scholarly journals Renewal in Canadian Public Sector Unions

2007 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Camfield
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Sector Reform ◽  
Public Sector Union ◽  
Union Activity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Movement Unionism ◽  
Limited Success ◽  
Public Sector Unions ◽  
Union Renewal

Challenges from employers and governments and the limited success of public sector union responses suggest the need for renewal in Canadian public sector unions. This article engages with discussions of union renewal by way of theoretically conceptualizing the modes of union praxis relevant to Canadian unions. It then examines the nature of neoliberal public sector reform and assesses the experiences of Canadian public sector unions under neoliberalism. In this difficult context, unions that are able to make progress in the interconnected development of greater democracy and power will be more capable of channelling workers’ concerns into union activity. This, along with international and Canadian evidence, highlights the significance of the praxis of social movement unionism to union renewal in the public sector.

scholarly journals The ‘Great Recession,’ the Employers’ Offensive and Canadian Public Sector Unions

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (1 / 2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Camfield
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Context Change ◽  
Promising Direction ◽  
Social Movement Unionism ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Municipal Workers ◽  
Public Sector Unions ◽  
Il Y A ◽  
Union Renewal

The global economic crisis and its effects have changed the context for public sector unions in Canada. There is evidence that an intensified offensive against public sector unions is beginning. Few public sector unions are prepared to respond adequately to such an offensive, as the important 2009 strike by Toronto municipal workers illustrates. In this more difficult context, change within public sector unions is increasingly urgent. The most promising direction for union renewal lies in the praxis of social movement unionism. However, there are very few signs of moves to promote this approach within Canadian public sector unions. La crise économique globale et ses effets ont changé le contexte pour les syndicats du secteur public au Canada. Il y a des signes qu’une attaque violente contre les syndicats du secteur public a commencé. Peu de syndicats du secteur public sont prêts à répondre dans une manière satisfaisante à cette attaque, comme le montre la grève importante des travailleurs municipaux à Toronto en 2009. Dans ce contexte plus difficile, des changements au sein des syndicats du secteur public sont de plus en plus urgents. La direction la plus prometteuse pour une renaissance syndicale est la pratique d’un syndicalisme de mouvement social. Toutefois, il y a très peu d’indices que les syndicats du secteur public au Canada s’inscrivent dans une telle approche.

Why Public Sector Union Members Support Their Unions: Survey and Experimental Evidence

Social Forces ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez ◽  
Ethan Porter
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Public Sector Union ◽  
The Public ◽  
Sector Union ◽  
Teachers Union ◽  
Public Sector Unions ◽  
To Receive

Abstract Despite their decline, unions, and especially public sector unions, remain important civic and economic associations. Yet, we lack an understanding of why public sector union members voluntarily support unions. We report on a field experiment conducted during a 2017 Iowa teachers union recertification election. We randomly assigned union members to receive emails describing union benefits and measured effects on turnout effort (N = 10,461). Members were more likely to try to vote when reminded of the unions’ professional benefits and community—but not legal protections or political representation. A follow-up survey identified the specific aspects of professional identity and benefits that members most valued and why. In a context where union membership and support is voluntary among professionalized workers, our findings emphasize the possibility of training for fostering shared identities and encouraging support for public sector unions. Our results have broader implications for understanding the public sector labor movement in a context of legal retrenchment.

scholarly journals Editorial

2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. v-vi
Author(s):  
Leena James
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Banking Sector ◽  
Work Process ◽  
The Public ◽  
Customer Base ◽  
Public Sector Banks ◽  
National Bank ◽  
The Impact

The eleventh issue of Ushus brings to you a wide variety of scholarly articles encompassing socio-economic and managerial issues. The first paper "Information technology and banking sector with reference to customer satisfaction" focuses on the impact of automation of the public sector banks as per the reflections of the bank officials and the customers. The crest of the article lies in the fact that the customers are being able to keep abreast with the exchange of automation in the modern banking practices and the survey brings out their perception towards it and throws some light on the effective ways to deal with this crisis. The study concludes with the analytical results that public sector bank customers have a positive inclination towards technological upgradation but the banks need to be more flexible in their work process and focus on marketing themselves in order to entrap a larger customer base. The paper titled "Administration of micro-credit by national bank" talks about the successful micro-finance initiatives taken by NABARD how aptly they had been implemented and evolved as a sustainable social movement over a decade now.

