Perry Work Report, March 7, 2014

March 7, 2014

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Reminder: Annual Sefton Memorial Lecture March 18, 2014

The Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources and Woodsworth College are proud to host the annual Sefton Memorial Lecture.  The lecture series is dedicated to the memory of Larry Sefton (1917-1973), whose career in the labour movement began on the picket line in Kirkland Lake in the gold miners' strike during World War II.  He subsequently led the 1946 Stelco strike and later held office in the United Steelworkers of America, eventually becoming the Director of District 6.

Speaker: Jennifer Wells, Feature Writer, The Toronto Star
Lecture title: The Sweated Trades: Why 2014 Looks Like 1914 -- Offshoring, labour standards, and the corporate response to public criticisms of garment factory working conditions

Tuesday, March 18, 2014,  7:00 p.m.
Kruger Hall Commons, Woodsworth College, 119 St. George Street

Register Online

Nova Scotia Back-to-Work Legislation and the Right-to-Strike

"Hundreds of striking home-care workers were ordered back to work Saturday [March 1, 2014] after the Nova Scotia government passed legislation that provoked sharp rebukes from opposition leaders, who say it will do nothing but sour labour relations in the province."

"The governing Liberals voted unanimously for Bill 30, the Essential Home-support Services Act, while the NDP and Progressive Conservatives opposed it in the unusual weekend vote to get about 420 workers back on the job."

"...[T]he head of the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union, which represents the workers, said the legislation effectively strips them of the right to strike since disputes over what is an essential service could drag on for months."

"The union says striking workers at Northwood Homecare want the same pay as their counterparts in hospitals."

The Globe and Mail, March 1, 2014: “Nova Scotia Liberals pass disputed home-care legislation in rare weekend sitting,” by Allison Auld

Bill No. 30 -- Essential Home-support Services (2014) Act

Should these health care workers be allowed to strike?

"Larry Haiven, Professor at St. Mary’s University and member of Solidarity Halifax who’s written extensively about union/management relations, [was] a guest on CBC’s Maritime Connection to discuss health care workers’ right to strike." Click here to listen.

Solidarity Halifax, March 2, 2014: “Should Health Care Workers be allowed to strike?”

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Rand Formula: Paying our Dues

"As always, pollsters get different answers by framing the questions differently. When a 2013 Harris-Decima poll asked Ontarians about paying dues ‘if they benefit from the union’s work,’ -- a subtle reference to free riders -- 60 per cent supported the Rand Formula. And in a cautionary note for Hudak, a majority of Ontarians said they would be ‘suspicious’ of politicians who try to limit unions.”

The Toronto Star, March 4, 2014: “Tim Hudak retakes the anti-union pulse of Ontario: Cohn,” by Martin Regg Cohn

Forum Research Inc., January 2014: “No agreement union dues should be outlawed Majority agree with ‘right to work’”

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Women's Work Opportunities Declining in GTA

“’Young women aren’t asking for pity or handouts. We’re asking for an opportunity,’ said [Viktoria] Bitto, 27. ‘That is our right, after pursuing education or being in the workforce or completing a trade or becoming an expert … that we’re respected and we’re paid fairly for that.’”

"A new report published Thursday [March 6, 2014] gives voices to women like Bitto, who have struggled with a stagnant job market in the Greater Toronto Area. Women at opposite ends of the age spectrum -- younger and older -- have been hit hardest by the recession, the study suggests."

"The report, called “Working Women, Working Poor,” was produced by several unions including Unifor and the Canadian Union of Public Employees.”

"The younger generation is facing a mountain of student debt and a scarcity of meaningful full-time jobs… Meanwhile, middle-aged women who were laid off during the recession are now competing for jobs with inexperienced young people who accept lower wages and fewer benefits, the report notes.”

“‘A precarious labour market is de-skilling women,’ the report states.”

