Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Tweet[IWS] CANADA: Weekly Work Report 24 October 2005
IWS Documented News Service
_______________________________
Institute for Workplace Studies Professor Samuel B. Bacharach
School of Industrial & Labor Relations Director, Institute for Workplace Studies
Cornell University
16 East 34th Street, 4th floor Stuart Basefsky
New York, NY 10016 Director, IWS News Bureau
________________________________________________________________________
(The following is courtesy of the Centre for Industrial Relations, University of Toronto).
Weekly Work Report for the Week of October 24, 2005
These highlights of the week's HR/IR news are prepared by the Librarians at the Centre for Industrial Relations for our subscribers, alumni, faculty and students, and are intended for their individual use only. Please visit the CIR website for terms of use and information about organizational subscriptions. This message is composed in MS Outlook Express and contains hyperlinks that require an HTML-enabled email program.
The WWR is protected by Canadian copyright law and should not be reproduced or forwarded without permission. For inquiries or comments, please contact the Editor, elizabeth.perry@utoronto.ca.
----------
BC TEACHERS RETURN TO WORK AFTER $500,000 FINE FOR CIVIL CONTEMPT: Members of the BC Teachers Federation voted by a margin of 77% to accept facilitator Vince Readys proposals to end their 10 day illegal strike and to return to the classrooms across B.C.. Readys report recommended $85 million for teachers salaries and benefits, an extra $20 million in 2005/06 to improve learning conditions, and a greater role for teachers on a new education roundtable. Although the union initially demanded a written guarantee that the government would amend the School Act to include specific limits on class sizes, teachers returned to work on October 24th with only verbal assurance.
In a decision on October 21, Madam Justice Brown of the Supreme Court of B.C. considered the differences between civil and criminal contempt and fined the union $500,000 for civil contempt for its failure to comply with her earlier orders of October 9 and 13. The Justice also reminded the union that as a result of my order of October 13, 2005, individual teachers will not be reimbursed for pay lost while in contempt of court.
LINKS:
Teachers return to work in BC after illegal strike in the Toronto Star (Oct. 24) at < http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1130147341978 >
Recommendations by Facilitator Vincent Ready (October 20, 2005) (7 pages, PDF) at < http://www.bctf.ca/FacilitatorsReportVinceReady.pdf>
BC Supreme Court decision BC Public School Employers Assoc. v BC Teachers Federation, 2005 BCSC 1490 (October 21, 2005) (8 pages, HTML) at < http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/Jdb-txt/SC/05/14/2005BCSC1490.htm>
BC Teachers and contempt update posted October 22 on the Thoughts from a Management Lawyer Blog at < http://labourlawblog.typepad.com/managementupdates/>
The first skirmish in a long war with labour in the Toronto Star (Oct. 22) at < http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1129931410361 >
----------
EMPLOYER MUST PAY ONTARIOS HEALTH PREMIUM TAX ACCORDING TO DIVISIONAL COURT: In the first court decision regarding Ontarios Health Premium tax (introduced in May 2004) , the Ontarios Divisional Court has ruled that Arbitrator Anne Barrett's award of October 6, 2004 was "not patently unreasonable" , and has upheld the arbitrators order that the LaPointe Fisher nursing home must pay the provincial health premium tax on behalf of its employees. The judgment in the case is based on the particular wording of the collective agreement between the nursing home and the U.F.C.W. Local 175/633 and uses the standard of review of patent unreasonableness. The issue of who should pay the tax has been controversial; a Fasken Martineau Alert on the topic lists 17 arbitration awards that concluded that employers were NOT responsible to pay the health tax.
