Recently in Employment Practices Category

Source: Doug Goodman and Stacey Mann, Public Personnel Management, Volume 39 No. 3, Fall 2010
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In recent years, Mississippi has temporarily suspended civil service protections for employees in some departments, reorganized those departments, and then reinstated civil service protection in those departments. State HR directors are surveyed to seek their opinions about at-will employment. Five survey items focus on the respondents' opinions concerning at-will employment as a managerial instrument; the responses are discussed and analyzed. We find that HR directors from smaller agencies and HR directors who trust political officials find utility in at-will employment as a managerial tool. We also find that female HR directors and HR directors with private sector experience disagree with the at-will employment in the public sector as a managerial tool.

Source: Julia Rose Adler-Milstein, Sara J. Singer, and Michael W. Toffel, Harvard Business School Working Papers, August 25, 2010

From the summary:
How can front-line workers be encouraged to speak up when they know how to improve an organization's operation processes? This question is particularly urgent in the U.S. health-care industry, where problems occur often and consequences range from minor inconveniences to serious patient harm. In this paper, HBS doctoral student Julia Adler-Milstein, Harvard School of Public Health professor Sara Singer, and HBS professor Michael W. Toffel examine the effectiveness of organizational information campaigns and managerial role modeling in encouraging hospital staff to speak up when they encounter operational problems and, when speaking up, to propose solutions to hospital management. The researchers find that both mechanisms can lead employees to report problems and propose solutions, and that information campaigns are particularly effective in departments whose managers are less engaged in problem solving. Key concepts include:

- Front-line workers offer more solutions to operational problems in departments whose managers are more engaged in problem solving.
- Information campaigns that promote process improvement generate more solutions from front-line workers, especially from workers whose managers are less routinely engaged in problem solving.
- Efforts at the organizational level can compensate for managers who cannot or do not create an environment that inspires front-line workers to speak up.

Source: Robert N. Roberts, Public Administration Review, Volume 70, Issue 4, July/August 2010
(subscription required)

From the abstract:
What has been the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2009 decision in Ricci v. Destefano on the selection and promotion practices of public employers?; Relying solely on circumstantial evidence, the Supreme Court held that the Civil Service Board of New Haven, Connecticut, had engaged in Title VII disparate treatment discrimination by refusing to certify the results of a promotion examination that led, in turn, to a disparate impact on African American firefighters. To limit the discretion of public employers to disregard such selection and promotion exam results, the Ricci majority held that a public employer must "have a strong basis in evidence to believe it will be subject to disparate-impact liability if it fails to the take the race-conscious discriminatory action." This article argues that the decision effectively prohibits public employers from rejecting the results of selection and promotion instruments, even though there is evidence that screening instruments inequitably affect protected groups. It also forces public employers to become more careful in developing selection and promotion examinations or face the possibility of costly Title VII litigation.

Source: by the National Employment Law Project for the Just Pay Working Group, April 2010

Too many workers in the United States are not paid for their work, earning below the minimum wage in industries that are at the heart of our economy. Employers in retail, janitorial, hospitality, construction, home care, agriculture and trucking offer subpar wages and then do not pay for overtime hours worked. A national survey of workers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago found that 26 percent of workers were paid less than the minimum wage, and an astonishing 75 percent were not paid overtime pay in the previous week.

Workers are reluctant to complain for fear of losing their jobs, a dire result in today's tight labor market. And, the U.S. Department of Labor, the federal agency charged with ensuring fair pay and accepting worker complaints, recently was described as ineffective in a series of Government Accountability Offce (GAO) reports chronicling the agency's inaction in the years leading up to the current administration. This lack of a public enforcement actor in the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has perpetuated workplace lawlessness and has hurt law-abiding businesses, workers and our economy.

Source: NPR, 2010

Stories include:
- Diversity Efforts Uneven In U.S. Companies
- The Promise Of Diversity Is Yet To Be Fulfilled
- Introspection After Allegations Of Discrimination
- In-House Resource Groups Can Help And Harm
- Defining Diversity: Beyond Race And Gender
- Gay In The Office: The Last Frontier Of Workplace Equality
- 'Mad Men' Haven't Changed Much Since The 1960s
- Should 'The Office' Be Used In HR Training?

