March 21, 2011
- CIRHR Library Tweets of Interest
- IR Academics on U.S. Public Sector Bargaining
- Toronto Municipal Professionals get Promised Performance Pay
- Social Media in Canada: only for the young?
- C-Suite results – Canadian Executives View the Economy and Recession, Recovery and Rewards Flash Survey
- Cheers for Queers and Out on Bay Street
- Income Gap for Racialized Workers
- Harassment at Work
- Lack of Employee Engagement? -- According to HR it’s the bosses fault
- Canada’s Physician Supply
- In the United States and Canada: whither publicly funded education?
- Global Wage Trends
- European Council: fostering competitiveness by lowering wages
- The f-word
- Book of the Week
CIRHR Library Tweets of Interest
Public sector unions head for hard time at bargaining table http://t.co/RY1ESa2 via @globeandmail
Ontario Power Generation workers awarded wage hike http://tgam.ca/Bknl /via @globeandmail
Penticton demands union accept two-tier wage system http://t.co/ZrkrQNm via @globeandmail
A pilot's quest to remain at the top http://tgam.ca/Bk2u /via @globeandmail
Will Wisconsin's chill on labour move north? http://tgam.ca/Bk3g /via @globeandmail
You can also visit the CIRHR Library Twitter page and become a follower for regular update
IR Academics on U.S. Public Sector Bargaining
“The United States is in the throes of a public-policy debate about public-sector unionism and collective bargaining.” The paper, Getting It Right, by well know U.S. academics, “seeks to clarify the role of government as an employer and evaluate proposals for public-sector unionism and collective-bargaining reform.”
Employment Policy Research Network (EPRN), Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA), March 16, 2011:Getting It Right: Empirical Evidence and Policy Implications from Research on Public-Sector Unionism and Collective Bargaining
by David Lewin (UCLA), Thomas Kochan (MIT), Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld (Illinois),Teresa Ghilarducci (New School for Social Research), Harry Katz (Cornell), Jeff Keefe (Rutgers), Daniel J.B. Mitchell (UCLA), Craig Olson (Illinois), Saul Rubinstein (Rutgers) and Christian Weller (U. Mass Boston) (32 pages, PDF)
To follow Wisconsin try :
New York Times, March 21, 2011
Slate, March 16, 2011: The Recall State: How Wisconsin politics became a national model for partisanship and acrimony,by David Weige
Toronto Municipal Professionals get Promised Performance Pay
“In a decision by the Ontario Ministry of Labour, close to two thousand non-union employees of the City of Toronto were awarded their 2008 re-earnable performance pay. The Toronto Municipal Professionals welcome the decision as fair and reasonable”. (CNW Group)
"These employees worked for a full year on the understanding that this pay was part of their compensation. The award simply confirms that if you promise to pay people for their work, then you've got to keep the promise," said TMP spokesperson Matthew Kellway.”
CNW Group, March 21, 2011: Toronto Municipal Professionals Secure Re-earnable Bonus for Non-Union Staff
Toronto Municipal Professionals, March 21, 2011: Toronto Municipal Professionals Secures Re-earnable Performance Pay for All Eligible Staff
Toronto Municipal Professionals, March 21, 2011: Reasons for Decisions, (19 pages, PDF)
Toronto Municipal Professional, October 7, 2010: Employment Standard Claim Submissions of the Claimant, (8 pages, PDF)
Social Media in Canada: only for the young?
“The revolution in social media is changing the way ideas are transmitted, and unseating traditional power brokers. A comprehensive new study … shows older, affluent well-educated Canadians, the very people who usually embrace new technology, are not leading the social media conversation on blogs, Facebook and Twitter. They are following it…
If Canada’s traditional elites want to retain their position as savvy consumers, early adapters and captains of industry, they cannot just eavesdrop on the conversation, but must gain the confidence to participate in it.” [Globe and Mail]
The Globe and Mail, March, 20, 2011: The powers that be are not in the social media vanguard
Environics Analytics, March 21, 2011: New Database Reveals Social Media Habits Tied to Canadian Lifestyle
C-Suite results – Canadian Executives View of the Economy
“Since the start of the C-Suite survey over five years ago, one of the most interesting dynamics has been the difference in attitude, expectation and need between Canada’s two largest business centres: the West, anchored by Alberta’s oil and gas companies, and Ontario, once anchored by its manufacturing sector.”[Globe and Mail, March. 21, 2011: Two economies…]
Globe and Mail, Mach 21, 2011: C-Suite results: How Canadian executives feel about the economy
Globe and Mail, March 21, 2011: Tackling deficit no longer top priority, CEOs say Richard Blackwell
Globe and Mail, March 21, 2011: Graphic: Highlights from the March, 2011 C-Suite survey
Globe and Mail, March 21, 2011: Analysis: Two economies, pulling in opposite directions by David Herle and Alex Swann
Recession, Recovery and Rewards Flash Survey
Towers Watson surveyed large and midsize employers in January and February 2011 and found merit increases improving and funding for short-term incentive programs projected to hold steady in 2011.
