Organizational Governance and Trade-Offs Between Pay and Subjective Employee Well-Being - Jan 19 2025
Suppose you were offered a job or a promotion that gave you higher intrinsic rewards, but required accepting less pay than you could get elsewhere. Might you have concerns that the employer would, at some point, renege on its promise of higher intrinsic rewards—which are harder to observe than pay—leaving you with just lower pay? Even if the...
In
last month’s post, I contrasted the positive, intrinsic view of work that
underlies high-road HR strategies with the negative, instrumental view of work
frequently seen in songs about work. Continuing with the theme of how we think about
work, varying perspectives on work often correspond with assumptions about
work embedded
in different...
Different HR strategies for managing people are founded, at
least in part, on different ways in which we think about work.
Is work simply an input into a productive process that’s tracked and traded
like other commodities? Or something bad that individuals do primarily for
income? Or a source of personal satisfaction? A way to serve others? A way...
Using Political Party Manifestos to Investigate the Relative Importance of Industrial Relations Ideas in Politics - Jan 21 2022
Note: if you'd prefer an animated version of this posting, see:Before almost any major election in democratic countries, each political party publishes its manifesto which declares the party’s values, goals, and policies it will pursue if elected. In order to fully inform candidates from that party as well as voters, manifestos comprehensively...
A Diagnostic Tool for Managing Conflict at its Sources - Oct 27 2021
To successfully resolve a conflict or dispute, Alex Colvin (Cornell), Dionne Pohler (Saskatchewan), and I assert that you must first understand its roots or sources, and then appropriately match a dispute resolution method. We call this "managing conflict at its sources." To this end, we’ve created a three-part typology of the roots of...
The Importance of Political Systems for Trade Union Membership, Coverage, and Influence - Sep 20 2021
Here's the Twitter thread version of my new article:Excited that “The Importance of Political Systems for Trade Union Membership, Coverage, and Influence: Theory and Comparative Evidence” with @jryanlamare is in the current BJIR issue. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.125751/Ideological links between the state & industrial relations have-of...
Worker Voice and Political Participation in Civil Society: Lousy Work Is Bad for Democracy - Jul 08 2021
The
stories are familiar by now: businesses
claim that there’s a labor shortage and others reply that they need
to pay more. Pay is obviously an important part of a job, but we need to
remember that the positive and negative aspects of work are
complicated, which means that we must consider more than pay when
evaluating job
quality and...
Will Work Really Change That Much? - Jun 09 2021
As people look ahead to the end of the Covid-19 pandemic,
many are heralding a work-from-home revolution. But for centuries, it’s been easy
to overstate predictions about the future of work. Even when they are not just
plain wrong, such predictions are, at best, only partially true because how
people experience work varies tremendously by...
The Importance of Cognitive Frames for Understanding HR Practices, Part 2 (Adding Workers In) - May 05 2021
In the recent union organizing drive at an Amazon warehouse
in Bessemer, Alabama, workers were presented with competing
narratives. Amazon portrayed unionization as unnecessary because it already
provides good wages and benefits along with direct communication between
workers and their managers, whereas union advocates emphasized the need...
The Importance of Cognitive Frames for Understanding HR Practices, Part 1 (Organizational Leaders) - Apr 15 2021
Last Fall, workers at two popular craft breweries in the
Twin Cities (Fair State and Surly) announced their intent to unionize. The CEO
of Fair State responded
by saying “I am proud of the self-determination our team has shown by
taking on the responsibility of organizing to make Fair State better,” and Fair
State became the first U.S....
Happy International Women's Day!First came the
wave of teacher strikes led by women fighting the
devaluing of their work, then Google employees walked out in protest of its handling of
sexual harassment and (later) formed the Alphabet Workers Union, and now racial justice is a central
theme as Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama vote on whether...
Does 5 to 9 solve 9 to 5? - Feb 08 2021
In the title song for the 1980 movie "9 to 5", Dolly Parton captured the inhumanity of underpaid and over-harassed working women, which includes the well-known chorus:
Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living
Barely gettin' by, it's all taking and no giving
They just use your mind and they never give you credit
It's enough to drive you crazy...
The NBC comedy Superstore is set in one store of the fictitious big-box retail chain Cloud 9. The main characters are all store employees, and refreshingly, it frequently reveals the injustices that many workers face, such as the difficulty supporting a family on low wages, a lack of parental leave, inadequate health insurance, and many other...
How the U.S. Political System Might be Bad for Labor Unions Regardless of Who is in Power - Nov 05 2020
Speaking of elections….it’s fairly obvious that whether Democratic or Republican politicians control local, state, or federal policy-making has important implications for future outcomes on wide-ranging issues, including employment-related outcomes like labor union strength. But recent research with Ryan Lamare suggests that regardless of which...
Workplace Cooperation: Important, But Difficult - Oct 07 2020
On Monday I had the honor of the receiving the 2020 Melvin Lurie Labor-Management Cooperation Prize. This award honors the memory of Melvin Lurie, a Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and founder of what is now its Master of Human Resources and Labor Relations (MHRLR) program. The prize is intended to continue and...
Is the NLRA Racist? - Aug 31 2020
One way to think more deeply about issues of race in work
and labor relations is to ask whether the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) is
racist. The NLRA was enacted in 1935 as part of the New Deal, and protects private
sector workers’ rights to organize into labor unions and collectively bargain.
At its core, the NLRA is about workers, full...
