Perry Work Report for the week of January 11, 2010

January 11, 2010

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Morley Gunderson Prize: Nominations Now Open

The Morley Gunderson Prize was established in 1997 as a tribute to Morley’s extraordinary commitment to the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the University of Toronto.It recognizes a current student or graduate of the Centre who combines outstanding professional achievement with dedicated and significant service to the Centre.

Nominations may be submitted by current students, graduates, faculty and staff to Anil Verma, Interim Director of the Centre by Monday February 1, 2010. The selection committee considers all nominations, and the presentation of the award is a highlight of the annual Sefton Lecture, co-sponsored by the Centre and Woodsworth College of the University of Toronto. Contact director.cirhr@utoronto.ca.

 

Annual Sefton Lecture: March 25, 2010

The 2010 Sefton Lecture is scheduled for Thursday, March 25, 2010, 7 pm in Kruger Hall at Woodsworth College, 119 St. George Street. The speaker will be Don Drummond, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of TD Bank Financial Group. Further information will be available soon.

 

Five Reasons to Hire an MIRHR Student this Summer

  1. Gain access to the top talent in Industrial Relations and Human Resources – MIRHR students are carefully selected, highly motivated, and can provide refreshing and creative business solutions.
  2. Get help with your special projects or other short-term requirements.
  3. Evaluate potential new employees - our graduates are highly sought after and many major employers return annually to recruit new graduates. Gain a competitive advantage: recruit once, hire twice.
  4. Energize your human resources or labour relations teams by hiring a student that will bring new knowledge, skills, and perspectives to the organization.
  5. Promote your organization as one that is committed to developing Industrial Relations and Human Resources professionals.

We invite you to contact Chantal Emond at the Co-op Programs in Management. She will be able to assist you with the entire recruiting process and can answer any questions you may have about the summer work term or its participants. Chantal Emond can be reached by telephone at (416) 287–7361 or via email at emond@utsc.utoronto.ca.

 

47th Annual CIRA/International CRIMT Conference

Employee Representation in the New World of Work: The Dynamics of Rights, Voice, Performance and Power; 47th Annual CIRA Conference / International CRIMT Conference, June 16 – 18 2010, Université Laval, Québec, Canada

In a special collaboration between the Interuniversity Research Centre on Globalization and Work (CRIMT) and the Canadian Industrial Relations Association (CIRA-ACRI), the annual 2010 CIRA conference will focus on the current and future dynamics of employee representation. A thematic call for papers was issued in June 2009 and closed last November 15th. Over 250 researchers from 30 countries responded to this thematic call for papers.

As in previous years, CIRA also welcomes proposals that address other themes and issues related to the world of work, employment and industrial relations. CIRA’s annual conference has always been a setting in which researchers, practitioners and public policy makers could exchange on all issues related to work and employment. This special 2010 annual CIRA conference maintains that tradition. That is why last October we issued a second call for papers seeking extra-thematic contributions. This second call closes January 15th 2010.

Deadline January 15th 2010 Extra-Thematic Call for Contributions

 

Global Solidarity Campaign for Striking United Steelworkers at Vale Inco

LabourStart launched an e-mail petition in support of the 3,500 USW members in Canada who have been on strike against Vale Inco for six months. The petition reinforces the USW’s global solidarity campaign which is building alliances with Vale workers and communities around the world who are demanding better treatment from this giant multinational. In the last few weeks, more than 8,000 protest messages have been sent directly to the chief executive of Brazil-based Vale SA, condemning the mining conglomerate. You can send your message of support too!

Join the Labour Start Campaign

Fair Deal NOW! Site for Vale Inco families and community members, December 30, 2009: LabourStart Campaign Against Vale a Tremendous Success

The Sudbury Star, January 9, 2009: ACCENT: Remembering 1978-79 posted by Carol Mulligan

Fair Deal NOW! website for the most current information: 
Vale’s offer including pension plan and bonus is available here on the Fair Deal NOW! website.

Sudbury Northern Life, December 15, 2009: Class' held for LU students at Vale Inco picket line: Students and faculty from Laurentian University showed solidarity for striking Vale Inco workers at the Clarabelle Mill picket line Dec. 11. A “class” was held to discuss the causes of the strike. Laurentian University Faculty Association (LUFA) and Laurentian Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) sponsored the class. LUFA donated $4,000 to help families affected by the strike at the event.

 

Is Sudbury Sustainable?

“Labour strife, shaken confidence and an economic downturn. What does Northern Ontario's largest city have to do to survive in a global market? “Watch The Agenda with Steve Paikin and his guests to find out. Guests include: Stan Sudol, a columnist with Northern Life, and a blogger for Republic of Mining; Sylvie Albert is assistant professor in the faculty of management at Laurentian University; David Robinson is an associate professor of Economics at Laurentian University and writes for Northern Ontario Business.

The Agenda, December 10, 2009: Is Sudbury Sustainable?

 

Ontario's Labour Peace: Bought or Brought?

“As a new decade dawns in Ontario, has the province's relatively amicable relationship with labour been brought about by reasonable policies... or bought outright with plum collective agreements?” Watch the Agenda with Steve Paikin as this question is debated and also view the second segment, an interview with Labour expert Charlotte Yates titled, The Future of Unions.

The Agenda, January 5, 2009: Ontario's Labour Peace: Bought or Brought?

