomed. We are not bystanders. No, we instead love and care and in that way create dignity for all regardless of a broader validation. And we’ve always been willing to fight for that because we consider basic dignity to be an essential service. All this achieved in an environment where there was no pre-existing political will to facilitate these services. Everything in place is in place because the people, led by our recently deposed management, fought for it to be so.'"
The Globe and Mail, March 25, 2014: “‘We consider basic dignity to be an essential service’: employee’s blog defends PHS leadership”
stuggleondotcom, March 22, 2014: “I Work for the PHS”
The Globe and Mail, March 24, 2014: “PHS spent thousands on questionable expenses, Health Minister says,” by Frances Bula
How Kijiji's Data Threw Off Ottawa's Math on Skills Shortages
"Economists have been scratching their heads for weeks as to how the Conservative government could claim on budget day that Canada’s job vacancy rate was on the rise when Statistics Canada said it was declining."
"The answer, it appears, is that Finance Canada’s numbers were thrown off by data from a surprising place: questionable job postings on Kijiji, a popular classified site used by Canadians to buy and sell everything from rarely used exercise bikes to old electronics."
"Officials with the Parliamentary Budget Office say Kijiji is so unreliable as a job site that it can single-handedly explain away the government’s claims. With the simple removal of that one site from the search, the steep rise Ottawa flagged becomes much closer to a flat line."
“‘We expect they will probably review their report,” said Jean-Denis Frechette, the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Another PBO official said removing Kijiji would have a ‘big time’ impact on Ottawa’s job vacancy numbers.”
"Mr. Frechette is referring to Finance Canada’s 54-page ‘Jobs Report’ that was released alongside the Feb. 11 [2014] budget. In it, the government claimed that Canada’s labour market has a job vacancy rate that has been ‘increasing steadily since 2009.’"
The Globe and Mail, March 26, 2014: “How Kijiji’s data threw off Ottawa’s math on skills shortages,” by Bill Curry and Tavia Grant
Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, March 25, 2014: “Labour Market Assessment 2014” (38 pages, PDF)
Department of Finance Canada, February 11, 2014: “Jobs Report: The State of the Canadian Labour Market” (56 pages, PDF)
The Globe and Mail, March 25, 2014: “No skills crisis as Tories claim, budget watchdog says,” by Bill Curry
Canada's Top 100 Non-Profit Organizations
"This year, The Globe and Mail, in partnership with CharityCan, ranked Canada’s 1,000 largest not-for-profit institutions.”
The Globe and Mail has provided a list of the top 100 non-profit organizations but you may wish to “[p]urchase [the] full report featuring the Top 1000 non-profit (registered charity) organizations to help target organizations with your business services and products.”
The Globe and Mail, March 24, 2014: “Canada’s top 100 non-profit organizations (registered charities)”
College Athletes Can Unionize
"The very foundation of the $16 billion-a-year college sports industry is trembling. In a landmark ruling, the National Labor Relations Board said that Northwestern University’s football team has the right to unionize."
"On the one hand, the NLRB ruling is revolutionary and shocking. On the other hand, it merely reflects reality. Kain Colter, the Northwestern quarterback who’s leading the unionization drive, has testified that players routinely spend 40 to 50 hours a week on football. That’s a full-time job."
"The notion of student athletes as employees is less far-fetched than it sounds. Historians of college sports have noted that the NCAA decades ago invented the concept of the ‘student athlete’ to protect universities against workmen’s compensation claims by injured former competitors. The NLRB’s ruling should help erode the fiction that membership on a Division I football squad is just another extracurricular activity, akin to student council or the debate club."
Bloomberg Businessweek, March 27, 2014: “College Athletes Can Unionize, and NCCA Inc.’s Troubles Worsen,” by Paul M. Barrett
New Strategy Would Drop College Textbook Costs to Zero
"This semester, the University System of Maryland is exploring ways to bring that cost to zero with ‘open-source’ electronic textbooks -- the latest experiment in changing the way students in Maryland and across the nation are taught.”
"Unlike electronic versions of textbooks sold by publishers, open-source textbooks are made up of materials gathered from various sources and are not protected by copyright. They are often designed to be interactive, with links to source material and multimedia elements. The materials are licensed openly, so anyone with an Internet connection can access them."
"A pilot program, which the university system estimates is saving 1,100 students a combined $130,000, is the latest in a shift on the nation’s campuses toward digital learning. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the California State University system and the Washington State college system are among those that have built libraries of free online course materials in recent years.”
Despite the benefits and cost-savings, open-source text books still face a number of challenges, including: the textbook industry, connecting professors with the materials they need for the textbooks, creating a system to assess the quality of the books, and contracts universities are bound to with private companies to run campus bookstores.
Other open-source textbook initiatives:
- Rice University’s OpenStax College (peer-reviewed)
- BCcampus’s OpenEd Resources, Open Textbook Project (supported by the BC Ministry of Advanced Education)
- University of Minnesota & BCcampus’s Open Textbook Library
- Washing State Board for Community and Technical Colleges’ Open Course Library
- California State University’s MERLOT program
- The Massachusetts Institutes of Technology’s OpenCourseWare
The Baltimore Sun, March 23, 2014: “New strategy would drop college textbook costs to zero,” by Carrie Wells
2014 PayScale College ROI Report
"How do you measure the value of a college education? PayScale has the salary data to rank hundreds of U.S. colleges and universities based on total cost and alumni earnings. Find the best returns on investment by school type, location, major and more."
