XII. POSTER SESSION

Asian Employment Relations: The Forgotten Case of Pakistan

Mohammad A. Ali
University of Rhode Island

     This paper is an attempt to introduce an American audience to the key institutions and the development of employment relations in Pakistan, a country that has become increasingly important to U.S. interests. The paper surveys the recent literature on Asian employment relations and emphasizes not only that virtually nothing has been written on Pakistan, but alsoÑ because of peculiarities of culture, history, and religionÑPakistan does not fit into any of the employment relation patterns discussed in the recent literature. Finally, a case for a more thorough study of Pakistan's employment relations is made.

The Utilization of Contingent Workers in Order to Control Costs and Firm Financial Performance

Paula Alexander Becker
Seton Hall University

     Research on the utilization of contingent workers, using data collected by the American Management Association in 1999 and reported in the 2004 IRRA Proceedings, showed that firms that use contingent workers more have better financial performance than firms with a lower utilization of contingent workers. Firms that use contingent workers to control costs, however, have poorer financial performance than do firms for which cost control is not important. The question arises whether firms that invoke cost reduction as a reason for using contingent workers are in worse "financial health" than firms for which cost reduction is not an important reason for using contingent workers. To test this hypothesis, firms were compared on measures of firm financial health independent of the outcomes measures for firm financial performance, for the periods 1997, 1999, 2001, and 2002Ñthat is, periods before and after, as well as during, the time reference period for the utilization of contingent workers. Overall, there were no significant differences between the "financial health" of firms that use contingent workers to control costs compared to firms for which cost control is not an important reason for using contingent workers, which would be predictive of differences in firm performance; however, significant differences in firm financial health in years after the decision to use contingent workers to control costs were identified, including significant differences in beta and Z scores. It is not likely that cost control reasons are themselves causally related to company poor financial health several years later but that the managerial decision-making processes, including the decision to use contingent workers to control costs, are related to a poorer long-term consequence.

How Peripheral Are Peripheral Workers?

Matthew Bidwell
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

     Theories in industrial relations and human resource (HR) management emphasize the importance of HR practices and employment relationships in how workers are managed. We therefore expect that firms will treat nonstandard "contingent" workers differently from regular employees. In this paper, I use a survey of project managers within the information technology department of a large financial services institution to investigate whether there are indeed differences between how consultants and regular employees are viewed and managed. I do find evidence that employment relationships affect the way that workers are managed. Managers are more likely to use regular employees for work that is critical, harder to monitor, and requires higher levels of firm-specific technical and domain skills; however, these effects are slight. Both the project managers' comments and the way that they staff projects emphasize that employment relationships play a surprisingly small role in how workers are managed.

Determinants of Employee Layoffs in High-Technology Firms

Minston Chao, Chih-Ting Shih and Shyh-Jer Chen
National Sun Yat-Sen University, Taiwan

Jyh-Jer Ko
National Taiwan University, Taiwan

     In the past decade, employers have implemented various human resource practices to increase workplace efficiency, such as the use of outsourcing, performance- based payment ,and the termination of lower-performance workers. These practices are regarded as shifting the risk of market success or failure from employers to employees. Employees are required to bear more risks than before. This paper utilizes individual data from two high-technology companies in Taiwan to empirically investigate what factors contribute to explaining employees' layoffs (involuntary turnover). By using logistic regression, we find that workers who are older, perform poorer, and have college degrees tend to have higher probability to be terminated. The results, to some extent, are consistent with the prediction of tournament and human capital models.

Class War in Paradise: A Participant-Observer Perspective

Jack Fiorito
Florida State University

     In 2000ø2001, the administration of governor Jeb Bush and its legislative allies abolished Florida's statewide university board of regents. Governance devolved to university-level boards stacked with political donors. Bush, his political allies, and university administrators then used devolution as a pretext to orchestrate attacks on longstanding statewide collective bargaining at eleven state universities. The United Faculty of Florida, with affiliate support, responded with a massive reorganizing campaign. More than a thousand new members joined, and more than 6,000 faculty members signed authorization cards (65 percent or more at each school). Although most campuses then granted voluntary recognition, two have so far undergone representation elections. The union won each resoundingly with more than 90 percent of the vote. These events are reviewed with emphasis on Florida State University, one of the largest schools involved and site of a 736-to-33 vote for faculty union representation. University-level negotiations were underway at most campuses at this writing.

Mandatory or Not MandatoryÑ That Is the Question: A Comparison of Overtime in the U.S. Labor Market

Lonnie Golden
Penn State University, Abington College

Barbara Wiens-Tuers
Penn State University, Altoona College

     This paper analyzes the 2002 General Social Survey Quality of Work Life Module. It finds that a substantial proportion of workers face downward constraints on work hoursÑ21 percent of the full-time employed worked extra hours because it was mandatory. Logistic regressions find that the likelihood of working mandatory overtime, relative to those with nonmandatory or no overtime, is enhanced by demographic, job, and workplace characteristics such as being male, foreign-born and full-time, employed in nonprofits and certain industries and occupations, and having inflexible work schedules, seniority, few alternative job prospects, bonus compensation, and a poor relationship with management.