The Agenda, January 5, 2009 The Future of Unions with Labour expert Charlotte Yates click on the blue tab Charlotte Yates

 

Men Key in Initiatives to Eliminate Gender Bias in the Workplace

Catalyst has released its second report in the Engaging Men in Gender Initiatives series, subtitled, Stacking the Deck for Success. The series looks at factors that heighten or dampen men’s interest in becoming effective change agents for gender equality at work. This report provides information and advice for managing employees’ attitudes, and gives concrete recommendations for how organizations can communicate more persuasively with men about gender-related learning opportunities.

Report 1: Engaging Men in Gender Initiatives: Stacking the Deck for Success, December 2009 (20 pages, PDF)

Report 2: Engaging Men in Gender Initiatives: What Change Agents Need to Know, May 2009 (44 pages, PDF). This report offers evidence-based advice about the most effective ways to partner with men in ending gender inequalities at work.

 

Towers Watson Studies on Employee Health & Productivity

Towers Perrin and Watson Wyatt have merged and are now Towers Watson. The transaction to form Towers Watson, a leading global professional services company, was announced on June 28, 2009.
Several reports under the new Towers Watson have recently been released, including the 2010 Annual Enrollment study. This year’s study found that employers are using decision-support tools more to help employees make better choices about the health care plan they select, as well as numerous other findings.

2010 Annual Enrollment Study (6 pages, PDF) Under Download the Complete Report click on the name of report.

Towers Watson has recently released the 2009/2010 North American Staying@Work Report: The Health and Productivity Advantage. The report finds that despite financial difficulties, many companies are committed to holding onto programs that improve their employees’ health and productivity. Companies with the most effective H&P programs experienced superior human capital and financial outcomes: 11 percent higher revenue per employee, lower medical trends by 1.2 percentage points, 1.8 fewer days absent per employee and 28 percent higher shareholder returns.

2009/2010 North American Staying@Work Report: The Health and Productivity Advantage (35 pages, PDF) Under Download the Complete Report click on the name of report.

 

Unhappy at Work

In the 2009 edition of an annual job satisfaction survey conducted for The Conference Board, only 45 percent of Americans said they were satisfied with their jobs, which is a marked drop from the more than 61 percent who said they were satisfied in 1987. This paper examines how, through both the booms and the busts of the past two decades, job satisfaction numbers have shown a consistent downward trend.
The Conference Board New York, January 2010: I Can’t Get No...Job Satisfaction, That Is, by Linda Barrington, Lynn Franco (14 pages, PDF) –available to current University of Toronto students, faculty and staff through the Conference Board of Canada’s e-Library

Globe and Mail, January 11, 2010: Why many Americans don't like their jobs: ‘It says something troubling about work in America. It is not about the business cycle or one grumpy generation'

 

Pension Papers

A recent C.D. Howe paper titled, Supersized Superannuation: The Startling Fair-Value Cost of Federal Government Pensionsby Alexandre Laurin and William B.P. Robson, finds Ottawa’s pension obligations to be larger and more volatile than they appear, creating risks for plan participants and underappreciated exposure for taxpayers.

Paper, December 2009 (16 pages, PDF)

A research paper from RBC Economics finds dwindling RRSPs contributions:

Toronto Star, January 12, 2009: Boomers behind savings decline: Drop in contributions to registered savings plans likely to continue through 2020: Report

RBC Economics Research, January 11, 2010: RRSP contributions 1968 to 2008... and beyond to 2020 (6 pages, PDF)

 

Migrant Workers – 100,000 in GTA

“Construction workers gathered Thursday night to commemorate the lives of four illegal labourers who died in a scaffolding accident Christmas Eve.” On December 16th Canadian labour unions observed International Migrants Day - Migrant workers’ rights are human rights. For what the Ontario Ministry of Labour is doing to improve workplace safety go to the Safe at Work Ontario website for access to laws, statistics and reports.

Globe and Mail, January 9, 2009: GTA's migrants: Working in the dark: A scaffolding tragedy illuminates the danger 100,000 illegal labourers face, by Joe Friesen

 

Recession Recovery in the UK

The Work Foundation has published a report titled, Recession and Recovery to 2020 analyzing the various trends that are likely to impact economic outcomes and policy actions in the UK. Included in this report is an assessment of the sectors which have suffered the most, as well as a listing of the industries which are expected to grow and provide new jobs. This report is based on research from The Work Foundation’s Knowledge Economy 2 Programme, to be completed in April 2011.

Report, December 2009 (23 pages, PDF)

 

Book of the Week

Drive: the Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, by Daniel Pink. New York : Riverhead, 2009. 256 p. ISBN 978-1594488849

Forget everything you thought you knew about how to motivate people--at work, at school, at home. It's wrong. As Daniel H. Pink explains in his new and paradigm-shattering book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does--and how that affects every aspect of our lives. He demonstrates that while the old-fashioned carrot-and-stick approach worked successfully in the 20th century, it's precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today's challenges. In Drive, he reveals the three elements of true motivation:

*Autonomy - the desire to direct our own lives
*Mastery - the urge to get better and better at something that matters
*Purpose - the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves

Along the way, he takes us to companies that are enlisting new approaches to motivation and introduces us to the scientists and entrepreneurs who are pointing a bold way forward.

Globe and Mail, January 12, 2010: Dear Management: Give me meaning, not money

About the Authors:

Daniel H. Pink is the author of four books focused on the changing world of work: New York Times best-seller A Whole New Mind, Free Agent Nation, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, and Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

 

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Questions or Comments: contact us at cirhr.library@utoronto.ca.

Editor: Vicki Skelton
Designer: Nick Strupat

Copyright © 2008 Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources, University of Toronto. All rights reserved.

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