December 9, 2011
- Lancaster House 2012 Human Rights and Accommodation Conference
- Queen's IRC State of Labour Relations Survey Reminder
- Industrial Relations Outlook 2012
- Workplace Death & Injury: the Mushroom Farm Case
- University Administrators and Poor Pension Management
- Depression in the Workplace takes its Toll
- Family Friendly Workplaces – the 100 Best
- Women are still Doing Most of the Housework
- Why Inequality Keeps Rising
- Reduce the Gap between Rich and Poor
- Income Disparity Between Countries will bring Migratory Pressure
- Not Emigrating for the Benefits
- U.S. Public/Private Sector Wage Gap
- Book of the Week
Lancaster House 2012 Human Rights and Accommodation Conference
Presented by Lancaster House and the University of Toronto, Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources
We are pleased to announce Lancaster's Human Rights and Accommodation Conference andWorkshops (scroll to bottom of page) in Toronto, which will be held from April 2 to 5, 2012 at theSheraton Centre Toronto Hotel. Covering employment in both federal and provincial jurisdictions
Special Early Bird Rate Register and pay by January 27 to save $200 off each regular conference and workshop price!
Queen's IRC State of Labour Relations Survey Reminder
“Recently, the IRC launched a survey, "An Inquiry into the State of LR in Canada." I invite all LR professionals who have not yet completed the survey to participate in this IRC research initiative. On behalf of the IRC, I thank you for supporting our LR research,” from Paul Juniper.
Industrial Relations Outlook 2012
Summary:
- Although the “Great Recession” never materialized in Canada, the past two years have been plagued by global uncertainty.
- The fragility of the economy gave the federal government a reason to intervene in high profile labour disputes involving Air Canada and Canada Post, an intervention that has profound implications for collective bargaining in Canada.
- The aging of the Canadian population requires all stakeholders to be prepared to address concerns surrounding the security and affordability of pension plans and to ensure investment in training and development to mitigate the effects of pending labour shortages.
Conference Board of Canada, 2011: Industrial Relations Outlook 2012: Going Sideways, With a Twist (available to the University of Toronto community through your e-Library, PDF, 38 pages).
The Globe and Mail, December 2, 2011: “Year of labour strife looms: report”, by Tavia Grant
Workplace Death & Injury: the Mushroom Farm Case
“Sentences were recently handed down in one of British Columbia’s most well-known cases of workplace death and injury. This case has produced an outcry over the inadequacy of fines as penalties in such cases.” On 5 September 2008, three workers were killed and two others suffered brain damage in a work incident at a mushroom composting facility in British Columbia.” [SSlinn]
Conversations on Work & Labour, December 3, 2011: Workplace Death & Injury: the Mushroom Farm Case December 3, 2011, by SSlinn
University Administrators and Poor Pension Management
“With a few exceptions, university pension plans are governed by university administrations. The decision to impose contribution holidays rests with the administrators, not the plan members. The same is true for investment choices. When a plan goes into the red, the administrators are usually responsible.” [Constance Adamson, OCUFA President)
OCUFA, December 7, 2011: OCUFA’s Adamson responds to Globe and Mail columnist Wente
Globe and Mail, December 6, 2011: “Pension ponzi is a raw deal for students”, Magaret Wente
The University of Toronto Faculty Association has put forward a motion concerning the U of T pension plan recommending changes to UTAM’s (University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation) investment strategy. The current solvency deficit of the plan is calculated at two billion dollars.
UTFA website, November 23, 2011: UTFA Council Motion re Pension Plan & UTAM - Nov 23, 2011.
Depression in the Workplace takes its Toll
“The financial toll includes workdays lost due to illness, missed wages, lower economic output as well as the added financial burden put on the health care and insurance industries, said roundtable founder Bill Wilkerson, who co-wrote the report with Mr. Wilson. Making matters worse, waves of layoffs and relentless cost-cutting in recent years are helping to create “chronically stressful” workplaces, he said. “There’s a lack of fairness, a lack of opportunity in the workplace and a lot of insecurity,” Mr. Wilkerson said.