Source: Peter Coy, Michelle Conlin and Moira Herbst, Business Week, no. 4163, January 18, 2009

Pay is falling, benefits are vanishing, and no one's job is secure. How companies are making the era of the temp more than temporary.

...You know American workers are in bad shape when a low-paying, no-benefits job is considered a sweet deal. Their situation isn't likely to improve soon; some economists predict it will be years, not months, before employees regain any semblance of bargaining power. That's because this recession's unusual ferocity has accelerated trends--including offshoring, automation, the decline of labor unions' influence, new management techniques, and regulatory changes--that already had been eroding workers' economic standing.

Source: Diane Rehm Show, December 14, 2009

American workers are short-changed on vacation days, sick leave and benefits compared to their counterparts in other nations. The case for improving work life in the U.S. and around the world.
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Source: Jody Heymann and Alison Earle, Stanford Politics and Policy, October 28, 2009
(purchase required)

From the press release:
A major new study by researchers at Harvard and McGill Universities - the largest ever to look at working conditions worldwide - finds the United States far behind other economically successful nations in terms of adopting policies that support workers and families. The new study finds that 14 of the world's 15 most competitive countries provide paid sick leave, 13 guarantee paid leave for new mothers, 12 provide paid leave for new fathers, 11 provide paid leave to care for children's health needs, eight provide paid leave to care for adult family members, and seven guarantee breastfeeding breaks to nursing mothers on the job. At the federal level, the United States offers its workers none of those supports.

Raising the Global Floor: Dismantling the Myth that We Can't Afford Good Working Conditions for Everyone examines policies, protections and supports in 190 of the world's 192 United Nations countries. It is the most extensive study ever conducted on these issues. Released today, the new book is published by Stanford University Press and written by Jody Heymann, Founding Director of the Institute for Health and Social Policy at McGill University and Alison Earle, while a Research Scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health. They were aided in the study by a team of international researchers who also examined the working conditions faced by 55,000 households in seven countries on five continents.

Raising the Global Floor also finds that:

* 163 nations around the world guarantee paid sick leave; the U.S. does not.
* 164 nations guarantee paid annual leave; the U.S. does not.
* 177 nations guarantee paid leave for new mothers; the U.S. does not.
* 74 nations guarantee paid leave for new fathers; the U.S. does not.
* 48 nations guarantee paid time off to care for children's health; the U.S. does not.
* 157 nations guarantee workers a day of rest each week; the U.S. does not.
* 148 nations guarantee a wage premium for mandatory overtime, including the U.S.

Source: Lindsay Beyerstein, In these Times, November 12, 2009

The tempification of the American workforce continues apace. While job losses make headlines, we don't hear as much about an equally insidious trend: real jobs with benefits are being replaced by "contracting opportunities" and temporary placements.

Source: Tristin Green, Emory Law Journal, 2009

From the abstract:
This Article provides the first extended analysis of the conscious use of race and sex in decisions organizing work. It takes the position that race and sex are being used in organizing work-in assigning clients and job tasks, in composing work teams, in staffing committees and outreach groups-and that they are being used pursuant to a "diversity" narrative in ways that are likely to entrench workplace inequality. At the same time, it argues that race and sex could be used in those same decisions to reduce workplace discrimination and to further equality in work. Drawing on a rich body of research in sociology, social psychology, and organizational theory, the Article exposes the risks and possibilities of race and sex in organizing work by focusing on the role that social interactions play in producing and reproducing disadvantage and on the role of organizational and institutional structures in shaping those interactions.

Based on this empirical foundation and on the Supreme Court case law governing the use of race and sex in employment decisions under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Article advances a comprehensive approach to the permissibility of race and sex in decisions organizing work. It argues that Title VII permits the use of race and sex in decisions organizing work to serve the goal of reducing employment discrimination, provided that individual race- and sex-based decisions are part of an employer's systemic integrative effort. This approach recognizes that decisions organizing work differ from decisions at moments of entry, promotion, and exit in ways that matter to an anti discrimination analysis. They are "softer" in that their benefits and harms are not always immediately discernible, and they can impose costs as well as benefits on women and people of color, even when they are intended to (and do) further anti discrimination goals. The approach to Title VII developed in this Article accounts for these differences and offers a unique opportunity to harness the existing business case for diversity to progress meaningful integration in work and to foster reduced workplace discrimination.