Research: Corporate social responsibility

The journal Academy of Management Perspectives published an interesting article in 2009 entitled "Is the socially responsible corporation a myth? The good, the bad and the ugly of corporate social responsibility." In it, the author examines whether the conflicted nature of corporations perhaps makes spurious the notion that corporations be an instrument of public policy.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a bit of an ill-defined concept. A workable definition might well be something like a management strategy whereby organizations take responsibility for their impact on society and the environment. From a labour perspective, this might include focusing on eliminating health risks from production to workers and from products to customers.

The real question is whether CSR is more than just window dressing. In a fairly even-handed manner, the article's author concludes there is little empirical evidence or logical reason that corporate behaviour will be socially enhancing. Further, he notes that social responsibility is a contested concept (one open for colonization by corporations) and that corporations must make difficult trade offs when they act in socially responsible ways.

These limitations reflect the corporations exist to optimize for themselves, rather than for the general public. An interesting line of analysis is corporations use of CSR as a competitive weapon to monopolize a sector. In short, agreeing to CSR environmental or employment standards of practice may make entry to new firms (or the existence of smaller firms) financially untenable.

Two books provide some useful insight into this issue. Harry Glasbeek's 2002 book Wealth by stealth provides an analysis of the corporate form and its implications for society. Glasbeek takes particular pains to outline the anti-social and criminal behaviour endemic in the corporate form.

David Michael's 2008 Doubt is their product is a damning account of how corporations have hidden the health effects of products and production from consumers and workers. It does a particularly good job of examining the decades-long manipulation of occupational health research in order to delay and derail regulation of hazard substances. I like to think of myself a suitable jaded, but Michael's book was, frankly, shocking to read.

While I don't want to be reflexively dismissive of CSR, the evidence that corporations act in socially irresponsible ways in order to achieve their goals is difficult to dismiss. And it sheds light on contemporary topics such as the recent dust-up between Bee-Clean Cleaners and their largely immigrant workers.

-- Bob Barnetson

Are safety records accurate?

The government of Alberta recently launched a new database of employer injury records. Minister Thomas Lukaszuk noted:

“Albertans have the right to know the injury record of who they are working for. We hope that making this information public will encourage employers to commit to even better health and safety performance.”

So does this database allow workers to see the injury records of their employers? My colleague, Jason Foster, does not think so:

"As one example, I requested all employer reports in Residential Construction, one of the more dangerous industries. 503 employers came up. We know that four fatalities and 325 injury claims were reported from this industry in 2009. However, not a single employer in the report was recorded as having a fatality or even an injury. Where are the deadly phantom employers? Why do their records not show up?"

The Alberta Federation of Labour has done a similar analysis:

" We found:

- Clayton Construction Limited is facing seven charges, laid September 2, 2010, for an alleged offence involving a fatality on September 2, 2008. A search on the new site came up with "no results found."

-Canadian Natural Resources faces two charges from the same fatal event. The same company has also been charged in relation to three other fatalities and three injuries - or six of the 31 active charges (20 per cent) listed by Employment and Immigration. A search of the new site brings up three records for the company, two of which have references to Lost Time Claims (LTCs) in 2008, and LTC rates marginally above the rates for the industry, but no reference is made to the fatality or charges.

-Central Alberta Well Services Corp. faces five charges for an alleged offence on August 26, 2008. A search on the new website results in a dizzying array of eight records for the company, under varying Industry Name segments, each giving different Lost Time Claim statistics."

These analyses raise very difficult questions about the quality of the data the government is using. They also raise serious questions about whether the database fulfills its official purpose: allowing workers to determine their employer's injury record. It will be interesting to see if the three workers killed in as many days this weekend, show up in the statistics for next year.

-- Bob Barnetson

Safety records and ticketing

It has been an interesting summer for occupational health and safety in Alberta. A Calgary Herald series highlighted ineffective workplace fatality prosecutions. And the provincial auditor general also issued a critical report. This was followed by turnover among senior OHS bureaucrats.

One of the government's responses was to resurrect the publication of employer injury records. Despite criticisms that the information released was misleading and incomplete, the government went ahead and put this information online.

