Perry Work Report for the week of January 31, 2013

Perry Work Report, January 31, 2013

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Morley Gunderson Prize Announcement

Sara Slinn, Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School has won the Morey Gunderson Prize, an annual award to a graduate of the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources (CIRHR) in recognition of outstanding professional achievement and dedicated and significant service to the Centre. Over the years Sara has taught at the Centre, more recently she organized topics and speakers for the Conversations on Work series, chairing the panels at Osgoode Hall in October 2011 and at the Centre in Fall 2012. The extent of her research and her publications available on SSRNattest to her high academic standing in the field of labour and employment law. Congratulations Sara! The Morely Gunderson Prize will be awarded at the Annual Sefton Memorial Leture 2013.

Biography: Sara Slinn is an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, specializing in labour, employment, human rights and the Charter. She studied at the University of Toronto, CIRHR (Ph.D 2003), the University of British Columbia (LL.B.), and Queen’s University (BA Honours and MIR). Her background includes practicing labour and employment law at the Labour Relations Board of British Columbia and private law firms in Vancouver. Professor Slinn has been a visitor at Melbourne Law School’s Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law, Cornell University’s Industrial and Labour Relations School and the RMIT Graduate School of Business and Law.  Professor Slinn has received  numerous research grants including as principal investigator in a SSHRC standard research grant investigating the workplace and expression; Borden Ladner Gervais Research Fellowships to exploring labour board decision-making and  to research back-to-work legislation; and, a Foundation for Legal Research grant to study employer workplace communications. She has recently completed a co-edited volume addressing teacher collective bargaining structures: Dynamic Negotiations: Teacher Labour Relations in Canadian Elementary and Secondary Education. Current research includes a study funded by the National Academy of Arbitrators Research and Education Fund, with co-researchers Martin Malin (Chicago-Kent) and Jon Werner (Wisconsin): “An Empirical Evaluation of the Adjudication of Statutory Human Rights Claims before Labour Arbitrators and Human Rights Tribunals in Ontario.” Professor Slinn also serves on the editorial board of the journal Relations Industrielles, and is a member of both the Labour Law Casebook Group in Canada and the Labor Law Group in the United States.

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Sefton Memorial Lecture 2013: Labour's Responses to Globalization

This year's lecture will feature a panel discussion with the following speakers:

  • Prof. Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy, University of California Santa Barbara
  • Dr. Natalie Des Rosiers, General Counsel of Canadian Civil Liberties Association
  • Tony Burke, Assistant General Secretary at Unite the Union (UK)

Topic: Labour's Responses to Globalization: Alternative Forms of Organization

The Sefton Award for contributions to labour relations will be presented to Homer Seguin

Date and Time:

March 7, 2013 7-8:30pm

Location:

Kruger Hall Commons, Woodsworth College
119 St. George Street

RSVP Required: Online or Email

Event sponsored by Woodsworth College and the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources

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Generation Jobless

"There was a time when a University degree assured you a of good job, good pay and a comfortable life. Not any more. Today, the unemployment rate for young people in this country is close to 15% double that of the general population. But the real crisis is the increasing number of university and college grads who are underemployed scraping by on low-paid, part-time jobs that don't require a degree." [CBC]

CBC, Doc Zone: Generation Jobless: Thursday January 31, 2013 AT 9:00 PM on CBC-TV and Sunday February 3 at 8 pm ET on CBC News Network

CBC, Doc Zone: Generation Jobless: Promo (3:32, video)

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HD Mining sends 16 temporary workers back to China

“The B.C. Building Trades questions why HD Mining would decide to pull out of its B.C. coal mine project just days after we received the resumes of 300 Canadian workers who were rejected for jobs that were then filled by Chinese temporary foreign workers,” Brian Cochrane, business manager of IUOE Local 115, said Monday in a statement.” [The Globe and Mail]

The Globe and Mail, January 28, 2013: HD Mining sends 16 temporary workers back to China

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Profile of High Income Earners: The Canadian 1%

“The income gap between the top 1% and the rest of filers has widened over time. In 1982, the median income of the top 1% of filers was $191,600. This was seven times higher than the median income of $28,000 for the other 99% of filers.” [Statistics Canada]

