‘Fire and rehire’:four lessons from Australia

The practice of firing employees and then rehiring them in their same jobs on inferior conditions and lower wages (‘fire and rehire’) has emerged as a matter of acute political controversy. Its use in the United Kingdom has become even more controversial in the period since the Covid-19 pandemic. A brutal example of the practice was seen in the P&amp;O case, which could be viewed as an example of ‘fire and replace’ as well as ‘fire and rehire’. In March 2022, P&amp;O Ferries summarily dismissed 786 seafarers, setting aside £44 million to meet the anticipated compensation costs arising from its failure to comply with multiple employment law obligations owed to the crew. Approximately 100 of those dismissed were re-engaged on new terms, the remainder replaced by new crew engaged through agencies on inferior terms and conditions. This article addresses what would need to be done to ‘ban’ fire and rehire, and the related practice of fire and replace. It is argued that fire and rehire is a symptom of system failure which will not be addressed by sticking plaster solutions or by an unenforceable code, but by addressing the underlying causes. This means better regulation, treating collective agreements and contracts of employment with greater respect, better procedures for the negotiation of change, and more effective remedies designed to restrain employers from acting unlawfully. In addressing these matters we draw extensively on the experience of Australia where fire and rehire as understood or practised in the United Kingdom is largely unknown.</p

The Australian Charter of Employment Rights: The missing dimensions

Just prior to the 2007 General Election, a group of labour lawyers and economists, broadly sympathetic to the Labor Party, produced a Charter of Employment Rights. This article examines the Charter's proposals and its underlying framework, and suggests significant aspects of work and labour have been omitted. It contends that the Charter would have been improved if it had not retained an artificially stretched definition of workers as employees, in which the only relationship worthy of inclusion in a Charter is that between the direct employer and employee. The framework and language of the Charter convey a paternalistic approach and an outdated focus on industrial labour, while ignoring aspects of the emerging global system of work linked to the concept of occupation

A similarity hypothesis for the two-point correlation tensor in a temporally evolving plane wake

The analysis demonstrated that the governing equations for the two-point velocity correlation tensor in the temporally evolving wake admit similarity solutions, which include the similarity solutions for the single-point moment as a special case. The resulting equations for the similarity solutions include two constants, beta and Re(sub sigma), that are ratios of three characteristic time scales of processes in the flow: a viscous time scale, a time scale characteristic of the spread rate of the flow, and a characteristic time scale of the mean strain rate. The values of these ratios depend on the initial conditions of the flow and are most likely measures of the coherent structures in the initial conditions. The occurrences of these constants in the governing equations for the similarity solutions indicates that these solutions, in general, will only be the same for two flows if these two constants are equal (and hence the coherent structures in the flows are related). The comparisons between the predictions of the similarity hypothesis and the data presented here and elsewhere indicate that the similarity solutions for the two-point correlation tensors provide a good approximation of the measures of those motions that are not significantly affected by the boundary conditions caused by the finite extent of real flows. Thus, the two-point similarity hypothesis provides a useful tool for both numerical and physical experimentalist that can be used to examine how the finite extent of real flows affect the evolution of the different scales of motion in the flow

Interactions of asbestos-activated macrophages with an experimental fibrosarcoma

Supernatants from in vivo asbestos-activated macrophages failed to show any cytostatic activity against a syngeneic fibrosarcoma cell line in vitro. UICC chrysotile-induced peritoneal exudate cells also failed to demonstrate any growth inhibitory effect on the same cells in Winn assays of tumor growth. Mixing UICC crocidolite with inoculated tumor cells resulted in a dose-dependent inhibition of tumor growth; this could, however, be explained by a direct cytostatic effect on the tumor cells of high doses of crocidolite, which was observed in vitro

Qualitative study in Loop Quantum Cosmology

This work contains a detailed qualitative analysis, in General Relativity and in Loop Quantum Cosmology, of the dynamics in the associated phase space of a scalar field minimally coupled with gravity, whose potential mimics the dynamics of a perfect fluid with a linear Equation of State (EoS). Dealing with the orbits (solutions) of the system, we will see that there are analytic ones, which lead to the same dynamics as the perfect fluid, and our goal is to check their stability, depending on the value of the EoS parameter, i.e., to show whether the other orbits converge or diverge to these analytic solutions at early and late times.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures. Version accepted for publication in CQ