The Toronto Star, March 6, 2014: “Women’s work opportunities declining in GTA,” Laura Kane

Unifor, March 6, 2014: “Working Women, Working Poor,” by Prabha Khosla (43 pages, PDF)

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Who's Gotten a Raise Since the '80s -- and Who Hasn't

“University of British Columbia economists Thomas Lemieux and Craig Riddell, who is also a research fellow at the Institute for Research on Public Policy, presented an eye-popping chart at the institute’s recent conference on income inequality.”
"Drawn from tax data since the early 1980s, the economists show there was virtually no change in real income growth between 1982 and 2010 among those below the top 10%. As you move up, ‘distribution gains become much larger.’ The top 0.01%, for example, saw a jump of 160%.”

PressProgress, March 3, 2014: “Look who’s gotten a raise since the ’80s - and who hasn’t”

Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP) paper, February 2014: “Top Incomes in Canada: Evidence from the Census,” by Thomas Lemieux and Craig Riddell (24 pages, PDF)

IRPP-CLSRN Conference -- Inequality in Canada: Driving Forces, Outcomes and Policy: visit the website to view PowerPoint presentations and listen to audio from the various conference sessions.

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Report: Manufacturing in Ontario Must Shift its Focus

"It’s no secret that Ontario’s manufacturing sector has taken a beating and is badly bruised."
"Factories keep shutting down as big companies, from Caterpillar to Heinz, exit the province... [and] those jobs aren’t likely to come back."

"But a new report by the University of Toronto’s Mowat Centre says it’s not all doom and gloom. Rather it argues Ontario needs to take a different view of what manufacturing could and should look like."

"Ontario Made: Rethinking Manufacturing in the 21st Century says Ontario needs to focus on high-tech, advanced manufacturing.”

"That means Ontario should stop competing with neighbouring jurisdictions in the United States and Mexico for the lower-skilled jobs... [and concentrate] on innovative, high-tech manufacturing at the upper end of the global value chain, often requiring community college or university education."

"As well, the report calls for more investment in infrastructure, notably ‘a real transit strategy’ for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton areas ‘to facilitate the free movement of goods and people.’"

"Other ideas include more supports for energy efficiency investment such as green bonds, or tax incentives for capital investment or enhancing skills."

The Toronto Star, February 27, 2014: “Manufacturing in Ontario must be different than past,” by Vanessa Lu

University of Toronto, Mowat Centre, February 26, 2014: “Ontario Made: Rethinking Manufacturing in the 21st Century” Summary Report (20 pages, PDF)

University of Toronto, Mowat Centre, February 25, 2014:”Ontario Made: Rethinking Manufacturing in the 21st Century” Full Report (75 pages, PDF)

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Returns from a University Degree Substantial, but Unequal

“A Statistics Canada study has found that university graduates far out-earn students who graduate only from high school or those with a college diploma. Over 20 years, men with a bachelor of arts degree earn an average of $732,000 more than high-school graduates. For women, the gap is only $448,000.”

"It suggests that a university degree is one of the best investments available. For college graduates, the average earnings premium versus high school was $248,000 for men and $179,000 for women."

"Not all university graduates experience those returns, however. The highest-earning graduates experience outsize premiums. Men in the top 5 per cent of earners make about $2.5-million more than their high-school counterparts... And women who make it into the top 5 per cent of female earners received only $600,000 more than a high-school graduate at the same salary level."

"Why do women not receive the same salary bumps as men from pursuing higher education? Contrary to popular perception, women were not more likely to drop out of the labour force for an extended period of time. Men and women spent similar amounts of time working during the two decades of the study, especially if they had attended university."

"Instead, the study places the blame on many more women choosing to work in the public sector in areas such as education, health and public administration. Graduates who reach the top of their careers in the private sector earn outsized returns, particularly for men, whose salary premiums are more than double those of women. In the public sector, successful women actually out earn men but have much lower incomes."

