Labour

Faculty of Law's Global Professional Master of Laws program launches concentration in law of leadership

noreen.rasbach — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 17:44:37 +0000

Faculty of Law's Global Professional Master of Laws program launches concentration in law of leadership

noreen.rasbach Tue, 04/23/2019 - 13:44

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(photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

Karen Gross

Topic

Our Community

Academics

Faculty of Law

Graduate Students

Labour

Navigating today’s ever evolving, increasingly complex human rights and health and safety legislation can be treacherous for even the most informed employers and managers.

“The legal obligations on employers are much more robust than they used to be,” says Faculty of Law alumna and adjunct professor Emma Phillips. “Employees are much more aware of what their rights and protections are, particularly in the wake of #MeToo.”

Phillips, an expert in labour law with Goldblatt Partners, will be co-teaching Harassment, Discrimination, and the Duty to Accommodate, as part of the Global Professional LLM program's new law of leadership concentration, curated for executives and leaders in industries such as corporate, non-profit, public service, education and health management.

“It actually is very well-suited for people who aren’t necessarily doing everyday HR, but are a step removed. They need to have a broad understanding of what the rights and obligations are in the workplace,” she says.

The law of leadership concentration offers seasoned professionals – lawyers and non-lawyers – with the opportunity to learn from the top legal minds in North America and global industry experts. Launching in September, the one-year executive graduate degree is offered in the evenings and on weekends, and provides flexibility in course selection across four concentrations offered in the Global Professional LLM program.

In addition to her day job handling complex grievances, labour arbitration cases, collective bargaining and Charter litigation, Phillips frequently conducts workplace training on harassment and discrimination prevention and implicit bias, working with new employees as well as managers and executives.

“They’re the ones who are ultimately responsible under the law for ensuring their organization is meeting its obligations,” she notes, which is why Phillips believes participants will find the class extremely helpful. “I want to provide them with enough information so they understand where there are red flags, so they have a legal framework they weren’t previously aware of, so they know when to call general counsel or outside counsel. That’s ultimately what the course is designed to do, because not everybody goes to law school.”

To illustrate her point, Phillips cited a case she recently handled involving an employee at a large, unionized organization in Toronto. The woman developed a medical condition that required surgery. The residual symptoms left her unable to stand for long periods of time, making a subway commute during rush hour difficult. What should have been a straightforward request for a modified work schedule of 7 to 3 instead of 9 to 5, instead brought an avalanche of easily avoidable consequences.

“Her manager regarded her with a lot of suspicion, didn’t think she needed the accommodation, thought that this was all just a way to get a schedule that was more preferential and favourable rather than something that was actually medically necessary,” Phillips recalls. “The employee was sent back to the doctor on numerous occasions for additional medical reports. She ended up feeling mistrusted and harassed and ultimately brought a harassment complaint against the manager and a grievance under her union’s collective agreement, based on the employer’s failure to accommodate.”

The fallout affected all sides. Psychological stress exacerbated the employee’s medical condition, and left her on long-term disability. The employer was deprived of a competent and experienced employee, along with having to bear the financial costs of her disability and grievance arbitration. Employee morale was eroded. “That’s the kind of case where I would hope by providing those in senior management positions with an understanding of the duty to accommodate, we could avoid the harms done both to individual employees and to the organization,” Phillips says.

It’s the kind of case she sees fairly frequently and which Phillips believes managers should be able to identify and handle appropriately. Other potential pitfalls for managers may include disclosed or undisclosed mental health issues, and implicit bias – where what starts as misunderstandings can often lead to misery.

“There are all kinds of interactions in the workplace that people might feel were well-intentioned, but that others might perceive as harassment or bias,” Phillips says. “There’s a common myth that you have to have intended to make an offensive comment for it to constitute harassment. In fact the test is that you knew or ought to have known your conduct would be unwelcome.”

Phillips will co-teach the course with Pamela Chapman, a labour lawyer, former vice-chair of the Ontario Labour Relations Board and former member of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. She’ll bring an entirely different point of view to the discussion. “We’ll get to hear her insights from the perspective of an adjudicator,” Phillips says. “That too will be of enormous benefit to the students.”

Emily Orchard, assistant dean of the Global Professional LLM program, says in today's political and social climate, the law of leadership concentration is more important than ever.

