March 27, 2015
The Perry Work Report will be on spring break next week, returning on April 10, 2015.
Announcements: OCUFA honours Sheila McKee-Protopapas with 2015 Lorimer Award: Congratulations Sheila! The Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) has recognized Sheila McKee-Protopapas, executive director of the Wilfrid Laurier University Faculty Association (WLUFA) and a contract academic staff member, with the prestigious Lorimer Award. The award recognizes individuals who have worked to protect and promote the interests of Ontario's academic staff through collective bargaining. Sheila is currently completing her MIRHR degree (2016, expected) at the Centre for Industrial Relations & Human Resources, University of Toronto.
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- Oh, What a Nite: The First Sefton-WiIliams Memorial Lecture and Award
- TA Strike at the University of Toronto: Where Do We Go from Here?
- No Jobs, No Growth
- The Public Sector is Bloated -- 'Thank Goodness for That'
- Temporary Foreign Workers Program: The Deadline Approaches
- Debunking the Myth of the Job-Stealing Immigrant
- The Three Cities within Toronto
- Making Work Meaningful
- From Workers to Turkers
- Negotiation and Likeability
- Hacking America's Universities for Profit
- Three Economic Myths
- Boom Bust Boom: The Monty Python Approach to Capitalism
Oh, What a Nite: The First Sefton-WiIliams Memorial Lecture and Award
“This year’s recipient of the The Sefton/Williams Award for Contributions to Industrial Relations was the Hon. Ed Broadbent. Larry Sefton and LynnWilliams were honoured by Prof. Anil Verma, Director of the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources, and by Mr. Marty Warren, USW District 6 Director. The lecture was renamed for Lynn Williams, the first Canadian president of the International USW after Lynn Williams’ passing this year.”
“The Morley Gunderson Prize went to Stephen Bedard who received his MIR degree from the Centre for Industrial Relations in 1981. From 1981 to 2000 he was with Bell Canada eventually becoming Vice President -- Industrial Relations. In July 2000 Steve became the Vice President -- Labour Relations for TELUS Communications. Steve is the current Chair of FETCO (Federally-regulated employers in transportation and communication) which represents the majority of unionized private sector employers in the federal sector. He is also on the executive board of the Canadian Employer’s Council (CEC), and was its Chair from 2006-2009. Steve has also been appointed on a number of advisory committees by federal labour ministries. Following his MIR graduation in 1981, Steve taught labour relations in the Employment Relations program at Woodsworth College, University of Toronto for a number of years.”
Photos from the event are available here. Presentation slides are available here as well as at the links below.
Armine Yalnizyan, Senior Economist, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Presentation: Inequality and its Discontents: a Canadian Perspective (slides in PDF, 24 pages)
Miles Corak, Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa, Presentation: 'Inequality is the root of social evil,’ or maybe not: Two stories about inequality and public policy (slides in PDF, 22 pages)
TA Strike at the University of Toronto Goes to Binding Arbitration
"Striking University of Toronto teaching assistants and other unionized workers will be back at work Friday after voting overwhelmingly to enter binding arbitration. CUPE 3902 Unit 1, which represents the some 6,000 U of T workers, said its members voted 942 for and 318 against entering binding arbitration at a Thursday evening vote.”
CBC News, March 26, 2015: “University of Toronto strike over as CUPE 3902 workers enter binding arbitration”
“The University of Toronto is calling on the union representing 6,000 TAs at the University of Toronto to agree to binding arbitration and immediately end a strike that is in its fourth week.”
The Globe and Mail, March 25, 2015: “U of T president seeks binding arbitration to end strike," by Simona Chiose
“Undergraduates at the University of Toronto say they are facing lower marks and cancelled assignments and classes as a strike at the school that has gone on for almost a month went into another week after teaching assistants and instructors rejected the latest deal between their bargaining committee and the administration.”