Towers Watson, March 2011: 2011 Recession, Recovery and Rewards Flash Survey: Key Canada Findings. (3 pages, PDF)
Cheers for Queers and Out on Bay Street
“Out on Bay Street is an annual conference for LGBT students in business, law, and consulting. In 2010, over 60 LGBT law students from across Canada attended the event where they networked with gay and lesbian law students, out lawyers, and representatives from sponsor firms like:
Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP, McCarthy Tétrault LLP, Torys LLP, Blake Cassels & Graydon LLP, Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP, Stikeman Elliott LLP, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP, Ogilvy Renault LLP, and Heenan Blaikie LLP.
The conference builds a sense of community.” [from “Cheers for Queers”]
Canadian Lawyer, March 2011: Cheers for Queers, by Naomi Carniol
Out on Bay Street: Out on Bay Street Inc. is Canada’s First and Sole professional organization focused on supporting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Ally (LGBTQA) Undergraduate and Graduate Students in Business, Law & Consulting.
Out on Bay Street Newsletter, March 2011 edition
Deloitte, December 2010: Our passion for diversity: Diversity annual report (20 pages, PDF)
Income Gap for Racialized Workers
“Despite an increasingly diverse population, a new report co-produced by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Wellesley Institute on Canada’s racialized income gap shows a colour code is still at work.”
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Wellesley Institute, March 2011: Canada’s Colour Coded Labour Market: the gap for racialized workers. (20 pages, PDF)
Torstar new Service, March 22, 2011: Race plays big role in pay: Study
International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, March 21, 2011
Harassment at Work
“The researchers studied how ethnic harassment (targeting particular ethnic groups), gender harassment (crude, offensive behaviours conveying sexist attitudes) combined with generalized workplace harassment to create particularly noxious outcomes for staff targeted.” [Montreal Gazette]
Montreal Gazette, March 22, 2011: Harassment at work on the rise, study shows: Sometimes discrimination comes in very subtle forms, by Jennifer Newman & Darryl Grigg, March 22, 2011.
Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 95, No. 2, 2010, 236–254 : Once, Twice, or Three Times as Harmful? Ethnic Harassment, Gender Harassment, and Generalized Workplace Harassment by Jana L. Raver Queen’s University Lisa H. Nishii Cornell University (19 pages, PDF)
Lack of Employee Engagement? -- According to HR it’s the bosses fault
“Lack of employee engagement is a major issue among Canadian firms, according to a survey by Psychometrics Canada. Sixty-nine per cent of the 368 HR professionals surveyed across the country said employee disengagement is problematic in their organization.”
Psychometrics Canada Ltd, March 2011: Control, Opportunity & Leadership: A Study of Employee Engagement in the Canadian Workplace. (30 pages, PDF)
Globe and Mail, March 23, 2011: Feeling unmotivated? HR managers say it's the boss's fault, by Wallace Immen
Globe and Mail, March 9, 2011: Leaders cannot motivate their employees, by Anne Dranitsaris
Canada’s Physician Supply
According to a recent paper by the Fraser Institute, “The current physician supply in Canada is insufficient to meet the demand for physician care under the present structure of Medicare, and falls well short (in terms of the supply of physicians relative to population) of what is being delivered in other developed nations that also maintain universal approaches to health care insurance.”
Fraser Institute, March 2011: Canada's Physician Supply, (7 pages, PDF)
Canadian Medical Association: Statistical information on Canadian physicians
In the United States and Canada: whither publicly funded education?
“Here, really, is the other argument for tenure, less often heard than the claim that it protects academic freedom. It runs like this: if the body of permanently appointed professors is not to determine who merits appointment as professors, according to peer review of their competence and the prospect of their remaining active and engaged, who will? Who will do the hiring and firing? It would in all likelihood be the administration—presidents, boards of trustees, some of whom have considerable power as it is. Is that really what we want… ”
New York Review of Books, March 24, 2011: Our Universities: How Bad? How Good? By Peter Brooks
At the University of Toronto there are conflicting interpretations of just what was being said in the article “The Perils of Philanthropy: The Case of the Munk School”, written by two university academics. According to separate responses from the university’s Vice Provost and from the Presiden,t philanthropy and the donor Peter Munk are under attack, whereas from the authors’ perspective the problem is a poorly negotiated university contract/agreement that could have been improved with a more inclusive university governance structure.
