Quiz 2_MGMT 104

What is a social movement?

"Collective challenges based on common purposes and social solidarities, in sustained interaction with elites, opponents, and authorities." (Tarrow, 1998) - goal is to change laws (of the state), policies (of an organization), norms (of a group or society), or authorities - must be collective action - must be consistent and sustained action (a riot is not a movement, it is an event) - must spring from a grievance Examples - black lives matter - suffragist movement - the green movement - gun rights movement - pro-life movement

Who owns employee communications?

"The federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act makes clear that workplace e-mails [is] the property of the employer, and employees should not expect privacy when sending, receiving, downloading, uploading, printing or otherwise transmitting electronic messages." - Nancy Flynn, ePolicy Institute

What are the steps in the termination process?

(according to Coates and Ellis) *Prevention*: early intervention, early warnings, redeployment - "the manager will have failed if the final termination meeting comes as a surprise to the employee" (Coates) *Preparation* - documentation - termination experts *Implementation* - preserve privacy and dignity - clarity on the action and brevity on the reasons - separation agreement *Post-Separation Management* - communicate to other employees but don't disparage

Labor Markets and Trade Unions (Streeck)

*Affects labor supply through* - requirements for who can hold certain jobs - supporting skill formation of certain workers - limiting amount of labor extracted from a given worker by setting minimum wages and maximum hours *Affects labor demand through* - political activism supporting high levels of employment - pushing for internal promotion as opposed to lateral hire - "cartels of labor" - trade unions above all pushed for standardization of employment contracts in part in order to suspend competition between workers to enable solidarity - trade unions act both as agents of explicit specification of contracted obligations, protecting workers from excessive demands, making performance easier to manage, and as guardians of trust in implicit and informal mutual commitments - contracts with unspecified / less specified content = greater flexility = greater potential for "rationalization" HOWEVER move from contracts of work to employment "deskills" manual work and "degrades" work in general - labor supply may decline as price of labor increase due to worker preference for leisure over income - skills are specific / idiosyncratic to social groups and in the particular workplaces, in which they are built

Describe economic research on the impact of a minimum wage

*Bad for Society* - raising the minimum wage creates substantial job loss due to basic supply and demand *Good for Society* - dis-employment effects are either not present or are very small - lots of convincing US and international studies suggest big impact on wages for these workers with no aggregate effect on levels of employment - raising the minimum wage affects other things like higher worker productivity that may offset the negative effects - lots of these jobs are in service-related occupations that are hard to replace - minimal inflation effects

What are considered the current best practices in and challenges to a redesigned performance review system?

*Best Practices:* - conversations between managers and employees should occur when projects / milestones are reached, challenges pop up, etc., allowing people to solve problems in current performance and develop skills for the future - focus on development rather than accountability *Challenges* 1. Aligning individual and company goals 2. Rewarding performance: how to divvy up rewards if not tied to annual reviews? 3. Identifying poor performers 4. Avoiding legal troubles 5. Managing feedback

What are some typical provisions in collective bargaining contracts?

*Establishment and Administration of the Agreement* - contract duration - union security - bargaining unit *Functions, Rights, and Responsibilities* - subcontracting - union activities on company time and premises *Job or Income Security* - hiring and transfer arrangements - income guarantees *Wage Determination and Administration* - rate structure and wage differentials *Plant Operations* - work and shop rules *Paid and Unpaid Leave* - vacations and holidays - sick leave *Employee Benefit Plans* - health and insurance plans

What union avoidance tactics are legal?

*Firms cannot*: *T*hreaten *I*nterrogate *P*romise *S*py *Firms can share with employees*: *F*acts *O*pinions *E*xperiences with a union According to the Labor Department, 87% of employers hire consultants to help manage union avoidance campaigns, yet the agency gets "very few reports" on that work because consultants long considered it exempt from reporting. - rule change July 1, 2016 required reporting - changed back July 17, 2018

Polanyi's Double Movement

*Flexibility* (1800 - 1930, 1975 - 2008) - uncertainty - guided by principles of economic liberalism and laissez-faire - predicts a response to flexibility / insecurity *Security* (1930 - 1975) - relative certainty - moves toward social protections "The great danger Polanyi alerts us to, however, is that mobilizing politics to protect against markets run wild is just as likely to be reactionary and conservative, as it is to be progressive and democratic." social democracy vs fascism

What do unions do for society?