“Privacy, human rights, employment, and dispute resolution are among the many issues leaders grapple with on a daily basis, and it’s becoming increasingly necessary to understand how to manage them from a legal perspective. The first of its kind in Ontario, we launched the law of leadership concentration because we saw a need in the market for a program that could provide leaders with the legal knowledge necessary to make sound decisions for their organizations.”

Applications to the program are currently being accepted.

U of T expert on how youth activism is kicking unpaid internships to the curb

noreen.rasbach — Thu, 07 Jun 2018 16:48:27 +0000

U of T expert on how youth activism is kicking unpaid internships to the curb noreen.rasbach Thu, 06/07/2018 - 12:48

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Unpaid interns protest in Geneva in 2016. Activism has played a big part in how unpaid internships are now being regarded with disdain (photo by Global Intern Coalition)

It’s job search season for students and fresh graduates, which means a bump in media interest in internships.

Barely a decade ago, we’d expect news articles to include tips for landing a “dream internship” or to quote an employer boasting that unpaid interns are economically efficient for firms. But today, the media coverage generally takes a different tone.

For example, the U.K.‘s The Guardian recently called out British Vogue for recruiting unpaid interns.

The article’s main source is an intern advocate who reported the fashion magazine to Britain’s HM Revenue and Customs for potentially violating minimum wage laws.

It notes that a Vogue “workplace shadowing” role undermines the editor’s stated commitment to expand diversity at the magazine since unpaid internships generally exclude people who can’t afford to work for free and generally favour the children of the wealthy.

In Canada on International Women’s Day, CBC News reported on the need for improved protections against sexual harassment of unpaid interns.

Sexual harassment in the workplace is one of many ordeals faced by unpaid interns (photo by Shutterstock)

What’s behind the pivot in public opinion that has seen internships shift from a benign rite of passage to a lightning rod workers’ rights issue? Activism.

Since 2010, an intern rights movement has been remarkably successful at winning victories for interns, drawing attention to just one vital issue of workers’ rights.

Activism has made a difference

As part of our research on collective responses to precarious work in cultural and creative industries, we have been tracking how young workers, interns past and present and their allies are confronting unpaid internships and the cultural conditions that condone them. They’re doing so via protests, online campaigns and government lobbying.

Grassroots intern labour groups are led by young people motivated by their own experiences and those of their peers, who are underemployed, engaged in long stretches of unpaid work or simply unable to afford to work for no pay.

Groups such as Intern Aware and Precarious Workers Brigade in the U.K., Intern Labor Rights in the United States, Interns Australia and the Canadian Intern Association (on whose advisory board two of us sit) have formed to protest the pressure to work for no wages to gain “experience.”

These groups have produced research and educational texts (such as Surviving Internships: A Counter Guide to Free Labour in the Arts) and staged demonstrations that grab headlines.

Under the banner of the Global Intern Coalition, intern organizations have orchestrated an annual Global Intern Strike, a day each February where interns worldwide protest unpaid work in fields such as international development, arts and culture and in various academic programs.

UN interns not diverse

This past February, thousands of students protested in Quebec – their slogan, “exploitation is not a vocation” – while United Nations interns emphasized the high cost of interning at the UN, which can block people from diverse economic and cultural backgrounds from vital work experience.

According to the Fair Internship Initiative, 64 per cent of UN interns come from high-income countries.

Collectively, intern advocates have shaken up consensus on unpaid internships.

As part of our aforementioned research, we analyzed hundreds of news media articles between 2008 and 2015 and traced a shift in tone in how unpaid internships are covered, who is quoted as sources and what narrative devices journalists use to help tell stories about unpaid internships.

Early articles typically endorsed internships. They positioned unpaid internships as essential for standing out in a hyper-competitive labour market and relied on employers and career counsellors as go-to sources.

During the 2008-2009 recession, internships were viewed more critically and contextualized as a side effect of youth unemployment, but generally articles aligned with employer interest in attracting cheap labour. Unpaid internships were pitched as future investments, reinforcing the outlook that optimizing their employability is every young person’s calling.

As the years progressed, interpretations shifted. Articles begin to emphasize class-based exclusion in the intern economy, challenging assumptions about meritocracy and a slew of articles took a legal angle, focusing on employers that break minimum wage regulations.

Narrative changed

By 2015, the voices of interns and activists were being amplified, helping shift the narrative. Activists wrote op-eds, served as accessible sources for journalists and held events that spurred media coverage, including descending upon London’s Serpentine Gallery dressed as Santa Clauses carrying signs reading: “All we want for Xmas is pay.”

