Your search
Results 87 resources
-
The purpose of this study is to contribute to knowledge of profit-sharing by utilizing a before-and-after analysis of panel data to assess whether the effects of profit-sharing adoption on productivity growth vary, depending on whether a profit-sharing adopter utilizes work teams or not, while controlling for numerous variables that may affect these results within a carefully constructed sample of Canadian establishments. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the moderating role of teamwork in the relationship between profit-sharing and productivity growth. Besides the implications for profit-sharing, ascertaining whether profit-sharing and work teams are complementary practices would have important implications for understanding how to develop more effective work teams, a topic of ongoing interest. We utilized a longitudinal research design to compare within-firm productivity growth during the three-year and five-year periods subsequent to profit-sharing adoption and within-firm productivity growth during the same periods in firms that had not adopted profit-sharing. Overall, our results suggest that use of team-based production plays an important moderating role in the success of employee profit-sharing—at least in terms of workplace productivity growth. Establishments that had adopted profit-sharing showed a substantial and highly significant increase in workplace productivity over both the three-year and five-year periods subsequent to adoption, but only if they had work teams. These findings are in line with the notion that work teams help to mitigate potential shirking behaviour in profit-sharing firms (Freeman, Kruse and Blasi, 2010) and are also in line with the argument that work teams serve as an effective mechanism to help translate the purported motivational and other benefits of profit-sharing into tangible productivity gains (Heywood and Jirjahn, 2009).
-
The article reviews the book, "The Socialist Challenge Today," by Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin.
-
The article reviews the book, "Grève et paix. Une histoire des lois spéciales au Québec," by Martin Petitclerc and Martin Robert.
-
The article reviews the book, "The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity," by Eugene McCarraher.
-
The article reviews the book, "In the Red Corner: The Marxism of José Carlos Mariátegui," by Mike Gonzalez.
-
In recent years the issue of migrant workers with precarious status has increased in importance in Canada, in large part due to economic and policy changes that have led to greater numbers of migrant workers remaining in the country post permit expiry. This study tracks the employment experiences of low-skilled migrant workers who arrived through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and who remained following their permit expiry. Using a temporal analysis, the study identifies four timepoints that shape the workers’ employment outcomes both pre- and post-expiry. Events at these timepoints create differing employment pathways that, in turn, reveal different aspects of the workers’ precarity. In addition to pathways, workers’ ability to access informal support networks shape their employment outcomes as workers with precarious status.
-
Discusses a biographical questionnaire that J.B. McLachlan completed for the Communist International during a visit to the Soviet Union in 1931. In it, the Nova Scotia labour leader briefly responded on his background, education, work and labour activism, political status (including his recruitment to the "Canadian section" of the Communist Party in 1922), and imprisonment in 1923-24. The questionnaire and other related materials came to light as a result of a request made by the author to the Russian State Archives in October 2020.
-
This study contributes to the emerging literature on the interplay between safety committees and employee perceptions of organizational safety culture. Creating, managing and maintaining a safety culture in organizations involves significant investment in the establishment of safety committees. The role of such committees in improving safety culture perceptions has remained underexplored in the safety management and organizational literature. This study addresses that gap and focuses on a safety committee within the facilities management operations of a large American academic institution. The objective is to generate understandings of how a committee can influence organizational cultural change and impact employee perceptions of safety. Using Schein’s organizational culture model as a prism, we unpack the employees’ implicit cultural beliefs. Data from over sixty employee interviews revealed that formation of the Safety Committee resulted in unintended consequences in terms of employee perceptions. Employees attributed most safety-related actions to the committee when, in fact, the managers and supervisors had actually carried them out. This overestimation of committee activities and concomitant underestimation of managerial actions by employees was an unintended consequence of establishing a committee. Employees, in fact, collectively attributed all positive changes in the organizational culture to the committee. The committee ultimately influenced the employees’ basic assumptions, such change being, according to Schein, a prerequisite for organizational cultural change. This study, therefore, contributes to the literature by proposing that unintended consequences can operate in three different ways to support organizational change. First, unintended consequences can promote positive outcomes; second, they can reveal a new understanding of committees, which under certain circumstances can act as a proxy for management and encourage positive perceptions of managerial commitment. Lastly, unintended consequences can provide a means to detect and ‘excavate’ hidden, implicit assumptions that drive organizational culture’s deepest layers.
