Policy & Issue Briefs

The Economic Downturn is Accentuated by Labor Market Deficiencies of U.S. Immigration Policies: A Mandate for Change

Vernon M. Briggs Jr — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:45:24 PST

[Excerpt] The depth and length of the economic downturn has already led federal policymakers to implement fiscal policy remedies (i.e., government spending and tax cuts) of unprecedented proportions. These efforts have been intended to enlarge labor demand by stimulating aggregate spending in the lagging economy. Likewise, the Federal Reserve has pursued an expansionary monetary policy (i.e., increasing the money supply) that has driven interest rates to historically low levels and held them there longer than has ever before been imagined. Despite the massive scale of these policy initiatives, they have been of little avail. Throughout this troublesome period, however, the nation’s immigration policies — which have been under criticism for over 40 years for being at odds with the nation’s labor market trends — have remained untouched by policymakers. Annual immigration levels have remained at historically high levels without any seeming notice of the economic downturn affecting the economy.

The Job Creation Tax Credit: Dismal Projections for Employment Call for a Quick, Efficient, and Effective Response

John H. Bishop — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:59:58 PST

[Excerpt] Given the extraordinary scope of the current economic crisis, no single policy can fully address the challenge of job creation. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has spurred job creation substantially, but the deterioration in economic prospects since it was passed demands a renewed focus on job growth in the near term.

A well-designed temporary federal job creation tax credit should be an integral part of the effort to boost job growth. Besides having broad-based, bipartisan political support, the best argument for a job creation tax credit is simply that it will create almost 3 million jobs in 2010 and over 2 million in 2011. Moreover, it will stimulate the entrepreneurial character of Americans by giving 6.5 million employers and millions more aspiring entrepreneurs a limited-time offer to expand their production or start new endeavors, at a discount. Because choices about whom to hire and what work they should do are left to independent decision makers who can act immediately, the credit will have just as quick an impact.

This paper outlines a version of this credit that aims to induce increases in payroll—either through adding new jobs or by increasing the hours or wages of current workers—and estimates its economic impact:

• A job creation tax credit that refunded 15% of new wage costs in 2010 and 10% of new wage costs in 2011 could create 5.1 million additional jobs in the U.S. economy over these two years.

• The net cost of the tax credit would be roughly $27 billion, or about $5,400 per new full-time-equivalent job created over these two years.

IWS Briefing, Winter 2009, Volume 9, Issue 1

Maralyn Edid — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:33:37 PST

[Excerpt] A newsletter on workplace issues and research from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University.

ILR Impact Brief - Group Success Depends on Giving Individuals Credit Where Credit Is Due

Jack A. Goncalo et al. — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:13:18 PST

[Excerpt] Does the tendency of groups to take credit for their success without acknowledging the input of specific group members affect subsequent group performance?

In a word, yes. This “group-serving bias” may cause groups to ignore or underestimate the potentially unique contributions made by each individual member, a common practice that can lead to inferior outcomes. When groups ascribe their success to individuals, they are more likely to explore a wide range of divergent alternatives before reaching consensus. Attribution to individuals also facilitates the sharing of information that is known to only one member of the group but is critical to making the right, or best, decision.

ILR Impact Brief - Union Leaders' Actions Can Rev Up the Rank and File

Tove H. Hammer et al. — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:02:29 PST

[Excerpt] Local union leaders engage in activities that concern internal affairs and others that pertain to external matters. These internal and external orientations are elements of leadership that affect how members feel about and perceive their union, which in turn affect their allegiance and commitment to the union. Specifically, beliefs about how well the union delivers on wages, benefits, and working conditions (instrumentality) and perceptions of wage equity and the degree of rank-and-file voice in decisions (distributive and procedural justice, respectively) at least partially mediate the link between local leaders’ actions and members’ loyalty to, and willingness to work for, the union.

ILR Impact Brief - Affective Commitment Links Human Resource Practices and Voluntary Turnover

Patrick M. Wright et al. — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:56:28 PDT

[Excerpt] Motivation- and empowerment- enhancing human resource (HR) practices are positively associated with employees’ collective emotional attachment to, and identification with, a company and its goals; this affective commitment, in turn, is negatively associated with the aggregate of employee decisions to exit an organization. Thus, collective affective commitment mediates the relationship between these two sets of HR practices and voluntary turnover. Practices that enhance workforce skills, however, are not mediated by collective affective commitment; rather, they are directly and positively associated with increased voluntary turnover.