The Global Business and Economic Roundtable for Addiction and Mental Health 2011 Report, December 8, 2011: Brain Health + Brain Skills, Brain Capital (74 pages, PDF)
Executive Summary (10 pages, PDF)
The Globe and Mail, December 7, 2011: Mental illness ‘a tsunami of economic loss’ in the workplace Barrie Mckenna and Lisa Priest
The Globe and Mail, December 6, 2011: Canada's prisons becoming warehouses for the mentally ill, by Kim Mackrael
Family Friendly Workplaces – the 100 Best
“To create the Top Family-Friendly Employer list for 2012, Mediacorp, which oversees the competition, examined the most progressive and forward-thinking workplace benefits valued by families. These included maternity and parental leave top-up payments, generous vacation and personal days off, flexible work options, emergency daycare support, eldercare support and childcare costs for employees attending events or business trips.”
The Globe and Mail, October 7, 2011: Canada’s top family-friendly employers for 2012
The Globe and Mail, October 7, 2011: The LIST: Canada's top 100 employers for 2012
Women are still Doing Most of the Housework
Using data from the 500 Family Study, two professors from the University in Israel found that working women are still doing more multitasking around the household than their partners:
“The study showed that 52.7 per cent of all multitasking for working mothers involved housework, compared to 42.2 per cent for fathers, and 35.5 per cent was taken up with childcare, as opposed to 27.9 per cent for men.”
The 500 Family Survey was designed to provide in-depth information on middle class, dual-career families living in the United States, and explores how work affects the well-being of parents and their children.
The Globe and Mail, December 1, 2011: “Women still doing the bulk of multitasking: study”, by Patricia Reaney, New York.
Child Care & Early Education: Research Connections: “The 500 Family Study [1998-2000: United States]”, by Barbara Schneider & Linda J. Waite. Click to access the data set and for a summary of the dataset.
Why Inequality Keeps Rising
“In the three decades prior to the recent economic downturn, wage gaps widened and household income inequality increased in a large majority of OECD countries. This occurred even when countries were going through a period of sustained economic and employment growth. This report analyses the major underlying forces behind these developments”
OECD, December 6, 2011: Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising website – links to data, video, and individual country profiles are available on this page
OECD, December 2011: An Overview of Growing Income Inequalities in OECD Countries (25 pages, PDF)
This overview summarises the key findings of the analytical chapters of this report. It sketches a brief portrait of increasing income inequality in OECD countries and the potential driving forces behind it. It reviews changes in these driving forces and examines their relative impact on inequality. In particular, it looks at the role of globalisation and technological changes, regulatory reforms in labour and product markets, changing household structures, and changes in tax and benefit regulations. It assesses what governments can do about increasing inequality and concludes by examining possible specific policy avenues
OECD country report: Income Inequality Canada:
The Globe and Mail, December 9, 2011: Income inequality: deep, complex and growing, Jeffrey Simpson
The Globe and Mail, December 5, 2011: Canada’s wage gap at record high: OECD, by Tavia Grantnt
Reduce the Gap between Rich and Poor
The authors of, The Spirit Level , Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have created The Equality Trust an independent, evidence based campaign working to reduce income inequality in order to improve the quality of life in the UK. “If we want to build a better society, it is essential we take action now to reduce the gap between rich and poor.
The Equality Trust is working with others to build a social movement for change. We analyse and disseminate the latest research, promote robust evidence-based arguments and support a dynamic network of campaign groups across the country.”
YouTube, June 2009: The Spirit Level why more equal societies almost always do better IPH interview authors – - according to the authors trade unions and employee representation on boards play a big role in lessening income disparity.
Income Disparity Between Countries will bring Migratory Pressure
“Mr. Milanovic has two important takeaways from all of this. The first is that in the 150 years, the spectre of Communism in the Western world “was exorcised” because industrial capitalism did such a good job of enriching the erstwhile proletariat.”