Public Sector Reform and the Public Servant

2021 ◽  
pp. 359-379
Author(s):  
Avery Poole ◽  
Janine O’Flynn ◽  
Patrick Lucas
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Sector Reform ◽  
Sector Reform ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Servant

Between government unilateralism and corporatist bargaining: public sector pension reforms in the UK and Ireland, 2000s–2010s

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-124
Author(s):  
Sung Ho Park
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Pension Reforms ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Sector Unions ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Uk

AbstractStudies on welfare reform in advanced European countries have identified two established paths to welfare retrenchment: government unilateralism and corporatist bargaining. This study explores a more complicated path to welfare reform, wherein governments pursue ‘non-corporatist’ bargaining by actively combining features of unilateralism and negotiation. Such a hybrid case is explained by employing an ‘insider-outsider’ framework for public policy reform. The key argument is that the presence of exclusive insiders complicates the reform process, disqualifying both unilateralism and corporatist bargaining as feasible options for benefit cuts. The author demonstrates the validity of this claim by examining three cases of public sector pension retrenchment in the UK and Ireland during the 2000s and 2010s. Defying the common expectation that benefit cuts in residual welfare states would be promoted with government unilateralism, the public sector pension reforms in the UK and Ireland exhibited more complicated features which combined governments' unilateral initiatives andad hocnegotiations with public sector unions. Future studies may build on this finding to examine hybrid reform cases in a general European context.

scholarly journals Lost in transition? The personal and professional challenges for probation leaders engaged in delivering public sector reform

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Millings ◽  
Lol Burke ◽  
Gwen Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Organisational Change ◽  
Transformational Change ◽  
Senior Management ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Senior Managers ◽  
Sector Reform ◽  
Management Level ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Community

The outsourcing and transfer of labour in the contexts of policing, prisons and courts illustrate that, even in a national context, these transitions are not uniform. Rather, there are a diverse set of ‘privatisation journeys’ that can be taken and that need to be understood. Our focus in this article is on the experience of probation leaders who, under the Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reform programme, were charged with stewarding their organisation from the public sector, through a 10-month transitional period, and into the full relinquishing of ownership to the private sector. It is an account of how, with no clear ‘transition and transformation’ precedent to follow, a locally-based senior management team from one probation trust engaged with the task of implementing organisational change during a period of great uncertainty. We explore managers’ engagement with the language, working styles and vision of engineering transformational change and how they processed and began to articulate the challenges of new ownership, both for themselves (as individuals) and for their organisation (as a collective). We examine the resilience of the organisational culture at senior management level; the operational dynamism of leaders to embrace change; and the extent to which senior managers felt able to participate in, and take ownership of, the new Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) they were charged with forming.

scholarly journals Exploiting conditionality: EU and international actors and post-NPM reform in Ireland

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-200
Author(s):  
Muiris MacCarthaigh ◽  
Niamh Hardiman
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Policy Coordination ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Sector Reforms ◽  
New Public ◽  
Public Sector Unions ◽  
Administrative Elites

Between 2008 and 2015, Ireland undertook unprecedented and systemic public sector reforms in a polity not traditionally considered a prominent reformer. While some of these reforms comprised part of the loan programme agreement with EU and international actors, many others did not. This article argues that the crisis in Ireland provided a window of opportunity to introduce reforms that political and administrative elites had previously found difficult to implement. The authority of the Troika was invoked to provide legitimacy for controversial initiatives, yet some of the reforms went further than the loan programme strictly required. A number of these concerning organisational rationalisation, the public service ‘bargain’ and transversal policy coordination are considered here. Agreements were negotiated with public sector unions that facilitated sharp cuts in pay and conditions, reducing the potential for opposition to change. The reform effort was further legitimated by the reformers’ post-New Public Management, whole-of-government discourse, which situated considerations of effectiveness and efficiency in a broader framework of public service quality and delivery.

Wellington-Winter Revisited: The Case of Municipal Sanitation Collection

ILR Review ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda N. Edwards ◽  
Franklin R. Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Solid Waste ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Waste Collection ◽  
Solid Waste Collection ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Sector Unions ◽  
Residential Solid Waste ◽  
Public Collection

This study examines the hypothesis advanced by Wellington and Winter that public sector unions have greater power than private sector unions to raise wages. To test this hypothesis the authors use a unique body of 1974 data on several aspects of residential solid waste collection in 175 cities, 95 with public collection systems and 80 with private systems. In both groups of cities some work forces are unionized and some are not. The authors' analysis shows that unionization raises the wages of sanitation workers in the public sector by considerably more than it raises the wages of such workers in the private sector, thus providing strong support for the Wellington-Winter thesis.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document