Perry Work Report for the week of April 26, 2012

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April 26, 2012

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Perry Work Report On Hiatus

PLEASE NOTE: Due to staff on vacation, the Perry Work Report will be taking a three week break, and will return the week of May 21.

Nominations for Bora Laskin Award 2012

The University of Toronto, Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources, is inviting nominations for its annual Bora Laskin Award for Outstanding Contributions to Canadian Labour Law. More information about the Bora Laskin Award can be found at the Centre's website.

The award is named after the late Chief Justice Bora Laskin (1912-1984) who, before joining the Supreme Court of Canada, was pre-eminent as a labour law scholar and labour arbitrator. Nominees will be considered from all fields relating to labour law, including, for example, academia, private practice, courts, tribunals and arbitration. The Awards Committee will consider nominations received on or before Monday, May 14, 2012.

This year's award will be presented at a dinner on the evening of Tuesday, October 16, during the Lancaster House Canadian Labour Board Law Conference, which will take place at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Toronto on October 16 and 17, 2012.
To submit a nomination, please fill out the following online form

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Labour Relations in Canada - IRC Report

“In November 2011, the IRC surveyed labour relations (LR) professionals in Canada. The purpose of this survey was to describe the state of the LR profession in Canada, based on the perspectives of practitioners. This Executive Summary presents an overview of the aggregated survey data. This practitioner-focused research complements our 2011 exploration of the state of the human resources profession in Canada, and builds on the IRC’s 2009 labour relations survey”.

Queen’s University, IRC, 2012: “An Inquiry Into The State Of Labour Relations In Canada: Executive Summary”, by Paul Juniper, Alison Hill, and Tahreem Raza, 2012. (Full Report, PDF, 28 pages)

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Labour Violations In Canada

“In a recent report reviewing the extent of Canada’s compliance to the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) most fundamental Convention – No. 87, Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize, the ILO cited over 20 instances where governments across Canada have refused to change labour laws which have been found to be in contravention of Convention No. 87”. The International Labor Organisation (ILO) “has been expressing concern for many years on the exclusion of wide categories of workers from statutory protection of freedom of association and on the restrictions on the right to strike in several provinces.” “This ILO report is very troubling… It damages the human rights reputation of Canada and many of our provinces."

National Union of Public and General Employes, April, 2012: “ILO cites over 20 ongoing labour rights violations by Canadian governments”

National Union of Public and General Employes, April, 2012: “Latest ILO report damages Canada’s human rights reputation, says CFLR”

ILO, 2012: Canada: Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise, Convention, 1948 (No. 87) (ratification: 1972) (PDF, 13 pages)

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Six Activities for Successful Organizational Change

According to a new Towers Watson study, “leading activities, which include finding executive sponsorship for organizational change, developing a clear vision of desired organizational change, creating an integrated communication and change management strategy, and creating strong employee motivation for making organizational change, have the most influence in the overall success of an organization's change”.

Towers Watson, 2012: 2011-2012 Change and Communication ROI Study: Clear Direction in a Complex World. (PDF, 30 pages)

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Older Workers – Skills Needed, and Skills Lost

“Older workers in 2008 were significantly less likely to participate in job-related training than their counterparts in the core working-age population. Overall, younger employees reported receiving more job-related training than their older counterparts. In the year from July 2007 to June 2008, 45% of workers aged 25 to 54 took at least one job-related course or program, compared with 32% of those aged 55 to 64”.

Statistics Canada, April 20, 2012: Study: Job-related training of older workers, 2008 
(Full Report PDF, 13 pages) (HTM format)

A joint SHRM and AARP jointly survey reports that 72% of HR professionals “described their organization’s loss of talent due to older workers retiring/leaving their organization as a “problem” or “potential problem”; however, only a small percentage of organizations (5%) have implemented specific policies and management practices in anticipation of this potential talent loss. Approximately one-half of organizations (51%) indicated that writing in English (grammar, spelling, etc.) was the top basic skill observed  among older workers that is not readily seen among younger workers, while 52% of organizations reported professionalism/work ethic is the top applied skill that younger workers are less likely to exhibit. Almost one-half of organizations (45%) have increased training and cross-training efforts in order to prepare for the potential skills gaps and/or to retain and recruit older workers”.  

Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), April 9, 2012: AARP Strategic Workforce Planning. Slide Show (28 slides).