LINKS:
Ontario Division Court decision LaPointe-Fisher Nursing Home v. United Food and Commercial Workers' International Union, Local 175/633 (October 17, 2005) (12 pages, HTML) at < http://www.canlii.org/on/cas/onscdc/2005/2005onscdc10205.html>
Ontario Health Premium - Court decision upholds union claim at the Lancaster House website at < http://www.lancasterhouse.com/about/headlines_1.asp>
Court upholds employer liability to pay Ontario Health Premium Tax (6 pages, PDF) at the Fasken Martineau website at < http://www.fasken.com/web/fmdwebsite.nsf/AllDoc/1AF0256DF81AF15B882570A1004C5A17/$File/FMALERT21OCT05.PDF >
----------
CONFERENCE BOARD COMPENSATION PROJECTS NON-UNION PAY INCREASES OF 3.4% FOR 2006: The Conference Board of Canada forecasts that non-union pay increases will average 3.4 % in 2006, driven mainly by a tightening labour market that makes recruitment and retention top priorities. The forecast for unionized employees in both public and private sectors is for average wage increases of 2.5 %. The Conference Board conducted its annual survey among 347 large and medium-sized Canadian organizations in July and August 2005 and released its findings on October 24 at the annual Compensation Outlook conference in Toronto. The publication, Compensation Planning Outlook 2006: Pay Pressure Builds as Labour Markets Tighten, includes information on base pay, collectively bargaining wage increases, variable pay, long-term incentives, HR priorities, recruitment and retention, performance management, turnover, absenteeism, benefits, and collective bargaining issues.
LINKS:
Press release at the Conference Board of Canada website at < http://www.conferenceboard.ca/press/2005/CompHR.asp>. (The full 26-page document can be ordered for $950 Cdn.)
----------
GENDER STEREOTYPES AND LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS: The research organization Catalyst has released a study on gender stereotyping in organizations. Entitled Women Take Care, Men Take Charge: Stereotyping of U.S. Business Leaders Exposed, the study considers 10 essential behaviours required of corporate leaders, pinpoints where women leaders are vulnerable to stereotyping, and makes recommendations to overcome the stereotypes. It also examines the costs that organizations incur because of the barriers to advancement into leadership positions that women face due to stereotyping.
LINK:
Women Take Care, Men Take Charge: Stereotyping of U.S. Business Leaders Exposed, (45 pages, PDF) at the Catalyst website at < http://www.catalyst.org/files/full/Women Take Care Men Take Charge.pdf>
----------
MACLEANS IDENTIFIES 100 EMPLOYERS OF CHOICE FOR JOB SEEKERS: The Macleans list of top 100 employers in Canada has been released, compiled for the benefit of job seekers. To be invited to participate in the annual list, organizations including not-for-profit groups, government agencies and private-sector companies must be fast-growing, in hiring mode, and must offer employees a superior work environment through compensation, benefits, work-family provisions, or community involvement. The Macleans website overview highlights a few case studies and provides an alphabetical list; a full-book edition of Canada's Top 100 Employers will be released by Mediacorp Canada publishers in early November.
LINKS:
Top 100 employers at the Macleans.ca website at < http://www.macleans.ca/webspecials/article.jsp?content=20031020_67488_67488 >
Top 100 employers List (3 pages, PDF) at < http://www.macleans.ca/pdf/top100list.pdf>
----------
GTA WORKERS WORK LONG HOURS: A recent survey by the polling firm Leger Marketing examined the working life of residents of the Greater Toronto Area. The survey revealed that on average employed residents work 41.2 hours per week at work and an additional 13 hours at home for their employer. They also spend on average 3.2 hours per week on personal activities at work. Other findings: 92 % of the respondents liked their co-workers and 70% said they liked them very much.
LINK:
Summary of Work Life in the GTA (6 pages, PDF) at the Leger Marketing website at < http://legermarketing.com/documents/spclm/051020ENG.pdf>
----------
OFL CAMPAIGNS FOR ONTARIO HEALTH CARE SECTOR WORKERS: The Ontario Federation of Labour has released a new report, Understaffed & Under Pressure: A reality check by Ontario health care workers, as part of a province-wide campaign in October and November to draw attention to working conditions for health care workers. The report is the result of an OFL fact-finding tour of 17 cities in 2005, giving voice to health care workers in all sectors of the health care system: emergency services, homecare, hospitals, long-term care, retirement homes, mental health and public health. The report calls on the government to impose an immediate moratorium on layoffs in hospitals, establish a required minimum standard of 3.5 hours per day of nursing and personal care for residents in nursing homes and homes for the aged, and minimum full-time staffing standards in all health care sectors.