The Globe and Mail, March 23, 2015: “U of T strike taking toll on undergraduate students,” by Simona Chiose
“Abdullah Shihipar, president of the Arts & Science Students’ Union, views the provisions as a compromise in U of T’s academic integrity. ‘It is astounding that the university is willing to sacrifice its own academic integrity rather than negotiate,’ he says. ‘It may seem like a good thing, but it will have adverse effects on the semester.’”
The Varsity, March 24, 2015: “Strike contingency plan faces sharp backlash: Some say plans are Policy on Academic Continuity in all but name only,” by Iris Robin
VIDEO: Students Challenge ‘Continuity Planning’ in Conversation with Dean Cameron
Letter from Dean Cameron to Undergraduates ‘Completing the Term’ (March 23)
CBC Podcast, March 23, 2015: Meric Gertler, President of the University of Toronto on Metro Toronto with Matt Galloway (beginss at 12:20min.)
The state of the University for some Students, Faculty, and Librarians via openletter.wordpress.com
The state of negotiations according to CUPE 3902: Did the Administration accept the Union’s offer last week?
“No. The Union tabled an offer on Sunday, March 15, that had the endorsement of Unit 1 members and would be ratified. The Employer refused this offer. The Administration made a counteroffer on Tuesday, March 17. The Union requested minor language changes to the counteroffer and then brought it to members for their consideration. The Union’s Bargaining Team was not unanimous in recommending this Administration counteroffer.“
What is the sticking point?
“The Union and the Administration have agreed on benefit funds that would top up members’ minimum funding packages and lower their tuition in the later years of their degrees. The Administration has refused to put in writing the per-member value of the benefits. Union members are demanding clear language guaranteeing the amount of benefit funds they will receive. This should be an easy change, and there is no reason an agreement that members will ratify should be far away.”
The state of negotiations according to University of Toronto administration: “CUPE 3902 Unit 1 today rejects enhanced offer proposed and recommended by union’s bargaining team.”
UTFA (University of Toronto Faculty Association) Strike updates:
CUPE Strike Update #3 Mar 23 2015
CUPE Strike Update #2 Mar 17 2015
CUPE Strike Update Mar 3 2015
therealnews.com, March 24, 2015: “Teaching Assistants Reject University of Toronto Offer,”by Sharmini Peries
No Jobs, No Growth
“Year-over-year employment growth in Canada has been below 1 per cent for 15 months in a row, the longest stretch below that mark for annual job gains, outside of recessions, in almost 40 years of record-keeping.”
“Employers shed 1,000 positions last month, according to Statistics Canada, and the jobless rate rose two notches to a five-month high of 6.8 per cent as more people looked for work. Annual employment growth has hovered at about 0.6 per cent in the 15 months since December, 2013.“
“There are signs that Alberta’s hiring binge ‘is over,’ said a report this month by the Human Resources Institute of Alberta. ‘Many are anticipating a pause in hiring along with a review of total compensation and organizations for savings to ensure the continued health of their organizations.’”
The Globe and Mail, March 22, 2015: “Anemic job growth streak earns a place in the record book,” by Tavia Grant
The Public Sector is Bloated -- 'Thank Goodness for That'
“Canada’s small and medium-sized businesses complain that the public sector is ‘bloated.’ All I can say is, thank goodness for that. The public sector is the only one creating jobs in this harsh environment.”
The Globe and Mail, March 2015: “Why Canada’s ‘bloated’ public sector is a good thing,” by Michael Babad
“Latest findings based on the 2011 National Household Survey, which represents earnings from 2010, show a continued and substantial gap in salary compensation in favour of government or public sector employees -- even after adjustments for differences in occupation mix, age and education. The gaps grow even wider once employment benefits such as working hours and pensions are taken into account.The impacts on the public purse are significant, adding almost $20 billion to the hard costs of compensating the public sector in 2010.“
CFIB, March 2015: “Wage Watch: A comparison of public-sector and private-sector wages,” by Ted Mallett, VP & Chief Economist
CFIB, March 2015: “Wage Watch: A Comparison of Public-sector and Private-sector Salaries and Benefits” (25 pages, PDF)
Temporary Foreign Workers Program: The Deadline Approaches
“In April 2011, the federal government introduced the so-called ‘four in, four out’ rule, which limited the time that some migrant workers in low-skill jobs could work in Canada to four years. Workers would be unable to apply for a new work permit in Canada for an additional four years, unless they first became a permanent resident or stayed in the country as a student.”