Huffington Post, April 13, 2012: “AARP Study: Are Businesses Prepared For Boomers To Retire?“

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Canada’s “Greenest Employers” and Green Job Initiatives

“The Mediacorp editors of Canada's Top 100 Employers judged organizations on: 1) their unique initiatives and programs; 2) how successful they've been in reducing their own environmental footprint; 3) the degree employees are involved and 4) the extent that their initiatives have become linked to their public identity and whether they attract new people”.

The Globe and Mail, April 20, 2012: “The 2012 List / Employers making a difference”, by Diane Jermyn

Pacific Coast Collaborative, March 2012: The West Coast Clean Economy: Opportunities for Investment and Accelerated Job Creation. (PDF, 84 pages)

BC Ministry of Environment: B.C.'s Green Economy: Growing green jobs (PDF, 40 pages)

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Mining Jobs in Canada

CBC News, April 25, 2012: “Fired Vale worker starts arbitration: Eight of nine Vale workers who were fired during a 2009-2010 strike will have their cases individually heard by an arbitrator”

Postmedia News, April 17, 2012:  “Mining graduates hot commodities”, by Gemma Karstens-Smith

Winnipeg Free Press, April 13, 2012: “A decidedly mixed blessing: mining jobs near a remote First Nations reserve”, by Heather Scoffield, The Canadian Press

Postmedia News, March 15, 2012: “Canada's North set to cash in on mining boom”

“Human resources challenges continue to threaten the future competitiveness of the Canadian mining industry. A combination of factors including the pending retirement of the baby boom generation, difficulties in attracting and engaging youth and an under-representation of diverse groups paints a challenging ten-year talent forecast. While the industry has taken tremendous strides in addressing these issues, finding experienced and skilled workers is becoming more difficult, and competition across sectors of the economy is increasing, according to a new report released by the Mining Industry Human Resources Council (MiHR)”.

Canada, Mining Industry Human Resources (MIHR) Council, September, 2011: Canadian Mining Industry Employment and Hiring Forecasts. A Mining Industry Workforce (PDF, 38 pages)

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The Public Sector Workplace

Conference Board of Canada, April 2012: “Public Sector HR 2012: The Changing Public Sector Workplace” Conference e-Proceedings. (Available to the University of Toronto community, via your Conference Board of Canada e-library account)

Highlights include:

• Leading Public Sector HR into the Future

• Putting Strategic HR into Practice

• Building Leadership Capacity Through Coaching

• Lessons in Leadership for Changing Times

• From Diversity to Inclusion at the Ontario Public Service: The OPS Inclusion Lens

• Maximizing Collaboration Across the Generations

• Workplace 2.0—Translating Technology Trends into HR Service Delivery in the Real World

• Workplace 2.0—The New Workplace • Engaging Employees for Success • Doing More with Less

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Restaurant Worker Challenges in Europe and the U.S.

“This report describes and analyses the main challenges facing the [hotel and restaurant] sector [in Europe], such as the impact of the crisis on employment, undeclared work, employment of young workers, seasonal work and working hours, qualifications and skills development, and health and safety at work. The study explores the state of social dialogue in the sector, highlighting the contribution of the social partners to addressing the current challenges. Based on contributions from the national centres of the European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO), the study covers the sector across EU27 countries and Norway”.

European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO), April 24, 2012: Employment and industrial relations in the hotels and restaurants sector. (Full Report, PDF, 52 pages)

“A report from the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United shows that women who work in the industry face systematic discrimination, poverty wages, a lack of sick days, and five times more harassment than the general female workforce. One major cause of poverty for these working women is that restaurant lobbyists have succeeded in keeping the federal minimum wage for servers and other tipped workers frozen at only $2.13 per hour for the past 20 years”.

Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, February 16, 2012: Tipped Over the Edge — Gender Inequity in the Restaurant Industry. Executive Summary (PDF, 6 pages) Full Report (PDF, 40 pages)

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Factory Jobs in the U.S.

“For over 100 years America was the world’s leading manufacturer, but now it is neck-and-neck with China. In the decade to 2010 the number of manufacturing jobs in America fell by about a third. The rise of outsourcing and offshoring and the growth of sophisticated supply chains has enabled companies the world over to use China, India and other lower-wage countries as workshops. Prompted by the global financial crisis, some Western policymakers now reckon it is about time their countries returned to making stuff in order to create jobs and prevent more manufacturing skills from being exported. That supposes two things: that manufacturing is important to a nation and its economy, and that these new forms of manufacturing will create new jobs”.