LINKS:
Understaffed & Under Pressure: A reality check by Ontario health care workers (74 pages, PDF) at < http://www.ofl.ca/uploads/misc/US-UNDERSTAFF.PDF>
----------
RETENTION OF OLDER WORKERS: The Policy Research Initiative, established by the federal government, has recently published another study in its Population Aging and Life-Course Flexibility project. Encouraging Choice in Work and Retirement looks at the economic implications of the aging workforce and how the labour supply might be increased by encouraging individuals to remain in the workforce. It discusses both employer policies that might retain older workers and public policies to remove barriers and disincentives to continue working.
LINKS:
Encouraging Choice in Work and Retirement (57 pages, PDF) at the PRI website at < http://www.policyresearch.gc.ca/doclib/Encour_Choice_E.pdf>
----------
JEAN PIERRE BRUN WINS PIONEER AWARD DURING NATIONAL HEALTHY WORKPLACE WEEK: National Healthy Workplace Week, October 24 to 28, is an annual promotion of health workplace practices, begun in 2001 and led by the Canadian Healthy Workplace Council. The Council serves as an advisory body to the National Quality Institute (NQI) on workplace health issues and adjudicates the annual Canadian Workplace Wellness Pioneer Award that is presented at the Health, Work & Wellness Conference. That conference was held in Montreal from October 20 to 22; winner of the Pioneer Award for 2005 is Jean Pierre Brun, a professor at the Faculty of Business Administration of the Universite Laval and a leading expert on mental health issues in Canada, particularly mental health in the workplace.
LINKS:
Healthy Workplace website at < http://www.healthyworkplaceweek.ca/index.php>
Health Work and Wellness Conference website at < http://conferences.healthworkandwellness.com/>
Quebec mental health expert wins Canadian workplace Pioneer Award (1 page, PDF) at < http://conferences.healthworkandwellness.com/pics/pioneer_award_news_release_eng.pdf >
----------
IMPLICATIONS OF DELPHI BANKRUPTCY FOR THE AUTO INDUSTRY: An article from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania considers the impact the Chapter 11 filing by auto parts giant Delphi on the October 8 and the subsequent agreement between GM and the UAW to cut healthcare benefits for retirees on October 17. According to experts at the Wharton School, The Delphi filing and the tentative GM-UAW accord set in motion a chain of events that may forever alter the relationship between Americas Big Three carmakers and the UAW, and they underscore the degree to which globalization is exerting downward pressure on the wages and benefits paid to U.S. workers.
LINKS:
A bumpy road for Delphi, GM and U.S. Auto Workers (5 pages, PDF) at the Strategic Management Wharton website at
< http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1301.cfm>
Auto industry rocked by Delphi bankruptcy ( 4 pages, HTML) at the MSNBC News website at < http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9644882/>
UAW statement on tentative agreement with GM at the UAW website at < http://www.uaw.org/news/newsarticle.cfm?ArtId=359>
----------
SOME SECOND GENERATION CANADIANS EARN MORE THAN NATIVE BORN PEERS: A new study released by Statistics Canada on October 25 investigates the link between the socio-economic status of immigrant fathers and their Canadian- born sons and daughters. Except for those whose fathers were from the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Oceania, children had higher weekly earnings than native-born Canadians. The earnings advantage was about 6%, except for those from the traditional source countries, where it was 14%. This research uses new information from the 2001 Census, the first to ask Canadians which country their mothers and fathers were born.; it focuses on young adults aged 25 to 37 years whose parents were both born in a country other than Canada and immigrated here before 1981.
LINKS:
Intergenerational earnings mobility among the children of Canadian immigrants ( Catalogue #11F0019MIE2005267) (44 pages, PDF) at < http://www.statcan.ca/english/research/11F0019MIE/11F0019MIE2005267.pdf >
----------
CONSUMER PRICE INDEX RISES DUE TO HIGH GASOLINE PRICES: The Consumer Price Index for September 2005 was released by Statistics Canada on October 25, showing a large jump of 3.4% for the 12-month All-items index (CPI). Not surprisingly, the rise is attributed mainly to substantial increases in gasoline prices. In addition, Canadians paid 13.7% more for fuel oil and 7.4% more for natural gas prices in September.
