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This study examines 54 cases of restructuring public services in towns and counties in upstate New York. The 54 cases include 39 cases of privatization in the form of contracting out, nine cases of contracting back in, and six cases of contracting out services to another government. Local government privatization was found to have some harmful effects on workers. Few local employers had adjustment policies to protect affected employees and disproportionate negative impacts were found on women and minorities. Privatization was also found to have significant de-unionizing effects. On the other hand, it had no clear impact on wages and benefits. The role of unions in the restructuring process is more complex than was previously thought. Unions were the catalyst for opposition actions but only in cases involving for-profit restructuring. In the nine cases that involved contracting work back into the public sector, unions supported restructuring changes, and in the six cases of contracting out to another government, union opposition was not significant.
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A framework for analyzing illegal public sector strikes is developed that explains observed patterns of behavior of employees, unions, managers, and third parties. It is found that no-strike laws diminish such positive effects of right-to-strike bargaining systems as eliciting information, adjusting expectations, and providing catharsis. A new theoretical outline helps understand and explain such illegal strike characteristics as the suddenness of strike development, the rank-and-file nature, lack of union control, conflict without clearly defined union objectives, and breakdown of the conflict regulation process by neutral agencies. Three policy issues emerge: 1. some conflict could have been avoided with a broader scope of bargaining, 2. mandatory and more responsive third party procedures should be legislatively provided, and 3. such information about worker discontent as grievance usage should be made available to dispute settlement agencies and mediators before conflict escalates out of control.
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Some 24 Relationships by Objectives (RBO) programs conducted by the Education Relations Commission in Ontario were evaluated. An RBO is a form of preventive mediation and applies problem-solving techniques to attempt to reduce such unnecessary conflict as language disputes over grievances, strikes, and the time in negotiations. Mean conflict scores of the RBO boards are compared, before and after RBO, with those of the education sector and a control group of boards. Some evidence is found of a half-life effect for RBO programs since long-run conflict scores returned to pre-RBO levels. However, RBO appears to be effective in reducing conflict as measured by time to reach a settlement and number of grievance arbitrations over language issues.
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Using a comprehensive collective bargaining data set, we examine dispute resolution patterns of all bargaining units in the province of Ontario over a 10-year period. A central finding is that bargaining units covered by legislation requiring compulsory interest arbitration arrive at impasse 8.7 percent to 21.7 percent more often than bargaining units in the right to strike sectors. Even after controlling for legislative jurisdiction, union, bargaining unit size, occupation, agreement length, time trend, and part-time status, strong evidence was found that compulsory arbitration has both chilling and dependence effects on the bargaining process. The problem of failure to reach negotiated settlements is particularly acute in the health care sector, especially among hospitals. Our results also call into question the use of interest arbitration in a central bargaining context. The centralized structure appears to exacerbate the negative effects of interest arbitration
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This text presents a hands-on examination of industrial relations balanced in both theoretical and practical coverage, as well as union and labour coverage. Industrial Relations in Canada is grounded in leading research and examines true-to-life issues. Experiential exercises, cases, and collective bargaining simulations bridge the academic content of the text with real-world issues in the field. --Publisher's description of 2011 edition.
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Using a large data set of large and small bargaining units, the implications for collective bargaining disputes of the evolution toward small bargaining units and the move to non-traditional forms of representation are examined. It is found that smaller bargaining units, as well as independent unions in both the public and private sectors, are less likely to reach an impasse. This finding supported those hypothesizing the cooperative nature of these organizations. These 2 sets of results suggest that the movement to smaller bargaining units, and towards more independent representation, will result in a higher proportion of directly negotiated settlements in the future. However, a reduced incidence of impasse does not necessarily mean a reduction in industrial conflict. Evidence is found of a shift away from a collective expression of conflict such as strikes, to more individual expressions. Thus, in the future, there may be a greater need for internal conflict resolution systems.
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We study public-sector bargaining and contract outcomes using Canadian data from 1978 to 2008. We have a number of interesting results, but our principal findings are from our analysis of wage settlements. We find that the essential services designation, which only allows non-essential members of a bargain unit to strike, is associated with decreases in wages. Our estimates also suggest that there is an arbitration wage premium and that making adjustments to the ability to pay criterion used by arbitrators to determine awards does not affect this premium. We also discuss the implications of our estimates.
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We examine the effects of collective bargaining legislation, such as (among others) bans on replacement workers and reinstatement rights, on private sector strike activity and wage settlements using Canadian data from 1978 to 2008. Our estimates indicate that this legislation does not have a statistically significant effect on the incidence of strikes. However, we do find that some of the policy variables have a statistically significant effect on strike duration and wage settlements.
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