The Economist, April 21, 2012: Factories and jobs: Back to making stuff. Manufacturing still matters, but the jobs are changing

The Economist, April 21, 2012: The third industrial revolution: The digitisation of manufacturing will transform the way goods are made—and change the politics of jobs too

Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, February 2012: “Why Does Manufacturing Matter? Which Manufacturing Matters? A Policy Framework”, by Susan Helper, Timothy Krueger, and Howard Wial (Full Report, PDF, 53 pages)

Executive Office of the President, President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, June 2011: Report to the President on Ensuring American Leadership in Advanced Manufacturing. (PDF, 58 pages)

Key conclusions include

  • The United States is losing leadership in manufacturing—not just in low-tech industries and products and not just due to low-wages abroad.
  • We are losing ground in the production of high-tech products, including those resulting from U.S. innovation and inventions, and in manufacturing-associated research and development (R&D).
  • Advanced manufacturing has the potential to create and retain high-quality jobs in the United States.
  • The United States lags behind competitor nations in providing the business environment and skilled workforce needed for advanced manufacturing.

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Older British Workers – Retirement Postponed?

A new report from the Pension Policy Institute in Britain “found that the vast majority of the over 50s who are working in 2011 - around 85% - might have sufficient state and private pension income to meet a minimum acceptable standard of living in retirement of £11,000 per annum if they continue to work and save until they are eligible to receive their state pension. However, for many people an income in retirement at this level is unlikely to be considered adequate.”

Pension Policy Institute, : “Retirement income and assets: the implications for retirement income of  Government policies to extend working lives.” (Full Report, PDF, 97 pages) (Executive Summary, PDF, 15 pages)

BBC News, April 25, 2012: “Employers can force retirement, court ruling suggests”

BBC News, April 24, 2012: “Half of over-50s 'will have to work beyond state pension age'

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Mass Exodus Interruptus

"I am required to remind you of your contractual obligations to the company you are leaving," the email said. "You have an obligation to retain any confidential information pertaining to Aviva Investors operations, systems and clients. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you and wish you all the best for the future," said the letter.

“This email was sent to Aviva's worldwide staff of 1,300 people, with bases in the U.S., UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Canada, Italy, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Poland, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Finland and the Netherlands. And it was all one giant mistake: The email was intended for only one individual”.

The Telegraph, April 20, 2012: “Aviva sacks more than 1,300 workers by mistake: The latest board shake-up at Aviva is radical, but not as radical as sacking its entire workforce by email”, by Anna White.

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Book of the Week

Constitutional Labour Rights in Canada: Farm Workers and the Fraser Case, edited by Fay Faraday, Judy Fudge and Eric Tucker. Toronto : Irwin Law, 2012. 322 p. ISBN 9781552212912

On 29 April 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada released its much-anticipated decision in Attorney General of Ontario v Fraser, which dealt with the scope of constitutional protection of collective bargaining. This collection of original essays untangles the two stories that are intertwined in the Fraserdecision—the story of the farm workers and their union’s attempt to obtain rights at work available to other working people in Ontario, and the tale of judicial discord over the meaning of freedom of association in the context of work. The contributors include trade unionists, lawyers, and academics (several of whom were involved in Fraser as witnesses, parties, lawyers, and interveners). The collection provides the social context out of which the decision emerged, including a photo essay on migrant workers, while at the same time illuminating Fraser’s broader jurisprudential and institutional implications.

About the Authors:

Fay Faraday is a social justice lawyer in Toronto, representing community groups and coalitions, unions, and individuals. With a practice focusing on constitutional and appellate litigation, labour, human rights, and administrative/public law, she has extensive  experience with Charter litigation at all levels of court, including numerous cases before the Supreme Court of Canada and the Ontario Court of Appeal. 

Judy Fudge is the Lansdowne Chair in Law at the University of Victoria. She has been widely published in law, history, and industrial relations journals, and she has co-authored and co-edited several books.

Eric Tucker, B.A., LL.B., LL.M. is a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. He has published extensively on the history and current state of labour and employment law.

Visit the Recent Books at the CIRHR Library blog.

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Questions or comments: cirhr.library@utoronto.ca

Editor: Claire Wollen
Designer: Nick Strupat

Copyright © 2012 Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources, University of Toronto. All rights reserved.

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