The Arbitration of Police Officer Discipline - Jul 27 2020
Police unions and their contracts should be
considered in discussions of social justice and policing. But we shouldn’t
ignore the details of the arbitration
procedure for deciding police discipline. It’s common for U.S. union
contracts across all occupations and industries to set standards for discipline
and discharge (especially just or good...
Police Unions, Contracts, and Misconduct - Jul 27 2020
Systemic problems with police brutality raise important
issues for labor relations. As with other public sector workers, police
officers have pushed for collective bargaining rights when they have been
frustrated with their pay and employment conditions, and they started winning
these rights in the 1960s as states began authorizing public sector...
Using Employment Relations Frames of Reference to Think about Discrimination and (Institutional) Racism - Jun 29 2020
Central to my
approach for labor relations teaching is the explicit recognition of schools
of thought (equivalently, “frames of reference”) on the employment relationship.
Four
schools of thought, in particular, illustrate sharply contrasting
perspectives on labor unions, and it’s important to understand how these views
are rooted in different...
Data visualization, dashboards, and statistical modeling
have been thrust into the spotlight because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I am not
a biostatistician or an epidemiologist (not even an armchair one!) so I am not in a position to evaluate or
criticize these visualizations and models. But I’m currently teaching a course
on data and metrics for...
Managing Conflict at its Sources - Feb 15 2020
In Director Bong Joon-ho’s highly-acclaimed movie Parasite
(2019), the wealthy Park family believes that they have a win-win relationship with
the lower-class Kims. The Kims, however, view this relationship very differently, allowing them to prioritize their own interests in this
relationship. If we were to step into this in the middle of the...
A New Culprit in the Decline of American Labor? Robert F. Kennedy and the Long Cast of Hoffa's Shadow - Jan 06 2020
I just finished reading Jack Goldsmith’s In Hoffa’s Shadow: A Stepfather, a Disappearance in Detroit, and My Search for the Truth (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019) which I highly recommend. Who needs fiction when real-life history produces stories like these? The author is a Harvard law professor whose mother married Chuckie O’Brien on June 16,...
Last week’s UK parliamentary election has highlighted the importance for election rules for determining the representativeness of a legislative body. In particular, the Conservative party won 56 percent of the seats in Parliament while only receiving 44 percent of the votes cast. The Labour party’s representation better matches its vote share (a...
And Now for the Biden Labor Plan...Laudable But Still a Narrow View of High-Stakes, Worker Voice - Nov 10 2019
Last month’s post was prompted by the release of the labor plans by the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren campaigns. A couple weeks later, the Biden campaign released its labor plan (“The Biden Plan for Strengthening Worker Organizing, Collective Bargaining, and Unions”). Like the Sanders and Warren plans, the Biden plan contains an...
Bernie Sanders ("The Workplace Democracy Plan") and Elizabeth Warren ("Empowering American Workers and Raising Wages") have now both released labor plans as part of their presidential election campaigns. If enacted, each ambitious plan would bring the deepest and most far-ranging reforms to labor law since…well, ever. Both plans include provisions...
The Fragility of Genuine Workplace Cooperation...Or, Avoid Sliding Down the Cooperation Curve - Sep 23 2019
In last month’s blog posting, I described a project in which Mark Bray, Johanna Macneil, and I carefully look at different meanings of cooperation. We think this is important because greater clarity over contrasting perspectives on cooperation can lead to a deeper understanding among individuals with differing views, whether they are...
Cooperation—What Does it Really Mean? - Aug 06 2019
When it comes to the practice of industrial relations, many people’s favorite word seems to be “cooperation.” During a union representation election in Tennessee, a Volkswagen executive bragged that “The Volkswagen Group is proud of its record of cooperation and co-determination between employees, management and the communities in which we live...
Why I Just Can’t Tell You What Works - Jul 24 2019
A tweet from Rae Cooper reminded me that the World Congress for the International Labor and Employment Relations Association was in Seoul exactly a year ago. I have lots of great memories from that conference, but something else has stuck with me, too. In a session on conflict resolution someone made a comment along the lines of “just tell us what...
What Do Industrial Relations Scholars Research? From the Traditional to the Emergent (and a Hidden Message) - Jun 13 2019
Last week I attended the 56th conference of the Canadian Industrial Relations Association on the beautiful UBC campus in Vancouver, and was asked to give some closing remarks. I decided to capture the conference’s topic by creating a Wordle or Tag Cloud from the presentation titles that shows more frequent words in a larger font. After doing the...
The Evolution of NAFTA and Labor Rights - May 22 2019
Debates continue to rage as to whether the United States should ratify the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), also known as NAFTA 2.0. Lost among these debates is an interesting progression from NAFTA 1.0 to 2.0 with respect to labor rights. NAFTA was originally negotiated without any labor provisions, but labor and environmental side...
Labor + Community + Environment = Australia’s Green Bans - Apr 14 2019
Earlier this year I was able to attend the AIRAANZ conference in Melbourne, Australia. At the end of one of the conference days, there was an optional Green Ban Walking Tour. I had no idea what the “green ban” part was, but walking around Melbourne after being at a conference all day sounded like a great idea. It turns out that green bans in...
The Great Uprising of 1877, The Great Divides of 2019 - Mar 21 2019
The 1870s ushered in an era of intense and violent labor conflict that would continue for decades, and I wonder whether we’re on the cusp of similar social strife, albeit not as overtly violent. A massive depression in the mid-1870s caused severe unemployment and wage cuts, and union membership plummeted. A six-month coal strike in eastern...