"[But] PayScale’s College ROI Rankings are just the beginning of the story. [I]nteractives illustrate how college accessibility, affordability and return on investment are affected by demographics like income, gender and ethnicity and more.”
You can also read about this year’s new methodology here.
PayScale, March 2014: “2014 PayScale College ROI Report”
"[Q]uestions surrounding the value of a college degree go far beyond alumni salaries and return on investment. That’s why we’ve asked 12 thought leaders, from college presidents to business executives, to weigh in. Here’s what they had to say.”
PayScale, March 2014: “Examining the Value of a College Degree” (15 pages, PDF)
Google is Right: We Work Better When We're Happy
"New research confirms what Google already knows -- greater employee happiness results in higher productivity without sacrificing quality."
"Economists carried out a number of experiments to test the idea that happy employees work harder. In the laboratory, they found happiness made people about 12 percent more productive."
"Andrew Oswald, Eugenio Proto, and Daniel Sgroi from the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick led the research. The findings, to be published in the Journal of Labor Economics, included four different experiments with more than 700 participants.”
“‘Companies like Google have invested more in employee support and employee satisfaction has risen as a result. For Google, it rose by 37 percent; they know what they are talking about. Under scientifically controlled conditions, making workers happier really pays off,’ says Oswald.”
“‘The driving force seems to be that happier workers use the time they have more effectively, increasing the pace at which they can work without sacrificing quality,’ adds Sgroi.”
Futurity, March 21, 2014: “Google is right: We work better when we’re happy,” by Kelly Parkes-Harrison-Warwick
University of Warwick, Department of Economics, February 2014: “Happiness and Productivity,” by Andrew J. Oswald, Eugenio Proto, and Daniel Sgroi (43 pages, PDF)
Is Surging Inequality Endemic to Capitalism?
"In the stately world of academic presses, it isn’t often that advance orders and publicity for a book prompt a publisher to push forward its publication date. But that’s what Belknap, an imprint of Harvard University Press, did for 'Capital in the Twenty-first Century,' a sweeping account of rising inequality by the French economist Thomas Piketty. Months before its American publication date, which was switched from April to March, it was already the subject of lively online discussion among economists and other commentators."
"Piketty believes that the rise in inequality can’t be understood independently of politics. For his new book, he chose a title evoking Marx, but he doesn’t think that capitalism is doomed, or that ever-rising inequality is inevitable. There are circumstances, he concedes, in which incomes can converge and the living standards of the masses can increase steadily -- as happened in the so-called Golden Age, from 1945 to 1973. But Piketty argues that this state of affairs, which many of us regard as normal, may well have been a historical exception. The ‘forces of divergence can at any point regain the upper hand, as seems to be happening now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century,’ he writes. And, if current trends continue, ‘the consequences for the long-term dynamics of the wealth distribution are potentially terrifying.’"
The New Yorker, March 31, 2014: “Forces of Divergence: Is surging inequality endemic to capitalism,” by John Cassidy
The New Yorker, March 26, 2014: “Piketty’s Inequality Story in Six Charts,” by John Cassidy
World Top Incomes Database
"There has been a marked revival of interest in the study of the distribution of top incomes using tax data. Beginning with the research by Thomas Piketty (2001, 2003) of the long-run distribution of top incomes in France, a succession of studies has constructed top income share time series over the long-run for more than twenty countries to date. These projects have generated a large volume of data, which are intended as a research resource for further analysis."
World Top Incomes Database: Graphics
Index of Economic Freedom and the Crony Capitalism Index
Hong Kong is number one in both the Index for Economic Freedom and the Crony Capitalism Index.
"The Index of Economic Freedom is an annual index and ranking created by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal in 1995 to measure the degree of economic freedom in the world’s nations. The creators of the index took an approach similar to Adam Smith’s in The Wealth of Nations, that ‘basic institutions that protect the liberty of individuals to pursue their own economic interests result in greater prosperity for the larger society.’”
Demos, March 25, 2014: “Heritage Study Ranks Left-Wing Paradise Among Most ‘Free’ Countries in the World,” by David Callahan
The Heritage Foundation with the Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2014: 2014 Index of Economic Freedom
"We use data from Forbes to calculate the total wealth of those of the world’s billionaires who are active mainly in rent-heavy industries, and compare that total to world GDP to get a sense of its scale. We show results for 23 countries -- the five largest developed ones, the ten largest developing ones for which reliable data are available, and a selection of eight smaller ones where cronyism is thought to be a big problem. The higher the ratio, the more likely the economy suffers from a severe case of crony-capitalism.”
The Economist, March 15, 2014: “Our crony-capitalism index: Planet Plutocrat -- The countries where politically connected businessmen are most likely to prosper.”
Book of the Week
Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas Piketty ; translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014. 685 p. ISBN 9780674430006.
From the publisher: "What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality. Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality -- the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth -- today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again. A work of extraordinary ambition, originality, and rigor, Capital in the Twenty-First Century reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today."
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