Collaboration between unions in a multi-union, non-exclusive bargaining regime: What can Canada learn from New Zealand?

The Canadian union certification system guarantees workers rights to organise, bargain collectively, and strike only when a majority of co-workers favours unionisation. This contravenes International Labour Organisation standards, in which the freedom to associate is unqualified by majority support. In recent years, the Supreme Court of Canada has drawn on ILO principles to interpret constitutional rights as covering organising and collective bargaining activities related to freedom of association under section 2(d) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, it has not as yet ordered Canadian governments to enact labour relations laws consistent with these new constitutional rights. Neither has there been a general call for such legislative change. Instead, many fear that statutory support for non-majority unionism would lead to multi-union representation and intensified inter-union competition, but fail to consider that sharing the workplace might actually promote inter-union cooperation against a common adversary in management. This study addresses this shortcoming by looking at the extent and nature of inter-union collaboration in New Zealand, where non-majority, non-exclusive representation exists already. Collaboration was found to be common, not only over bargaining and lobbying, but also in organising. Implications for Canada are explored

Reasonable Notice for Wrongful Dismissal Court versus Human Resource Decisions

Nota: Las reglas de escritura de las referencias bibliográficas pueden variar según los diferentes dominios del conocimiento. Este documento está protegido por la ley de derechos de autor. La utilización de los servicios de Érudit (comprendida la reproducción) se rige por su política de utilización que se puede consultar en el UR

Children born prematurely: Cognitive outcomes and preliminary findings for subsequent intervention

Well-established evidence shows that children born preterm/low birth weight (LBW) are at increased risk of academic difficulties (Lee, Yeatman, Luna, & Feldman, 2011; Pritchard et al., 2009) and, despite global IQ scores within the normal range, nonetheless display lower academic performance than their same age peers (Bhutta, Cleves, Casey, Cradock, & Anand, 2002; Kerr-Wilson, Mackay, Smith, & Pell, 2011). This is not fully understood and previous attempts to improve these circumstances through means of cognitive intervention have met with little success. Therefore, the current thesis investigates possible underlying mechanisms of this intellectual disparity and tests the effectiveness of one potential intervention. In doing so, the studies presented focus specifically on fluid intelligence (Taub, 2002). The investigation through fluid intelligence is relatively novel in the current literature and therefore worthy of further exploration. Normal individual differences in fluid intelligence have been explained with reference to information processing parameters. Previous studies have shown that children born preterm/LBW have impairments in basic processes identified with executive function (Aarnoudse-Moens, Smidts, Oosterlaan, Duivenvoorden, & Weisglas-Kuperus, 2009; Mulder, Pitchford, Hagger, & Marlow, 2009). However, the current study is the first to test whether differences in fluid intelligence, as measured by the Cattell Culture Fair Tests, between preterm (n = 217) and typically developing children (n = 145) could be accounted for by differences in working memory and cognitive flexibility, as measured by the digit span tasks and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test respectively. Results indicate that the seven to nine years old preterm cohort performed less well on measures of fluid intelligence than their peers across all age groups and their differences were partially mediated by both working memory and cognitive flexibility in a multiple mediation analysis. It also identified at least one year of developmental delay in fluid intelligence between the clinical group and their peers. Provided with evidence from Study 1 and parallel research suggesting that computerized working memory training may enhance working memory and fluid intelligence in non-clinical groups (Jaeggi, Buschkuehl, Jonides, & Perrig, 2008; Klingberg, Forssberg, & Westerberg, 2002; Studer et al., 2009), the second goal of this thesis was to conduct a preliminary study to investigate the feasibility of cognitive training for children born preterm/LBW. Therefore, in the second study, the utility of a brief adaptive working memory span training program (Buschkuehl, Jaeggi, Kobel, & Perrig, 2008) was tested in typically developing children. Sixty-three children, aged seven to nine years, were randomly assigned to one of three groups: Intervention, active control and passive control. The intervention group was trained in the adaptive version of the working memory span task and the active control group was trained in the nonadaptive version. Both groups trained for 15 minutes each day for a duration of 20 days. Participants in the passive control group participated only in pre and post assessments. All participants were assessed using the digit span and spatial span tasks for measuring working memory, the Stroop task for measuring executive control, a reaction time task for measuring processing speed and the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices for measuring fluid intelligence. Results indicate that children in the intervention group improved on their trained task and demonstrated significant far transfer effects on the assessment of fluid intelligence compared to both control groups. However, no near transfer to other measures was found. The reason behind the occurrence of far transfer effect without evidence of near transfer effects was unclear. However, given that the adaptive complex working memory training task was not in any way similar to the fluid intelligence measure, significant differences in fluid intelligence gains were unlikely to have been a consequence of practice or general familiarity effects but, rather, a consequence of the training. Although Study 1 identified that working memory and cognitive flexibility partially mediate birth status-related differences in Gf, the impact of these variables on academic performance in children born preterm is still unknown. Nonetheless, current evidence of far transfer to fluid intelligence after adaptive complex working memory span training provides support for the utility of WM training and modifiability in Gf. This in turn provides a preliminary evidence-base approach for psychologists to work toward providing neuro-remediation treatment options to targeted clinical groups, such as those born preterm with fluid intelligence deficiencies. In combination, the outcomes of these two studies provide both a theoretical contribution to our understanding of the deficits observed in children born preterm and an applied contribution to beginning the process of developing appropriate intervention programmes suitable for this clinical group in the future, with hopeful prospects for improving cognitive outcomes