-
...Ces changements récents entrainent des conséquences assez génériques pour ceux qui pensent et écrivent sur le travail et l’emploi. À travers le monde, les questions urgentes ont toutes une certaine homogénéité. Comment travailler en pratiquant la distanciation sociale ? Comment gérer à distance la main-d’oeuvre ? Qu’advient-il de la productivité si les travailleurs sont dispersés sur des lieux et des horaires différents ? Enfin, dans cette nouvelle réalité, que deviendront la négociation collective et l’asymétrie actuelle entre le capital et le travail ? Voilà autant de questions que nous devons poser et en trouver la réponse. Puis nous devons le faire ensemble, vraiment ensemble, à travers un effort collaboratif mondial. C’est ainsi, je crois, que changera le programme de recherche orthodoxe sur les relations de travail. En tant qu’individus, le défi est d’être en avant de ce qui se passe actuellement et de ne pas s’interroger sur ce qui s’est déjà passé. Voici, donc, ce que la revue entend privilégier : une variété de perspectives sur le plan géographique, une analyse critique, une volonté de tirer des leçons de l’histoire, ainsi qu’une préoccupation constante pour les oubliés et les défavorisés de la nouvelle normalité. Enfin, mon équipe et moi demeureront attachés à une politique de gestion beaucoup plus élargie qui visera l’inclusion et l’adaptation. En gardant ces priorités à l’esprit, je suis fier de présenter les contenus de l’édition 76(3). // These recent lifestyle changes are having somewhat generic consequences for those who think and write about work and employment. The pressing issues throughout the world have a sameness about them. How do jobs get done with social distancing? How are workforces remotely managed? What happens to productivity when workers are geographically dispersed and running on different schedules? Finally, in this new reality, what happens to collective bargaining and the existing capital/labour power asymmetry? We need to ask and answer these questions together—really together—through a collaborative global effort. In this way, I believe, change will come to the orthodox agenda of research on employment relations. As individuals, the challenge is to be ahead of what is happening and not wonder what has happened. Here is what we at the journal are currently emphasizing: geographically diverse perspectives, critical analysis, an emphasis on what history has to teach and an ongoing preoccupation with those who might be left behind and/or disadvantaged by the new normal. Meanwhile, my team and I will continue to be committed to a much broader policy of inclusion and accommodation when it comes to how we manage. It is with these priorities in mind that I am proud to present the content of edition 76(3).
-
We examine the relationship between union power and redistribution in Canada’s ten provinces between 1986 and 2014. Subnational jurisdictions are thus the focus of research questions that have previously been addressed at the international level. Multilevel models with time-series cross-sectional data are used to estimate the long-term association between union density and redistribution through provincial transfer payments and income taxes. We found that higher union density correlates with considerably more redistribution over the long term but not over the short term. This finding is confirmed by three distinct measures of inequality and poverty reduction, an indication that it is quite robust. The association is significant for the entire study period and for its second half. This finding is consistent with power resource theory in its original form, but not with more recent work in that area or with comparative political economy scholarship, which generally now neglects or downplays the impact of organized labour on social and economic policy outcomes. Our findings suggest a need to re-assess the diminished interest of recent researchers in the political influence of organized labour. It will also interest scholars in other countries where tax and transfer systems are decentralized, and where the impact of organized labour on such measures has been understudied at the subnational level. Additionally, we show that unionized voters in Canada are more favourably disposed than their non-unionized counterparts toward redistribution and toward pro-redistribution political parties. Unions may consequently affect redistribution in part by socializing their members to favour it. This possibility is advanced with preliminary data in this paper. We argue that further scholarly attention is both required and deserved on this subject in Canada and elsewhere.
-
The article reviews the book, "Ordinary Saints: Women, Work, and Faith in Newfoundland," by Bonnie Morgan.