The surface wave environment in the GATE B/C Scale - Phase III

The surface wave environment in the GATE B/C scale is described from wave measurements made from buoys and aircraft during Phase III (September 1974). Particular emphasis is given to the wave measurements made from the pitch-roll buoy deployed in the B-scale array from the ship Gilliss and a similar buoy deployed in the C-scale array from Quadra. Reduction of the pitch-roll buoy measurements provided estimates of the one-dimensional wave spectrum as well as of the mean direction and spread of wave energy as a function of frequency. The data clearly revealed the importance of external forcing on the wave climate in GATE. Most of the wave energy present in the GATE areas was found to be swell imported from the trade wind circulations of both hemispheres and from an intense extratropical cyclone which crossed the North Atlantic at high latitudes early in Phase III. Locally generated waves were clearly evident in the wave spectra, but their energy level way have been modulated significantly by the low-frequency swell. The GATE wave data set can provide a powerful test of contemporary numerical wave-prediction models. The present study defines the, attributes which are required of such models for meaningful application to the GATE needs

Ultrarapid cerium(III)–NHC catalysts for high molar mass cyclic polylactide

The EPSRC are acknowledged for research funding through the Centre for Doctoral Training in Critical Resource Catalysis (CRITICAT, EP/ L016419/1, R. W. F. K., P. M. D. A. E.), EP/J018139/1, the UK Catalysis Hub (EP/K014714/1, P. L. A., C. K. W., S. K. R.), EP/M010554/1 (P. L. A.) and EP/S018603/1 (C. K. W.). This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 740311, P.L.A.).Cyclic polyesters could improve the properties of degradable plastics, but routes to them that provide a product with faster rates, higher molar mass, and greater selectivity for cyclic vs linear polymer are needed. Here, homogeneous Ce(III)–N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) catalysts show outstanding activities (turn-over-frequency (TOF) > 864 000 h–1), excellent control, and selectivity for cyclic polylactide (PLA) topology (>95%), yielding high molar mass PLA (60 < Mn < 250 kg mol–1). They efficiently produce cyclic PLA from rac-lactide or l-lactide and aliphatic cyclic polyesters from ε-caprolactone or β-butyrolactone. The enhanced performances are only achievable from combining cooperative Lewis acidic cerium(III) and hemilabile N-heterocyclic carbene functionalities.PostprintPostprintPeer reviewe

Economic performance or electoral necessity? Evaluating the system of voluntary income to political parties

Whilst the public funding of political parties is the norm in western democracies, its comprehensive introduction has been resisted in Britain. Political and electoral arrangements in Britain require parties to function and campaign on a regular basis, whilst their income follows cycles largely related to general elections. This article shows that the best predictor of party income is the necessity of a well-funded general election campaign rather than party performance. As a result, income can only be controlled by parties to a limited degree, which jeopardises their ability to determine their own financial position and fulfil their functions as political parties

Dust from Mars-Analog Plains (Iceland): Physico-Compositional Properties as a Function of Grain-Size Fraction

Dust is a key component of the geological and climatic systems of Earth and Mars. On Mars, dust is ubiquitous. It coats rocks and soils, and, in the atmosphere, it interacts strongly with solar and thermal radiation. Yet, key questions remain about the genesis and fate of martian dust, as well as its sources, composition, and properties. We collected wind-blown dust from basaltic plains in SW Iceland at Skjaldbreiauhraun that represent a geologic Mars-analog environment. Icelandic dust differs from the typical continental sources (e.g. Sahara, Asia) because of its basaltic volcanogenic origin, which is similar to Mars. Dust collection took place in July of 2019 as a complementary project to the SAND-E: Semi-Autonomous Navigation for Detrital Environments project. Here we report preliminary analyses of this Mars-analog dust material, with the goal of understanding the processes that control the physico-chemical proper-ties of the different grain-size fractions