In the wake of this, some old adversaries have popped up to spar. Former Minister of Employment and Immigration Clint Dunford praised the release of lost-time claim data on most Alberta employers. And former director of policy for the Alberta Federation of Labour Jason Foster (who is now my colleague) responded, with a fairly damning list of deficiencies in the new system.

Unable to get ahead of the safety debate, the government is now hauling out a second idea from 10 years ago: ticketing of OHS violations. This is a very interesting debate because of how ticketing can shape the perception of who is responsible for workplace safety.

A recent study in the British Journal of Criminology entitled "The Regulation of Corporate Violations: Punishment, Compliance, and the Blurring of Responsibility" examines ticketing in Ontario. Its conclusion is that:

"This regulatory shift has resulted in a diffusion of responsibility for safety risks as workers have increasingly become individually responsible for enforcing regulation as well as a target of regulation. In essence, workers are being transformed from a victim to a health and safety offender."

In effect, ticketing can serve to blame the victim. On the other hand, if employers are the focus of ticketing, then ticketing stands a good chance of altering their behaviour. This is particularly true of small employers for whom a fine would be a significant penalty. It also creates a penalty for violations that do not result in injuries. Presently, injury-violations are the only ones that trigger any penalty, and even these do so infrequently.

-- Bob Barnetson

Janitors fight back at U of A

An interesting story is developing out of the University of Alberta. A group of janitors employed by Bee Clean Building Maintenance (which is under contract with the university) has taken a number of steps to protest what it believes is unfair treatment:

1. The employees, with the assistance of the Service Employees International Union, has filed civil suit against Bee Clean for over $42,000 in unpaid wages.

2. The SEIU has filed an unfair labour practices complaint with the Alberta Labour Relations Board alleging Bee Clean has violated the provisions of the Labour Relations Code precluding employer interference with the formation and administration of a trade union.

Some of these workers are temporary foreign workers. They allege that the employer has threatened to send them home if they persist in forming a union. They also assert a worker was terminated for supporting coworkers who are temporary foreign workers. Bee Clean has not yet responded publicly.

The janitors are backed by a fairly saavy campaign more typical of the Justice of Janitors campaign in the US. The Los Angeles Justice of Janitors campaign was the basis of the 2000 film Bread and Roses.

Temporary foreign workers (TFWs) routinely face violations of basic employment right. In 2009, 74% of employers employing TFWs inspected by the province were found to be in violation of the Employment Standards Code. Half of these violations were for not paying workers properly. In a bizarre bit of spin, Employment and immigration Minister called these stats good news:

"They know what their rights are, they know what their privileges are as Alberta employees and they're making complaints that are valid."

So why then have the janitors chosen civil action over seeking payment for unpaid wages through the Employment Standards Code process? A part of the issue may be the limited reach of employment standards. Section 90 only allows employment standards complaints to go back six months from the date the order for back pay was issued on.

Practically what the means is that an employee files a complaint. It takes awhile for the complaint to be investigated and an order issued. A cagey employer will correct the illegal behavior when the complaint is filed and then stall the investigation. This stalls the issuance of an order (which crystallizes the six-month retrospective period) and thereby reduces the owed backpay by dragging out the proceedings.

The 2005 review of the Employment Standards Code identified this as an issue to be fixed by crystallizing the six-month period on the date of complaint. Despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff time and on consultants (including yours truly) the government shelved the recommendations from the review and this issue never got addressed.

-- Bob Barnetson

Research: The reflexive worker?

An interesting article appeared in Work, Employment and Society today. "The myth of the reflexive worker: class and work histories in neo-liberal times" examines the life-stories of 55 workers in Britain to assess the degree to which class continues to affect life choices. The idea that class remains an important determinant in life patterns runs contrary to the notion that "reflexive workers" navigate the increased insecurity that characterizes labour markets.

The article demonstrates the "work trajectories, despite changes that have taken place, are still driven along class tracks by class motors." Those workers with access to capital appear better able to explore new directions and cope with employment setbacks. Those without such access find themselves much less able to cope and thus make choices of necessity. Herein we see class remains an important driver of behaviour.