*Lower Economic Inequality* - low-income children rise higher in income rankings when they grow up in areas with high-union membership; 10% point increase in area's union membership associated with low-income children ranking 1.3% point higher in national income distribution - union density is one of the strongest predictors of an area's mobility - children of non-college-educated fathers earn 28% more if their father was in a labor union - union membership decline explains 1/3 of the increase in wage inequality in men and 1/5 in women since 1973 - decline in union membership has social / cultural consequences: membership is positively and significantly associated with marriage for men

What do performance evaluation systems do?

*Managerial Functions* - communication of values and expectations - strategy implementation *Administrative Functions* - pay and promotions decisions - validation of recruitment and hiring practices - workforce retention / reductions - legal defense of hiring, promotion, and discharge decisions *Developmental functions* - feedback - professional and personal growth

What is the NRLB?

*National Labor Relations Board*: defines and outlaws unfair labor practices - interfering with employee rights to form unions - interfering with the administration of a union - discriminating against union members - discriminating against an employee who has filed charges under the act - refusing to bargain with the union "in good faith" - punishing employees for "concerted activity" ***note: NRLA covers non-union members

Analyze the Fight for 15 movement using social movement theory

*Political Opportunity* - with firms resistant to negotiations, and powerful enough to avoid unions, movement shifted its target to the state level - first $15/hr minimum wage law passed in 2013 - state minimum wage increases in January 2019 will raise pay for 5.3 million workers *Resource Mobilization* - Service Employees International Union (SEIU) uses union dues to support this movement in a 'nothing to lose' strategy - SEIU uses paid protestors in marches and even sets aside money to cover the bail and legal fees for protestors who volunteer to be arrested - other organizations in support: Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars, Syracuse Peace Council, Spanish Action League, Green Party and local churches (media and religious groups are important) *Framing* - justice, equality, fairness

What do unions do for / to firms?

*Positive / No Impacts* - small differences in wages, employment, and output between unionized and comparable non-unionized workplaces in close representation elections - historically, some in business saw the 'contract' as providing greater predictability - not much large-scale evidence that unions hurt productivity, quality, or the rate of innovation *Negative Impacts* - in the US, unions reduce cumulative returns to investors by 10% over 2 years - have a significant negative effect on profits, and this effect is larger in the US - ability to adapt to changing economic conditions can be more complex, particularly where labor / management relationships are very combative

What are the best practices when terminating an employee?

*Prevent the Situation* - clear and consistent communication - informing new hires of responsibilities and company policies - giving unambiguous feedback on an ongoing basis (including warnings) - logging written feedback in personnel file - advising a lagging employee that s/he has been placed on a 'watch list' *Prepare for the Termination* - build a paper trail documenting issues beforehand, including management's expectations for performance, employee acknowledgement of those expectations, documentation of underperformance, and explanation that continued failure would result in termination - once it is clear that an employee will not succeed, a manager should finalize the decision to terminate quickly - handle administrative tasks of organizing the nature of termination, effective final date, non-compete agreement, plan for transition *Implementing the Termination* - terminate on a Monday, not a Friday; 5-10 minutes long; unambiguous discussion - should not delay termination just to create a paper trail because this (1) creates an adversarial relationship with the employee, (2) prolongs operational inefficiency and (3) is unfair to the employee *Managing Post-Termination* - advisable to tell other employees about the termination right away

What are the two types of performance management systems?

*Relative Judgement*: an appraisal format that asks supervisors to compare an employee's performance to the performance of other employees doing the same job - Jack Welch on 'Rank and Yank': "It's letting the bottom 10% know where they are and then giving them a change to move on. About 70% (of the bottom 10%) leave on their own. Who wants to be on the bottom once they know it? You don't fire them. That's being mean." *Absolute Judgement*: an appraisal format that asks supervision to make judgements about an employee's performance based solely on performance standards

What is the price tag for union members?