Delineating the processing of Chinese characters and pictures : an ERP approach

The neural processing of reading Chinese scripts has previously sparked a fierce debate, particularly in questioning the uniqueness in processing the logographic Chinese characters compared with pictures. This study was designed to ascertain at which exact time frame, as well as to what extent, the visual, orthographic, and semantic processing of the two domains (Chinese characters and line drawing pictures) resemble and differ, by examining their well-formedness (real, pseudo, and non). By employing an event-related potential (ERP) repetition detection task, 29 participants identified when a stimulus was repeated (fillers) amongst a series of randomly presented target characters or line drawings and varied in well-formedness. ERP results revealed a significantly greater activation in pictures than Chinese characters at the early visual P100 component, and across the subsequent P200-N200 and N400 components, while a greater activation was observed in characters than pictures at the orthographic sensitive N170 component. Furthermore, it was observed that the well-formedness of Chinese characters and pictures was distinguished at only the N170 and P200-N200 components respectively. Later at the semantic N400 component, it was observed that only nonitems were distinguished from real and pseudoitems in both characters and pictures at a frontocentral region. Taken together, the results suggest that Chinese characters differ from pictures at early visual and orthographic processing, as well as their well-formedness, but start to resemble at later semantic processing.published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science

The semantics of the Cantonese utterance particle 'laa1'

This paper will carry out an in-depth semantic analysis of one of the most salient and frequently used Cantonese utterance particles, 'laa1' (high level tone). Cantonese utterance particles occur in continuous talk every 1.5 seconds on average, and play a very important role in Cantonese speakers’ self-expression. There are approximately one hundred utterance particles in Cantonese, outnumbering those in Mandarin. However, it has been suggested that the particles have no meaning, and there has not been much comprehensive semantic analysis of individual particles. Where utterance particles have previously been described, the descriptions do not fully and accurately convey their meanings. In this study, a range of naturally occurring examples of 'laa1' from the Hong Kong Cantonese Corpus will be examined, and an invariant meaning of 'laa1' proposed using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). This approach offers advantages over previous descriptions of 'laa1', and will allow a simple, precise and translatable definition to be constructed. It is found that 'laa1' indicates some shared knowledge between a speaker and an addressee. This study addresses the current gap in Cantonese linguistics, and contributes to the understanding of Cantonese utterance particles.ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences, School of Language Studies; ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, School of Culture, History and Languag

Measurement-Based Noiseless Linear Amplification for Quantum Communication

Entanglement distillation is an indispensable ingredient in extended quantum communication networks. Distillation protocols are necessarily non-deterministic and require advanced experimental techniques such as noiseless amplification. Recently it was shown that the benefits of noiseless amplification could be extracted by performing a post-selective filtering of the measurement record to improve the performance of quantum key distribution. We apply this protocol to entanglement degraded by transmission loss of up to the equivalent of 100km of optical fibre. We measure an effective entangled resource stronger than that achievable by even a maximally entangled resource passively transmitted through the same channel. We also provide a proof-of-principle demonstration of secret key extraction from an otherwise insecure regime. The measurement-based noiseless linear amplifier offers two advantages over its physical counterpart: ease of implementation and near optimal probability of success. It should provide an effective and versatile tool for a broad class of entanglement-based quantum communication protocols.Comment: 7+3 pages, 5+1 figures, close to published versio