“Now, as that four-year deadline approaches, workers are scrambling to find a way to stay. Saturday, foreign workers, labour experts and others gathered at the University of Alberta for a conference on the effects of the program. The conference, Migration and the Global Trade of People, examines the issues of income equality and worker rights.”
CBC News, March 21, 2015: “Temporary foreign worker program’s issues discussed at conference”
“Alberta employers will be forced to give up six times as many temporary foreign workers as employers in Ontario by 2016 -- even though Ontario’s unemployment rate is significantly higher.”
Calgary Herald, March 9, 2015: “Alberta to lose six times as many TFWs as Ontario by 2016, report finds,” by Amanda Stephenson
Canada West Foundation, March 9, 2015: “Work interrupted: How federal foreign worker rule changes hurt the West” (9 pages, PDF)
Debunking the Myth of the Job-Stealing Immigrant
“Few of us are calling for the thing that basic economic analysis shows would benefit nearly all of us: radically open borders.”
“And yet the economic benefits of immigration may be the most settled fact in economics. A recent University of Chicago poll of leading economists could not find a single one who rejected the proposition. (There is one notable economist who wasn’t polled: George Borjas of Harvard, who believes that his fellow economists underestimate the cost of immigration for low-skilled natives. Borjas’s work is often misused by anti-immigration activists, in much the same way a complicated climate-science result is often invoked as 'proof' that global warming is a myth.) Rationally speaking, we should take in far more immigrants than we currently do.”
The New York Times Magazine, March 24, 2015: “Debunking the Myth of the Job-Stealing Immigrant,” by Adam Davidson
“New rules and fees appear to be raising barriers to becoming Canadian, with rates dropping from 79% to 26% between 2000 and 2008 newcomers."
The Toronto Star, March 24, 2015: “Canada faces dramatic drop in citizenship, prompting concerns about disengaged immigrants,” by Nicholas Keung
The Three Cities within Toronto
“City #1: The first is a predominantly high-income area within the boundaries of the old city of Toronto, in which neighbourhood incomes have risen a great deal relative to the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) average since 1970. Hulchanski writes that these neighbourhoods are generally found in the central city and close to the city’s subway lines.”
“City #2: The in-between city in Toronto is a mainly middle-income area, where neighbourhood incomes have remained fairly close to the CMA average since 1970.”
“City #3: The third city is a generally low-income area of Toronto, in which neighbourhood incomes have fallen substantially over the past few decades compared to the average. These neighbourhoods are found mostly in the northeastern and northwestern parts of Toronto.”
“The growing gap is not just inequality, but what his report calls income polarization. A lot of the polarization comes down to growth rates -- certain parts of the city are growing faster than others, creating large gaps in wealth.”
“Hulchanski says it’s not too late to turn things around if there’s political will. More investments in economic development and housing could lead to a more prosperous 2025 for more people in our city.”
“He argues the polarization could be reversed by making housing more affordable to low-income populations, expanding access to transit and services in places where the need is greatest and renewing the aging high-rise towers scattered throughout low-income areas.”
CBC News, March 25, 2015: “Toronto 2025: The disappearing three cities ‘Income polarization’ separating large parts of the city, according to report”
The full report, The Three Cities within Toronto: Income Polarization Among Toronto’s Neighbourhoods, 1970-2005, by J. David Hulchanski, University of Toronto, is available here (32 pages, PDF).