The Globe and Mail, February 27, 2014: “Extensive Statscan study finds successful women earn millions less than men,” by Simona Chiose

Statistics Canada, February 2014: “An Investment of a Lifetime? The Long-term Labour Market Premiums Associated with a Postsecondary Education,” by Marc Frenette

Click here for the PDF version (27 pages)

The Globe and Mail, February 28, 2014: “Returns from university degree unequal, study finds,” by James Bradshaw

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University Works: Graduate Employment Reports for Canada and the United States

"A new report by the Council of Ontario Universities demonstrates that Ontario’s university graduates enjoy higher earning, have better employment rates, and find employment in their fields. The findings, based on data from Statistics Canada and the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities, was published on February 25, 2014."

"The report counters recent media criticisms that a university education does not prepare students for the needs of the workforce. It echoes an American research study, released by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, outlining the strong employment outcomes of graduates in the liberal arts. These reports call into question recent criticisms that universities in Ontario and the United States do not prepare students for the workforce. In fact, a university education is still one of the best routes to a successful career.”

Council of Ontario Universities, February 28, 2014: “University Works: 2014 Employment Report” (32 pages, PDF)

Council of Ontario Universities, February 28, 2014: “University Works: Quick Facts Infographic” (2 pages, PDF)

Association of American Colleges and Universities, January 2014: “How Liberal Arts and Sciences Majors Fare in Employment: A Report on Earnings and Long-Term Career Paths,” by Debra Humphreys and Patrick Kelly [eBook version also available for purchase]

Association of American Colleges and Universities: “Liberal Arts Graduates and Employment: Setting the Record Straight” brochure (4 pages, PDF)

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How America's Great University System Is Getting Destroyed

In a recent interview with AlterNet staff, Noam Chomsky comments on: hiring faculty off the tenure track; how higher education ought to be; shared governance and worker control; the alleged need for "flexibility"; the purpose of education; the love of teaching; and using corporate rhetoric against corporatization.

An excerpt regarding his thoughts on hiring faculty off the tenure track: "That's part of the business model. It's the same as hiring temps in industry or what they call 'associates' at Wal-Mart, employees that aren't owed benefits. It's a part of a corporate business model designed to reduce labor costs and to increase labor servility. When universities become corporatized, as has been happening quite systematically over the last generation as part of the general neoliberal assault on the population, their business model means that what matters is the bottom line. The effective owners are the trustees (or the legislature, in the case of state universities), and they want to keep costs down and make sure that labor is docile and obedient. The way to do that is, essentially, temps. Just as the hiring of temps has gone way up in the neoliberal period, you're getting the same phenomenon in the universities. The idea is to divide society into two groups. One group is sometimes called the 'plutonomy'... the top sector of wealth, globally but concentrated mostly in places like the United States. The other group, the rest of the population, is a 'precariat,' living a precarious existence."

AlterNet, February 28, 2014: "Chomsky: How America's Great University System Is Getting Destroyed," by Robin J. Sowards and Noam Chomsky

Click here for an interactive map that will explain what to expect along the journey to tenure. You can also click here to access an e-book on the subject entitled The Tenure Trek (33 pages, PDF).
 

Suzanna Mettler continues to describe how the "American system of higher education is in crisis":

"Over the past 30 years, it has gone from facilitating upward mobility to exacerbating social inequality. College-going, once associated with opportunity, now engenders something that increasingly resembles a caste system: It takes Americans who grew up in different social strata and widens the divisions among them. The consequences are vast, including differences among graduates in employment rates and lifetime earnings, in health, and in civic engagement."

"The rise of for-profit colleges, changes in federal student aid, and the demise of state funds for public colleges and universities have helped produce these circumstances. But at its core, this transformation represents a political failure, a breakdown of representative government that no longer provides effective mechanisms by which Americans can pursue a better life."

The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 3, 2014: "Equalizers No More: Politics thwart colleges' role in upward mobility," by Suzanna Mettler

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CLC Report: Statscan Doesn't Tell Whole Story About National Job Market

"A research report timed to coincide with Thursday’s [March 6, 2014] launch of a long-term Parliamentary study into youth unemployment argues Canadians lack key information that is available in the United States and elsewhere."

"[A] report by Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) senior economist Angella MacEwen argues the public’s heavy focus on Statistics Canada’s monthly job numbers and unemployment rates do not tell the full story of the nation’s job market. Ms. MacEwen said better data on underemployment would shed more light on the reasons it is a more serious problem among women and youth."

