CNBC, April 29, 2014, Tuesday

CNBC

April 29, 2014, Tuesday 

CNBC (full article)

A New Generation of Careers

"Is it jobs that didn't exist, or work that didn't exist or workplace titles that didn't exist?" asked labor economist Linda Barrington, executive director of the Institute for Compensation Studies at Cornell University's Industrial and Labor Relations School.

"Clearly, occupations and jobs have changed a lot," she said. One sign of this is that the BLS is planning a substantial overhaul of job classifications for 2018.

Detroit Free Press, April 28, 2014, Monday

Detroit Free Press

April 28, 2014, Monday

Detroit Free Press (full article)

UAW Seeks Mediation to Settle Dispute with Nissan in Mississippi

Lance Compa, a professor of labor law and international labor rights at Cornell University, said unions successfully used the mediation process about a decade ago with a French multinational clothing manufacturer called Pinault-Printemps-Redoute to organize a plant in Indiana.

Philly.com, April 26, 2014, Saturday

Philly.com

April 26, 2014, Saturday

Philly (full article)

Union Protest Target Crown Holdings Meeting


"It's obvious why unions are doing this," said Lee Adler, who teaches at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. "This is the way one introduces leverage into the conversation with powerful multinational organizations. It not only introduces leverage, but demonstrates leverage."

Crain’s, April 24, 2014, Thursday

Crain’s

April 24, 2014, Thursday

Crain's (full article)

ACA Reinspires Single-Payer Hopes


Some unions are reluctant to support a single-payer system, said Gene Carroll, co-director of the Cornell Union Leadership Institute. Union membership has been dropping for decades, and "for some unions, connection to members is that they're seen as providing health care," he said.

Detroit Free Press, April 21, 2014, Monday

Detroit Free Press

April 21, 2014, Monday

Detroit Free Press (full article)

UAW Drops Appeal in Organizing Loss at VW in Tennessee


Art Wheaton, associate with the Worker Institute at Cornell University, said VW could end the drama instantly by certifying the union and he cannot understand the political opposition. “A politician in Germany would be burned at the stake if they did that.”

Women’s eNews, April 21, 2014, Monday

Women’s eNews

April 21, 2014, Monday

Women's eNews (full article)

Female College Grads Entire Lifetime of Wage Gaps

This poses a challenge in both pinpointing the problem and crafting solutions for it.

"The unexplained gap is unexplained," said Francine Blau, professor of economics at Cornell University, in a phone interview. "Anything we say about it is speculative because that's just the nature of the beast."

However, Blau said the AAUW study is notable because it considers a type of gender wage gap at a time when it would be relatively small. "It's when the workers are just starting out so it's all the more reason to be concerned about it."

Inquisitr, April 19, 2014, Saturday

Inquisitr

April 19, 2014, Saturday

Inquisitr (full article)

Gender Gap Legislation Nixed by, Who Else? Republicans


According to the Daily Beast, despite nefarious Republican number-crunching, Obama’s staff is not only made up of equal numbers of men and women, but tailored pay raises have increased women’s pay to an average of $62,000 a year. That’s 88 percent of what men at the White House earn, which isn’t equal yet, but better than the national average of 77 percent. Francine Blau, a professor of economics at Cornell University, has authored studies on the gender pay gap in the United States.

The Union Edge, April 16, 2014, Wednesday

The Union Edge

April 16, 2014, Wednesday 

The Union Edge (Listen to broadcast)

Bright Obamacare Skies for Insurers


Arthur Wheaton from The Worker Institute is teaching a program on contract and negotiation skills at Cornell, in Buffalo NY and online. 
We talk about the PA Governors race – including incumbent Corbett's attempt to squash Republican challengers- with Frank Snyder, ST of the PA AFL-CIO.

ColorLines, April 16, 2014, Wednesday

ColorLines 

April 16, 2014, Wednesday

ColorLines (full article)

What's a Union For?

In some ways, unions organizing for all workers, not just dues-paying members on the job is a practical matter. Compared to 30 percent of the workforce in the early 1960s, only one out of every 10 American workers is a union member today.

“They’re going to die,” Cornell University labor professor Kate Bronfenbrenner matter-of-factly says, of unions that don’t look beyond workplaces to engage non-union workers in social justice unionism.

Runner’s World, April 10, 2014, Thursday

Runner’s World

April 10, 2014, Thursday

Runner's World (full article)

Controversy at Indoors puts TFAA in the spotlight


“The question of their success probably will have a lot to do with leadership to the extent they can define their issues in a way that a lot of people relate to them,” said Ken Margolies, a senior associate professor at Cornell’s Industrial and Labor Relations School, an expert on organizing unions. “In most organizing, the key thing is who steps forward and says, ‘I’m for this.’ In a field like athletics it probably has to be some of the more prominent athletes in the field.

KSPR, April 8, 2014, Tuesday

KSPR 

April 8, 2014, Tuesday

KSPR (full article)

Can Workers Talk About Pay?

Half of all workers report that talking about wage information is either discouraged or prohibited and could lead to punishment, according to a survey from the Institute of Women's Policy Research and the Rockefeller Foundation.

