New Model Unions: Options for the 21st Century

The purpose of this short paper is threefold. First we discuss the underlying properties of the dominant organisational model for trade unions in Britain. Second, we look at options for changing this organisational model. Third, we conclude by looking at what this might imply for the future operation and organisation of trade unions and their engagement with their members

Accounting for Collective Action: Resource Acquisition and Mobilization in British Unions

The paper uses two data sources to map trends in resource availability for trade unions in Britain. Union resources exist on the one hand in the form of subscription income and accumulated assets shown in union accounts and, on the other, establishment level resources provided by employers and union members. The paper documents a substantial decline in both forms of resource across the period 1990 -2004 and attempts to explain both the reasons for this decline and its consequences for employee representation in Britain

Patient safety in Europe: medication errors and hospital-acquired infections

The Report was commissioned by the European Federation of Nurses Associations (EFN) in November 2007 in order to support its policy statements on Patient Safety (June 2004). In that statement the EFN declares its belief that European Union health services should operate within a culture of safety that is based on working towards an open culture and the immediate reporting of mistakes; exchanging best practice and research; and lobbying for the systematic collection of information and dissemination of research findings. This Report adressess specifically the culture of highly reliable organisations using the work of James Reason (2000). Medication errors and hospital-acquired infections are examined in line with the Reprt´s parameters and a range of European studies are used as evidence. An extensive reference list is provided that allows EFN to explore work in greater detail as required

Airborne Pollen of Native Prairie

The study consisted of a qualitative survey of airborne pollen on the native prairie. The study site is located T. 151 N., R. 52 W., Sec. 16, Oakville Township, Grand Forks County, North Dakota. Airborne pollen was obtained using the gravity slide method with a Durham Air Sampling Device from June 15 to August 15, 19^7* Gramineae and Chenopodiaceae pollen predominated with Urticaceae, Polygonaceae, Compositae, Pinaceae, and other pollen in lesser amounts

In dubio pro CES - Supply estimation with mis-specified technical change

Capital-labor substitution and total factor productivity (TFP) estimates are essential features of growth and income distribution models. In the context of a Monte Carlo exercise embodying balanced and near balanced growth, we demonstrate that the estimation of the substitution elasticity can be substantially biased if the form of technical progress is misspecified. For some parameter values, when factor shares are relatively constant, there could be an inherent bias towards Cobb-Douglas. The implied estimates of TFP growth also yield substantially different results depending on the specification of technical progress. A Constant Elasticity of Substitution production function is then estimated within a “normalized” system approach for the US economy over 1960:1–2004:4. Results show that the estimated substitution elasticity tends to be significantly lower using a factor augmenting specification (well below one). We are able to reject Hicks-, Harrod- and Solow-neutral specifications in favor of general factor augmentation with a non-negligible capital-augmenting component. Finally, we draw some important lessons for production and supply-side estimation. JEL Classification: C15, C32, E23, O33, O51Balanced Growth, Constant Elasticity of Substitution, Factor Income share, Factor-Augmenting Technical Change, Technical Progress Neutrality

Identifying the elasticity of substitution with biased technical change

Despite being critical parameters in many economic fields, the received wisdom, in theoretical and empirical literatures, states that joint identification of the elasticity of capital-labor substitution and technical bias is infeasible. This paper challenges that pessimistic interpretation. Putting the new approach of "normalized" production functions at the heart of a Monte Carlo analysis we identify the conditions under which identification is feasible and robust. The key result is that the jointly modeling the production function and first-order conditions is superior to single-equation approaches in terms of robustly capturing production and technical parameters, especially when merged with "normalization". Our results will have fundamental implications for production-function estimation under non-neutral technical change, for understanding the empirical relevance of normalization and the variability underlying past empirical studies. JEL Classification: C22, E23, O30, 051Constant Elasticity of Substitution, Factor Income share, Factor-Augmenting Technical Change, Identification, Monte Carlo, Normalization

From the Two Faces of Unionism to the Facebook Society: Union Voice in a 21st Century Context, Manpower Human Resources Lab Discussion Paper No. 6

Union membership has declined precipitously in the US over the past 40 years. Can anything be done to stem this decline? This paper argues that union voice is an attribute (among others) of union membership that is experiential in nature and that unlike the costs of unionisation, can be discerned only after joining a union. This makes the act of ‘selling’ unionism to workers (and to some extent firms as well) rather difficult. Supportive social trends and social customs are required in order to make union membership’s many hard-to-observe benefits easier to discern. Most membership based institutions face the same dilemma. However, recent social networking organizations such as Facebook and other on-line communities have been rather successful in attracting millions of members in a relatively short period of time. The question of whether the union movement can appropriate some of these lessons is discussed with reference to historical and contemporary examples