“Canada’s top 1 per cent remains a largely male group, but more women are now part of the rarefied club that requires annual income of at least $201,400 to join. And once they’re in, they tend to stay in.” [The Globe and Mail]

Statistics Canada, January 26, 2013: High-income trends among Canadian taxfilers, 1982 to 2010

The Globe and Mail, January 27, 2013: Wealth trends: The shifting makeup of the 1-per-centers, by Tavia Grant

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Jobless for Longer

“Many Canadians are still jobless for long stretches of time, while the number of people stuck in part-time work who’d prefer a full-time job remains high. While the broadest measure of the country’s labour market, the unemployment rate, has been gradually easing, the Bank of Canada issued a more nuanced reading of the health of the jobs market Wednesday.” [The Globe and Mail]

“Following an estimated 1.9 per cent in 2012, the Canadian economy is expected to grow by 2.0 per cent in 2013 and 2.7 per cent in 2014, and to reach full capacity in the second half of 2014, later than anticipated in the October Report.” [Bank of Canada]

Bank of Canada, January 2013: Monetary Policy Report January 2013 (42 pages, PDF)

The Globe and Mail, January 23, 2013: Long Term Unemployment, Part-time work still high, by Tavia Grant

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Emerging Stronger: A Transformative Agenda for Ontario

The Ontario Chamber of Commerce, the Mowat Centre and Leger Marketing believe Ontario can ‘emerge stronger’ if we move forward on the five (5) priorities outlined in Emerging Stronger: A Transformative Agenda for Ontario (28 pages, PDF)

Emerging Stronger: A Transformative Agenda for Ontario is the result of consultation with Ontario’s business, government and civic leaders (including non-profit, Aboriginal and labour). The priorities identified by these leaders include:

  1. Fostering a culture of innovation and smart risk-taking in order to become a productivity leader
  2. Building a 21st century workforce through workplace training, utilizing newcomers’ skills and apprenticeship reform
  3. Restoring fiscal balance by improving the way government works
  4. Taking advantage of new opportunities in the global economy
  5. Identifying, championing and investing in our competitive advantages

Thanks to business, government and civic leaders, the Chamber Network and participants of theOntario Economic Summit who lent their voice to the shaping of this economic vision for Ontario.

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Union Membership in the United States 2012

"In 2012, the union membership rate, the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a union, was 11.3 percent, down from 11.8 percent in 2011, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions, at 14.4 million, also declined over the year. In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent, and there were 17.7 million union workers." [Bureau of Labor Statistics]

Bureau of Labor Statistics, January 23, 2013: Union Membership 2012

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Still a Man's World: The Myth of Women's Ascendance

“Meanwhile, the men who would stand to lose their privileged positions thanks to feminism’s success actually are resisting change. At the low end, many blue-collar men have blocked the entrance of women into their trades, passively or actively. At the high end, the board rooms and executive suites of corporate America are monuments to sexism’s perseverance, with annual progress in women’s representation measured in the fractions of a percent. Active gender discrimination, especially based on women’s status as mothers, continues to plague working women.

We cannot assume a future of continuous, inexorable change in the direction of gender equality, the satiating lullaby of these tall tales.” [Boston Review]

Boston Review, Jan/Feb. 2013: Still a Man's World: The Myth of Women's Ascendance, by Philip N. Cohen

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American Households Digging Out of Debt in the Worst Possible Way

"The story of the post-crash economy has been one of people borrowing to go to school instead of to buy houses. Student loans are up $317 billion. Mortgages are down $1.3 trillion, with often-underwater households defaulting en masse."

The Atlantic, January 27, 2013: The American Household Is Digging Out of Debt in the Worst Possible Way, by Matthew O'Brien

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Job Polarization Leaves Middle-Skilled Workers Out in the Cold

"If Jaimovich and Siu's conclusions correctly explain the labor market's recent dynamics, then what are the implications? For one, post recession policies to stimulate labor market activity may have little effect since the jobless recovery is due to the downturn-induced disappearance of middle-skilled jobs.