Factors Associated with Employee Dismissal: Some Canadian Evidence

James D. Grant and Terry H. Wagar
Saint Mary's University

     Although there is a substantial body of research on voluntary turnover, considerably less attention has been directed toward involuntary turnover. The focus of this paper is to examine factors associated with employee dismissal. In Canada, an employer who terminates a non-union employee without just cause may be sued under the common law (what has become known as the law of wrongful dismissal). Using data obtained from a survey of Canadian workplaces, we found that approximately 25 percent of the employers did not dismiss an employee on the basis of just cause over a one-year period. A higher dismissal rate was related to environmental turbulence, whereas unionization, workplace size, and greater employee participation in teambased programs was associated with a lower dismissal rate.

The Impact of Federal and State Occupational Safety and Health Regulations on Workplace Injuries and Illnesses

Stephen J. Havlovic
SUNY Institute of Technology

William Moore
Salisbury State University

David McLain
SUNY Institute of Technology

     Hospital and nursing facility accident rates remain considerably higher than the service sector average. An improving trend was generally detected in hospital and nursing home accident/illness rates and lost work day case rates. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)øapproved state plans were associated with higher accident/illness rates and lost work day case rates compared to federal OSHA plan coverage states. Right-towork states generally had lower injury/illness rates with lower severity; however, the authors are concerned that the right-to-work state effect may be the result of an artifact associated with a fear of reporting injuries and illnesses in non-union environments.

Explaining the Association Between Gender Density of Occupations and Compensation

Timothy J. Keaveny and Edward J. Inderrieden
Marquette University

     The gender composition of occupations and salary are related. There is a negative correlation between the proportion of those in an occupation who are female and salary level. Several possible explanations for this relationship are investigated in this paper:

Human capital variablesÑlabor force experience, gaps in employment, length of service with current employer and college major.
Nature of jobÑhours worked per week, promotion rates, responsibilities regarding personnel and budgets and employer provided training and education.
Company size and industry.
Cognitive abilityÑverbal and quantitative scores.
Demographic characteristicsÑmarital status, presence of children and age.
Job facet satisfactionÑinteresting work, work environment, pay and bene- fits, coworkers, advancement, and supportive environment.

     Two sample are studied. Both data collections were sponsored by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC). The first data collection took place in 1985, and consisted of first-year MBA students. The second data collection took place in 1990ø1991, and consisted of individuals who registered to take the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT). As expected the gender density (percent of those in an occupation who are female) of an occupation is negatively related to salary (ø.24 for sample 1 and ø.28 for sample 2). When the variables described above are entered, the association between gender density and salary is substantially reduced (ø.10 and ø.14, respectively). The sets of variables were entered in stepwise fashion. At each step in the regression analysis there is a significant increase in the variance in salary explained. With the exception of demographic characteristics, in both samples the inclusion of a set of variables is associated with a decline in the standardized beta for gender density. Demographic characteristics is associated with a decline in the standardized beta for gender density in sample 2, but not sample 1. The results suggest that each of the sets of explanatory variables specified in research questions 1 through 6 accounts for part of the negative association between gender density and salary.

Effects of High-Performance Work System on Workplace Safety: Evidence from Korea

Yong-Seung Park
Kyung Hee University

     This study analyzes effects of high-performance work system on workplace safety. Research hypotheses of this study suggest that different types of work organization will have impact on occupational safety via two reasons: (1) optimality of safety investment (the true safety effect) and (2) incentive of the worker's safety-cautious behavior (the incentive effect). Employee involvement in decision-making process, financial ownership, job design that provides employees with more autonomy (i.e., job enrichment) or scope of work (e.g., job enlargement), and climate of labor-management relations are key independent variables of this study. Empirical results based on multivariate analyses against 543 Korean companies show that employee participation in decision making does not have any impact on the workplace safety, although employee financial ownership significantly reduces both workplace injury incidence and severity rates. Job enrichment is associated with relatively lower level of workplace injury rates, whereas job enlargement, in some specifications, increases workplace injuries. Unionized workplaces showed relatively higher level of injury rates. Finally, cooperative climate in the labor-management relations decreases injury rates and ameliorates negative safety effect of job enlargement with the statistical significance.

Participation in Union Locals

Julie Sadler
Cornell University

     Member participation in a union does not just grow, it must be cultivated. It must be desired by the membership and fostered by the leaders. Kahn and Tannenbaum (1957, 286)

     My dissertation research investigates the effects of local union leadership on member participationÑmore specifically, how formal leadership behaviors and characteristics directly and indirectly influence members' general and specific attitudes, perceptions, and involvement in their local union. Through interviews, direct observation, secondary data sources, and survey analysis, the results of this study contribute to the broader theoretical understanding of the leadership influence process in labor unions, which relative to corporate leadership studies has been largely ignored. Along with theoretical contributions, this study has practical implications and applications for individuals and organizations, including issues of worker empowerment, organizational survival and strength.

Support for Labor-Management Cooperation: Results from a Survey of Local Union Officials

Terry H. Wagar and James D. Grant
Saint Mary's University

     For several decades, there has been an ongoing call for greater cooperation between labor and management; however, despite efforts at increasing cooperation, many bargaining relationships remain adversarial in nature. This study examines attitudes toward labor-management cooperation using data from a sample of local union officials. When asked about support for labor-management cooperation, Canadian union officials indicated that their level of support was stronger than their management counterparts. Important predictors of support for cooperative programs included the labormanagement climate, the strength of the union membership support for the local union, and previous participation in joint labor-management programs. In short, union officials perceive management representatives as being less supportive of cooperative programs. Because cooperative efforts require the support and commitment of both parties, it is not surprising that many joint initiatives either do not get off the ground or fail to survive.