“His second conclusion is that the big cleavage in the world today is not between classes within countries, but between the rich West and the poor developing world. As a result, he predicts “huge migratory pressures because people can increase their incomes several-fold if they migrate.””[by Chrystia Freeland]
World Bank, December 2011: Global inequality: from class to location, from proletarians to migrants, by Branko Milanovic (25 pages, PDF)
YouTube, April 2010: Branko Milanovic - Global Income Inequality
The Globe and Mail, December 2, 3011: The stubborn wage gap between two economic worlds Chrystia Freeland
Not Emigrating for the Benefits
According to a comprehensive study of 19 European countries over a period from 1993 to 2008, national differences in unemployment benefits have no impact on migration flows within the European Union.
“There’s an impression out there that migrants come and they absorb all of our unemployment resources,” said Corrado Giulietti, who co-authored the study with colleagues Martin Guzi, Martin Kahanec and Klaus Zimmermann. “That’s absolutely not the case.”[Globe and Mail]
IZA Institute for the Study of Labour, October 2011: Unemployment Benefits and Immigration: Evidence from the EU Corrado Giulietti Martin Guzi Martin Kahanec Klaus F. Zimmermann (18 pages PDF)
Globe and Mail Blog, December 6, 2011: EU states not ‘welfare magnets’ for poor workers, by Naomi Powell
Visit the IZA website (Institute for the Study of labour) for access to all of their many scholarly publications.
“Established in 1998 in Bonn, Germany, IZA is a private independent economic research institute focused on the analysis of global labor markets. It operates an international network of about 1,100 economists and researchers spanning across more than 40 countries.
Based on academic excellence and an ambitious publication strategy, IZA serves as a place of communication between academic science and political practice.”
U.S. Public/Private Sector Wage Gap
This brief examines whether benefits close the wage gap between public and private sector workers. The analysis found that the compensation of state-local and private sector workers is similar. The brief’s key findings are:
State and local workers have a wage penalty of 9.5 percent.
Pension contributions and retiree health insurance help close the gap.
Total compensation for public sector workers is about 4 percent less than that in the private sector
Center for State and Local Government Excellence, September 2011: Issue Brief: Comparing Compensation: State-Local Versus Private Sector Workers By Alicia H. Munnell, Jean-Pierre Aubry, Josh Hurwitz, and Laura Quinby (18 pages, PDF)
Book of the Week
Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. Toronto : Doubleday Canada, 2011. 499 p. ISBN 9780385676519 (hardcover)
"It's a promising thought, but to place this book in the rubric of self-help would be to mistake Kahneman—who lived for several years in Nazi-occupied France—for a benighted optimist. Again and again he reminds us that having the means to describe your own bias won't do much to help you overcome it.
If we want to enforce rational behavior in society, he argues, then we all need to cooperate. Since it's easier to recognize someone else's errors than our own, we should all be harassing our friends about their poor judgments and making fun of their mistakes. Kahneman thinks we'd be better off in a society of inveterate nags who spout off at the water-cooler like overzealous subscribers toPsychology Today.
Each chapter of the book closes with a series of quotes—many suggested by the author's daughter—that are supposed to help kick off these enriching conversations: You might snipe to a colleague, for example, that "All she is going by is the halo effect"; or maybe you'd interrupt a meeting to cry out, "Nice example of the affect heuristic," or "Let's not follow the law of small numbers." [from Slate Magazine, October 25, 2011: The Effect Effect: Daniel Kahneman and the language of popular psychology.]
Reviews:
Bloomberg Business Week, October 27, 2011: Book Review: “Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman: A Nobel laureate’s new book cautions us not to trust our gut”
Globe and Mail, November 25, 2011: The heart of reason, and the reason of the heart [Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman ] reviewed by Janice Gross Stein
About the Author:
"In 2002, Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel in economic science. What made this unusual — indeed, unique in the history of the prize — is that Kahneman is a psychologist."
"Specifically, he is one-half of a pair of psychologists who, beginning in the early 1970s, set out to dismantle an entity long dear to economic theorists: that arch-rational decision maker known as Homo economicus." [from New York Times, November 25, 2011: Two Brains Running By Jim Holt [Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, reviewed]
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