December 20, 2011
To All a Merry Holiday!
- News for 2012
- The Perry Work Report Rave 2011
- Is the Conservative Government really this malevolent?
- The Occupy Movement
- The 100 Best Protest Signs At The Wisconsin Capitol
- Unemployment and Youth and Precarious Work
- Mental Health and Work life Balance
- Best Companies to Work For?
- Women and Work
- Conversationson Work & Labour
- The Clawbies
- Book of the Week
News for 2012
Your editor and writer of the Perry Work Report since January 2007, Vicki Skelton, is pleased to announce that she will be on a six month research leave starting in January 2012. As academic staff at the University of Toronto, librarians may take either a one year research leave every seven years, or a six month leave every three years.
The broad scope of my research will be comparing clauses in faculty collective agreements in selected universities in Canada and Ontario. This fits well with my current service to the university as a member of the University of Toronto Faculty Association (UTFA) bargaining team. We are currently bargaining with the administration at the University of Toronto and details can be found on both theUTFA website and the Office of the Vice-President & Provost website.
Now to introduce Claire Wollen who will be your Perry Work Report editor for January – June 2012, as well as reference librarian at the CIRHR Library, Wednesdays to Fridays, during my absence.
Claire is currently an Information Specialist in the Business Information Centre (BIC) at the Rotman School of Management where she works with a team providing fee-based research services. Prior to assuming this role, she was the Public Services librarian at the BIC for one year. Before joining the University of Toronto, Claire spent seven years at the Toronto Star, where she managed the newsroom library for over a year, before becoming the Manager of Product Development and Licensing. She also spent seven years at the Toronto Reference Library, where her positions included a one-year secondment as Facilitator of Service Delivery, and Manager of Answerline and Intellisearch.
Claire has a B.A. History from Glendon College, York University, an MLS from the iSchool Institute, University of Toronto and a post-graduate IT diploma from ITI (Information Technology Institute).
I would also like to thank Yasmin Hartung, a graduate student at U of T’s i-School and a work study student at the CIRHR Library. As well as her wonderful work on our research guide and the CIRHRbook blog, Yasmin has embraced researching and writing stories for the Perry Work Report and has taken up tweeting industrial relations and social justice issues as well --- it is addictive! CIRHR Twitter site
The Perry Work Report Rave 2011
“Rave on, down through the industrial revolution
Empiricism, atomic and nuclear age
Rave on down through time and space down through the corridors
Rave on words on printed page” [Van Morrison: Rave on, John Donne]
Is the Conservative Government really this malevolent?
Is the Conservative Government really this malevolent or smart to hoodwink Canadian’s into believing that this could end well? -- proroguing parliaments and limiting parliamentary debate, ending the long form census, incarcerating more people, ergo more prisons, by pushing through the crime bill … we could go on… we must go on … getting rid of the Canadian Wheat Board but keeping the Dairy supply management system , issuing back to work legislation before strikes have even begun and now involving private sector workers. And the most recent insult -- Canada is now the first country to formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol.
The Occupy Movement
The Occupy Movement is an international protest recognizing that income inequality affects us all – how can one stay neutral with stories of banker’s waving 100 pound notes in protestor faces in London and California police pepper spraying a benign group of student protestors? But at long last, the destruction of a myth -- supported by a worldwide lack of government regulation, brought to you at the cost of other nations’ poverty and non-compliance with international labour standards, and soon to hit home as governments in recessionary times tighten belts and target the public service -- the OECD recognizes that there is no trickledown effect!
The 100 Best Protest Signs At the Wisconsin Capitol
Link for: The 100 Best Protest Signs At the Wisconsin Capitol
Unemployment and Youth and Precarious Work
Early on in the year the International Labour Office (ILO) warned that weak recovery in jobs is likely to continue in 2011, especially in developed economies. Noting high unemployment rates among young people (ages 15-24), the Globe and Mail asked, is this the “lost generation?” In Canada, McLean’s magazine writes that it, in comparison to Spain, France, or the United Kingdom, young Canadians are doing, well, pretty okay! While the Canadian Government remains num on the matter, the European Commission launched a website “Youth on the Move&! rdquo; in order to provide young people with a single point of access to information” about living and working abroad and making young Europeans’ “dreams a reality”. Visit the Youth and Work website by Andrew Langille for reports on youth, workplace law, economics, labour market policy and intergenerational equity.