"The House of Commons Finance Committee is holding the first of 10 days of meetings on Thursday [March 6, 2014] on youth unemployment. The study, which was proposed by New Democrat MP Peggy Nash, will begin with testimony from youth leaders and the CLC as well as senior officials from Statistics Canada and Employment and Social Development."

“‘We’re trying to get a truer picture of what is actually going on,’ she said. ‘We know that the job situation is imbalanced in the country.’”

The Globe and Mail, March 6, 2014: “Statscan doesn’t tell whole story about national job market, CLC report says,” by Bill Curry

Canadian Labour Congress, March 6, 2014: “Underemployment is Canada’s Real Labour Market Challenge”

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Quality of New Jobs on the Decline, Study Finds

"Almost 95 per cent of net new positions [created last year] were part-time, according to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s analysis of the 2013 labour market, a year that saw the weakest job growth since 2009."

"Older women continue to lead job gains. Employment among women aged 55 and older grew by 5.5 per cent in 2013, year over year, ‘by far’ the biggest gain of all age groups. Employment for older men rose too, by 4 per cent. Employment among people in prime working age, between 25 and 54, ebbed while youth saw little improvement."

"Immigrants still face elevated jobless rates. Recent immigrants in their prime working age had an unemployment rate more than double that of Canadian-born workers in the same age group, the report noted."

"[Additionally,] Canada’s job market, like that in other advanced economies, is shifting to services. All of last year’s job growth came on the services side, in areas such as professional services and health care, which now employs 78 per cent of the work force.

The Globe and Mail, March 2, 2014: “Quality of new jobs on the decline, study finds,” by Tavia Grant

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, February 2014: “Canada’s Labour Market Sputtered in 2013” (17 pages, PDF)

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Canada's Under-35's Fall Far Behind in the Wealth Race

"The big story in the release of data from this week’s Survey of Financial Security from Statistics Canada was that the median net worth of Canadian households has been increasing very significantly.”

"The other story buried in the numbers is increasing inequality between older and younger Canadians."

"Looking at changes between 1999 and 2012, the median net worth of households headed by a person under age 35 rose just 9 per cent, far less than gains of about 50 per cent for those in the 35-to-64 age groups, and 70 per cent for households headed by a person over 65."

"And the under-35 households are getting deeper into debt. Between 1999 and 2012, the median assets of households headed by people under 35 rose by 14 per cent, but the median debt of such households rose 61 per cent."

"The recent housing boom may have boosted wealth and modestly reduced wealth inequality from a very high level. But younger Canadian families are being left behind."

The Globe and Mail, February 28, 2014: “Canada’s under-35s are also-rans in the wealth race,” by Andrew Jackson

Statistics Canada, The Daily, February 25, 2014: “Survey of Financial Security, 2012”

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Union Organizing Decisions in a Deteriorating Environment

From the abstract: “It is well known that the organizing environment for labor unions in the U.S. has deteriorated dramatically over a long period of time, contributing to the sharp decline in the private sector union membership rate and resulting in many fewer representation elections being held. What is less well known is that, since the late 1990s, average turnout in the representation elections that are held has dropped substantially. These facts are related. I develop a model of union decision making regarding selection of targets for organizing through the NLRB election process with the clear implication that a deteriorating organizing environment will lead to systematic change in the composition of elections held. The model implies that a deteriorating environment will lead unions not only to contest fewer elections but also to focus on larger potential bargaining units and on elections where they have a larger probability of winning. A standard rational-voter model implies that these changes in composition will lead to lower turnout. I investigate the implications of these models empirically using data on turnout in over 140,000 NLRB certification elections held between 1973 and 2009. The results are consistent with the model and suggest that changes in composition account for about one-fifth of the decline in turnout between 1999 and 2009.”