The effort to boost transparency over wages is not new, said Esta Bigler, the director of the Labor and Employment Program at Cornell University.

Market Place, April 7, 2014, Monday

Market Place 

April 7, 2014, Monday

MarketPlace (full article)

The Best and Worst States on Closing the Gender Pay Gap

But it is unclear exactly how these orders will be meaningful. "I think they are much more symbolic, to get us talking about the wage gap," Linda Barrington with the Institute for Compensation Studies at Cornell noted, adding that "if we don’t do that, we can’t reduce the wage gap."

Dissent Magazine, April 4, 2014, Friday

Dissent Magazine 

April 4, 2014, Friday 

Dissent (full podcast)

NLRB Northwestern Decision

Is the era of the student athlete over? This week on Belabored, we discuss the groundbreaking decision by National Labor Relations Board Region 13 that Northwestern University’s football players are employees and thus eligible to form a union. We are joined to break down the decision by Lee Adler of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the Worker Institute, who discusses the work college athletes do, what impact this decision will have on athletes outside of the "major" sports, and the power shifts facing the NCAA. 

The Boston Globe, April 6, 2014, Sunday

The Boston Globe 

April 6, 2014, Sunday 

The Boston Globe (full article)

Not Your Grandpa's Labor Union

“Most of our labor law is built on this New Deal vision of the industrial workforce, when it was fairly clear who the employers were,” said Kate Griffith, an associate professor at Cornell University’s ILR School and cochair of the Precarious Workers Initiative. “Generally speaking, there wasn’t the same level of complexity that we have now.” Figuring out how to organize workers who would otherwise be excluded from the labor movement entirely, Griffith said, is an attempt to “adapt the old labor law model to new realities.”

Crain’s, April 2, 2014, Wednesday

Crain’s 

April 2, 2014, Wednesday 

Crain's (full article)

Apartment Workers Likely to Put Strike on the Table

“The board was trying to make some major changes in the basic structure of the agreement, and the union rallied to show them that wasn’t a good idea,” said Ken Margolies, senior associate at Cornell University’s The Worker Institute. “Had the union not done that, it would have been in a much more difficult situation.”

CNN Money, April 1, 2014, Tuesday

CNN Money 

April 1, 2014, Tuesday 

CNN Money (full article)

In Battling German Unions, Will Amazon Emulate Walmart?

Though Amazon's run-ins with Germany's retail worker union mirror Wal-Mart's, the online retailer seems to have a lot more at stake. While Wal-Mart failed to gain traction in Germany -- seven years in it had captured just 2% of German food sales and sold its stores at a $1 billion loss -- Amazon's sales have soared in the country -- by about 12% in 2013 -- making Germany the online retailer's second-biggest market behind the U.S.

"The trade unions have a lot of bargaining power," says Lowell Turner, director of The Worker Institute at Cornell University. "Germany is a big market for Amazon. This is going to keep happening until Amazon gets its act together."

Roll Call, March 26, 2014, Sunday

Roll Call 

March 26, 2014, Sunday

Roll Call (full article)

History Shows Overtime Pay Protections Are Disconnected From Employer Hiring

But even then, it seems overtime pay had little effect on hiring. A 1998 paper by labor historian Dora Costa looking at the 1938-1950 period found that overtime rules reduced the number of hours worked but did not directly translate into an increase in employment, although some increase in hiring may have been offset by minimum wages that were also mandated in the law.

Ronald Ehrenberg, an economist at Cornell University who has also written extensively about overtime, likewise found little evidence that increasing overtime pay would lead to an increase in hiring.

The Motley Fool, March 22, 2014, Saturday

The Motley Fool 

March 22, 2014, Saturday

The Motley Fool (full article)

The Gender Pay Gap Costs Women More than $500 Billion Every Year

This can explain some, but not all, of the wage gap -- a fairly recent study by economists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn took these and other sociocultural factors into account, but still found that a woman working the same job as a man was likely to earn $0.91 per dollar earned by her male counterpart.

Herald Business Journal, March 21, 2014, Friday

Herald Business Journal 

March 21, 2014, Friday

Herald Business Journal (full article)

New Machinists leader says he's focused on healing divisions

Indeed, across the country, unions face an uphill fight in the private sector.

Economic pressure and the ability of companies to shift work means many people are worried about holding onto jobs, said Art Wheaton, a faculty member and labor relations expert at the Worker Institute at Cornell University.

Earlier this year, the United Auto Workers were dealt a tough defeat when workers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee voted against joining the union. VW had actually stayed out of the debate, but outside anti-union groups stepped in to oppose UAW expansion in the South.

CNN Money, January 8, 2014, Wednesday

CNN Money 

January 8, 2014, Wednesday

CNN Money (full article)

Why bossnappings and France are like baguette and brie

"This is [France's] version of civil disobedience," says Lowell Turner, director of The Worker Institute at Cornell University, and the tactic, he says, gets a tremendous amount of public support. That makes sense, considering how well bossnappings fit into France's long history of civil defiance, which dates back to the French Revolution, says Turner, who studies labor in Europe and the U.S. In the ongoing battle between workers and large multinational corporations, French people's social and political instincts lead them to side with the workers, he says.