What Causes Conflict? A New Three-Dimensional Framework - Feb 02 2019
Put yourself in the shoes of a manager who believes that a dispute is preventing two co-workers from working together effectively. What do you do? Possibilities might include encouraging them to get along, locking them in a room until they work out their differences, threatening them with consequences if their work doesn’t improve,...
This past week I had the pleasure of speaking about the current
state of labor relations to a local community group. It was great to see their
interest in the topic, and the audience asked many good questions and had
numerous important observations. I wasn’t sure how to structure my presentation,
but they had provided me with a list of possible...
Last month, the New York Times and the Star Tribune reported on conflicts between Somalian workers and management at Amazon’s Shakopee (Minnesota) warehouse. The workers’ concerns include increases in their workload, lack of advancement opportunities, and prayer breaks.
There are many interesting angles to this story, including the...
Should Work Be More Like BDSM Role-Play? - Nov 05 2018
“You can’t say ‘orange’ to your boss.” Wait a minute, what?!?
Is “orange” some kind of offensive slang I’m not aware of? I don’t think so…so
taken in isolation, this sentence from David Graeber’s book Bullshit Jobs (p. 282) seems odd. But
it’s actually quite important. “Orange” is being used here as an example of a
safe word analogous to what...
Finding the Meaning in Bullshit Jobs - Oct 06 2018
I’ve been reading Bullshit Jobs by LSE anthropologist David Graeber (Simon & Schuster, 2018). Graeber
defines a bullshit job as “a form of paid employment that is so completely
pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its
existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee
feels...
Suppose you think that your employer is engaging in wage theft by intentionally misclassifying you as exempt from overtime (or substitute many other possible grievances that are shared by co-workers, such as being misclassified as contractors, enduring systematic discrimination or harassment, or being forced to work off the clock). In the absence...
Paid family leave is back in the U.S. news again, this time with a proposal by Senator Mario Rubio called the Economic Security for New Parents Act, which would provide paid leave to parents who agree to delay taking social security benefits by an amount to offset the paid leave. I’m not going to get into the merits and controversies of this...
What Happens in the Aftermath of the Janus Ruling? - Jul 02 2018
In 2018, all eyes in the labor relations community were focused on the Supreme Court in anticipation of its ruling in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31. Workers who are represented by a labor union cannot be forced to join a union and pay full dues, but in the absence of a right-to-work law, it has...
I just finished reading James Chamberlain’s new book Undoing Work, Rethinking Community: A Critique of the Social Function of Work (Cornell University Press). It’s an
ambitious theoretical work that raises fundamental issues regarding not only
the meaning of work but also the construction of society. But let me first back
up. My own book, The...
This past weekend I was at an ILR Review-sponsored
conference “Toward New Theories in Employment Relations.” A predictable theme
was the gig economy. But more interesting were repeated themes of the importance
of ideas (whether from the bottom up rooted in individual cognition (a paper I presented)
or from the top down in the form of contested...
Sinclair Broadcasting Group has recently been forcing news anchors at its stations across the country to broadcast statements that echo President
Trump’s attacks on the news media as propagating “fake news.” These anchors
have then been criticized for following along rather than quitting. But they
signed employment contracts in which they can be...
Looking back on the now-defunct (or hibernating) University
of Minnesota faculty organizing drive, it’s striking the number of things that
were said that implied that certain good or bad outcomes were inevitable. From the vantage
point of someone who studies and teaches about labor relations, I only see one
thing as inevitable if any group of...
Business Is Not a War, a Jungle, a Machine, or a Game: Rejecting Narratives that are Unhealthy for Work and Workers - Feb 26 2018
Earlier this month, an Australian colleague (Rae Cooper)
tweeted that Tony Dundon’s AIRAANZ keynote presentation made the point that the
“war for talent” narrative is macho and narcissistic, and undermines
collaborative employment strategies. I agree. In fact, there are many war metaphors
used in business: in addition to the “war for talent,” we...
Uncovering the Financialization Roots of Contingent Work - Jan 05 2018
A Politico story by Danny Vinik was published this week with the headline “The Real Future of Work” and a provocative subtitle: “Forget automation. The workplace is already cracking up in profound ways, and Washington is sorely behind on dealing with it.” This is an important story that deserves to be read widely. Automation has the potential to...
I just
received news that my first book—Employment with a Human Face: Balancing Efficiency, Equity, and Voice—will be
translated and published in Turkish. I have Dr. Fuat Man, a professor of HRM at
Sakarya University to thank for this, and I’m particularly grateful and honored
because he has already translated my The Thought of Work (Çalışma...
Lessons for Resolving Conflict from the NFL Players Anthem Dispute and Papal Conclaves - Nov 22 2017
With Thanksgiving comes football, and with football comes…well,
this year, maybe politics. While perhaps not as heated as in September and
October, the NFL player anthem protest controversy has not been completely
resolved. Before reading further, I’d like you to think about what underlies
this dispute. Have you thought about it? Once you have...
The raging controversy over the kneeling by NFL players
during the playing of the national anthem took yet another turn recently, this
time with labor law in the spotlight. Specifically, there has been publicity
and press over the possibility that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)
protects protesting players against being fired or other...