ILR Impact Brief - Industry Clusters Affect Job Mobility and Earnings Growth

Matthew Freedman — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:16:32 PDT

[Excerpt] Industry clusters are associated with greater job hopping and faster growth in workers’ earning power relative to the experience of workers at less spatially concentrated companies. Workers in these clusters tend to accept lower starting salaries than peers at more isolated firms in anticipation of rapid gains that accompany movement from job to job within the cluster and the accumulation of industry-specific knowledge. Higher earnings observed among workers in clustered firms may also reflect choices made by workers with certain characteristics to seek employment in an area with a high concentration of similar firms and by companies with certain characteristics to locate in such an area.

ILR Impact Brief - Deconstructing Absenteeism: Satisfaction, Commitment, and Unemployment

John Hausknecht et al. — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:47:36 PDT

[Excerpt] Group attitudes about satisfaction and commitment are negatively associated with absenteeism and interact in predicting absenteeism at the unit level. The effects are particularly strong in areas where jobs are plentiful but fade away where jobs are scarce. In other words, higher levels of absenteeism in a work group are associated with lower levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment in labor markets with low unemployment, and vice versa. Organizational commitment is the crucial factor: absenteeism is higher in work units with low levels of commitment regardless of the level of satisfaction. Group norms about absenteeism and other contextual factors, such as work processes, contribute to the variance among work units. Satisfaction and commitment are not related to changes in absenteeism over time.

ILR Impact Brief - Collective Bargaining Remains the Linchpin of Worker Representation

Rebecca Givan — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:10:53 PDT

[Excerpt] The decline in union density and collective bargaining coverage has created a representation gap that civil society organizations only partially bridge. Their offer of mutual insurance and political and legal advocacy on issues of concern to workers is no substitute for collective bargaining, a function that resides entirely within the union portfolio. Growing wage inequality is the clearest indication that representation without bargaining provides workers little protection against the power of employers and “the state.” Alliances between unions and civil society organizations may help labor reach potential members and advance workers’ non-bargaining interests.

IWS briefing, Summer 2008 Volume 8 Issue 2

Maralyn Edid, Editor — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 08:58:01 PDT

[Excerpt] A newsletter on workplace issues and research from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University.

ILR Impact Brief - Community College Websites and Barriers to Access

William Erickson et al. — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 08:33:50 PDT

[Excerpt] Community colleges, on average, serve 335 students with disabilities, although that number climbs to 5,000 at the largest college surveyed for this project. Nearly all community colleges that participated in the survey rely on the web for a variety of student services, but only half have instituted requirements regarding web accessibility for individuals with disabilities. Actual evaluations of accessibility and ease of use revealed that none of the websites analyzed complied with all federal standards on accessibility, and many web pages encompassed usability obstacles (e.g., unfamiliar terminology, unintuitive navigation schemes, and hard-to-read design elements) that affected disabled and non-disabled individuals alike.

ILR Impact Brief - Employee Attributions about HR Practices Lead to Customer Satisfaction

Lisa Hisae Nishii et al. — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 08:46:17 PDT

[Excerpt] The perceived reasons why management chooses a set of HR practices are linked to employee satisfaction, commitment, and on-the-job behavior. Employees individually make their own attributions about the purposes behind the practices, which are, in turn, associated with employees’ attitudes: a perception that management cares about service (or product) quality and employee well-being is associated with positive attitudes, but a sense that management is intent on cost cutting or employee exploitation is associated with negative attitudes. Furthermore, individual attitudes are shared within work units and in their aggregate are associated with “organizational citizenship behaviors;” i.e., group-level satisfaction and commitment are associated with intra-unit helping behaviors, which are linked to enhanced unit performance and customer satisfaction.

ILR Impact Brief - Building Trust and Cooperation in Boundary-Spanning Teams

Michele Williams — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:39:50 PST

[Excerpt] Knowledge workers engaged in interorganizational collaborative initiatives (i.e., boundary spanners) can actively build and maintain interpersonal trust through a multi-step “threat regulation” process. Designed to mitigate counterparts’ fears that harm will arise out of the cooperative effort, threat regulation involves 1) perspective-taking (understanding how others might perceive and experience the risks of cooperation); 2) threat-reducing behavior (intentional efforts to influence others’ negative emotions); and 3) reflection (self-assessment leading to self-corrective actions). When hierarchical authority is absent, which is common in collaborative projects, boundary-spanners can adopt these behaviors to influence others’ emotions so as to gain the requisite trust and cooperation.

