Apparently, we have become so used to Federal Labour Minister Lisa Raitt prematurely intervening in public sector labour disputes that, when it happens, it isn’t even considered news any more. (more…)
work
What You Can Do With A Ph.D.
Crowdsourcing and Unpaid Workers: When Worlds Collide
A while ago I wrote about crowdsourcing, which is becoming more and more interesting to me as an organizational theorist. Crowdsourcing bypasses traditional organizational structures and processes by creating what organizational theory would likely identify as a “networked organization”, Crowdsourcing creates a network of supporters around an artist or a project, and that organization can be temporary (for a one-time-only project) or ongoing (when the artist calls on those supporters whenever they have something new they want to pursue).
Thanks to the lively minds over at The Afterword, I was recently alerted to a situation that we might call “crowdsourcing gone wrong”. (more…)
Rocky Mountaineer and Locked-Out Workers Reach Tentative Settlement
According to this story, the Rocky Mountaineer rail service has reached a tentative contract settlement with the onboard workers it locked out more than a year ago. The ratification vote on the contract will take place on Saturday. I’ll post information on the settlement as I come across it.
UPDATE: According to this story from Monday, the workers ratified the contract. A message on Twitter indicated that the new contract includes a 10% pay cut, a requirement that onboard workers share their tips with other staff, and a “payout” (I’m not sure if this is a contract signing bonus, a buyout option for employees who want to leave, or something else), but I haven’t seen any official confirmation of any of these details.
Labour Day News Review
Well, if Labour Day is indeed the time of the year when labour and workers get the most media attention, we might as well take advantage of it and take a quick look at some of what was said. (more…)
Wired Magazine “Severs Relationship” with Jonah Lehrer
Earlier today, the Slate website released this analysis of Jonah Lehrer’s work for Wired magazine and its website. Wired commissioned the analysis after previous work by Lehrer published elsewhere was revealed to have been plagiarized or recycled – but, according to the report’s author, Charles Seife, “Wired.com decided not to publish my full analysis of my findings”.
Several hours after the report was posted on Slate, Wired announced that its relationship with Lehrer has been severed. (more…)
(Not so) Happy Labour Day: How Did We End Up Here?
Labour Day, as my colleague David Doorey points out, is the time of the year when labour relations and unions can be guaranteed a bit of media attention. The “state of the union movement” was something I was thinking about not just because of Labour Day, but while following the recent bargaining dispute between the Society of Professional Engineers and Associates (SPEA) and Candu Energy, and hearing about the latest anti-union diatribe from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. (more…)
My Guest Blog at MARC
Thanks to the folks at MARC (Men Advocating Real Change) for asking me to be a guest blogger on their site this month. I’ve written a post on how and when men can speak out effectively about workplace inequality, which you can find here.
The MARC site has some excellent and very honest discussions taking place. I encourage you to take a look at it.
Late-August Industrial Relations News
Lately I haven’t posted a lot of news from the world of Canadian industrial relations – but suddenly, at the end of the summer, all sorts of things are happening. (more…)
The Lehrer Case, Part III: Being Unethical To Be Successful
I’ve written a few posts already about the Jonah Lehrer story – the case of the writer whose self-plagiarism episode blew up into a case of outright fabrication. This story fascinates me because of what it says about how modern media organizations operate, how writing careers work, and more broadly, about another theme that I’ve also touched on before – definitions of “success”. (more…)
All About Work 