Minnesota Legislature: Respect U of M Contingent Faculty By Letting Them Decide Whether or Not to Unionize - Sep 16 2017
Whether a group of employees wants to form a union to
represent them in collective bargaining is a decision that those employees
should be entitled to make. Unfortunately, contingent faculty (non-tenure-track
instructors, lecturers, and teaching specialists) at the University of
Minnesota will likely not get to make that decision themselves....
It’s been an “interesting” week. First, a Googler was fired
for his infamous memo on the alleged biological roots of gender inequality. And
now Top Dog, a California hot dog chain, has fired a cook because he was identified
on social media as a participant in the white supremacist demonstration in
Charlottesville. These firings are probably legal...
What Happens at Work Doesn’t Stay There: (Poor) Workplace Democracy Promotes (Poor) Political Democracy - Jul 19 2017
The workplace is not like Las Vegas—what happens at work, often doesn’t stay at work. Nearly 250 years ago, the father of modern economics,
Adam Smith, worried that mind-numbing jobs would cause workers to lose the
ability and motivation to be thoughtful, engaged citizen-people outside of the
workplace (The Wealth of Nations,
Book V, Chapter I,...
If one had to come up with a shorthand for the values of the
field of employment relations, a strong contender would be “industrial
democracy.” For starters, employment relations scholars seek to understand the
rules of the workplace. Organizations are therefore seen as industrial
governments that can be autocratic, technocratic, or democratic....
Are More Stock Options the Answer for Target's Woes? - May 02 2017
I’m no expert on stock options or executive compensation. So
maybe you should stop reading, and I should stop writing. But here I go anyway…Target
Corporation’s latest executive pay plans were revealed yesterday in its proxy
filing with the SEC.
The CEO didn’t get an incentive bonus. Makes sense…Target
hasn’t been hitting its financial...
Thoughts on Uber and Its Psychological "Tricks" - Apr 17 2017
Earlier this month, a New York Times article “How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons” received a lot of publicity
for revealing how Uber is using “behavioral science to manipulate [drivers]
in the service of its corporate growth.” A company trying to get workers to act
in the interests of the organization? Shocking....
Why Study Labor Relations? - Mar 16 2017
It’s always interesting getting a new book, but it’s
particularly exciting and rewarding when it’s the product of your own work! So
I was thrilled when earlier this month I received a copy of the fifth edition
of my textbook, Labor Relations: Striking a Balance, that is published by McGraw-Hill. But some might be...
Controversies around tipping are seemingly everywhere these
days. Tip jars seem to be proliferating at the same time as some restaurants
are experimenting with banning tips. It’s always hard knowing who to tip and
how much, and even more so when traveling abroad. Even the New York Times ran a
story on “To Tip or Not to Tip Your Uber Driver” last...
With Donald Trump joining a Republican-majority Congress in office this week, the U.S. labor movement is braced for adversity. Who knows what lies ahead. At a minimum, labor will face a less sympathetic legal system when the composition of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and judiciary reflect Trump appointees. Bigger changes at the...
President-elect Donald Trump’s apparent success in getting
Carrier to partially reverse its decision to shift jobs from Indiana to Mexico
has rightfully received a lot of attention. This certainly isn’t the first time
a politician has used a bully pulpit to pressure private corporations on labor
issues. But to do so using Twitter, and more...
It’s hard to find many people happy with the choices in
tomorrow’s U.S. presidential election. Setting aside the troubling personal
qualities that have been so apparent, it’s difficult not to be leery (at best)
of Trump’s populism-at-its-worst and Clinton’s elitist-insider-insularity. If
only both sides had paid more attention to industrial...
The biggest business story of the past month has been the
Wells Fargo banking scandal. Driven by pressures to sell banking customers
additional products, thousands of employees created perhaps two millions new
accounts without customer approval. Over 5,000 workers were fired for creating
fraudulent accounts, and some who were fired for failing to...
When I taught labor relations last winter, the union organizing drive among University of Minnesota faculty was a very timely topic. After having been away for the summer, some of the students from that class asked whether faculty were unionized yet. But the answer brings to life one of the realities of union organizing in the United States—it’s a...
Homogenization: Good for Milk, Bad for Managing Workers - Aug 28 2016
Readers of my blog know that I developed and launched a
massive open online course (MOOC) on Preparing to Manage Human Resources. Readers
of my blog also know that I think work is quite complex. It shouldn’t be
reduced to being just about money, or just about satisfaction, or just about
any other single thing. Put these two things together and a...
The Unique CTUL-Target Partnership: Filling a Vacuum - Jul 31 2016
Last week I had the pleasure of attending a roundtable event
sponsored by the Workers Lab that focused on the CTUL-Target partnership. CTUL
(Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha which translates to The Center of
Workers United in Struggle) is a Minneapolis worker center that, to quote from
its own mission statement, “organizes low-wage workers...
The Soul and Scope of Labor Union Strategies - Jun 27 2016
The faculty organizing drive at the University of Minnesota has heated up with the recent launch of a website for faculty opposing the drive. The presence of an organizing drive anywhere naturally raises questions of what will a union do for the workers, and more broadly, how will they do it. Indeed, the traditional collection of union strategies...
Working with Purpose…Not Just for the Productive - May 01 2016
In April I had the pleasure of meeting Arthur Woods (@ArthurWoods),
a co-founder of Imperative,
who was in Minneapolis to speak at a couple of our events, including our annual
HR Tomorrow conference. Imperative emphasizes working with purpose—creating a
measure of purpose, identifying the importance of purpose, and helping
companies facilitate...