*Union Dues* - $200 - $1,000 per year for full time workers - often 1-2% of wages with a cap *Non-Monetary Costs* - in the US, political climate may make union workers a target for scorn - unionized workers report experiencing lower collaboration and support from supervisors than do non-unionized workers - disadvantages of seniority priority: (1) hard to reward exceptional talent and (2) lay offs / promotion systems disadvantage less tenured workers

National Labor Relations Act

*Wagner Act (1935)* - protects organizing, joining a union (whether employer recognized or not), going on strike to secure better working conditions - established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) - protects most private sector workers but NOT supervisors, independent contractors, agricultural workers, domestic workers, and public employees - sets up rules for the union's organizing campaign - establishes "bargaining unit" based on community of interest ---> if union wins a majority of the vote, it represents all workers in the unit

Dignity (Finnegan)

- Fast Food Forward: NY branch of a growing campaign to unionize fast-food workers - most fast-food workers make minimum wage, receive no benefits, and work highly unpredictable schedules - SEIU, second-largest union in the US, quietly fund the fast-food campaign - fast-food giants' traditional defense of their low pay that most of their employees are young and part time, is no longer true (average employee is 28 years old) - 52% of fast food workers are on some for of public assistance ---> direct taxpayer subsidy for the fast food industry - National Restaurant Association (NRA): enormous organization (>0.5MM member businesses) fights minimum wage legislation at every level of government McDonald's Labor Practices - managers snip each line out of a printed schedule so that workers don't see each other's hours / scheduling - fired workers for participating in protests on their own time (reinstated later) - corporate management decided to raise the wages of its employees, but this policy does not extend to the thousands of workers at franchisees - corporate decided to no longer lobby against a $15 minimum wage, but still a member of the NRA

Emotionally Difficult Work (HBR)

- HR professionals describe feelings a tension between helping and hurting others - compared to those who tried to limit the emotional toll of their work through avoidance, participants who stayed engaged and helped those in need ended up being more resilient over the long term 7 stressors that particularly evoked suffering: 1. having to deliver harm to others that felt unnecessary or unjustifiable 2. feeling that necessary evils conflicted with other work obligations, beliefs, or values 3. feelings stigmatized by others (e.g. "grim reaper") 4. feeling personally responsible for negatively impacting people's lives 5. being repeatedly exposed to others' pain and suffering 6. feeling that one couldn't escape the work of harming others 7. having inadequate recovery time between difficult tasks

When was the most recent era of precarious work in the US?

- began in the mid-to-late-1970s - neoliberal globalization intensified economic integration, increased the amount of competition faced by companies, provided greater opportunities to outsource work to lower-wage countries, and opened up new labor pools through immigration - union decline and deregulation shifted power more heavily toward employers - fissured workplace led employers to seek greater flexibility in their relations with workers

Describe the trends in organized labor membership in the US

- consistently declining from ~18% to just 6.5% for private sector employees - holding steady state at ~35% for public sector employees

Describe the trend in economic mobility in the US in the last century?

- economic mobility has significantly and steadily declined since 1940; measure economic mobility as the % of children earning more than their parents - most of the decline in absolute mobility is driven by the more unequal distribution of economic growth in recent decades, rather than by the slowdown in GDP growth

How can unions constrain total employment?

- higher wages lead to lower demand for labor - some evidence of no effect on firm-level employment; some evidence that unionization may decrease employment at the firm-level by 3-6% - in the US, union firms may use capital in place of labor

What problems are highlighted in the Fresh To Table case?

- how the blurring boundaries between personal and professional life can create managerial dilemmas - how technology affects organizational interactions and culture - how leadership decisions and directives affect employee morale, engagement, and retention - how workers should have no expectation of privacy at work - how termination is a difficult decision and a difficult process

State of the Unions (New Yorker)

- industrial democracy developed in late 1800s by English socialist thinkers who saw workplace rights as analogous to civil rights such as due process, freedoms of speech and assembly - whenever the rate of unionization in the US has risen, top 1%'s portion of the national income has tended to shrink - Frances Perkins: head of New York Consumers League, witnessed Triangle Shirtwaist fire ---> 1928 chair of a board that oversaw industrial safety in NY ---> Secretary of Labor under Roosevelt, first woman named to a Cabinet position ---> "I'd much rather get a law than organize a union" - according to labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein, even in the two golden decades following WWII, American unions bargained from a position of weakness as manufacturers fled the better-unionized North for the South (similar to offshoring now) - union approval declines began at end of 1950s as corruption, fraud, tax evasion, and general bureaucracy exposed ; also a result of decline in manufacturing jobs - 2009 survey found that union supporters illegally fired at 34% of firms where management opposed a union - strategic goal for unions is not to have too high of a wage premium but rather to establish a wage floor across an economic sector - Fight for 15 featured a new kind of strike: only one day long, designed to deprive the firm of labor but also to draw media attention ---> altruism and storytelling are the new union weapons - unions losing capacity to reduce income inequality in private sector but continue to reduce it among government employees ---> estimates that union membership increases voter turnout by 5 percentage points

What are the recent trends in performance appraisal systems?