LINKS:
Latest release from the Consumer Price Index at the Statistics Canada website at < http://www.statcan.ca/english/Subjects/Cpi/cpi-en.htm>
----------
Book of the Week :
Proving the Value of HR: How and Why to Measure ROI
by Jack J. Phillips and Patricia Pulliam Phillips. Alexandria, Virginia: Society for Human Resource Management. 256p. ISBN: 1586440497
The authors argue that measuring the return on investment (ROI) of human resources is critical for success in today's business world and is a requirement for HR professionals who are part of the senior executive team. HR managers and executives must show HR's contribution and prove that HR policies, practices, and solutions add directly to the organization's bottom line.
They provide basic, step-by-step instructions to develop the ROI of HR and show how the ROI methodology is a communication tool to strengthen the relationship with senior management as well as a process-improvement tool to enhance and improve HR's contribution.
About the Authors:
Jack J. Phillips is the chairman of the ROI Institute and is the author of Accountability in Human Resource Management, The Human Resources Scorecard, and Managing Employee Retention.
Patricia Pulliam Phillips is president and CEO of the ROI Institute.
----------
121 St. George Street, Toronto Canada M5S 2E8 http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/cir
_____________________________
This information is provided to subscribers, friends, faculty, students and alumni of the School of Industrial & Labor Relations (ILR). It is a service of the Institute for Workplace Studies (IWS) in New York City. Stuart Basefsky is responsible for the selection of the contents which is intended to keep researchers, companies, workers, and governments aware of the latest information related to ILR disciplines as it becomes available for the purposes of research, understanding and debate. The content does not reflect the opinions or positions of Cornell University, the School of Industrial & Labor Relations, or that of Mr. Basefsky and should not be construed as such. The service is unique in that it provides the original source documentation, via links, behind the news and research of the day. Use of the information provided is unrestricted. However, it is requested that users acknowledge that the information was found via the IWS Documented News Service.
Stuart Basefsky *
Director, IWS News Bureau *
Institute for Workplace Studies *
Cornell/ILR School *
16 E. 34th Street, 4th Floor *
New York, NY 10016 *
*
Telephone: (607) 255-2703 *
Fax: (607) 255-9641 *
E-mail: smb6@cornell.edu *
****************************************
_______________________________
Institute for Workplace Studies
School of Industrial & Labor Relations
Cornell University
16 East 34th Street, 4th floor
New York, NY 10016
________________________________________________________________________
(The following is courtesy of the Centre for Industrial Relations, University of Toronto).
Weekly Work Report for the Week of October 24, 2005
These highlights of the week's HR/IR news are prepared by the Librarians at the Centre for Industrial Relations for our subscribers, alumni, faculty and students, and are intended for their individual use only. Please visit the CIR website for terms of use and information about organizational subscriptions. This message is composed in MS Outlook Express and contains hyperlinks that require an HTML-enabled email program.
The WWR is protected by Canadian copyright law and should not be reproduced or forwarded without permission. For inquiries or comments, please contact the Editor, elizabeth.perry@utoronto.ca.
----------
BC TEACHERS RETURN TO WORK AFTER $500,000 FINE FOR CIVIL CONTEMPT: Members of the BC Teachers Federation voted by a margin of 77% to accept facilitator Vince Readys proposals to end their 10 day illegal strike and to return to the classrooms across B.C.. Readys report recommended $85 million for teachers salaries and benefits, an extra $20 million in 2005/06 to improve learning conditions, and a greater role for teachers on a new education roundtable. Although the union initially demanded a written guarantee that the government would amend the School Act to include specific limits on class sizes, teachers returned to work on October 24th with only verbal assurance.
In a decision on October 21, Madam Justice Brown of the Supreme Court of B.C. considered the differences between civil and criminal contempt and fined the union $500,000 for civil contempt for its failure to comply with her earlier orders of October 9 and 13. The Justice also reminded the union that as a result of my order of October 13, 2005, individual teachers will not be reimbursed for pay lost while in contempt of court.
