January 26, 2012
- Conference Announcement
- CEP and CAW Consider Merging
- Public Sector Pensions in Canada and the US and Under Scrutiny
- Sex Trade Workers Take Their Case to the Supreme Court of Canada
- Costa Concordia Cruise Ship Tragedy Prompts Business Ethics Questions
- Learning More About Education
- Killing Keystone Will Kill Jobs - But How Many?
- Jobs in Canada - Quality and Quantity Declining
- Growing Green Jobs
- Talent Needed to Drive World Economy Reports World Economic Forum at Davos
- American Future Trends
- Even If You Wear Pin Stripes With a Tie?
- Book of the Week
Conference announcement
March 2 and March 3, 2012. All events at The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario.
For more information please see the attached brochure.
CEP and CAW Consider Merging
The two unions have formed a “proposal committee”, and an extensive consultation process “will elaborate, critique and make concrete the principles set out in the discussion paper “A Moment of Truth for Canadian Labour” towards the goals of greater collective bargaining strength, an organizing model for growth and activism, and more political influence for progressive social change.”
CAW, January 24, 2012: CEP-CAW New Union Discussion, Process Protocol & Timetable
Toronto Star, January 26, 2012: Unions must change quickly to survive, says secret report by CEP/CAW
Canadian Business, January 24, 2012: Two major Canadian unions, CAW and CEP, exploring merger by mid-2013
Public Sector Pensions in Canada and the US and Under Scrutiny
According to a report recently released by the C.D. Howe Institute, “Ottawa’s unfunded employee pension obligations are $80 billion more than reported in the Public Accounts.”
C.D. Howe Institute, December 13, 2011: Ottawa’s pension gap: the growing and under-reported cost of federal employee pensions. (PDF, 6 pages)
Wisconsin Legislative Council, December 2011 : 2010 comparative study of major public employee retirement systems. Link provided by IWS Documented News Service. [PDF, 44 pages]
Calgary Herald, January 22, 2012: Public-sector pensions are unfair to taxpayers
Canadian Labour Reporter, January 19, 2012: MP pension plan facing $1-billion deficit: C.D. Howe
Ottawa Citizen, January 19, 2012: PSAC on edge over possible pension changes
CBC Ottawa Morning, January 19, 2012: Public service pensions debate. Listen to Dan Kelly from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and Chris Roberts from the Canadian Labour Congress debate the issue. (audio, 11:45 minutes)
CNBC, January 19, 2012: Public Employees [US] Fight To Retain Shrinking State Pensions
Sex Trade Workers Take Their Case to the Supreme Court of Canada
CBC News, January 20, 2012: Community reaction to sex-trade workers' Supreme Court appearance
CBC News, January 19, 2012: Sex-trade workers make their case in top court
Supreme Court of Canada. Case Information: Attorney General of Canada v. Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence Society, et al.
Costa Concordia Cruise Ship Tragedy Prompts Business Ethics Questions
“Like many jobs, the job of captaining a ship comes with a range of risks and benefits. As long as the risks were understood when the job was taken on, you're obligated to follow through.”
The Business Ethics Blog, January 19, 2012: Must the CEO Go Down With the Ship?
Canadian Business, January 17, 2012: Must the captain go down with his ship?
And a list of those leaders who are ‘doing it right’:
Ethical leaders in “Government and Regulatory; Business Leadership; Non-Government Organization (NGO); Design and Sustainability; Media and Whistleblowers; Thought Leadership; Corporate Culture; Investment and Research; Academics; and Philanthropy.”
Ethisphere: 2011 100 most influential people in business ethics.
Learning More About Education
The Education Data Community provides datasets that “have been gathered from various agencies to provide detailed information on the state of education on all levels, from cradle to career and beyond.”
Link provided by the IWS Documented News Service.
United States Government, Data.gov.
“New Faculty Orientations (NFOs) – an induction program for newly hired faculty members at the
beginning of their teaching careers – vary widely in the content delivered across different Ontario
universities. While some simply provide a general introduction to a particular university’s settings, and/or a list of local resources for the new faculty members to choose and use as they see fit, others focus on specific teaching skills and organize a series of sessions, which explore a variety of teaching and learning issues and strategies.”
Higher Educational Quality Council of Ontario, 2012: The Role of New Faculty Orientations in Improving the Effectiveness of University Teaching – Part 1: University Sector. Toronto. Summary and overview.
Higher Educational Quality Council of Ontario, 2012: The Role of New Faculty Orientations in Improving the Effectiveness of University Teaching – Part 1: University Sector. Toronto. (PDF, 41 pages)
National Science Board, 2012: Science and Engineering Indicators 2012. A broad base of quantitative information on the U.S. and International science and engineering enterprise.
New York Times, January 20, 2012: Why Students Leave the Engineering Track.
Killing Keystone Will Kill Jobs - But How Many?
Media, industry, corporation and political rhetoric have offered wildly varying numbers to estimate the number of jobs that would be created if the Keystone Pipeline were to be approved. FAIR reviews numbers reported in the media, and the Cornell Global Labor Institute’s study looks at available data and concludes, “The industry’s claim that KXL will create 119,000 total jobs (direct, indirect, and induced) is based on a flawed and poorly documented study commissioned by TransCanada (The Perryman Group study)…. KXL will not be a major source of US jobs, nor will it play any substantial role at all in putting Americans back to work”
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), January 25, 2012: USA Today: Keystone Job Cops
Cornell Global Labor Institute, 2012: Cornell GLI Study Finds Keystone XL Pipeline Will Create Few Jobs.