Topic modeling for conference analytics

This work presents our attempt to understand the research topics that characterize the papers submitted to a conference, by using topic modeling and data visualization techniques. We infer the latent topics from the abstracts of all the papers submitted to Interspeech2014 by means of Latent Dirichlet Allocation. Pertopic word distributions thus obtained are visualized through word clouds. We also compare the automatically inferred topics against the expert-defined topics (also known as tracks for Interspeech2014). The comparison is based on an information retrieval framework, where we use each latent topic as a query and each track as a document. For each latent topic, we retrieve a ranked list of tracks scored by the degree of word overlap. Each latent topic is associated with the top-scoring track. This analytic procedure was applied to all submissions to Interspeech2014 and sheds some interesting light in terms of providing an overview of topic categorization in the conference, popular versus unpopular topics, emerging topics and topic compositions. Such insights are potentially valuable for understanding the technical content of a field and planning the future development of its conference(s)

Are Quality Improvement and Downsizing Compatible? A Human Resources Perspective

L'amélioration de la qualité (AQ) et la réduction d'effectifs (RE) sont apparues comme deux moyens d'améliorer la compétitivité des entreprises. La RE consiste en l'élimination planifiée d'emplois permettant la réduction des dépenses et l'accroissement des profits. L'AQ est un terme parapluie pour ces principes et pratiques visant à améliorer la qualité des produits et services. On déduit que plus les consommateurs apprécieront la bonne qualité des biens et des services, plus les affaires et les profits s'accroîtront. Les principales caractéristiques de l'AQ incluent le ciblage des consommateurs, l'amélioration des processus, la collaboration patronale-syndicale et la participation intensive des employés à l'amélioration de l'entreprise. L'AQ et la RE partagent ce double objectif ultime d'améliorer l'efficacité et l'efficience d'une organisation. Leur sont sous-jacents cependant de très différentes hypothèses et différentes implications organisationnelles.Les gestionnaires qui perçoivent l'amélioration de la qualité et la réduction des effectifs comme deux volets de la même stratégie d'amélioration de l'entreprise font souvent face à un curieux dilemme. Alors que quelques chercheurs ont suggéré que ces deux initiatives sont complémentaires, d'autres sont sceptiques et ont même proposé qu'elles pourraient être contradictoires. Il y a cependant peu de travaux empiriques portant sur la relation entre l'AQ et la RE ainsi que sur leurs implications organisationnelles. Nous visons ici à combler cette lacune : (1) en examinant d'abord comment les employés réagissent à des initiatives combinées d'AQ et de RE, (2) en scrutant le degré de compatibilité de ces initiatives, et (3) en établissant comment les effets négatifs d'une initiative sur l'autre peuvent être éliminés. Les sujets de cette étude proviennent d'un hôpital albertain où un processus à deux étapes d'AQ fut implanté entre 1989 et 1996. Durant la première étape, caractérisée par une approche de gestion de la qualité totale (GQT), les améliorations furent graduelles et l'emploi continua d'être stable. La deuxième étape a coïncidé avec une réduction substantielle d'effectifs et a impliqué un effort de réingénierie appelé le « Patient Care Design Project » (PCDP) qui visait à changer radicalement l'organisation du travail. Les résultats indiquent que l'étape GQT du processus d'amélioration de la qualité n'a aucunement menacé la qualité de vie au travail des employés.Les relations du travail se sont améliorées et tout allait bien durant cette période pendant laquelle les décisions d'amélioration de la qualité n'ont pas eu d'impacts négatifs sur les ressources humaines. Cependant, les résultats de cette GQT ont été modestes, provoquant ainsi l'introduction du PCDP. Cette initiative fut accompagnée d'une coupure sans précédent de budget, imposée par le gouvernement provincial, réduisant sérieusement les effectifs et modifiant l'approche du PCDP de l'amélioration de la qualité à la réduction des coûts. Ces derniers développements ont sérieusement changé l'environnement de travail de l'hôpital, entraînant notamment l'insécurité d'emploi, l'intensification du travail, la détérioration de la qualité des services, une baise de l'implication des employés, une érosion du leadership, la rivalité entre les pairs et l'opposition syndicale.Ces changements ont résulté en une baisse de moral du personnel et en un niveau plus bas de confiance entre les parties organisationnelles. Comme l'AQ ne peut s'épanouir que dans une culture de haute confiance et de haute implication, on peut constater que l'appui pour l'AQ a souffert dans cette vague de changements. Syndicats et employés ont été incapables, ou ne se souciaient pas, de faire la différence entre les résultats des réductions d'effectifs et l'AQ vu que ce qui comptait vraiment, c'était l'impact total. Ils ont perçu ces deux initiatives comme une seule et entretenu des sentiments négatifs envers l'AQ.Nos résultats nous amènent à proposer que la réduction d'effectifs et l'AQ sont des initiatives essentiellement incompatibles lorsqu'elles sont accompagnées de ce qui suit : (a) le manque d'une culture d'AQ bien établie qui fait que les employés sont incapables de distinguer les effets de ces deux initiatives; (b) un encadrement temporel serré pour les réductions d'effectifs, ce qui limite le temps nécessaire à une analyse approfondie des recommandations d'AQ; (c) des relations du travail empreintes de confrontation, où les droits syndicaux acquis sont continuellement attaqués; (d) une mauvaise implantation d'une de ces deux ou de ces deux initiatives découlant de mauvaises communications et du peu de respect envers les employés lors de mise à pied. D'autres recherches sont toutefois nécessaires pour voir si ces deux initiatives auraient de meilleurs résultats dans d'autres contextes. Lorsqu'elles sont utilisées ensemble, les relations entre l'AQ et la RE ne sont ni simples ni directes. Les organisateurs devraient alors être prudents dans leur implantation combinée. Il est possible que les coûts en ressources humaines d'une telle implantation simultanée annule les gains financiers escomptés de ces initiatives. On devrait faire des efforts pour comprendre ces préoccupations de ressources humaines. Communications ouvertes, politiques justes et constantes, réelle implication des employés, bon leadership, planification soignée et participation syndicale sont quelques-uns des moyens permettant d'améliorer les effets négatifs sur l'environnement de travail de l'AQ et de susciter le support des employés à son égard. Vu que l'opposition syndicale à l'AQ en contexte de réduction des effectifs peut durer longtemps, on devrait prendre des mesures pour favoriser la compréhension et la collaboration éventuelles des parties. Certains de ces moyens sont l'implication des syndicats dès les premières étapes du processus de l'AQ, la reconnaissance des contraintes organisationnelles et opérationnelles des syndicats et la légitimité de la négociation collective, la volonté d'accommodement des droits syndicaux acquis et le partenariat avec le syndicat dans la prise de décision. Cependant, vu les objectifs opposés des parties, le fait de ne pas recourir à ces moyens ne peut que créer de la résistance qui sera difficile à surmonter. Mais, même, avec de tels efforts, le succès n'est pas garanti.Quality improvement (QI) and downsizing have been two popular initiatives to enhance firm competitiveness. When used together, the relationship between them is neither simple norstraightforward. Although there have been many separate studies of QI and downsizing, there is a paucity of empirical work on the relationship between them, and their organizational implications. This study seeks to fill this lacuna by shedding light on: (a) how employees respond to these initiatives when combined; (b) their compatibility; and (c) ways to alleviate the negative effects of one initiative on the other.La mejora de la calidad y los cortes de personal han sido dos iniciativas muy populares en la bùsqueda de aumentar la competitividad de las empresas. Cuando ambas opciones se usan juntas la relaciòn entre ellas no es ni simple ni directa. Aun y cuando existen un numéro importante de estudios sobre la mejora de la calidad y el corte de personal, existe un gran espacio vacìo en cuanto a estudios que ponen en relaciòn directa ambos postulados en la empresa al mismo tiempo y sus implicaciones en la organizaciòn. Este estudio trata de llenar este vacìo proporcionando: (a) como los empleados responden a estas iniciativas cuando la empresa las combina; (b) su compatibilidad; y (c) maneras de aliviar los efectos negativos de una iniciativa en la otra