LINKS:
Teachers return to work in BC after illegal strike in the Toronto Star (Oct. 24) at < http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1130147341978 >
Recommendations by Facilitator Vincent Ready (October 20, 2005) (7 pages, PDF) at < http://www.bctf.ca/FacilitatorsReportVinceReady.pdf>
BC Supreme Court decision BC Public School Employers Assoc. v BC Teachers Federation, 2005 BCSC 1490 (October 21, 2005) (8 pages, HTML) at < http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/Jdb-txt/SC/05/14/2005BCSC1490.htm>
BC Teachers and contempt update posted October 22 on the Thoughts from a Management Lawyer Blog at < http://labourlawblog.typepad.com/managementupdates/>
The first skirmish in a long war with labour in the Toronto Star (Oct. 22) at < http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1129931410361 >
----------
EMPLOYER MUST PAY ONTARIOS HEALTH PREMIUM TAX ACCORDING TO DIVISIONAL COURT: In the first court decision regarding Ontarios Health Premium tax (introduced in May 2004) , the Ontarios Divisional Court has ruled that Arbitrator Anne Barrett's award of October 6, 2004 was "not patently unreasonable" , and has upheld the arbitrators order that the LaPointe Fisher nursing home must pay the provincial health premium tax on behalf of its employees. The judgment in the case is based on the particular wording of the collective agreement between the nursing home and the U.F.C.W. Local 175/633 and uses the standard of review of patent unreasonableness. The issue of who should pay the tax has been controversial; a Fasken Martineau Alert on the topic lists 17 arbitration awards that concluded that employers were NOT responsible to pay the health tax.
LINKS:
Ontario Division Court decision LaPointe-Fisher Nursing Home v. United Food and Commercial Workers' International Union, Local 175/633 (October 17, 2005) (12 pages, HTML) at < http://www.canlii.org/on/cas/onscdc/2005/2005onscdc10205.html>
Ontario Health Premium - Court decision upholds union claim at the Lancaster House website at < http://www.lancasterhouse.com/about/headlines_1.asp>
Court upholds employer liability to pay Ontario Health Premium Tax (6 pages, PDF) at the Fasken Martineau website at < http://www.fasken.com/web/fmdwebsite.nsf/AllDoc/1AF0256DF81AF15B882570A1004C5A17/$File/FMALERT21OCT05.PDF >
----------
CONFERENCE BOARD COMPENSATION PROJECTS NON-UNION PAY INCREASES OF 3.4% FOR 2006: The Conference Board of Canada forecasts that non-union pay increases will average 3.4 % in 2006, driven mainly by a tightening labour market that makes recruitment and retention top priorities. The forecast for unionized employees in both public and private sectors is for average wage increases of 2.5 %. The Conference Board conducted its annual survey among 347 large and medium-sized Canadian organizations in July and August 2005 and released its findings on October 24 at the annual Compensation Outlook conference in Toronto. The publication, Compensation Planning Outlook 2006: Pay Pressure Builds as Labour Markets Tighten, includes information on base pay, collectively bargaining wage increases, variable pay, long-term incentives, HR priorities, recruitment and retention, performance management, turnover, absenteeism, benefits, and collective bargaining issues.
LINKS:
Press release at the Conference Board of Canada website at < http://www.conferenceboard.ca/press/2005/CompHR.asp>. (The full 26-page document can be ordered for $950 Cdn.)
----------
GENDER STEREOTYPES AND LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS: The research organization Catalyst has released a study on gender stereotyping in organizations. Entitled Women Take Care, Men Take Charge: Stereotyping of U.S. Business Leaders Exposed, the study considers 10 essential behaviours required of corporate leaders, pinpoints where women leaders are vulnerable to stereotyping, and makes recommendations to overcome the stereotypes. It also examines the costs that organizations incur because of the barriers to advancement into leadership positions that women face due to stereotyping.
LINK:
Women Take Care, Men Take Charge: Stereotyping of U.S. Business Leaders Exposed, (45 pages, PDF) at the Catalyst website at < http://www.catalyst.org/files/full/Women Take Care Men Take Charge.pdf>
----------
MACLEANS IDENTIFIES 100 EMPLOYERS OF CHOICE FOR JOB SEEKERS: The Macleans list of top 100 employers in Canada has been released, compiled for the benefit of job seekers. To be invited to participate in the annual list, organizations including not-for-profit groups, government agencies and private-sector companies must be fast-growing, in hiring mode, and must offer employees a superior work environment through compensation, benefits, work-family provisions, or community involvement. The Macleans website overview highlights a few case studies and provides an alphabetical list; a full-book edition of Canada's Top 100 Employers will be released by Mediacorp Canada publishers in early November.