Cornell University Global Labor Institute: Pipe Dreams? Jobs Gained, Jobs Lost By The Construction Of Keystone XL (PDF, 38 pages)
Edmonton Journal, January 18, 2012: White House kills Keystone XL pipeline, but open to new route. TransCanada CEO says company will submit a new application
Jobs in Canada - Quality and Quantity Declining
A new report by CIBC World Markets notes the pace of job creation in Canada is weak, and the softening pace of job creation is exacerbated by a reduction in the quality of positions in the Canadian labour market. “Our index of employment quality focuses on three quality measures: part time/ full-time distribution, the composition of paid employment and self-employment, and the relative compensation of a given full-time paid employment job.”
CIBC World Markets, January 25, 2012: Quantity and Quality of Jobs Falling in Tandem. (PDF, 4 pages)
“...despite claims to the contrary, the damage of the recession is still very much with Canadians and that the labour market is still much weaker (measured by the employment rate) than it was before the recession. After adjusting for population growth, neither GDP nor employment growth have yet to recoup the ground lost during the 2008-09 downturn. Real per capita GDP remains 1.4% lower as of the third quarter of 2011 than it was at the beginning of 2008.”
Centre for Policy Alternatives, January 26, 2012: Canada's Incomplete, Mediocre Recovery. Summary.
Full report. (PDF, 7 pages)
The Globe and Mail, January 25, 2012: More Canadians in low-paying jobs
Financial Post, January 25, 2012: Canada’s job market weakest on record
Globe and Mail, January 24, 2012: Job vacancies by province (graphic)
Growing Green Jobs
"The Global 100 list, released each year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, ranks major corporations on a wide variety of factors including their relative energy and water consumption, carbon emissions, board diversity, the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay, and the amount of waste they generate."
The Globe and Mail, January 25, 2012: Six Canadian firms among globe's most sustainable
Corporate Knights, 2012: The 2012 Global 100: World Leaders in Clean Capitalism View the current and past lists of leaders, and an interactive map.
International Labor Organization, Resource Guide on Green Jobs. Search the document database by theme or region.
Environmental Careers Organization (ECO), 2011: What You Don’t Know About Your Environmental Workers, and What Drives Employee Engagement for Environmental Workforce. Access both Labour Market Reports, and others, at the link above.
Hamilton Spectator, January 18, 2012: As many as 1,900 jobs coming to Hamilton. Five years of work to build turbine towers for $1.5b wind energy project
Talent Needed to Drive World Economy Reports World Economic Forum at Davos
What fuels the global economic engine? Talent, says Mercer. Mercer, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, published a report this month that looks at how effective talent mobility can help to spur economic growth. The report’s findings were unveiled this month (January 2012) as part of the Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
Deloitte has also published a report on talent this month. Talent Edge 2020 explores “changing talent priorities in all industries, at large businesses worldwide”.
Mercer: World Economic Forum Explore Global Talent Mobility practices that drive economic growth, website
World Economic Forum in collaboration with Mercer, January 2012: Talent Mobility Good Practices: Collaboration at the Core of Driving Economic Growth, (PDF, 110 pages)
Deloitte, January 2012: Talent Edge 2020: Redrafting talent strategies for the uneven recovery (PDF, 20 pages)
American Future Trends
On July 7, 2011, “leading experts, journalists, policy advocates, and government officials gathered to discuss how trends in four areas — the economy, demographics, the workplace, and lifestyles — will affect the poor and vulnerable in America in the coming decade....They focus throughout on the role of philanthropic institutions, such as the project sponsor, the Rockefeller Foundation, in helping to address the challenges likely to confront America's poor and vulnerable, which include a growing jobs-skills mismatch and inadequate funding for social services. “
RAND Corporation, 2012: How Americans Will Live and Work in 2020: A Workshop Exploring Key Trends and Philanthropic Responses
Full report. (PDF, 37 pages)
Even If You Wear Pin Stripes With a Tie?
Irish Examiner, January 26, 2012: Social welfare office bans pyjamas for interviews
Book of the Week
Poor Economics: a Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo. New York : PublicAffairs, 2011. 303 p. ISBN 9781586487980
Kirkus Review, April 15, 2011
“Highly decorated economists Banerjee and Duflo (Economics/Massachusetts Institute of Technology) relay 15 years of research into a smart, engaging investigation of global poverty—and why we're failing to eliminate it…A refreshingly clear, well-structured argument against the standard approach to poverty, this book, while intended for academics and those working on the ground, should provide an essential wake-up call for any reader.”
About the Authors:
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at MIT. He is the recipient of many honors and awards, including most recently the inaugural Infosys Prize in 2009, and has been an honorary advisor to many organizations including the World Bank and the Government of India. Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT. She is a recipient of several important awards, including a MacArthur "genius" award (2009) and the John Bates Clark medal awarded annually to the best American economist under forty (2010).
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