Managers' Perceptions of Cooperation and Joint Decision-Making with Trade Unions: A Regional Case Study in the Illawarra (Australia)

This paper examines managerial perceptions of cooperation and consultation, and tests the hypothesis of some unionists that cooperation and consultation as perceived by management minimise union input into the decision-making process. The increased adoption of a strategic HRM perspective on the employment relationship has led to a growing concern with building cooperation through employee consultation and participation at the workplace level. This perspective actually embraces two broad approaches: 'hard' HRM characterised by direct forms of job-related participation; and 'soft' HRM characterised by representative forms of participation, or joint decision making, between management and unions and/or works councils (or consultative committees), as favoured in much of Europe. The choice between these is influenced, among other things, by the industrial environment in which workplaces operate, particularly the strength of traditional industrial relations structures and perspectives. This case study is based upon a survey of employment relations managers' attitudes to cooperation and joint decision making in a region characterised by a strong traditional industrial relations infrastructure, including strong unionism. It shows that whilst strategic HRM perspectives on employee participation have developed a significant presence in the region's workplaces, they have been adapted to the industrial environment. The managers overwhelmingly reported a cooperative relationship with unions, and a significant proportion believed in joint decision making with unions, albeit over a selective range of issues. Managers of public sector, tertiary sector and large workplaces were far more inclined to support joint decision making than others. The survey results also show that those respondents who perceived a cooperative relationship indicated a greater willingness on the part of management to share input with the union than those who perceived their relationship as confrontational. The perspective of a pragmatic HRM shaped by its industrial environment is confirmed by comparing these results with those from a survey of US employee relations managers conducted by Perline and Sexton (1994). The results of this comparison diverge considerably. Perline and Sexton found for the US that 'those managers who perceived their relationship with the union to be cooperative were less likely to believe that issues should be jointly determined by management and the union', thus confirming the pessimistic union hypothesis.trade unions, cooperation, consultation, perceptions

Part-time Employment, Gender and Employee Participation in the Workplace: An Illawarra Reconnaissance

The growth in non-standard forms of employment has major implications for the effectiveness of employee participation mechanisms in the workplace, whether direct or indirect (representative). This seems to be especially the case with representative forms, such as consultative committees, because they effectively assume permanent or long-term employment and are not as easily accessible to part-time employees. However, the literature on participation rarely addresses this major contextual aspect. The issue is of further significance since the majority of part-time and casual employees are female. Consequently, to the extent that non-standard employees do not have the same access to participatory mechanisms in the workplace that their full- time permanent colleagues enjoy, then women also are disproportionately excluded from participation. This paper begins to redress the insularity in the literature by analysing survey data from the Illawarra Regional Industrial Relations Survey (IRWIRS). It tests the hypothesis that the growth of non-standard forms of employment diminishes the access to participation in the workplace enjoyed by part-time workers in comparison with their full-time colleagues.Illawarra Regional Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, workplace employee relations, Australia

Gender, Part-time Employment and Employee Participation in the Workplace: Comparing Australia and the European Union

The international trend in the growth and incidence of 'no n-standard employment', and its highly gendered nature, is well documented. For ease of definition, and because of the nature of the available data, we focus upon part-time employment in this paper. Employee participation may be defined as any workplace process which 'allows employees to exert some influence over their work and the conditions under which they work' (Strauss 1998). It may be divided into two main approaches, direct participation and indirect or representative participation. Direct participation involves the employee in job or task-oriented decision-making in the production process at the shop or office floor level. Indirect or representative forms of participation include joint consultative committees, works councils, and employee members of boards of directors or management. In the EU context statutory works councils are the most common expression of representative participation, but in Australia, consultative committees resulting from union/employer agreement or unilateral management initiative are the more common form. All of these forms of employee participation raise important issues concerning part time employees. Effective participation has two further major requirements which also may disadvantage part timers. First, there is a ge neral consensus in the participation literature that training is required for effective direct or representative participation. Secondly, effective communication between management and employees is required for participation, preferably involving a two-way information flow. The issue is of further significance since it has decided gender implications. This paper seeks to redress this relative insularity in the literature by examining some broad trends in this area in Australia and the EU. It analyses survey data at a national level in Australia and compares with some survey data generated in the EU by the EPOC project and analysed by Juliet Webster along the lines which we suggest here. It tests the hypothesis that the growth of one non-standard form of employment, part-time employment, diminishes the access to participation in the workplace enjoyed by female workers in comparison with their male colleagues, and finds that the hypothesis is strongly confirmed. This has major implications for workplace equity, and for organisational efficiency.gender, part-time employment, employee participation, Australia, European Union

The Illawarra at Work: A Summary of the Major Findings of the Illawarra Regional Workplace Industrial Relations Survey

This paper summarises the main results of the Illawarra Regional Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (IRWIRS). The data is unique in that it provides the only comprehensive and statistically reliable source of information about workplace employee relations at the regional level in Australia, and compares regional patterns with national trends. The data collected relates to industrial relations indicators, workplace ownership, market conditions, management organisation and decision- making in the workplace, among other things. The results reveal a positive pattern of employment relations in the Illawarra, distinctive in many respects from national trends.Illawarra Regional Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, workplace employee relations, Australia

Privileged Communications between Counsel and the Corporate Client

At present inconsistent lower federal appellate court decisions governing the use of the attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine apply to the discovery of communications between counsel and the corporate client. Because of the distinctions that have developed in the application of the corporate attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine due to the unique factual settings in which the issues have arisen, prior case law may not be totally preempted by the Supreme Court decision in Upjohn. This article will explore some of these divergent opinions to determine the probable effect that the Court\u27s decision in Upjohn will have upon communications between counsel and the corporate client