LINKS:
Top 100 employers at the Macleans.ca website at < http://www.macleans.ca/webspecials/article.jsp?content=20031020_67488_67488 >
Top 100 employers List (3 pages, PDF) at < http://www.macleans.ca/pdf/top100list.pdf>
----------
GTA WORKERS WORK LONG HOURS: A recent survey by the polling firm Leger Marketing examined the working life of residents of the Greater Toronto Area. The survey revealed that on average employed residents work 41.2 hours per week at work and an additional 13 hours at home for their employer. They also spend on average 3.2 hours per week on personal activities at work. Other findings: 92 % of the respondents liked their co-workers and 70% said they liked them very much.
LINK:
Summary of Work Life in the GTA (6 pages, PDF) at the Leger Marketing website at < http://legermarketing.com/documents/spclm/051020ENG.pdf>
----------
OFL CAMPAIGNS FOR ONTARIO HEALTH CARE SECTOR WORKERS: The Ontario Federation of Labour has released a new report, Understaffed & Under Pressure: A reality check by Ontario health care workers, as part of a province-wide campaign in October and November to draw attention to working conditions for health care workers. The report is the result of an OFL fact-finding tour of 17 cities in 2005, giving voice to health care workers in all sectors of the health care system: emergency services, homecare, hospitals, long-term care, retirement homes, mental health and public health. The report calls on the government to impose an immediate moratorium on layoffs in hospitals, establish a required minimum standard of 3.5 hours per day of nursing and personal care for residents in nursing homes and homes for the aged, and minimum full-time staffing standards in all health care sectors.
LINKS:
Understaffed & Under Pressure: A reality check by Ontario health care workers (74 pages, PDF) at < http://www.ofl.ca/uploads/misc/US-UNDERSTAFF.PDF>
----------
RETENTION OF OLDER WORKERS: The Policy Research Initiative, established by the federal government, has recently published another study in its Population Aging and Life-Course Flexibility project. Encouraging Choice in Work and Retirement looks at the economic implications of the aging workforce and how the labour supply might be increased by encouraging individuals to remain in the workforce. It discusses both employer policies that might retain older workers and public policies to remove barriers and disincentives to continue working.
LINKS:
Encouraging Choice in Work and Retirement (57 pages, PDF) at the PRI website at < http://www.policyresearch.gc.ca/doclib/Encour_Choice_E.pdf>
----------
JEAN PIERRE BRUN WINS PIONEER AWARD DURING NATIONAL HEALTHY WORKPLACE WEEK: National Healthy Workplace Week, October 24 to 28, is an annual promotion of health workplace practices, begun in 2001 and led by the Canadian Healthy Workplace Council. The Council serves as an advisory body to the National Quality Institute (NQI) on workplace health issues and adjudicates the annual Canadian Workplace Wellness Pioneer Award that is presented at the Health, Work & Wellness Conference. That conference was held in Montreal from October 20 to 22; winner of the Pioneer Award for 2005 is Jean Pierre Brun, a professor at the Faculty of Business Administration of the Universite Laval and a leading expert on mental health issues in Canada, particularly mental health in the workplace.
LINKS:
Healthy Workplace website at < http://www.healthyworkplaceweek.ca/index.php>
Health Work and Wellness Conference website at < http://conferences.healthworkandwellness.com/>
Quebec mental health expert wins Canadian workplace Pioneer Award (1 page, PDF) at < http://conferences.healthworkandwellness.com/pics/pioneer_award_news_release_eng.pdf >
----------
IMPLICATIONS OF DELPHI BANKRUPTCY FOR THE AUTO INDUSTRY: An article from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania considers the impact the Chapter 11 filing by auto parts giant Delphi on the October 8 and the subsequent agreement between GM and the UAW to cut healthcare benefits for retirees on October 17. According to experts at the Wharton School, The Delphi filing and the tentative GM-UAW accord set in motion a chain of events that may forever alter the relationship between Americas Big Three carmakers and the UAW, and they underscore the degree to which globalization is exerting downward pressure on the wages and benefits paid to U.S. workers.