Tracing coverage over time shows that intern labour activism has had concrete effects, altering public discourse about unpaid internships and informing government policy reform on internships in countries like Canada and the U.K.

Activists have brought attention to unpaid internships and their deleterious effects by naming and shaming employers who break minimum wage law on social media, and have pushed governments to make concrete changes to legal and policy structures.

Video by Euractiv

The Canadian Intern Association has been a major player in shifting Canadian policy.

In 2017, the federal government banned unpaid internships in federally regulated industries. In Ontario, the province’s Ministry of Labour clarified that unpaid internships are legal in very few instances – typically only for-credit academic internships.

U.S. law has been amended to protect interns against sexual harassment. Some media unions, like at VICE Canada, have collectively bargained for minimum hourly rates for interns.

In the U.K., various political officials support placing a four-week cap on internships, and a bill to that effect is making its way through the Upper Chamber.

Setbacks, challenges

Intern activists have made meaningful gains. But there are setbacks and new challenges.

Earlier this year, for example, the U.S. Department of Labor brought in measures that make it more difficult for an unpaid intern to argue they are entitled to a wage.

Shining the spotlight on unpaid internships is not the end of a struggle, but rather a training ground.

Advocates who have led the fight against unpaid internships, often a young person’s first foray into the labour market, have raised awareness about difficult labour conditions and have fought for the tenet that workplace inequalities are unacceptable and must not be regarded as inevitable.

Displacing the cliché “pay your dues” with the call to “pay your interns” is a significant achievement for a young movement.

Challenges, of course, remain. Improved regulations are only as good as enforcement, for example. Without careful oversight, unpaid internships will continue informally.

What is clear, however, is that the “experiential learning” of the intern rights movement over the last few years can only help in the broader labour battles to come.

Nicole Cohen is an assistant professor at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology at the ��Ƶ Mississauga. Greig de Peuter is an associate professor of communication studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Kate Oakley is a professor of cultural policy at the University of Leeds.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Disrupting the disruptors: U of T event looks at worker resistance in companies like Uber, Amazon

Romi Levine — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 15:30:08 +0000

Disrupting the disruptors: U of T event looks at worker resistance in companies like Uber, Amazon

Romi Levine Mon, 03/05/2018 - 10:30

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Workers in the platform economy are finding ways to fight for better working conditions (Photo by rawpixel.com via Unsplash)

Romi Levine

Topic

City & Culture

Cities

Faculty of Information

Labour

McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology

U of T Mississauga

We’re all tapped into the platform economy – from using ridesharing apps to ordering food from an online delivery service – where we enjoy fast and efficient service for a reasonable price.

But it’s easy to take these services for granted without understanding what goes on behind the scenes.

Tomorrow, academics and tech workers from Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. are coming together at the ��Ƶ to talk about what happens when tech economy workers start fighting for better working conditions at Log Out! Worker Resistance Within and Against the Platform Economy – organized by the McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology in the Faculty of Information.

Alessandro Delfanti (pictured left), an assistant professor at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology at U of T Mississauga, is one of the organizers and a speaker at the event. He spoke with U of T News about the perils of the platform economy and what consumers should be paying attention to.

Do you think it's important for consumers of the platform economy – users of apps like Uber and Foodora – to know about the underlying issues facing workers?

I think so. If you only approach these companies or the platform economy as a consumer, you only see something very efficient or possibly cheap and convenient, but you don't see the underlying labour relationships.

This labour is hidden from our view so, from a consumer perspective, you will miss out on many important things that happen that are hidden because of the way labour is organized.

When you order something from Amazon, you don't see what happens in those gigantic warehouses where people perform this super physical, exhausting labour, moving, picking and sorting commodities around.

In some cases it’s more visible – when you order a pizza through Foodora, you'll see the rider – same for Uber. But what you don’t see is the day-to-day struggles they have to deal with and what you don't see is the employment relations and the claims people are making. It's a hyper-casualized form of employment in many cases and it’s very difficult as consumers to tell the difference between an Uber driver and a taxi driver, for example.

What kinds of changes are taking place in the platform economy?

It’s very interesting because we see what Silicon Valley calls disruption as being very big, quickly changing markets, quickly modifying the rules of the games within labour relationships. But what’s interesting is that workers also have been very quick to pick up on these challenges and provide their own reaction and/or response to this.

In other moments in history when there's been a dramatic technological reorganization of labour like the Industrial Revolution in the 19^th century, it's taken decades for workers to find new ways to mobilize within that new environment and find ways to improve their conditions within a new technological paradigm.