IWS briefing, Winter 2008 Volume 8 Issue 1

Maralyn Edid, Editor — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 08:13:48 PST

[Excerpt] A newsletter on workplace issues and research from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University.

ILR Impact Brief - Economic Development, Labor Markets, and Poverty Reduction

Gary S. Fields — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:44:08 PST

[Excerpt] Economic development is generally understood to involve improvements in economic well-being for a society and its members. Despite the generalized unfolding of economic opportunity that accompanies economic growth, the specific goal of poverty reduction should be the most pressing component of a development agenda. Labor market policies that foster the creation of “good” jobs and prepare the population to hold these jobs will alleviate individual economic privation.

ILR Impact Brief - College Tuition Creeps Ever Higher — Here’s Why

Ronald G. Ehrenberg — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:56:28 PST

[Excerpt] A variety of factors are responsible for the rapidly escalating costs of undergraduate education in the United States. Concern about quality — of students, faculty, course offerings, physical plant, and image — militates against a focus on efficiency and productivity at the selective private colleges and universities; a perception among students and families that price signals quality gives the less selective privates cover to keep raising rates. Public colleges and universities, where relatively higher increases have been recorded, continue to grapple with diminishing state appropriations as a share of their budgets.

ILR Impact Brief - Labor Branches Out: Resurgence in the Urban Core

Lowell Turner — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 09:00:12 PST

[Excerpt] Agency (the choices made and strategies pursued by leaders and organizations) and opportunity structure (the presence or absence of institutional, political, and/or social barriers)—are the two factors that seem to account for the revitalization of city-based labor movements in several locales, such as Seattle, Buffalo, Los Angeles, and San Jose; European unions have not progressed quite as far in this regard. Rather than focus exclusively on traditional workplace issues, unions active in contemporary urban labor movements are forging coalitions with other actors in civil society and mobilizing grassroots participation in union campaigns as well as in the democratic process.

ILR Impact Brief - Workforce Alignment and Fluidity May Yield a Competitive Advantage

Lee Dyer et al. — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 12:10:46 PST

[Excerpt] The authors postulate that workforce scalability is the key competency necessary for ongoing marketplace success. Workforce scalability encompasses two factors: alignment and fluidity. The former is an ideal target that calls for the right number of the right type of people in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. The latter is the means by which organizations hit the target, and specifically refers to the speed and ease with which employees are moved around and adjust their behaviors to suit changing business requirements. A set of operating principles facilitates the simultaneous attainment of workforce alignment and fluidity.

ILR Impact Brief - It’s a Paradox: Union Workers Less Satisfied but Less Likely to Quit

Tove H. Hammer et al. — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 11:58:03 PST

[Excerpt] Existing economic models of human behavior do not adequately deal with the seeming inconsistency between union members’ attitudes about their jobs and their subsequent actions. A more promising explanation might derive from job satisfaction theory, which suggests that union members have a particular set of values, expectations, and frames of reference that they use to evaluate the outcomes of their work effort. Individuals who join unions may place higher value on wages and benefits, which are the focus of most collectively- bargained contracts, than do non-union workers; historically, unions have delivered in this regard. Unionized workers may be more dissatisfied because of a more adversarial climate (e.g., testy supervisory and interpersonal relations, narrowly-defined jobs) but are less likely to quit because the things they value most—good wages and benefits—are provided.

ILR Impact Brief - Transcending Free Market Unionism: A New Alliance for New York State Unions

Jeff Grabelsky — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 12:30:29 PDT

[Excerpt] In the few years since the AFL-CIO consolidated 25 of the 31 central labor councils in New York State into five area labor federations (ALFs), local union affiliates have begun to transcend the narrow interests that long divided one union from another. ALFs have begun to embrace new and more diverse leaders, strengthen their functional capabilities, forge coalitions with community groups, and help elect politicians who are more responsive to the concerns of working families. Whether the restructured labor movement has a greater ability to affect organizing drives and contract negotiations is still unclear.