The State of Working Wisconsin 2016

The long shadow of the Great Recession is finally lifting in Wisconsin. The state has more jobs than ever before,unemployment rates have fallen to pre-recession levels, and workers that want full-time work are having an easier time finding it. To be sure, recovery here is incomplete and comparatively unimpressive. Many populations and places remain isolated from opportunity, and Wisconsin's growth is slow relative to the national pace. Still, labor market opportunities are more clear and consistent than they have been in nearly a decade. Given the brutality of the Great Recession and the slow recovery from it, this is welcome news for working Wisconsin.The longer-term challenges that Wisconsin faces, and that COWS has long documented, remain daunting. Wages have been stagnant over the last three and a half decades and workers have very little to show for increasing productivity. Women earn less than men and the gap is slow to close. African Americans have suffered declining wages and growing disparity. The wage reward for higher education is evident, as is the difficulty of making ends meet without completing some post-secondary education. One-in-four workers toils in a poverty-wage job and low-wage sectors are growing faster than better-paying ones. Racial disparities, while hardly unique to Wisconsin, are particularly extreme here. A variety of economic and social indicators of racial inequality consistently identify us as among the most racially unequal states in the nation

The Gloves-off Economy: Workplace Standards at the Bottom of America\u27s Labor Market

[Excerpt] The goal of this volume is to map the landscape of gloves-off workplace strategies, to connect them to the erosion of norms farther up in the labor market, to identify the workers most vulnerable to these practices, and finally and perhaps most importantly, to identify the ways that the floor under job standards can be rebuilt. In what follows, we first explore conceptual tools for analyzing evasions and breaches of workplace standards and then briefly review evidence about the scope of the problem. We next trace the historical trajectory that first led to the upgrading of workplace protections, then to the partial undoing of the protective web of laws and standards—using this narrative as well to introduce the contents of the volume. We close by considering strategies to put the gloves back on in order to re-regulate work

An Overview of the Gloves-Off Economy: Workplace Standards at the Bottom of America’s Labor Market

When we talk about the “gloves-off economy,” we are identifying a set of employer strategies and practices that either evade or outright violate the core laws and standards that govern job quality in the U.S. While such strategies have long been present in certain sectors, such as sweatshops and marginal small businesses, we argue that they are spreading. This trend, driven by competitive pressures, has been shaped by an environment where other major economic actors—government, unions, and civil society—have either promoted deregulation or been unable to contain gloves-off business strategies. The result, at the start of the 21st century, is the reality that a major segment of the U.S. labor market increasingly diverges from the legal and normative bounds put into place decades ago

2018 Research & Innovation Day Program

A one day showcase of applied research, social innovation, scholarship projects and activities.https://first.fanshawec.ca/cri_cripublications/1005/thumbnail.jp

Aspirin and clonidine in non-cardiac surgery: acute kidney injury substudy protocol of the Perioperative Ischaemic Evaluation (POISE) 2 randomised controlled trial

IntroductionPerioperative Ischaemic Evaluation-2 (POISE-2) is an international 2×2 factorial randomised controlled trial of low-dose aspirin versus placebo and low-dose clonidine versus placebo in patients who undergo non-cardiac surgery. Perioperative aspirin (and possibly clonidine) may reduce the risk of postoperative acute kidney injury (AKI).Methods and analysisAfter receipt of grant funding, serial postoperative serum creatinine measurements began to be recorded in consecutive patients enrolled at substudy participating centres. With respect to the study schedule, the last of over 6500 substudy patients from 82 centres in 21 countries were randomised in December 2013. The authors will use logistic regression to estimate the adjusted OR of AKI following surgery (compared with the preoperative serum creatinine value, a postoperative increase ≥26.5 μmol/L in the 2 days following surgery or an increase of ≥50% in the 7 days following surgery) comparing each intervention to placebo, and will report the adjusted relative risk reduction. Alternate definitions of AKI will also be considered, as will the outcome of AKI in subgroups defined by the presence of preoperative chronic kidney disease and preoperative chronic aspirin use. At the time of randomisation, a subpopulation agreed to a single measurement of serum creatinine between 3 and 12 months after surgery, and the authors will examine intervention effects on this outcome.Ethics and disseminationThe authors were competitively awarded a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for this POISE-2 AKI substudy. Ethics approval was obtained for additional kidney data collection in consecutive patients enrolled at participating centres, which first began for patients enrolled after January 2011. In patients who provided consent, the remaining longer term serum creatinine data will be collected throughout 2014. The results of this study will be reported no later than 2015.Clinical Trial Registration NumberNCT01082874

When Work Doesn’t Pay: The Hidden Cost of Low-Wage Jobs in Wisconsin

This report takes a closer look at the “hidden public costs” of low wage jobs. These costs are both hidden and public because the community directly and indirectly pays in order to fill in the gap between what work pays and what families need