In addition, the long-term task of equipping American workers for the future economic environment may need to be approached from a different angle. While educational achievement is undoubtedly important as demand continues to increase for college-educated, high-skilled (and high-wage) workers, it also may be useful to emphasize development and training for non routine skills since they will grow ever more valuable as technology automates routine work." [The Regional Economist]

National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 18334, August 2012: The trend is the Cycle: Job Polarization and Jobless Recoveries, by Nir Jaimovich and Henry E. Siu

The Regional Economist, January 2013: Job Polarization Leaves Middle-Skilled Workers Out in the Cold, by Maria E. Canon and Elise Marifian

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Immigration of Temporary Lower-Skilled Workers

“U.S. employers in various industries argue that they need to hire foreign workers to perform lower-skilled jobs, while others maintain that many of these positions could be filled by U.S. workers. Under current law, certain lower-skilled foreign workers, sometimes referred to as guest workers, may be admitted to the United States to perform temporary service or labor under two temporary worker visas: the H-2A visa for agricultural workers and the H-2B visa for nonagricultural workers. Both programs are administered by the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (DHS/USCIS) and the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration (DOL/ETA).” [Congressional Research Service]

Congressional Research Service, December 13, 2012: Immigration of Temporary Lower-Skilled Workers: Current Policy and Related Issues, by Andorra Bruno (38 pages, PDF)

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Creating Jobs in the Private Sector

“IFC, the world’s largest global development institution focused on the private sector, has decades of experience financing and advising private firms throughout the developing world. We sum up our thinking on job creation in a new IFC Jobs Study released. The study, produced with support from our Dutch, Swiss, and U.K. donor partners, complements the World Bank’s recent World Development Report 2013-Jobs.” [International Finance Corporation]

International Finance Corporation, January 2013: IFC Jobs Study: Assessing Private Sector Contributions to Job Creation and Poverty Reduction (145 pages, PDF)

International Finance Corporation, January 2013: Private Sector Solutions for Development: Job Creation website

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Corporate Responsibility at the Cost of Enterprise?

“I’m writing this in Expresso, my favourite Norwich coffee shop. It’s an independent business, locally owned and very much part of the local community. Cafe owner Roland Schreiber not only pays UK tax, he spends his profits here too. Contrast this with Starbucks, who paid no tax last year on UK sales of £398m and you can see a good reason to support locally owned coffee shops."

“So what is the answer? Do we grow the social enterprise sector organically, in the face of corporate competition? Or do we accept that we've reached a tipping point and start swimming with the tide?” [The Guardian]

The Guardian, January 24, 2013: Corporate social responsibility could swamp social enterprise in 2013, by Robert Ashton

The Globe and Mail, January 29, 2013: West Wing aide to bean counter: Starbucks main man in British tax tempest, by Paul Waldie

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Book of the Week

Global Human Resource Management Casebook, edited James C. Hayton ... [et al.] New York, NY : Routledge, 2012. 406 p. ISBN 9780415893718 (pbk.)

    UTLibraries link to catalogue record: http://go.utlib.ca/cat/8722784

A collection of business teaching cases, focusing on Human Resource Management issues around the world. Each case is based in a single country and illustrates one or more significant challenge faced by managers and HR practitioners. The influence of the unique national cultural and institutional context upon the issues in the case is emphasized. In total 32 unique and original cases are presented, each from different national contexts. Every case is followed by a set of questions for use in class discussion or private study of the cases.

About the Authors:

James C. Hayton, PhD, is the David Goldman Professor of Innovation and Enterprise, and Director of the Centre for Knowledge, Innovation, Technology, and Enterprise at Newcastle University.

Michal Biron is a lecturer at the Graduate School of Management, University of Haifa (Israel), and a visiting researcher in the department of Human Resource Studies at Tilburg University (the Netherlands).

Liza Castro Christiansen, DBA and MBA, is a visiting academic fellow at the Henley Business School, University of Reading, England. Liza is an external lecturer at the Copenhagen Business School and a senior lecturer at the Aarhus Business Academy in Denmark.

Bard Kuvaas is Professor of Organizational Psychology at BI Norwegian School of Management in Oslo.

Visit the Recent Books at the CIRHR Library blog.

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This publication is protected by Canadian copyright laws and may not be copied, posted or forwarded electronically without permission.

Questions or comments: cirhr.library@utoronto.ca

Editor: Vicki Skelton and Melody Tacit

Designer: Nick Strupat

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

Date posted