Class, of course, can have an international dimension as the growing use of temporary foreign workers (TFWs) in Alberta demonstrates. Traditionally limited to domestic workers, the use of TFWs has rapidly expanded. On October 19, the Work and Learning Network in partnership with the Prairie Metropolis Centre will be hosting a Temporary Foreign Workers (TFW) symposium in Edmonton addressing TFWs in nursing.

-- Bob Barnetson

Research: Safety Inspections and Injury Reduction

A new study in the Journal of Safety Research examines the impact of workplace inspections on injury rates. Confirming earlier research, this study finds that inspections that result in penalties affect injury rates, both those related to the inspections and those not related.

"What kind of injuries for OSHA inspections prevent?" estimates of the impact of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) penalty inspections in Pennsylvannia manufacturing firms with 20 to 250 employees between 1998 and 2005 on injury rates. More simply, if the government penalizes a firm for a safety violation, how does it affect the firm's subsequent injury rate?

The results indicate that inspections with penalties result in significant reductions in injury rates. The study found 4.1% annual reduction in the pooled injury rate of those injury causes that are more closely related to OSHA standards. Interestingly, there also appears to be a spill over effect with a 7.2% annual reduction in the pooled injury rate of those injury causes that are less closely related to OSHA standards. This suggests that firms respond to penalties by pulling up their safety socks in many areas as well as addressing the specific deficiencies noted by the inspection.

The conclusion that inspections with penalties make workplace safer is consistent with the broader literature. For example, Tompa et al.'s 2007 meta analysis examined how experience rating, inspections and inspections with penalties affect injury rates. Their conclusion are compelling:

"There was moderate evidence that the degree of experience rating reduces injuries, limited to mixed evidence that inspections offer general and specific deterrence and that citations and penalties aid general deterrence, and strong evidence that actual citations and penalties reduce injuries."

This raises the question of why Alberta continues to focus so much effort on experience rating and incentive schemes and relatively little effort penalizing safety violators? While rewarding employers that report few injuries and not penalizing employers with injuries and fatalities is likely politically popular with employers, its seems an unlikely way to protect workers--which is the point of occupational health and safety systems.

-- Bob Barnetson

Minimum Wage to Rise

After the government suspended a scheduled increase in the minimum wage and requested the Standing Committee on the Economy to hold hearings this summer, the committee has recommended raising the minimum wage by 25 cents an hour and enshrining some form of indexing in legislation.

While this outcome is good for minimum wage earners, it is a bit hard to fathom what the point of this all was. Minister Lukaszuk's rationale that the scheduled raise imperiled jobs was never credible and clearly the Standing Committee on the Economy decided not to sign on to it.

I wonder if the submissions to the committee tell us something important about how public policy in Alberta is made. Seventy-five percent of the 220 submissions received by the committee were from members of the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association. The CRFA has previously complained about increases in the minimum wage. Its own website documents a concerted campaign to freeze and, in some cases, reduce the minimum wage.

A quick look around shows that, when the planned 2010 increase was frozen, the CRFA wrote: "CRFA thanks those members who wrote to Premier Stelmach and the Employment and Immigration Minister over the past year in support of our minimum wage position."

It also noted: "In a follow-up meeting, CRFA thanked Employment and Immigration Minister Thomas Lukaszuk for these actions and reiterated the need for minimum wage stability, adequate notice of increases, and the introduction of training wage and gratuity differentials." Perhaps that meeting is the one pictured here?

When the review was announced, the CFRA then encouraged members to sign this form letter. The CRFA's own submission can be found here.

The point of this is that it looks like a special interest group's lobbying influenced the Minister's decision to suspend the planned minimum wage increase and review the government's three-year old policy--decisions that withheld a needed wage increase for the most vulnerable of Alberta's workers. It is not often that one gets a glimpse of how public policy is made in Alberta.

The question this ought to raise for all workers is whether a similar approach to government by, say, a poverty action group seeking an immediate increase in the minimum wage would have triggered such dramatic action by the Minister and the government? If the government wouldn't have taken similar action on behalf of a non-business group, that likely tells us something important and disturbing about the biases of Minister Lukaszuk and the conservative government around the regulation of employment.

-- Bob Barnetson