- instant (or at least often) - less time consuming and distasteful - more developmental - (in some cases) tied to intermediate outcomes Examples: - GE, Accenture, Adobe, Microsoft have all recently eliminated annual ranking evaluation systems - From tech firms to GE and the Gap, up to 1/3 of US firms have replaced their annual review systems What hasn't changed? - firms still need a mechanism for deciding annual raises and promotions

What do right-to-work laws do?

- make union shops, agency shops, and maintenance of membership provisions illegal in the state - effectively, allow 'free-riding,' thereby making it less efficient to organize bargaining units as well as negotiate / administer contracts in states

Performance Management Revolution (Cappelli)

- more than 1/3 of US firms shifting from annual performance reviews to instant feedback, tying it to individuals' goals, and handing out small weekly bonuses - change in system driven by the fact that 1.8 million hours across a firm is deidicated to annual reviews that weren't as effective anymore; led to lack of collaboration and innovation - biggest limitation of annual reviews: their heavy emphasis on financial rewards and punishments and EOY structure, they hold people accountable for past behavior at the expense of improving current performance and grooming talent for the future - recent emphasis on improvement and growth over accountability ---> do you "get what you get" when you hire an employee? - appraisals traced back to US military's "merit rating" - Theory X vs Y approach to management: X = motivate people with material rewards and punishments; Y = assumes employees want to perform well and will do so if properly supported) - jobs have become more complex and rapidly change shape, so it's difficult to set annual goals that are meaningful; also, team-based work often conflicts with individual rewards and evaluations

Describe the trends in American attitudes towards unions

- most recent Gallup poll shows approval rates have ticked up to 62% in 2018 - more liberals tend to support unionization - younger generations appear to support unions more than older generations

What does mobilization of resources require under social movement theory?

- movements are often set in motion by social changes that render the political environment vulnerable / receptive to change - organization of resources is necessary to seize opportunities - framing is necessary for motivating collective action

Examples of business-friendly frames for environmental protection

- operational efficiency - risk management - capital acquisition - market demand - strategic direction - human resources management

Student Course Evaluations Get an 'F' (NPR)

- student ratings are high-stakes, often the only method a university uses to monitor teaching quality - response rate is low: fewer than half of students complete - sampling bias: very happy or unhappy students are more motivated to fill out these surveys - problem of averaging results: is a teacher that receives ten 5 stars the same as a teacher that receives five 0 stars and five 10 stars? - course evaluations may actually motivate bad teaching, as professors are motivated to please students as opposed to pushing students, giving out lower grades but actually engendering student learning - classes with highly skilled students do give highly skilled teachers high marks; perhaps smartest kids see the benefit of being pushed Alternative approaches? - peer evaluations - review of teaching materials (slides, exams, syllabus, etc.) - use student evaluations to judge student satisfaction

What are the two rival explanations for inequality?

1. *Individualistic Perspective*: poverty results from individual weaknesses - lack intelligence, ability, ambition, motivation, values - inability or unwillingness to exert necessary effort or take advantage of opportunities - poverty is an individual problem 2. *Structural Perspective*: poverty results from forces outside the immediate control of the individual - shortage of jobs that pay living wages - governing system that privileges the wealthy and denies access to resources and capital to others - the persistence of discrimination, residential segregation, and social isolation - poverty is a social problem

What are firms' key labor relations strategies?

1. Acceptance: company doesn't challenge the union's right to represent employees, and accepts collective bargaining 2. Avoidance - Substitution: HR practices similar to or better than those at unionized firms - Suppression: includes (threats of) relocation and outsourcing, dismissal, wage and benefit cuts, and use of strikebreakers (happens a lot)

What are the key questions in deciding whether an employee should be fired?