Mental Health and Work life Balance
How are we dealing with this? – more drugs to keep us in this “insane” world, a thesis popularized by psychologist R.D. Lang in the 1970’s, as we try to normalize ourselves in a mad, mad world. Where is work life balance? What did technological innovation bring but robots to replace us? We are working more and earning less.
Best Companies to Work For?
By the end of the year have we not had enough lists of companies being handed kudos for what? – giving employees a voice in the workplace or better pay? Hey, let’s not get carried away here – a provincial government family day is certainly cheaper than paying your employees more and yourstockholders less.
Women and Work
Women and Work: How can this be? In Canada women dominate the workforce but not theboardrooms or law firms. Sure there are stars, but in numbers women are still doing most of the housework and not participating in the big decisions in politics or in industry. Could it be … that top down management style and the “old boys’ network” is not a good fit?
Conversations on Work & Labour
The CIRHR Library (Newman) is very pleased to have joined in a new initiative with Professor Sara Slinn of Osgood Hall Law School -- the new blog Conversations on Work & Labour. I would also like to thank our library work study student, Hira Mirza, for her adept technical support and creative input on this new site.
The Clawbies
“Now in its sixth year, the Clawbies are a celebration of excellence in law-related blogging. The awards recognize the interesting, innovative, and informative sites that are the Canadian legal blogosphere’s best and brightest. But unlike traditional awards, the Clawbies are designed to create awareness for each blogger who nominates another’s blog, and peer endorsements via social media represent are a big part of the judging process… The 2011 edition of the Clawbies will follow the same format as prior years, with three ways to nominate a Canadian law blog…more
The deadline to nominate is Wednesday, December 28th and the 2011 Clawbies winners will once again be announced on New Year’s Eve.”
Book of the Week
Renewing International Labour Studies, edited by Marcus Taylor. Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2011. 205 p. ISBN 9780415593854
This volume seeks to re-energise the paradigm of the New International Labour Studies by detailing how struggles over the construction, reproduction, utilisation and restructuring of labour forces are the contested social foundations upon which the global economy stands.
Through a combination of theoretical works and a series of case studies, the volume highlights the cutting edge of international labour studies. Its expands on three pivotal areas of study within the discipline:1) the social construction of new labour forces across an expanding international division of labour; 2) the self-organising potential of workers, particularly within non-traditional sectors; and 3) the possibilities for transborder labour movements to help address the asymmetrical power relationships between globalised capital and localised labour.
In addressing these themes, the volume helps explain not only how the contemporary international division of labour is produced and reproduced, but also the strengths and limits to current attempts to overcome its unequal and divisive nature.
This book was published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.
About the Editor:
Marcus Taylor is Queen's University at Kingston Ontario Associate Professor in the Department of Global Development Studies and is cross-listed to the Department of Sociology and the School of Environmental Studies. His research and teaching emphasize the political economy of development, with a focus on labour and livelihoods in contexts ranging from Latin America to South Asia. He has written critically on questions of labour and global commodity chains; labour markets and anti-poverty policies; and has engaged with both mainstream and critical theories of development. His current interests include building a critical perspective on climate change adaptation viewed through the interface of political economy and political ecology. To this end he is initiating a comparative research project on power, conflict and climate change adaptation in Latin America and South Asia.
Publications include the monograph From Pinochet to the Third Way: Neoliberalism and Social Transformation in Chile (Pluto Press, 2006), and the edited volumes Global Economy Contested: Power and Conflict Across the International Division of Labour (Routledge, 2008) and Renewing International Labour Studies (Routledge, 2010).
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Editor: Vicki Skelton and Yasmin Hartung
Designer: Nick Strupat
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