Labour Management and Firm Financing: Explaining Workplace Change in CUB's Breweries, 1991-2003

The nature of the relationship between company financing and labour management has become increasingly analysed in recent years. Companies in countries characterised by large and relatively liberal capital markets are generally seen to favour market mediated relationships with workers, customers, suppliers and financiers. Moreover, management in these companies are more likely to prioritise the interests of financiers over other parties. Together these observations create a relatively bleak outlook for labour. While there is a growing literature around national systems of corporate governance and models of corporate financing, the extent to which these aggregated tendencies impact on individual company and enterprise level operations remains relatively untested. Some scholars have argued that management retain a capacity to make strategic choices about labour management and that indeed the extent to which companies are sensitive to capital market pressures will vary greatly. This paper examines the labour management choices made by Fosters, a large Australian multinational company, with respect to its brewery workforce, specifically at its Kent brewery in New South Wales. Fosters management elected to develop a partnership arrangement with its unionised workforce in order to introduce a substantial workplace change program. This change program combined both a focus on cost cutting and skill development. Fosters introduced this program at a time of corporate crisis with the company heavily indebted and unprofitable. That such a program was introduced in this particular context reinforces the notion that strategic choices remain open to management in terms of their approach to labour management. The tightness in financial markets was important for encouraging management to introduce operational reforms at the brewery. However, these conditions did not determine the pursuit of a partnership approach to change.The symposium is organised on behalf of AAHANZBS by the Business and Labour History Group, The University of Sydney, with the financial support of the University’s Faculty of Economics and Business

Improving the detection of abnormal visual function in glaucoma using High Spatial Resolution Perimetry and Motion Displacement Threshold testing

Primary open angle glaucoma is a major cause of blindness and visual disability. The introduction to this thesis summarises evidence that automated perimetry is not sensitive enough to detect early glaucomatous damage. This thesis investigates two novel tests of visual function which are Motion Displacement Threshold (MDT) testing and High Spatial Resolution Perimetry (HSRP). In chapter 4, motion reaction times are shown to be abnormally elevated in glaucoma patients as a function of threshold elevation. Their potential use as a marker for reliability is outlined. Chapter 5 reports that analysis of the slope of the frequency-of-seeing curve improves the sensitivity of the MDT test compared with analysis of the threshold alone. Chapter 6 describes the technique of High Spatial Resolution Perimetry (HSRP) and investigates its spatial resolution, repeatability and clinical use in glaucoma. Chapter 7, elevated Motion Displacement Thresholds (MDTs) are identified in glaucoma. These are shown to coexist in some cases with fine scale scotomas identified using HSRP. This suggests that an underlying factor contributing to MDT abnormalities in addition to selective magnocellular loss or reduced redundancy is sensitivity loss on a spatial scale too small to be measured by conventional perimetry. This led to the hypothesis that the orientation of the MDT stimulus could have a significant effect on motion threshold glaucoma, and that stimulus orientation might be incorporated in order to improve the sensitivity of the test. This hypothesis was tested in chapter 8, which identified increasing elevation of motion threshold for a line stimulus moving perpendicular to the retinal nerve fibre layer compared to a line stimulus moving parallel to the retinal nerve fibre layer in some glaucoma patients. The clinical significance of these studies is summarised in chapter 9 and future developments to improve the MDT and HSRP tests are discussed

A self-correcting point process

AbstractSuppose a point process is attempting to operate as closely as possible to a deterministic rate ρ, in the sense of aiming to produce ρt points during the interval (0,t] for all t. This can be modelled by making the instantaneous rate of t of the process a suitable function of n-ρt, n being the number of points in [0, t]. This paper studies such a self-correcting point process in two cases: when the point process is Markovian and the rate function is very general, and when the point process is arbitrary and the rate function is exponential. In each case it is shown that as t→∞ the mean number of points occuring in (0, t] is ρt+O(1) while the variance is bounded further, in the Markov case all the absolute central moments are bounded. An application to the outputs of stationary D/M/s queues is given

