Newsletter
March 2007
Spotlight: The IR Scene is All Shook Up
Restructuring is the most pressing IR issue of 2007 says Queen's MIR program faculty member Rob Hickey, topping the agenda for labour and management alike. In the following Q & A, Hickey discusses economic restructuring, related changes to work processes and employment relationships, and what he'd most like to see happen in IR this year ...more
This Issue:
- Queen's IRC Hits the Road: Join us for upcoming programs in Toronto, Saskatoon and Regina ...more
- Meeting of the Minds: Explore what HR leaders most need to know at Queen's School of Business conference ...more
- Free Download: Strategic HRM paper with Ottawa Citizen VP-HR Debbie Bennett ..more
- Spotlight: Restructuring is the big IR issue of 2007 says Queen's MIR faculty member Rob Hickey ...more
Upcoming Programs:
- Apr. 15-Apr. 20, 2007, Kingston - Negotiation Skills
- Apr. 23-Apr. 26, 2007, Kingston - Change Management
- Apr.29-May 4, 2007, Kingston - Industrial Relations
- May 1-May 3, 2007, Kingston - Business Strategy
- May 7-May 11, 2007, Kingston - Dispute Resolution
- May 28-June 1, 2007, Kingston - Labour Arbitration
Queen's IRC Hits the Road
Don't get us wrong: we adore welcoming the world to our programs here in the Limestone City. But we also know, based on your feedback, that some participants cannot make the hike to Kingston. For those people, we have decided to start bringing our programs to some other neighbourhoods around the country. Here are the sessions we have confirmed to date:
OD Foundations - Regina, April 02-05
Change Management - Toronto, May 8-11
Organizational Design - Regina, May 15-17
Negotiation Skills - Regina, June 4-7
Change Management - Saskatoon, June 12-15
Partnership Development - Regina, Sept. 17-19
Building Smart Teams - Regina, Oct. 16-19
Change Management - Regina, Nov. 27-30
HR Meeting of the Minds: Queen's Conference in Kingston
Our colleagues at the Queen's School of Business Monieson Centre and Centre for Business Venturing are holding a one-day HR conference this May 14. The theme is "Your Human Resources: What You Know; What You Should Know." The event will take place 8.30 am to 4.30 pm at the Donald Gordon Conference Centre on the Queen's campus in Kingston.
Join HR experts and Canadian companies as they share their best practices. Participants include winners of the 2006 "Best Small and Medium-sized Employers in Canada" survey. As well, attendees will be invited to share their biggest HR concern electronically with other participants, then take part in a fact-finding analysis and prioritization of these issues in an open forum. An expert panel will review the findings of this interactive brainstorming session.
For information call toll free 1-877-955-1800.
Free Download: Ottawa Citizen HR-VP on Strategic HRM
Click here to download this just-released paper in which HR VP Debbie Bennett shares her HRM insights.
Spotlight: IR Scene is All Shook Up
Rob Hickey, a faculty member in the Queen’s Master’s of Industrial Relations program, says restructuring is the big issue of 2007 for both labour and management. Below, Rob - who worked as an organizer for the Teamsters for a decade in the United States, and earned his MA and PhD from Cornell University’s School of Industrial Relations and Labor Relations Studies - discusses IR issues, and what he’d most like to see happen in IR in the year ahead.
What are the most crucial labour-management issues for 2007?
Key issues facing labour and management over the next year continue to revolve around the process of economic restructuring. The recent announcements of layoffs by Chrysler, preceded by Ford, the ripple effect that the Big Three auto sector has on parts suppliers - that type of restructuring is certainly impacting the field of IR and labour unions, the Canadian Autoworkers in particular.
This also plays into other forms of restructuring at the level of the workplace. Take the current CN strike: one dimension is a wage dispute, but the other is restructuring of work processes, or the drive for flexibility on the part of management.
I continue to see the issue of restructuring, both on the broader, industrial level and on the micro, workplace level as being the key challenge facing management and labour in the coming year.
What are the top priorities for management?
Management’s priorities are consistent with the term ‘flexibility’, and it creates clear tensions with unions over questions of job security, and economic security in general.
I think flexibility relates to both numeric and functional flexibility; functional flexibility as seen in the CN dispute and numeric flexibility based on the employers’ ability to outsource, contract out, to rationalize and downsize their workforce. We saw this at Chrysler, among the Big Three, and at a host of companies including Eastman Kodak and Nortel.
You see companies trying to adapt their operations to the changing global economic environment, and that includes in some cases shifting production from North America to Mexico, or low-cost offshore locations in the Far East. Or it includes what I call “insourcing” – bringing non-employee contractors into a local workplace. So the work may still be done locally, but no longer by core employees of a particular employer. These forms of flexibility continue to be attractive to employers as part of overall cost containment or cost reduction strategy.
It’s not simply a question of adapting to current economic pressures: it’s also about restructuring the work process, and creating different structures in the employment relationship.
What are the top priorities for labour?
Pressures from economic restructuring are increasing the profile of economic and social security concerns. So job security and also broader social security remain a serious focus of labour’s agenda. I include social security because while the loss of manufacturing jobs is one element, it also contributes to concerns about a crisis in the provision of public services and the quality of the health care system - which the Canadian labour movement is deeply concerned about.
Wages will of course not disappear from labour’s concerns, and that will continue to ebb and flow. Statscan has tracked contractual wage increases at slightly above the rate of inflation, and I don’t see that changing significantly in the near term. Labour unions do not want to see their members’ purchasing power decline.
Related to the first point on economic restructuring, we see rapid changes taking place in ownership structures through mergers and acquisitions. Take Novelis here in Kingston - an India-based firm, Hindalco, just made one of largest buyout offers in the industry’s history to purchase this aluminium manufacturing company. This type of global capital restructuring creates concern for unions but also opportunities that may bring much needed capital investment to operations that have historically been efficient, productive, and profitable, but lack money to recapitalize.
So restructuring in this case is not just about job protection and layoff concerns, but also about investment flows, capital improvements, and commitment to innovative technology to local operations.
To read the full Spotlight article, go to:http://www.industrialrelationscentre.com/labour-relations/articles/ir-scene-is-all-shook-up.htm
~~~
Call us: 613 533 6628
Fax us: 613 533 6812
E-mail us: ircentre@post.queensu.ca
Delete us: Click Here | 