Making Work Meaningful
“Google offers emotional intelligence courses for its employees. General Mills has a meditation room in every building on its corporate campus. Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs and BlackRock are teaching meditation on the job. Has the world of management discovered the human soul? The Agenda examines attempts to re-establish work-life balance in certain industries.“
TVOntario, March 23, 2015: “Video: The Agenda with Steve Paikin: Making Work Meaningful” -- York U’s Carla Lipsig Mumme & UofT’s Scott Schieman on making work more meaningful.
and don’t forget: “The prayer is that the line will be drawn, and managers will then see that the way forward is actually very simple: Hire good people. Treat them well. Help them succeed. Compensate them fairly. Let them go home.”
New Republic, March 2015: “In Praise of Meaningless Work: Mindfulness mantras are the latest tool of corporate control,” by Joe Keohane
From Workers to Turkers
“... Amazon found time to start a crowdsourcing service called Mechanical Turk. The platform enables workers (’turkers’) to complete small tasks that computers cannot do, such as transcribing an audio recording or flagging inappropriate photos for a social network. A task (known as a ‘human intelligence task,’ or ‘HIT‘) can pay anywhere from a cent to a dollar.”
“Turkers represent the Wild West of the crowdsourcing work force. The process of posting HITs (known as “requesting”) is not well regulated: there is no restriction on how much a requester can charge. I attempted to carry out one of the many HITs from ReceiptHog, a mobile app that pays users to snap photos of their grocery receipts and pays turkers to transcribe them. The illegible grocery receipt that I was assigned listed more than twenty items, and my transcription would earn me just two cents. After ten minutes of entering items incorrectly, I gave up.”
The New Yorker, March 20, 2015: “Video: Turking for a Living,” by Bassam Tariq
“Crowd labor platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk operate with few rules and little protection for workers. But a new movement might change the landscape.”The Daily Beast, December 3, 2014: “Amazon’s Turkers Kick Off the First Crowdsourced Labor Guild,” by Kevin Zawacki
Negotiation and Likeability
“Scholars of psychology, politics, and business love studying how people negotiate, both because there are obvious practical ramifications to such research and because negotiation scenarios can reveal some interesting aspects of human nature. But as Daniel Ames and Malia Mason of Columbia Business School write in a new paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, when it comes to the simple-seeming question of whether an initial offer made during a negotiation should be a single figure or a range, ‘the scholarly literature appears silent.’”
“The duo wanted to change that, so they ran a series of five negotiation-simulation experiments involving Amazon Mechanical Turk workers and business-school students.“
“Overall, their results suggest that range offers are the way to go. If you’re selling a laptop on Craigslist and hoping to get $400 for it, then all things being equal, you’re better off asking for ‘Between $400 and $440 than simply $400 -- you’ll likely get more for the laptop, and there’s little evidence you’ll be seen in a worse light. Simply put, the presence of two values causes the perception of the reservation price to climb upward a bit relative to what it would be if only the lower number were there.”
NYMag.com, Science of Us, March 19, 2015: “A Simple Way to Bump Up Your Next Salary,” by Jesse Singal
“Tandem Anchoring: Informational and Politeness Effects of Range Offers in Social Exchange,” by Daniel R. Ames and Malia F. Mason in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2015, Vol. 108, No. 2, 254-274 (21 pages, PDF)
Hacking America's Universities for Profit
“As Kevin Carey explains in The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere, American universities are strange machines: massive, specialized research operations welded unevenly to undergraduate training programs and semi-professional sports franchises.”
“Carey does something dangerous by making it sound as if the public institutions built to serve such students are irreparably broken, as if the culprit is simply 'decadence,' and as if the sole purpose of college is job placement. He mentions 'rising' tuition dozens of times, but never gives any serious thought to the decades of state budget cuts behind that rise.”
“Universities would be foolish to ignore the promise of new technologies and the imperative of improving access and effectiveness. Some parts of education really are about transmitting information, and by putting them online we could make more time for discussion and mentoring. Some parts of education really are about providing credentials and vocational skills, and we need every tool at our disposal to break down the ivy-covered walls that have limited them to the lucky few.”