1. Do we have a policy against this behavior? 2. Have the employees violated this policy? 3. If they have violated policy, what is the most appropriate response? 4. Have they created a hostile work environment?

How can managers craft the message right during performance evaluations so that people are encouraged to improve?

1. Focus on the task, not the person 2. Be specific 3. Give tangible advice

What statements does Deloitte ask in its performance evaluation system?

1. Given what I know of this person's performance, and if it were my money, I would award this person the highest possible compensation increase and bonus. 2. Given what I know of this person's performance, I would always want him or her on my team. 3. This person is at risk for low performance. 4. This person is ready for promotion today.

What do unions do for workers?

1. Higher wages and benefits for members - 10-20% wage premium for union members - premium for lower-skilled workers is larger; unions constrain pay between groups to lower inequality - union workers also report higher productivity according to most research 2. Strong unions also help set standards to pay in non-union firms - the impact of unions on total nonunion wages is almost as large as the impact on total union wages - example: a high school graduate, whose workplace is not unionized but whose industry is 25% unionized, is paid 5% more than similar workers in less unionized industries 3. Safer, healthier working conditions - often through legislation or regulation, which helps all workers, not just union members - example: in 1978, under pressure from unions, OSHA regulated cotton dust; pushed by the ACTWU; by 1983, cases of brown lung dropped by 97% 4. Remove management's ability to make unilateral decisions about some aspects of job - rules mean less arbitrary treatment and less room for discrimination - example: seniority provisions 5. Protect the interests of the "average" worker, who is usually older, with seniority - good if you've got seniority; in the US, contracts are more likely to mandate that in times of reduced demand, firms must lay off newer workers rather than reduct wages / hours of senior workers - not great for newer workers and may be against the interest of very high productive workers; stars get treated like everyone else

What are the key problems with relative performance appraisals?

1. Jobs of those ranked are not always identical 2. Disruptive to group / department / firm dynamics - punish "rate busters" (via collusion) - breeds internal competition: people don't want to work on teams with other great people 3. Leads to risk aversion - Microsoft employees argues that stack ranking "effectively crippled" the firm's ability to innovate 4. Imposes some sort of "distribution" on a population, which may not be accurate

How are performance management systems flawed?

1. Performance is hard to quantify and assess - finding the right measures / adjusting them over time is hard 2. Gaming - once a performance system is in place, it may be manipulated 3. Performance is not stable - from one year to the next, only 27% correlation (Cappelli & Conyon) 4. Bias - higher scores are given when the rater is similar to the ratee - impacts qualitative feedback too: "vague feedback is holding women back" (Correll and Simard) Evidence: - managers in a retail firm found that only ~1/3 of workers received the same rating year to year - Facebook found that people who receive assessments in the bottom 10% have a 36% chance of making it into the top half within a year

How do businesses self-regulate in order to stave off state or federal minimum wage increases?

1. Raise wages: WalMart, Target, Amazon 2. Reduce unpredictability in scheduling - WalMart: pilot program to give workers more control over their schedule - firms that don't use or have promised to eliminate on-call scheduling: the Gap, Old Navy, Hollister, J Crew, Urban Outfitters, Starbucks

What is the supply function of unions in market economies?

1. Replace individual with collective voice in attempts to address power imbalance between firms and individual employees - control labor supply through selective use of strikes 2. Skill formation: train and / or certify skilled workers - varies a lot from one country to the next; important for building trades in the US) 3. Institutionalize rules of access to employment based on social criteria (e.g. internal labor markets) in addition to ability to do a job 4. Limit the supply of labor through public policy - public policies that allow some people to remain outside the labor force, like tax breaks for stay-at-home parents, mandatory retirement ages, social safety nets that raise reservation wage of low earners

What are 3 business reasons to drop annual appraisals?

1. Return of people development - tighter labor market means keeping good people is critical, so firms focus on developing current talent - annual reviews widely reviled and focus on numerical ratings that interfere with learning and developing 2. Need for agility - future needs constantly changing, so it doesn't make sense to hang on to a system that is built to hold people accountable for past practices - employees' goals and tasks can't be plotted out a year in advance 3. Centrality of teamwork - moving away from forced ranking makes it easier to foster teamwork (readily apparent at Sears and Gap)

How is precarious work today different than precarious work after WWII?