The Blue and White: The University of Toronto Magazine, March 2011: A letter in response to The Perils of Philanthropy: The Case of the Munk School.
The Blue and White: The University of Toronto Magazine, March 2011: A Rejoinder to a Response to The Perils of Philanthropy, Paul Hamel , John Valleau
Global Wage Trends
The long-term losses to labour have not been equally distributed between all workers. Those who have suffered most from the decoupling are the workers at the middle and the bottom of the wage distribution. Those at the top have fared better, as indicated by the increasing gap between mean and median wages in many countries and epitomized by the ongoing bonus-bonanza among the world’s CEOs. While the highly educated elite has transformed into global “superstars”, workers with average skills have become the victims of the global compression in labour costs.
Global Labour Column, March 2011: Global wage trends: The great convergence? by Patrick Belser (2 pages, PDF) or in html
ILO December 2010: Global Wage Report: Wage Policies in a Time of Crisis (139 pages, PDF)
European Council: fostering competitiveness by lowering wages
At an informal meeting on March 11, 2011, the heads of state and of government of the euro area countries reached an agreement on a Pact for the Euro, which will be adopted at the Summit at the end of March to become part of the EU's comprehensive response to the sovereign debt crisis.
“One of the Pact’s main intentions is to assess “large and sustained increases in unit labour costs that may indicate the erosion of competitiveness “, followed by the “adjustment of wage setting mechanisms and notably the degree of centralization in the bargaining process”.[ETUC ]
European Council, March 11, 2011: Pact for the stability of the euro area
Brussels Blog, Financial Times, March 1, 2011: Competition for the competitiveness pact, March 1, 2011 [click on the original plan for a direct statement
European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), Economic discussion paper 2011/04: Why Europe Needs a Fairness Pact and not a Competitiveness Pact (11 pages, PDF)
The f-word
“Can you get away with using the f-word in exchanges with opposing counsel? Apparently you can, just as long as it's not used as part of a "campaign of rudeness aggressiveness and intimidating behaviour," according to a recent decision by a hearing panel of the Law Society of Upper Canada.
Legal Feeds: the blog of the Canadian Lawyer & Law Times, March 18, 2011: When it's OK to drop the f-bomb, by Michael McKiernan
The above is a segue to this brilliant (and very funny) presentation by Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker
For Steven Pinker, the brilliance of the mind lies in the way it uses just two processes to turn the finite building blocks of our language into infinite meanings. The first is metaphor: we take a concrete idea and use it as a stand-in for abstract thoughts. The second is combination: we combine ideas according to rules, like the syntactic rules of language, to create new thoughts out of old ones.
The Stuff of Thought: Language as a window into human nature : Please be advised that this presentation contains very strong language.
Book of the Week
Willis & Winkler on Leading Labour Cases 2010, by Elaine B. Willis and Warren K. Winkler. Aurora, Ont. : Canada Law Book, 2010. 132 p. ISSN 1920-2393
About the Authors:
Chief Justice Warren Winkler was appointed Chief Justice of Ontario in June 2007, following 14 years as a trial judge of the Superior Court of Justice of Ontario, where he held a range of judicial administration portfolios. He judicially mediated many large national and international disputes, including: Air Canada Restructuring; Walkerton Tainted Water; Ontario Hydro and Power Workers; Windsor-Michigan Tunnel. He has heard major class action proceedings involving: Hepatitis C; Breast Implants; Tobacco; Walkerton Tainted Water; Mad Cow Disease, and Native Residential Schools. As Regional Senior Justice for the Toronto Region (2004-2007), he was the catalyst for a forward-thinking Practice Direction and Rule reform that was to profoundly improve access to fair, timely and affordable Civil Litigation for the users of the civil justice system in Toronto.
Elaine B. Willis holds degrees from Mount Allison University, Dalhousie University and Queen’s University (BA, DPA, and MPA). She is the editor of Labour Arbitration Cases. She also provides research services to the Ontario Police Arbitration Commission and the Ontario Civilian Commission on Police Services. Ms. Willis has a variety of experience in the broader practice of industrial relations, including serving as a mediator for the Ontario Crown Employees’ Grievance Settlement Board. Ms. Willis has also published work in the areas of public policy and industrial relations, including the article “Democracy and Performance: Governance in Canada and the United States” (co-authored with R. Simeon) in Degrees of Freedom: Canada and the United States in a Changing Worldwhich was published in 1997, her book, co-edited with (K. Banting, M. Hawes and R. Simeon) Policy Choices: Political Agendas in Canada and the United States published in 1991, and Industrial Restructuring and Industrial Relations in Canada and the United States in which she edited 1991.
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