Drawing-Based Automatic Dementia Screening Using Gaussian Process Markov Chains

Screening tests play an important role for early detection of dementia. Among those widely used screening tests, drawing tests have gained much attention in clinical psychology. Traditional evaluation of drawing tests totally relies on the appearance of drawn picture, but does not consider any time-dependent behaviour. We demonstrated that the processing speed and direction can reflect the decline of cognitive function, and thus may be useful for disease screening. We proposed a model of Gaussian process Markov chains (GPMC) to study the complex associations within the drawing data. Specifically, we modeled the process of drawing in a state-space form, where a drawing state is composed of drawing direction and velocity with consideration of the processing time. For temporal modeling, our scope focused more on discrete-time Markov chains on continuous state space. Because of the short processing time of picture drawing, we applied higher-order of Markov chains to model long-term temporal correlation across drawing states. Gaussian process regression was used for universal function approximation to flexibly infer the state transition function. With Gaussian process prior to the distribution of function space, we could encode high-level function properties such as noisiness, smoothness and periodicity. We also derived an efficient training mechanism for complex Gaussian process regression on bivariate Markov chains. With GPMC, we present an optimal decision rule based on Bayesian decision theory. We applied our proposed method to a drawing test for dementia screening, i.e. interlocking pentagon-drawing test. We tested our models with 256 subjects who are aged from 65 to 95. Finally, comparing to the traditional methods, our models showed remarkable improvement in drawing test for dementia screening