“But we would be even more foolish to turn our public and nonprofit universities into a system driven entirely by profits and quantitative outputs.”
New Republic, March 10, 2015: “Silicon Valley’s 'Thunder Lizards' Want to 'Hack' America’s Broken Universities But are they vultures instead?” by Blaine Greteman
Three Economic Myths
“Robert Reich met Bill Clinton when they were both Rhodes Scholars during the 1960s. In the 70s, Reich attended Yale Law School with Hill and Bill. And then, decades later, he served in the Clinton administration as Secretary of Labor. Somewhere along the line, the political economist picked up some drawing skills (putting him in good company with Winston Churchill and George Bush) that work nicely in our age of whiteboard animated videos. Now a professor at UC Berkeley, Reich visually debunks three economic mythologies in two minutes. This clip follows a rapidfire 2012 video, again featuring his cartooning skills, called The Truth About the Economy.”
Open Culture, March 19, 2015: “Robert Reich Debunks Three Economic Myths by Drawing Cartoons”
Boom Bust Boom: The Monty Python Approach to Capitalism
“This is the year that economics might, if we are lucky, turn a corner. There’s a deluge of calls for change in the way it is taught in universities. There’s a global conference at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris, where the giants of radical economics -- including Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis -- will get their biggest ever mainstream platform. And there’s a film where a star of Monty Python talks to a puppet of Hyman Minsky.“
“Terry Jones’s documentary film Boom Bust Boom hits the cinemas this month. Using puppetry and talking heads (including mine), Jones is trying to popularise the work of Minsky, a US economist who died in 1996 but whose name has become for ever associated with the Lehman Brothers crash. Terrified analysts labelled it the ‘Minsky moment’.”
“Minsky’s genius was to show that financially complex capitalism is inherently unstable.. Bust becomes inevitable.”
The Guardian, March 22, 2015: “To move beyond boom and bust, we need a new theory of capitalism,” by Paul Mason
Variety, November 17, 2015: “‘Monty Python’s’ Terry Jones Co-directs ‘Boom Bust Boom”
Boom Bust Boom reveals our unstable economic system and explains why crashes happen.
“A combination of lighthearted humour and serious commentary, it draws as much on interviews and historical analysis as it does on animation, puppetry and the comedy of the absurd. With contributions from John Cusack, journalists Paul Mason and John Cassidy plus leading experts including Andy Haldane, the Chief Economist of the Bank of England and Nobel Prize winners Daniel Kahneman, Robert J Shiller and Paul Krugman, Boom Bust Boom is a platform for conversation -- can we change our unstable system?”
Boom Bust Boom website
“In revealing the truth about our unstable economic system, the film acts as the starting point for global project BoomBustClick.com - to get the world talking about change through education. A central hub for information, news and ideas, BoomBustClick is an online resource for everyone - can we change an unstable economic system? Can we adapt economics to human nature?”
BoomBustClick is a global project to change our unstable economic system.
Book of the Week
Capitalism: A Ghost Story, by Arundhati Roy. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2014. 125 p. ISBN 9781608463855 (pbk.)
From the publisher: "In Capitalism: A Ghost Story, best-selling writer Arundhati Roy examines the dark side of Indian democracy -- a nation of 1.2 billion, where the country’s 100 richest people own assets worth one quarter of India’s gross domestic product. Ferocious and clear-sighted, this is a searing portrait of a nation haunted by ghosts: the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt; the hundreds of millions who live on less than two dollars a day.”
“It is the story of how the largest democracy in the world, with over 800 million voting in the last election, answers to the demands of globalized capitalism, subjecting millions of people to inequality and exploitation. Roy shows how the mega-corporations, modern robber barons plundering India’s natural resources, use brute force, as well as a wide range of NGOs and foundations, to sway government and policy making in India.”
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