LINKS:
A bumpy road for Delphi, GM and U.S. Auto Workers (5 pages, PDF) at the Strategic Management Wharton website at
< http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1301.cfm>
Auto industry rocked by Delphi bankruptcy ( 4 pages, HTML) at the MSNBC News website at < http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9644882/>
UAW statement on tentative agreement with GM at the UAW website at < http://www.uaw.org/news/newsarticle.cfm?ArtId=359>
----------
SOME SECOND GENERATION CANADIANS EARN MORE THAN NATIVE BORN PEERS: A new study released by Statistics Canada on October 25 investigates the link between the socio-economic status of immigrant fathers and their Canadian- born sons and daughters. Except for those whose fathers were from the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Oceania, children had higher weekly earnings than native-born Canadians. The earnings advantage was about 6%, except for those from the traditional source countries, where it was 14%. This research uses new information from the 2001 Census, the first to ask Canadians which country their mothers and fathers were born.; it focuses on young adults aged 25 to 37 years whose parents were both born in a country other than Canada and immigrated here before 1981.
LINKS:
Intergenerational earnings mobility among the children of Canadian immigrants ( Catalogue #11F0019MIE2005267) (44 pages, PDF) at < http://www.statcan.ca/english/research/11F0019MIE/11F0019MIE2005267.pdf >
----------
CONSUMER PRICE INDEX RISES DUE TO HIGH GASOLINE PRICES: The Consumer Price Index for September 2005 was released by Statistics Canada on October 25, showing a large jump of 3.4% for the 12-month All-items index (CPI). Not surprisingly, the rise is attributed mainly to substantial increases in gasoline prices. In addition, Canadians paid 13.7% more for fuel oil and 7.4% more for natural gas prices in September.
LINKS:
Latest release from the Consumer Price Index at the Statistics Canada website at < http://www.statcan.ca/english/Subjects/Cpi/cpi-en.htm>
----------
Book of the Week :
Proving the Value of HR: How and Why to Measure ROI
by Jack J. Phillips and Patricia Pulliam Phillips. Alexandria, Virginia: Society for Human Resource Management. 256p. ISBN: 1586440497
The authors argue that measuring the return on investment (ROI) of human resources is critical for success in today's business world and is a requirement for HR professionals who are part of the senior executive team. HR managers and executives must show HR's contribution and prove that HR policies, practices, and solutions add directly to the organization's bottom line.
They provide basic, step-by-step instructions to develop the ROI of HR and show how the ROI methodology is a communication tool to strengthen the relationship with senior management as well as a process-improvement tool to enhance and improve HR's contribution.
About the Authors:
Jack J. Phillips is the chairman of the ROI Institute and is the author of Accountability in Human Resource Management, The Human Resources Scorecard, and Managing Employee Retention.
Patricia Pulliam Phillips is president and CEO of the ROI Institute.
----------
121 St. George Street, Toronto Canada M5S 2E8 http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/cir
_____________________________
This information is provided to subscribers, friends, faculty, students and alumni of the School of Industrial & Labor Relations (ILR). It is a service of the Institute for Workplace Studies (IWS) in New York City. Stuart Basefsky is responsible for the selection of the contents which is intended to keep researchers, companies, workers, and governments aware of the latest information related to ILR disciplines as it becomes available for the purposes of research, understanding and debate. The content does not reflect the opinions or positions of Cornell University, the School of Industrial & Labor Relations, or that of Mr. Basefsky and should not be construed as such. The service is unique in that it provides the original source documentation, via links, behind the news and research of the day. Use of the information provided is unrestricted. However, it is requested that users acknowledge that the information was found via the IWS Documented News Service.
Stuart Basefsky
Director, IWS News Bureau
Institute for Workplace Studies
Cornell/ILR School
16 E. 34th Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10016
Telephone: (607) 255-2703
Fax: (607) 255-9641
E-mail: smb6@cornell.edu
****************************************
# posted by SBasefsky : 9:04 AM