At the end of March, #ModernCollectiveNouns was a trending hashtag on Twitter. Here are some examples I saw:
A clutch of car mechanics.
A fraud of bankers.
A Kardashian of crap.
An avalanche of skiers.
My (ultra-academic) contribution to this was the following:
My tweet probably didn't make much sense to most people, but...
Questioning the Conventional Wisdom: Do Consensual Dispute Resolution Methods Produce Better Relationships? - Mar 20 2016
Think of a dispute you’ve had with a person or entity that you
have an ongoing relationship with, like a business, employer, co-worker, or neighbor.
Was that dispute resolved between the two of you, or did it involve a
third-party determination by a judge, arbitrator, superior, or some other
authority? Do you think it mattered how the dispute was...
Labor Relations 101 as Told Through the Musical Newsies - Feb 14 2016
I’m not sure whether to hope that my labor relations
students saw the musical Newsies at the Orpheum during its stop in Minneapolis.
On the one hand, it would be great if they had because it presents some enduring
and important themes. On the other hand, how can my lectures compete with the highly-entertaining
songs, dances, and staging? So...
Don't quit, strike - Jan 30 2016
Last month, about 150 employees at a Cargill meat processing
plant in Colorado were fired for not showing up to work for three days (StarTribune, January 8, 2016). The
workers were protesting what they believed was a change in Cargill policy not
allowing workers to take a prayer break. Religious accommodation, and more
generally, diversity,...
Video Blog on Worker Incentives - Dec 23 2015
As I wrote about in my previous post, I've been working on a foundation HR "course" that will be part of four Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on Human Resource Management Principles for People Managers. This course provides a foundation for managing employees by illustrating alternative human resource management (HRM) strategies, introducing...
And the MOOC Adventure Begins - Nov 28 2015
Along with a few faculty colleagues here in the Center for Human Resources and Labor Studies at the University of
Minnesota, I've been developing a series of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on Human Resource Management Principles for
People Managers. This completely-online specialization, as...
To Tip or Not to Tip, That is the (HR Policy) Question - Oct 27 2015
I often think that us Americans know how to take a good
thing and push it too far (e.g., youth sports, St Patrick’s Day, the size of
burritos). Maybe tipping is next? Just as tipping seems to be expanding, a leading
New York City restauranteur has announced an end to tipping in his restaurants.
Why? With larger tips being given to servers and...
Brief Reflections on Work in Cape Town, South Africa - Sep 17 2015
I recently returned from Cape Town, South Africa, where I
had the pleasure of attending the World Congress of the International Labor and
Employment Relations Association. The conference was very stimulating, and it’s
always good for the ego to have scholars from all over the world wanting to
talk to me about my research--past, present, and...
My friend Bruce Kaufman has produced yet another stimulating and important book. It is easy to think that good human resource management (HRM) practices are universal. Shouldn’t all workers be carefully selected into jobs that are a good fit, provided with feedback and opportunities for development, treated with respect, and rewarded for...
Reflections On My Own Work Experiences - Jul 31 2015
In my May blog posting, I reviewed a new book by Grant Michelson and Shaun Ryan called Just Work. In the tradition of Studs Terkel’s famous book Working, Just Work gives voice to 30 workers. Actually, they gave voice to 32 workers because although they modestly relegated themselves to an appendix, they shared their...
Thoughts on an Earlier Book, Just Work - Jun 15 2015
In my previous post, I reviewed a new book called "Just Work." The funny thing is, this isn't the first book that I've reviewed with this title. Here is my earlier review of Russell Muirhead's book Just Work (Harvard University Press, 2004).
The clever title of Dartmouth government professor Russell Muirhead’s book reflects the...
Thoughts on a New Book, Just Work - May 31 2015
Forty years ago,
Studs Terkel published his famous book Working
in which over 130 individuals provided their own narratives of their work. By
letting workers speak for themselves in their own words with their own
emphases, Working was and remains a
powerful and influential testament to the multi-faceted nature of work that
affects nearly...
‘We’re All in This Together’: The Multi-Stakeholder Imperative for Healthy, Balanced Employment Relationships - Apr 12 2015
Last month I had the pleasure of participating in a European
Union (EU) Presidency event in Riga, Latvia, organized by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) in
cooperation with the Latvian Saeima (Parliament). Eurofound is an agency of the
European Union whose mission is to provide information,...
I cannot attend today's 50th Anniversary Celebration of Richard Walton and Robert McKersie’s seminal 1965 book, A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations. But a conversation last week with Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld prompted me to start thinking about its impact on me. In my final year as an economics Ph.D. student at Princeton
in the early...
Say What? Employee Empowerment Zones? - Feb 08 2015
Illinois’ new Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, gave his first State of the State address this week, which included the following:
We must also empower voters to decide for themselves whether they want their communities to become employee empowerment zones. These zones will give employees the freedom to choose whether or not they want to join a...
What Theory Can and Cannot Do in (HR) Practice - Jan 14 2015
the·o·ry \ˈthir-ē\ : an idea or set of ideas that is intended to explain facts or events (Merriam-Webster)
I’m gearing up to again teach my course on Personnel
Economics to graduate and advanced undergraduate students interested in human
resources (HR). Each time I teach this course, I’m struck by the difficulty
that students have in...
Think of what would make for a lousy job. Low wages, long
hours, little autonomy, autocratic managers. Scholars call this a low-road or
hard human resource management (HRM) approach. But is low-road HRM really HRM?