Persistence and Activation of Right-Wing Political Ideology

We investigate the persistence of right-wing ideology in Germany. The “Alternative for Germany” (AfD), founded as a party espousing fiscal conservatism, has turned to an openly nationalist and anti-immigrant platform since 2015. We document this rhetorical change with quantitative text analysis. We further show that municipalities that voted more for the AfD after 2015 also exhibited higher support for the Nazi party in the 1920s and 30s. The historical correlation we observe is positive, significant, and large. In our preferred specification, a one standard deviation increase in historical support for the Nazi party is associated with a 0.15 standard deviations larger change in votes towards the AfD. Our results are robust to controlling for a large set of historical and contemporary covariates, especially relating to unemployment and the recent inflow of refugees from the Middle East

Persistence and Activation of Right-Wing Political Ideology

We investigate the persistence of right-wing ideology in Germany. The “Alternative for Germany” (AfD), founded as a party espousing fiscal conservatism, has turned to an openly nationalist and anti-immigrant platform since 2015. We document this rhetorical change with quantitative text analysis. We further show that municipalities that voted more for the AfD after 2015 also exhibited higher support for the Nazi party in the 1920s and 30s. The historical correlation we observe is positive, significant, and large. In our preferred specification, a one standard deviation increase in historical support for the Nazi party is associated with a 0.15 standard deviations larger change in votes towards the AfD. Our results are robust to controlling for a large set of historical and contemporary covariates, especially relating to unemployment and the recent inflow of refugees from the Middle East

A 193 nm Deep-UV Lithography System Using a Line-Narrowed ArF Excimer Laser

A small field refractive projection system for operation at the 193.3 nm wavelength of a spectrally narrowed ArF excimer laser is being constructed. The 1 mm field, 20X system operates with a variable objective lens numerical aperture from 0.30 to 0.60, variable partial coherence, and control over illumination fill and mask tilt. A 30 W maximum power ArF excimer laser has been spectrally line-narrowed through incorporation of tilted Fabry-Perot etalons into the laser cavity, allowing linewidths on the order of7 cm\u27 (26 pm) with one etalon and 0.5 cm1 (2pm) with two etalons. This work reports laser line narrowing and lens performance results. Simulations of aerial image intensity distributions from lens aberration data will be presented for 0.25 and 0.20 micron geometry

Be prepared – exploring future climate-related risk for residential and commercial real-estate portfolios

This article explores how real estate investors and lenders can assess and manage the physical risks of climate change through wellestablished risk models and climate scenarios. The authors propose a methodology that real estate investors and lenders can use to improve their understanding and management of these risks. The methodology is applied to a sample of 12 real estate portfolios with a total market value in excess of £2 trillion, spread across Europe, North and South America, and Asia, investigating the impacts of climate change on losses from floods and winter storms (UK) as well as tropical cyclones (North America and the Pacific Rim). The estimated changes in risk, especially in the climate scenario most aligned with the current warming trajectory, raises important questions for investors, lenders, insurers, and policymakers as to how these new levels of risk can be managed in the most cost-effective manner

Using short podcasts to reinforce lectures

Podcasting, the pushing of potentially mobile multimedia files to end users, is not a new tool in relation to learning and teaching. There is a perceived association between recording lectures and podcasting, however many kinds of materials may be podcasted in higher education. In this paper, we discuss the use of podcast episodes – short audio files – recorded by a lecturer in the Faculty of Economics and Business at The University of Sydney. Files are designed to reinforce lecture content and are produced by the lecturer and uploaded to the Faculty learning management system, Blackboard, for student subscription. We consider the impact on students based on survey data, particularly regarding the technology itself, any perceived learning benefits and the proportion of the participating student population. We further consider the impact on the lecturer, his experience using the learning technology and any perceived teaching benefits. This paper may be useful to academic staff or institutions interested in providing multimedia content for students