With digital labour, it’s happening very, very quickly. In a matter of a few years, we've seen a wave of worker struggles and new forms of mobilization. So disruptive also in terms of the speed at which this phenomenon is emerging.

What will you be speaking about at the event?

I'm speaking in particular about e-commerce. Whenever you buy something on Amazon, H&M or Ikea online, there's hidden labour happening in these gigantic warehouses that tend to be a place in the outskirts of metropolitan areas. I'm looking at what happens within those distribution hubs or warehouses – the problems workers are facing and the ways they're mobilizing and the demands they're making.

Are there any speakers you're particularly looking forward to hearing from?

Among the speakers there are digital workers – people who are working for platform-based companies or mobilizing within the workforce. For example, Callum Cant is a Deliveroo rider (Foodora-like delivery app) so his research is based on his own experiences, being part of mobilization to improve the conditions of Deliveroo or food riders in the U.K.

Kristy Milland, who is from Toronto, is an Amazon Mechanical Turk worker – a platform owned by Amazon that is based on online work so you can buy a service from Amazon Mechanical Turk and a mass of online workers distributed across the globe will perform it for you. She has experience as a worker and an organizer on that side of Amazon.

The tech workers coalition – that's a coalition of workers from the Silicon Valley – they're going to talk about the conditions labour is facing in the Silicon Valley on the engineering side.

Why was it important to you to bring together academics and representatives from the tech industry?

Having workers participate in this conversation is crucial if you want to know what's going on in the field and if you want to know what the problems and the claims are.

You don't see the kinds of claims workers make, for example, for Foodora and Deliveroo riders, they want to stop working in a piecework setting – when you're paid by the delivery – but rather they want to have an hourly wage or some guaranteed hours they can work every week so their salary is constant over time.

Canada should prepare for new technology spurring job loss, says U of T innovation expert

ullahnor — Fri, 17 Mar 2017 17:26:50 +0000

Canada should prepare for new technology spurring job loss, says U of T innovation expert

ullahnor Fri, 03/17/2017 - 13:26

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Robots building cars in a car factory. Being proactive can help Canadians prepare and adapt as the advent of artificial intelligence, information technology and robotics eliminate jobs, says David Ticoll (photo by spencer cooper via Flickr)

Daviel Lazure Vieira

Author legacy

Daviel Lazure Vieira

Topic

City & Culture

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Innovation Policy Lab

Automation

Labour

Economy

Subheadline

“If we do things right we will adapt faster than anyone”

The economic impact of an automated workforce will be much bigger than many observers expect, says Dave Ticoll, of the Innovation Policy Lab at the ��Ƶ’s Munk School of Global Affairs.

But Canada is uniquely placed to manage structural change, says Ticoll, who recently wrote an article detailing his views on labour obsolescence for Policy Options.

“If we do things right we will adapt faster than anyone.”

With the advent of artificial intelligence, information technology and robotics, we’re experiencing a significant shift in today’s economy, says the entrepreneur. And although experts have talked about labour substitution, where machines take over human work, little is said about labour obsolescence, Ticoll says. This is when technology change produces a new business model that no longer needs or supports some jobs. The work associated with these jobs doesn’t get automated – it simply becomes unnecessary.

The changing car industry is a good example, he says. Ticoll expects many people to forego car ownership in favour of on-demand, automated transportation services. Reduced car sales mean less need for car dealers and insurance brokers. Their jobs won’t get automated, Ticoll says – they will simply go away.

The shift is occurring in many industries, he says. As more consumers bypass malls in favour of online buying, for instance, retail clerks are replaced by technology. However, the demand decreases for shopping mall employees like maintenance personnel and facility planners.

Ticoll believes we’re underestimating the scale of structural changes to come.

“Traditional jobs automation research focuses on one question: can a computer do this work?” Ticoll says. “But to forecast labour obsolescence we must assess both technology and business innovation as they play out in a specific sector.”

For the auto industry, Ticoll predicts, connected and automated vehicles will be the norm by the 2030s. According to his analysis, this change will affect jobs that currently employ 1.1 million Canadians. Of these, up to half (like truck drivers) will face direct competition from automation, while the remainder are at risk of functional obsolescence.

“We need to change the way we operate for the 21st century economy”

Many other industries will be affected by such technology and business model shifts.

“We need to change the way we operate for the 21st century economy,” he says. “For example, more people need STEM skills – science, technology, engineering, mathematics.”