In a practical sense, yes it is--it’s certainly one way for managing human
resources, so in a definitional way, it's a form of HRM....
It’s no secret that employee wellness is an important issue
today. As just one example, Honeywell’s wellness program penalizes employees if
they don’t complete a biometric screening. According to newspaper reports, the
penalties can include a $500 medical plan surcharge, the loss of up to $1,500
in contributions to health savings accounts, and up...
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the UK
miners strike. The singular watershed event in U.S. labor relations in last the
50 years is arguably the illegal Professional Air Traffic Controllers
Organization (PATCO) strike in 1981. President Ronald Reagan’s firing of the
11,000 striking air traffic controllers is often cited as the event that...
Last week I
was lucky to spend two days in beautiful Tuscany at an excellent ESRC-sponsored seminar on employment regulation hosted by faculty from Newcastle (England),
Strathclyde (Scotland), and Monash (Australia) universities. As the stimulating
presentations unfolded, a pattern emerged: in cases where the geography of
employment regulation...
One of the hottest topics in business schools and in
business is leadership. Business schools are expected to provide a range of leadership
development opportunities, and their graduates—after interviews that invariably emphasize leadership potential or
accomplishments—then enter corporate leadership development programs. Companies
spend...
Earlier this month I attended the International Associationfor Conflict Management (IACM) annual conference outside of Leiden in the
Netherlands (Hup Holland Hup!). The diversity of presentations was stimulating,
including topics ranging from the very micro (e.g., individual interactions) to
the very macro (e.g., international diplomacy and...
What Do Unions in China Do? - Jun 19 2014
After three decades of fast growth, China has become one of
the world’s largest economies, and its labor movement is arguably the world’s
largest. But we are still lacking systematic evidence on the effect of Chinese unions
on wages, employment, and other important economic variables, such as labor
productivity and economic growth. With my...
Contested Ideas About Work: The Crowding Out of the Occupational Citizenship Conceptualization of Work - May 23 2014
Last week I had a stimulating time in Montreal at a
conference on “New Frontiers for Citizenship at Work” sponsored by the InteruniversityResearch Centre on Globalization and Work (CRIMT, from its French equivalent Le
Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la mondialisation et le travail). But
what is citizenship at work? Unfortunately, some...
Moving Past the "Gut Feeling" Rhetoric in HR Analytics - Apr 14 2014
One of the hottest topics among HR professionals is HR analytics. As an empirical scholar who has taught business statistics to numerous HR Master's students at the University of Minnesota, I should be pleased. But there are troubling aspects of the discourse on HR analytics.
For starters, proponents of HR analytics invariably start by...
A St. Patrick's Day Reflection--Heritage and Work - Mar 17 2014
When I was growing up, as far as anyone knew, my family's heritage was entirely English. With the advent of online, searchable Censuses and other genealogical records, however, I discovered that I also have some Irish heritage. So on St. Patrick's Day, I find myself reflecting on my heritage, and asking questions for which there will only be...
Is Making Work More Visible Always Better? - Feb 23 2014
The theme of this year's Eastern Sociological Society Annual Meeting was Invisible Labor. Work can be invisible in two broad ways. First, within the domain of work, some forms of work are celebrated and highly-valued while other forms are marginalized or not even socially recognized as work. In this way, undervalued and overlooked forms of work...
Why HR-OB Still Needs IR - Jan 15 2014
Professor John Godard of the University of Manitoba has just published a very stimulating article that should be read by anyone in employment relations, human resource management, and organizational behavior ("The Psychologisation of Employment Relations?," Human Resource Management Journal, 2014). I have witnessed the trends that John...
HR Pros Ignore Economics at Their Own Peril - Dec 12 2013
While the students in my personnel economics course were taking their exam recently, I was browsing my twitter timeline. In close succession, two tweets jumped out because of their direct relevance to this course. The subject of each tweet was a failed HR policy, but after only a half-semester of personnel economics, every student in my course...
Conceptualizing Work: A History of Powerful Ideas - Nov 03 2013
What is work? Why do we work? How is work valued? These questions are fundamental to any human society. Without a written record, we cannot know with certainty how the earliest humans thought about work, but the importance of sharing food and other resources means that prehistoric work embodied at least an element of serving a community's needs...
Last month I had the pleasure of attending and presenting my work at two stimulating conferences. Interestingly, a prominent speaker at each conference echoed a similar theme--that is, scholars of work and those interested in the well-being of workers and their families need to pay attention not only to rise of job insecurity, but also to the...
Almost a year ago I blogged about my participation in a University of Minnesota conference on "Creating Public Value in a Multi-Sector, Shared-Power World" ("Implicit Public Values and the Creation of Public Value: The Importance of Work and the Contested Role of Labor Unions"). My conference paper has been going through the review process for a...
The (Potential) Benefits of Employee Voice - Jul 24 2013
Last week I had the pleasure of giving a keynote address at a program on "Strengthening Democracy at Work: The Promise of Employee Voice" organized by Andrew Timming and sponsored by the Scottish Universities Insight Institute. The theme of my talk was "The (Potential) Benefits of Employee Voice." To adequately assess the benefits of voice, it is...
Right-to-Request--Let's Give Dialogue a Try - Jun 12 2013
An initiative was launched this week to include a ballot measure for San Francisco voters that would give caregivers and parents a right to request a flexible work schedule from their employers ("Family friendly SF? New measure would pioneer flexible work rules"). Employers would only be allowed to deny such requests if they posed an "undue...