1. Spatialization: greater connectivity has made it possible to move goods, capital, and people within and across borders - decentralized and spatially dispersed labor processes 2. Service sector has become increasingly central - decline in blue-collar jobs, increase in high- and low-wage white collar jobs 3. Layoffs have become a basic component of employers' restructuring strategies 4. Previous periods were characterized by strong ideologies (e.g. Marxism) 5. Precarious work has spread to all sectors of the economy ---> no longer concentrated in the secondary labor market

According to Katz and Kochan, what are the three levels of decision making in an industrial relations model?

1. Strategic: management makes basic choices such as whether to work with its unions or to devote efforts to developing nonunion operations 2. Functional: contract negotiations and union organizing occur 3. Administrative: arena in which the contract is administered - relationships at these three levels are somewhat interdependent but may also differ

Which two acts amend the NRLA?

1. Taft-Hartley Act (1947) 2. Landrum-Griffin Act (1959)

Evidence of the growth in precarious work

1. decline in attachment to employers 2. increase in long-term unemployment 3. growth in perceived job insecurity 4. growth of non-standard work arrangement and contingent work 5. increase in risk-shifting from employers to employees

What is the argument for structural inequality?

1. equality of opportunity is elusive: outside of utopian/dystopian societies, individuals are endowed with varying resources 2. is some degree of inequality not just necessary, but (sometimes) good? - why might it make sense to allocate some rewards for talent and hard work? 3. vast disagreements on whether / when / how governments and other social institutions should intervene to mitigate structural inequality - normative and positive arguments: order / stability, tradition, religion, may be more important than equality - many argue against social programs as ineffective or inefficient in countering inequality

Consequences of precarious work

1. greater economic inequality, insecurity, and instability 2. impact of uncertainty and insecurity on individuals' health and stress 3. affects communities via a lack of social engagement

According to social movement theory, what is required for a social movement?

1. identify grievance 2. examine political opportunity structure 3. mobilize resources 4. frame demands

Why is there a recent trend toward continuous feedback and away from relative ranking systems?

1. tighter labor market ---> higher return on people development since external hiring is more difficult 2. job complexity increasing ---> need for agility - hard to set 12 month goals - project-based work: better time for feedback is at the end of a project, not end of year 3. team-based work ---> move away from forced ranking

Landrum-Griffin Act

Accountability to members. - bill of rights for union members - unions must have a constitution - union must file financial statements with the Department of Labor, which are open to the public - elections are regulated by the government - fiduciary responsibility of union leaders

What speech is protected in the workplace?

All US workers - even those not members of a union - are entitled to protections for *concerted activity* at work.

Define a Union

An organization which exists for the purpose of dealing with employers concerning grievances, labor disputes, wages, rates of pay, hours of employment, and conditions of work. - craft unions: carpenters, machinists, electricians - industrial unions: autoworkers, CWA - public sector unions: teachers, fire fighters, mail carriers

How successful are anti-union campaigns?

Anti-union campaigns usually succeed. Of 22,382 organizing drives that filed an election petition from 1999-2004, only a projected 3,180 (1/7) reached a first contract within a year of certification

What is the "triple threat" as described by the CWA funding president Joseph Beirne?

CWA Triangle: 1. Organizing - organize new and existing workers 2. Political / Community Action - essential to maintaining public support for legislative goals 3. Bargaining / Representation - base of the triangle; many join the union solely for better representation on the job

How is collective action a vehicle of power?

Defiance of the social order is relatively rare; disenfranchised typically accept the authority system in place Why don't more people revolt? -- Changing the system is hard to do - successful mobilization --> coordination of economic and political resources - as individuals, most people have few resources at all - social movements harness collective power to push for change Social movements can target multiple authorities. - change via the state (through politics) is tough and slow --> social movements are faster - firms, clubs, professional organizations also have power --> target institutions of power directly

Define "flexicurity"

Denmark's system that combines flexible hiring and firing rules for employers and a strong social security system for workers. - unemployed workers given help finding a new job, income compensation, education, and job training

Define "concerted activity"

Employers can't punish employees (unionized or not) for "concerted activity for mutual aid" 1. in concert (with co-workers or in discussion with them) 2. issue must be job relevant 3. must be via appropriate means

How do unpredictable work hours turn families upside down?