The National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No.19908, February 2014: “Union Organizing Decisions in a Deteriorating Environment: The Composition of Representation Elections and the Decline in Turnout” by Henry S. Farber (32 pages, PDF)

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How the Rich Became Dependent on Government Subsidies

"[A report titled] “Subsidizing the Corporate One Percent”... shows that the world’s largest companies aren’t models of self-sufficiency and unbridled capitalism. To the contrary, they’re propped up by billions of dollars in welfare payments from state and local governments."

"[T]he study also shows, a full ‘three-quarters of all the economic development dollars awarded and disclosed by state and local governments have gone to just 965 large corporations’ -- not to the small businesses and start-ups that politicians so often pretend to care about."

"In dollar figures, that’s a whopping $110 billion going to big companies. Fortune 500 firms alone receive more than 16,000 subsidies at a total cost of $63 billion."

"These kinds of handouts, of course, are the definition of government intervention in the market. Nonetheless, those who receive the subsidies are still portrayed as free-market paragons... [T]he subsidies are also flowing to financial firms that have become synonymous with never-ending bailouts"

"All of these handouts, of course, would be derided if they were going to poor people. But because they are going to extremely wealthy politically connected conglomerates, they are typically promoted with cheery euphemisms like ‘incentives’ or ‘economic development.’ Those euphemisms persist even though many subsidies do not end up actually creating jobs."
"In light of that, the Good Jobs First report is a reality check on all the political rhetoric about dependency."

Salon, February 27, 2014: “No, really, you didn’t build that: How the rich became dependent on government subsidies,” by David Sirato

Good Jobs First, February 2014: Subsidizing the Corporate One Percent: Subsidy Tracker 2.0 Reveals Big-Business Dominance of State and Local Development Incentives,” by Philip Mattera (6 pages, PDF)

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Redistribution, Inequality, and Economic Growth

“A new paper by researchers at the International Monetary Fund appears to debunk a tenet of conservative economic ideology -- that taxing the rich to give to the poor is bad for the economy."

"Labelled as the first study to incorporate recently compiled figures comparing pre- and post-tax data from a large number of countries, the authors say there is convincing evidence that lower inequality is good economics, boosting growth and leading to longer-lasting periods of expansion."

"In the most controversial finding, the study concludes that redistributing wealth, largely through taxation, does not significantly affect growth unless the intervention is extreme."

"In fact, because redistributing wealth through taxation has the positive impact of reducing inequality, the overall effect on the economy is to boost growth, the researchers conclude."

The Globe and Mail, February 26, 2014: “Redistributing wealth through taxation not a drag on economic growth: IMF paper,” by Julian Beltrame

International Monetary Fund, February 2014: “Redistribution, Inequality, and Growth,” by Jonathan D. Ostry, Andrew Berg, and Charalambos G. Tsangarides (30 pages, PDF)

International Monetary Fund, February 26, 2014: “Transcript of a Conference Call on the Staff Discussion Note: ‘Redistribution, Inequality, and Growth’”

The Globe and Mail, March 5, 2014: “It’s the inequality, stupid,” by Robert B. Reich

The New York Times, March 4, 2014: “Just Right Inequality,” by Thomas B. Edsall

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Book of the Week

The Jobless Future, Stanley Aronowitz and William DiFazio. 2nd ed. Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Press, 2010. 410 p. ISBN 9780816674510 (pbk.) Click here for the e-book version.

From the publisher: "‘Jobs jobs jobs!’ went the cry during the 1992 presidential election. If the slogan seems empty now, there is good reason, as the authors illustrate. The “jobless recovery” we’re seeing today is no temporary hitch on the way to good times; it is, Stanley Aronowitz and William DiFazio contend, simply part of a profound shift in the world economy. The Jobless Future challenges beliefs in the utopian promise of a knowledge-based, high-technology economy. Reviewing a vast body of encouraging literature about the postindustrial age, Aronowitz and DiFazio conclude that neither theory, history, nor contemporary evidence warrants optimism about a technological economic order. Instead, they demonstrate the shift toward a massive displacement of employees at all levels and a large-scale degradation of the labor force..."

Visit the Recent Books at the CIRHR Library blog.

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