-
This study aims to shed light on the main determinants of and barriers to union commitment among young workers and, more generally, the relationship young workers have with union life. So far, the relationship between young workers and unionism has been examined mainly in terms of the challenges of access to unionization that confront young workers, a group generally underrepresented in union membership. The more specific issue of union commitment among young workers, once they become unionized, has remained largely underexplored in the literature. Using quantitative and qualitative data from an empirical survey of young unionized workers in the Quebec public service, our study identifies and compares the main factors that explain union commitment among young unionized workers and the theoretical underpinnings. It also seeks to shed light on the barriers to this commitment and identifies the organizational measures that could facilitate union commitment among young workers, based on the perceptions expressed by young union members. Our findings indicate that unions should adopt multidimensional organizational measures to foster union commitment among young workers, with a first step being to increase personalized contact between local union representatives and young members. Such investments at the local level are critical, as shown by our quantitative and qualitative findings. Thus, any reform or measure aimed at encouraging union involvement of young workers should not be limited merely to structural aspects but should also take into account the attitudinal and relational underpinnings of young workers’ commitment to their union. By shifting the focus from youth unionization to young members’ involvement in union bodies, our study will contribute to debate about union representation and the generational renewal of the labour movement’s activist base.
-
The article reviews the book, "Canada’s Other Red Scare: Indigenous Protest and Colonial Encounters During the Global Sixties," by Scott Rutherford.
-
The article reviews the book, "The Violence of Work: New Essays in Canadian and US Labour History," edited by Jeremy Milloy and Joan Sangster.
-
The article reviews the book, "Nothing Succeeds Like Failure: The Sad History of American Business Schools," by Steven Conn.
-
The article reviews the book, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Cars? Public Transit in the Age of Google, Uber, and Elon Musk," by James Wilt.
-
Trois grèves qui avaient pour objectif l’obtention du salaire minimum à 15 $ l’heure ont été menées par des syndicats québécois en 2016. Ces grèves se sont inscrites dans des campagnes politiques qui avaient le même objectif. Cet article propose une étude comparée de ces grèves dans le but d’analyser dans quelle mesure les formes de solidarité et les modes d’organisation déployés offrent des pistes de revitalisation qui permettraient au mouvement syndical québécois de relever les défis stratégiques contemporains auxquels fait face le mouvement syndical québécois. L’analyse de ces trois grèves, en s’appuyant sur une typologie des divers syndicalismes et activismes syndicaux, permet d’approfondir les formes de solidarité déployées par les syndicats ainsi que les formes de mobilisation originales qui, toutefois, n’ont pas mené à un progrès substantiel du contrôle démocratique exercé par les membres sur leur mouvement.
-
The article reviews the book, "Le régime des décrets de convention collective au Québec. Quel avenir ?," by Jean Bernier.
-
L’article présente les résultats d’une étude qualitative menée auprès de 31 intervenants et intervenantes qui travaillent en protection de l’enfance au Québec. Elle porte sur les conséquences des difficultés émotionnelles des intervenants sur leurs relations avec les gestionnaires et les collègues de travail, dans le contexte de la réforme du réseau de la santé et des services sociaux (projet de loi 10). Les résultats montrent qu’une large majorité d’intervenants et intervenantes rapportent une ou plusieurs conséquences délétères dans les relations avec les gestionnaires (colère et frustration, méfiance à l’égard d’une possible instrumentalisation des difficultés émotionnelles, évitement et perte de confiance). Également, une proportion très significative d’entre eux font état de conséquences à l’échelle des relations avec les collègues de travail (isolement et retrait, effet boule de neige sur les collègues et l’équipe de travail et diminution de la collaboration et de l’entraide). L’analyse montre que l’intensification du travail et la dégradation des conditions de pratique des intervenantes et intervenants sociaux, qui ont résulté de la dernière réforme (projet de loi 10) instituée par le ministre Barrette (2013), ont significativement contribué à fragiliser les collectifs de travail. Ce faisant, les possibilités d’entraide et de coopération, pourtant nécessaires à la réalisation de leur mandat professionnel, ont tendance à s’effacer au profit d’une activité professionnelle pratiquée par des travailleuses et travailleurs isolés et en souffrance.
-
The article reviews the book, "The Southern Key: Class, Race and Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s," by Michael Goldfield.