Hourly workers described going hungry, not being able to pay bills, scrambling to arrange child care, losing housing, losing sleep, and feeling stressed and unhealthy. Those with unpredictable schedules were twice as likely to report hardships as those with stable schedules, even when they earned the same wages, worked the same number of hours, and had the same employers. - African Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities, including women, are much more likely to be assigned irregular schedules - children of workers with precarious schedules had worse behavior [more anxiety, guilt, or sadness; tantrums, anger] and inconsistent childcare - workers' job quality is worse when their direct supervisor is of a different race [based on a survey of 20,400 respondents from 81 of the nation's largest retail and food service companies]

What is the recent trend in anti-union tactics amongst firms?

Increased use of hardball anti-union tactics. 63% of employers interrogate workers in mandatory one-on-one meetings with their supervisors about support for the union; *54% of employers threaten workers in such meetings *57% of employers threaten to close the worksite *47% of employers threaten to cut wages and benefits *34% of employers fire workers ***illegal Employers have increased their use of more punitive tactics such as plant closing threats and actual plant closings, discharges, harassment, disciplinary actions, surveillance, and alteration of benefits and conditions

What were some of the key takeaways of the Star Power exercise?

Inequality is: - self-perpetuating - often justified through stereotypes about the people at each level (high status = hardworking, intelligent, talented; low status = lazy, ignorant, unmotivated) - often endorsed by people at all levels, NOT just rich demeaning the poor - shows how easily power and status differences emerge and manifest into behavior: group identification is powerful - illustrates how asymmetries in resources and status affect behavior within a hierarchy - highlights some of the confusion between "ascribed" and "achieved" status / power - allows you to experience how inequality can be perpetuated

Taft-Hartley Act

Limits some union powers. - unions could not preclude firms from hiring non-union members (no closed shops) - gave states right to pass "Right to Work" laws - managers and foremen explicitly excluded from ability to organize - required union officers to sign non-communist affidavits - required 60 days notice for strikes - outlawed wildcat, political, and solidarity strikes as well as secondary boycotts

Describe the trend in minimum wages in the last century.

Minimum wage as a percentage of average wage has steadily declined from 53% in 1968 to 37% in 2012. Average minimum wage worker: - 36 years old - 89% are not teens - 37% are 40+ years old - 56% are women - 28% have children - 57% work full time - earn more than half of their family's total income

How are NLRB members chosen?

NLRB members appointed by the president. Current Board: - Republicans hold three of five seats - one Democrat holds a seat - one seat is now empty

Describe the trends in strikes in the US

Number of strikes steadily declined from the 1970s to today, but there was a sharp uptick in strikes in 2017.

Where and when was the first $15/hour minimum wage law passed?

Seatac, Washington in November, 2013. - millions of dollars spent to pass this law in such a tiny city

What is the link between parents' and children's economic success?

Unclear relationship, but some interesting findings: - correlation between father and son earnings varies by country; ~0.45 in the US - median family income of children in a family of four increases as parental education increases from low to high

Is stack ranking ever appropriate?

Yes. For example, Marissa Mayer was an outsider CEO brought in to turn around a company in crisis. One of the biggest issues afflicting Yahoo when she arrived was broad complacency and tolerance for low performance. She needed to shrink the organization and get rid of under-performers. ---> stack ranking gave her a simple and scalable tool, albeit at a cost in terms of employee satisfaction **note: this was a short-term solution

Define checkoff provision

a union contract provision that requires an employer to deduct union dues from employee's paychecks

Define closed shop

a union security provision requiring a person to be a union member before being hired (illegal under NLRA)

Define union shop

a union security provision that requires an employee to join the union within a certain amount of time after being hired (illegal)

Define precarious work

employment that is uncertain, unpredictable, and risky from the point of view of the worker

Define right-to-work laws

state laws that make union shops, maintenance of membership, and agency shops illegal

Define maintenance of membership

union rules requiring members to remain members for a certain period of time (illegal)

How does union density promote economic mobility?

unions ---> higher wages (for non-unionized workers too) ---> better education, more stable home life unions ---> better benefits (e.g. health insurance) - unions advocate for opportunity-advancing public policies Examples: higher minimum wage, expanded public services - among national lobbying / interest groups, unions are the most likely to support "middle-class" initiatives