Privileged Communications between Counsel and the Corporate Client

At present inconsistent lower federal appellate court decisions governing the use of the attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine apply to the discovery of communications between counsel and the corporate client. Because of the distinctions that have developed in the application of the corporate attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine due to the unique factual settings in which the issues have arisen, prior case law may not be totally preempted by the Supreme Court decision in Upjohn. This article will explore some of these divergent opinions to determine the probable effect that the Court\u27s decision in Upjohn will have upon communications between counsel and the corporate client

Privileged Communications between Counsel and the Corporate Client

At present inconsistent lower federal appellate court decisions governing the use of the attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine apply to the discovery of communications between counsel and the corporate client. Because of the distinctions that have developed in the application of the corporate attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine due to the unique factual settings in which the issues have arisen, prior case law may not be totally preempted by the Supreme Court decision in Upjohn. This article will explore some of these divergent opinions to determine the probable effect that the Court\u27s decision in Upjohn will have upon communications between counsel and the corporate client

On the Complexity of Temporal-Logic Path Checking

Given a formula in a temporal logic such as LTL or MTL, a fundamental problem is the complexity of evaluating the formula on a given finite word. For LTL, the complexity of this task was recently shown to be in NC. In this paper, we present an NC algorithm for MTL, a quantitative (or metric) extension of LTL, and give an NCC algorithm for UTL, the unary fragment of LTL. At the time of writing, MTL is the most expressive logic with an NC path-checking algorithm, and UTL is the most expressive fragment of LTL with a more efficient path-checking algorithm than for full LTL (subject to standard complexity-theoretic assumptions). We then establish a connection between LTL path checking and planar circuits, which we exploit to show that any further progress in determining the precise complexity of LTL path checking would immediately entail more efficient evaluation algorithms than are known for a certain class of planar circuits. The connection further implies that the complexity of LTL path checking depends on the Boolean connectives allowed: adding Boolean exclusive or yields a temporal logic with P-complete path-checking problem

Equilibrium Configurations of Strongly Magnetized Neutron Stars with Realistic Equations of State

We investigate equilibrium sequences of magnetized rotating stars with four kinds of realistic equations of state (EOSs) of SLy (Douchin et al.), FPS (Pandharipande et al.), Shen (Shen et al.), and LS (Lattimer & Swesty). Employing the Tomimura-Eriguchi scheme to construct the equilibrium configurations. we study the basic physical properties of the sequences in the framework of Newton gravity. In addition we newly take into account a general relativistic effect to the magnetized rotating configurations. With these computations, we find that the properties of the Newtonian magnetized stars, e.g., structure of magnetic field, highly depends on the EOSs. The toroidal magnetic fields concentrate rather near the surface for Shen and LS EOSs than those for SLy and FPS EOSs. The poloidal fields are also affected by the toroidal configurations. Paying attention to the stiffness of the EOSs, we analyze this tendency in detail. In the general relativistic stars, we find that the difference due to the EOSs becomes small because all the employed EOSs become sufficiently stiff for the large maximum density, typically greater than $10^{15}\rm{g} \rm{cm}^{-3}$. The maximum baryon mass of the magnetized stars with axis ratio $q\sim 0.7$ increases about up to twenty percents for that of spherical stars. We furthermore compute equilibrium sequences at finite temperature, which should serve as an initial condition for the hydrodynamic study of newly-born magnetars. Our results suggest that we may obtain information about the EOSs from the observation of the masses of magnetars.Comment: submitted to MNRA

Winter Housing and Feeding System for Small to Medium Sized Dairy Farms

End of Project ReportA survey of 190 dairy farms in a co-operative area in the south of Ireland served as the main source of data in the present study. Eight farms representative of the different types of dairy farms were chosen and their data were analysed using the Finpack financial analysis program. These eight case studies were analysed using alternative funding strategies to determine the effect of alternative funding strategies for farm buildings on net farm income. The data obtained were extrapolated to the national dairy herd. There are some 14,050 dairy farms with quotas of less than 15,000 gallons and 40% of these were classified as non viable. The corresponding figures for other quota categories are as follows: 8,150 farms with quotas of 15,000-25,000 gallons with 40% non-viable; 7780 farms with quotas of 25,000-40,000 gallons with 20% nonviable; and 8,535 farms with quotas >40,000 gallons with 10% nonviable. Non-viable dairy farms were those with low income, low contact with advisory services, low household dependence on farm income, a poor attitude to development and expansion and generally inadequate farm facilities. Non-viable dairy farms should consider changing from dairying into a suckler and/or beef enterprise and should be assisted to do so by the advisory service. They should be considered for a suckler quota unit for each 987 gallons of milk they had been producing. They should consider using income assistants, e.g., REPS, Early Retirement Scheme and/or unemployment benefits as relevant. Training schemes should be targeted at young farmers and their spouses who are not working so that they have a better chance of offfarm employment, when relevant. Potentially viable and viable dairy farms should be assisted on a sliding scale depending on their quota size, as follows: Grant aid for upgrading milking facilities, grant aid for milking and milk cooling equipment, interest subsidies on interest payment on money borrowed for agricultural development, the smallest milk quota farms should be considered the priority for milk quota reallocation, quota purchase should be subsidised if possible, quota leasing should be subsidised for the smallest quota category (<15,000 gallons), installation Aid should be introduced for all viable and potentially viable dairy farms.Dairy Farmer Levy Fund