Hunting The Most Distant Stars in the Milky Way: Methods and Initial Results

We present a new catalog of 404 M giant candidates found in the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS). The 2,400 deg$^2$ available in the UKIDSS Large Area Survey Data Release 8 resolve M giants through a volume four times larger than that of the entire Two Micron All Sky Survey. Combining near-infrared photometry with optical photometry and proper motions from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey yields an M giant candidate catalog with less M dwarf and quasar contamination than previous searches for similarly distant M giants. Extensive follow-up spectroscopy of this sample will yield the first map of our Galaxy's outermost reaches over a large area of sky. Our initial spectroscopic follow-up of $\sim$ 30 bright candidates yielded the positive identification of five M giants at distances $\sim 20-90$ kpc. Each of these confirmed M giants have positions and velocities consistent with the Sagittarius stream. The fainter M giant candidates in our sample have estimated photometric distances $\sim 200$ kpc (assuming $[Fe/H]$ = 0.0), but require further spectroscopic verification. The photometric distance estimates extend beyond the Milky Way's virial radius, and increase by $\sim 50\%$ for each 0.5 dex decrease in assumed $[Fe/H]$. Given the number of M giant candidates, initial selection efficiency, and volume surveyed, we loosely estimate that at least one additional Sagittarius-like accretion event could have contributed to the hierarchical build-up of the Milky Way's outer halo.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, emulateapj format. Accepted by A

Employee voice and human resource management: an empirical analysis using British data

The definition of formal employee voice employed in this paper is a variant of the definition developed by Hirschman (1970) in his seminal monograph and later elaborated and appropriated to unions in the labour market by Freeman and Medoff (1984). What we refer to as formal voice is any institutionalised form of two-way communication between management and employees. This is not the same as information sharing or other types of one-way consultation. Meaningful two-way dialogue, as that found typically in union collective bargained voice, is what formal employee voice refers to. As we endeavour to show in this paper, these forms of two-way communication typically extend beyond union voice to non-union forms of representation and direct forms of two-way dialogue, such as problem-solving groups and the statutory systems of works council voice developed as part of deeper European Union (EU) integration. Broader definitions of voice can also be invoked for the labour market as a whole or even for society more generally. In this context see recent work by Adrian Wilkinson and his colleagues (Dundon et al., 2004) and also John Budd’s Employment with a Human Face (2004). Some may take our definition of voice above and simply state that a formal voice system is 'the way workers communicate with management'. For us that would not be a poor workable definition. But how does that play out when we talk about Human Resource Management (HRM) techniques and their role in either abetting or inhibiting voice at work? HRM is not a voice system. Instead we assert that it has a different purpose altogether but may employ voice alongside in order to achieve the end goal of improving worker performance. This assertion flies against most received wisdom and evidence from the US, where union voice (the only real form permitted by the Wagner Act) often sits uncomfortably with HR. In England, up to now, the only thorough evidence by Wood and Machin (2005) suggested no correlation between voice (union) and HRM adoption. In this paper, however, we offer a new explanation for these findings above and in the process contribute some important new findings of our own. The principal source of formal employee voice has typically been provided by trade unions. However, in Britain, where our empirical analysis resides, unions have not been the sole, or even main, conduit for worker-management voice relations for more than three decades. Since the 1960s, firms in Britain have been combining traditional collective bargaining over wages and working conditions with independent non-union channels of two-way communication. Practically, this means things like having a non-union employee-employer committee to handle health-safety issues, promotion criteria or disability concerns. In my own university, a traditional collective bargaining process has neatly resided alongside a plethora of non-union administration and staff committees that discuss nearly every aspect of day-to-day work life and even strategic university planning goals. How these varying types and intensity of voice systems at work can (and do) sit alongside certain managerial innovations for the improvement of employee productivity, is the subject matter of our paper

UK Trades Unions and the Problems of Collective Action

This paper looks at the financial resources of trades unions in the UK, both updating previous work and attempting to understand the management of first and second order collective action problems. First order problems refer to the problems of initiating collective action and second order problems refer to the management of collective action organisations. Unions are ‘cost disease’ organisations in which expenditure outstrips inflation but revenue may not. Their economic model cannot survive without some form of external subsidy. Both aggregate and case study data – from the largest UK union, Unite – are presented to illustrate the cost disease problem and to suggest options for its management