The most contentious issue of the recently-completed Minnesota legislative session was a bill to allow in-home child-care providers and personal care attendants who receive subsidy payments from the state to vote on unionizing. Acrimonious debates in the Senate and the House dragged on for hours and hours, dozens of amendments were introduced in...
A recent New York Times article described a so-called "emerging field called work-force science:
It adds a large dose of data analysis, aka Big Data, to the field of human resource management, which has traditionally relied heavily on gut feel and established practice to guide hiring, promotion and career planning.
While the practice of human...
With many people still buzzing about Yahoo's termination of its telecommuting program, Best Buy has just announced the end of its Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) in which only job performance for corporate employees mattered, not time worked or time spent in the office. Like Yahoo last week, Best Buy attributes its decision to a need for...
Earlier this month I had the pleasure of participating in a very stimulating conference on invisible labor hosted by Washington University's Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Work and Social Capital. My contribution was reflected in an old adage that states that the eye does not see what the mind does not know.
We only see and value work...
The Roots of Words for Work - Jan 15 2013
An article in yesterday's Guardian correctly revealed the negative associations in language that have long been associated with words for work:
Words indicating labour in most European languages originate in an imagery of compulsion, torment, affliction and persecution. The French word travail (and Spanish trabajo), like its English equivalent,...
Why So Many Lockouts? Means, Motive, and Opportunity - Dec 11 2012
It has been an eventful year in labor relations: attacks on the NLRB, controversial ballot initiatives, strikes at Hostess and elsewhere, and, most recently, an attempt to push through controversial right-to-work legislation in Michigan. But to me, the most striking trend (sorry for the pun) is the continued heightened use of lockouts. A lockout...
Dilbert Completes an Employee Survey - Nov 08 2012
In case you missed it, last Sunday's Dilbert comic skewered various of aspects of modern work:
Note the references to paper towels having a purpose (how many workers feel their work lacks purpose?), gross stuff getting to leave (how many workers feel trapped in their jobs?), and the juxtaposition of the organization thinking it values workers...
This week, a Bloomberg News article revealed that the 62,600 jobs slated to eliminated by U.S. companies is the biggest two-month figure in two years. These losses include significant cuts by Ford, Colgate-Palmolive, Dow Chemical, and others. Most telling is the article's revelation that "the reductions coincide with a majority of U.S. companies...
Interview on Employee Voice - Oct 09 2012
While a visiting professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, I was interviewed at Voice Project by my friend Professor Paul Gollan. Here are some excerpts.
Question. In one of your recent journal articles you mentioned that "there has been a sharp increase in interest in employee voice and participation among academics, practitioners, and...
Implicit Public Values and the Creation of Public Value: The Importance of Work and the Contested Role of Labor Unions - Sep 20 2012
Today is the opening day of a conference on "Creating Public Value in a Multi-Sector, Shared-Power World" hosted by the Center for Integrative Leadership at the University of Minnesota. Using Barry Bozeman's definition, public values are the values of a society that provide "normative consensus about (a) the rights, benefits, and prerogatives to...
Celebrating Work...By Not Working? - Sep 03 2012
On Thanksgiving, we give thanks. On Memorial Day, we memorialize those who have sacrificed for us. On religious holidays, we worship. But today, Labor Day, we celebrate work by NOT working. Therein lies the complexities of work. It's important enough to celebrate. Yet in an odd twist of irony, we celebrate through avoidance.
There are many...
Job Quality: An Industrial Relations Perspective - Aug 15 2012
Last month I had the distinct pleasure of participating in the International Expert Conference on Job Quality hosted by Copenhagen Business School. This was a uniquely vibrant conference because it explicitly sought to bring together diverse perspectives on job quality. We need more of these interdisciplinary approaches to important issues...
Tweets from ILERA - Jul 06 2012
I just returned from attending the World Congress of the International Labour and Employment Relations Association (ILERA) in Philadelphia. With over 400 scholars and policymakers from outside of the United States in attendance, it was a very diverse and stimulating conference. Here are my tweets which I hope others will find stimulating in the...
Much has been written about the changing nature of work, but frequently overlooked is the more fundamental question of what is work in a conceptual sense. This is a troubling oversight because unstated definitions of work shape research and practice. As an example, mainstream economic thought implicitly sees work as a lousy activity tolerated only...
Employee Free Speech: Protections Needed in the Social Networking World, and in the Real World - May 17 2012
As the Presidential election campaigns heat up, we are likely to see increased political conversations by employees. Unfortunately, while corporations and other organizations have free speech rights, employees do not. In fact, in at least two recent cases, employees have been fired for the simple expressive act of liking someone on Facebook, such...
As an author of a comprehensive labor relations textbook (Labor Relations: Striking a Balance, McGraw-Hill), I was recently asked to provide some general advice for future human resources and labor relations managers. Issues within the labor relations arena can often be laden with highly-charged and volatile emotions. For complex reasons, the mere...
Frances Perkins: Mother of the New Deal - Apr 10 2012
As the Supreme Court wrestles with the future of U.S. social programs, it seems appropriate to recognize Frances Perkins on her birthday. Perkins was a tireless advocate for workers and their families. She was the first woman to ever hold a U.S. cabinet position, and as Secretary of Labor during the Great Depression she was the driving force...