Increasingly, he says, governments at all levels are taking action on this front.

Ticoll cautions that fostering STEM skills won’t be enough. Income inequality and precarious jobs are on the rise and Canada must ensure that those affected aren’t left behind. Possible solutions range from the adoption of a universal basic income, which the Ontario government is slated to pilot, to a proposal from Bill Gates to tax robots.

Despite labour challenges, Ticoll believes that Canada is uniquely placed to succeed in navigating structural change.

“Canada is a relatively small country compared with the United States, China or Europe. Our labour force is only about 18 million people. So we could potentially achieve a higher density of people with technological skills. It’s easier to train and keep occupied 18 million people than 10 or 20 times that number. If we do things right we will adapt faster than anyone.”

U of T's Dionne Pohler on power, the future of unions and what we can learn from Uber

ullahnor — Tue, 03 Jan 2017 21:32:08 +0000

U of T's Dionne Pohler on power, the future of unions and what we can learn from Uber

ullahnor Tue, 01/03/2017 - 16:32

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Dionne Pohler, assistant professor of human resources management, also researches labour policy (photo by Diana Tyszko)

Sean Bettam

Author legacy

Sean Bettam

Topic

City & Culture

Human Resources & Equity

Faculty of Arts & Science

Subheadline

Human resources scholar driven by a love of labour

Dionne Pohler recently joined the Faculty of Arts & Science, teaching strategic human resources planning and foundations of employment relations.

Prior to joining U of T as an assistant professor, Pohler was a frequent voice of labour insight in the media, commenting on topics like the role and regulation of human resource (HR) professionals, union strikes and employer lockouts, union advertising, essential services legislation and the right to strike.

At U of T's Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources, her focus will be on understanding the dynamic intersection of employment regulations, organizational strategy, HR systems, unions and employee voice. She also studies alternative ways of governing organizations and employment relationships.

She spoke with U of T's Sean Bettam about how the nature of work at the dawn of the 21st century is changing and how companies like Uber have created a new labour market.

Your work explores many aspects of labour relations and how organizations and employment relationships are governed. How do you tie them together?

Put simply, my research examines governance – who gets to decide what and how – in interdependent systems, and how this affects outcomes for different organizational stakeholders. I am particularly interested in studying the formal and informal arrangements that determine how power is allocated and exercised in employment relationships, organizations, professions and organizational networks, and the relative effectiveness of different governance arrangements in achieving efficiency, equity, sustainability, voice and legitimacy particularly for workers.

How is the rapid advancement of technology changing the nature of work?

The most popular recent example of how technology is changing the nature of work and employment relationships is the introduction of Uber. Uber created a completely new labour market and allowed for incredible worker flexibility and control over hours and working conditions.

However, what was most fascinating for me in observing the public controversy and policy debates over Uber was that even though this technology caused a massive industry disruption, the perennial concerns about protection of workers remained. For instance, there was still a perceived imbalance of power between capital and labour, and regulatory concerns centered on whether drivers were contractors or employees, driver access to insurance, health and safety issues and human rights.

You’ve done considerable research on unions and how their role within an organization has evolved over time. What is the place of unions today?

Unions, like any institution or organization, need to engage in ongoing struggles for legitimacy and relevance. This requires re-thinking strategies and even philosophies to be able to adapt and survive in a changing environment.

The vast majority of collective bargaining negotiations conclude without strikes or lockouts, so you rarely get the stoppages that bring work to a halt that are often threatened. The public needs to be aware that in a capitalist system, unions generally promote economic and social stability.

In countries where we have seen the power of unions decline at a much more rapid rate than in Canada – like the United States and the United Kingdom – we are observing increasing societal unrest and concerns about rising economic inequality. This definitely had some impact on the results of the American election and the Brexit referendum, though how much of an impact relative to other factors is still unclear.

Research is pointing toward a link between the decline of unions and rising inequality in liberal market economies. However, due to globalization, unions will likely never have the same impact they once did, so we need to think about new and innovative ways to ensure that the relative power between capital and labour does not fall too far out of balance with negative consequences for organizational efficiency, employee equity and voice, and ultimately society.

Why did you choose to come to U of T? How will being in Toronto enhance your research and teaching?

The ��Ƶ is the top research university in Canada, and one of the top research universities in the world. I want to push myself to reach that level of excellence in my own research.

I’m also excited about being exposed to new ideas. The diversity at U of T is unlike anything I’ve experienced.