The Power of Work's Connections in Billy Elliot - Mar 27 2012
While in London for the Voice and Value conference (see The Value of Voice entry), we saw the musical Billy Elliot. I might be biased because my family tree includes miners from County Durham, and because of my interest in labor unions, but anyone who does not believe that work has deep connections with family and community should see this...
The Value of Employee Voice - Mar 19 2012
I write this from 30,994 feet over the North Atlantic on the way back from London where I had the pleasure of participating in the Voice and Value 2012 conference at the London School of Economics. This engaging conference brought together academics, human resources professionals, and trade unionists who believe in the importance of employee voice...
Say What? "There's nothing we can do that is more beneficial for people's freedom and liberty" than a right-to-work law? - Feb 26 2012
In an article in today's Star Tribune ("GOP weighs cost of union battle"), Minnesota State Senator Dave Thompson, a supporter of Minnesota's right-to-work initiative, is quoted as saying about the proposed Minnesota right-to-work law, "In my opinion, there's nothing we can do that is more beneficial for people's freedom and liberty, and creating a...
Ron McCallum and the Importance of Labor Law - Feb 16 2012
Last night I had the distinct pleasure and honor of meeting Professor Ron McCallum and hearing him speak at the University of Sydney. Professor McCallum is arguably Australian's most eminent labor law professor. He is the recipient of many awards, including the Senior Australian of the Year 2011, and is the first totally blind person to have been...
Greetings from Melbourne, Australia! It's interesting being in a country where industrial relations is such a prominent subject. Controversies over industrial relations legislation were central to the federal election campaign in 2007, and the current Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, was Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations before...
Say What? A Right-to-Work? - Feb 04 2012
So-called "right-to-work" laws are again a hot topic of debate. Most right-to-work laws were passed decades ago, but Indiana (Republican) lawmakers hurriedly passed a right-to-work law last week, and Minnesota Republicans are pushing to have a right-to-work law included on the state's November ballot. The conservative perspective was succinctly...
Unlocking iPhone Work - Jan 25 2012
iPhones and other smartphones are frequently sold in a locked format so that Apple and others can dictate how they are used, at least to some extent such as choice of carrier. Apparently, Apple and others would similarly like to dictate a specific narrative about the jobs that Apple creates (or doesn't create). A wonderful New York Times story by...
Say What? Fighting the Jobs Crisis as We Would a War? - Jan 15 2012
Last week I was at the annual meeting of the Labor and Employment Relations Association, an association notable for the number of academics, practitioners, and policymakers who are deeply concerned with employment issues in the United States. One panel featured Bob Herbert, a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos. Mr. Herbert argued that we should...
Making Work Meaningful...By Listening to Me?? - Jan 10 2012
One element of making work meaningful to employees is helping them see how their work fits into broader organizational goals and accomplishments. Indeed, a lack of deeper connections for one's work is part of Karl Marx's argument way back in 1844 that capitalism creates worker alienation, though Marx typically isn't recognized as the basis for...
A New Year's Wish List for Work - Jan 01 2012
Happy New Year! As a new year starts, here is a wish list for work in 2012:
1. That the global unemployment rate declines so that the living standards of workers, their families, and their communities can improve.
2. That those who have too much work get less, and that those who don't have enough find more.
3. That we pay attention to job...
Working Like A Dog? - Dec 28 2011
One of the Christmas gifts received in my dog-loving family was Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You A Better Friend to Your Pet by John Bradshaw (Basic Books, 2011). The book starts with the observation that "dogs today unwittingly find themselves on the verge of a crisis, struggling to keep up with the ever-increasing pace...
I really enjoyed today's Dilbert comic strip:
This is a great illustration of what sociologists label normative control--subtle ways of directing employees to work harder and be more loyal not through traditional forms of structural control such as monitoring and direct supervision, but through workplace norms and identities. If companies are...
What is Worker Well-Being? - Dec 12 2011
The well-being of workers has long been an important issue. As industrialization became widespread in Britain, the United States, and elsewhere, early exposés by Friedrich Engels and Henry Mayhew, novels by Charles Dickens and Émile Zola, the photography of Lewis Hines, and diverse secular and religious reform movements focused attention on...
The Metaphor of the Octopus Worker - Dec 05 2011
Being from the United States where work is mostly about money and where organized labor is frequently demonized, when traveling it's quite refreshing to encounter museums devoted to workers. One such museum is Copenhagen's Arbejdermuseet (Workers' Museum). Among the many stimulating items is a plate from the early 1970s depicting a woman who needs...
Earlier this month there was an article on Yahoo! on the "6 Worst Home Fixes for the Money." The worst of the six is a home office remodel. Part of the rationale is that with the proliferation of wireless devices, people can work anywhere. Fair enough. But what caught my attention was the advice given for those selling a house with a home office:...
What is Work, and Why Does it Matter? - Nov 28 2011
What is work? Is it just a burden to tolerate, or something more? Does it even matter what work is and how it is defined? Yes! Work-related public policies, laws, and judges' decisions are all implicitly shaped by an often unstated view of work. For example, if someone implicitly sees work as a freely-exchanged commodity, it is then difficult to...
Welcome - Nov 28 2011
Welcome to my blog about work. I am a university professor who researches and teaches about diverse aspects of work, employment, and related institutions (e.g., labor unions) from a multidisciplinary perspective drawing on scholarship in industrial relations, economics, law, sociology, psychology, ethics, theology, and other disciplines.
I've...
