Role of Stuart for International Programs?

The following e-mail exchanges tell the story.

Role of Stuart for International Programs?

Re: Role of Stuart for International Programs?

Sarosh Kuruvilla sck4@cornell.edu 04/17/08
to Stuart

Stuart:
looks good. I think we generally know what your role is.......and how you are contributing to the international mission of the school by raising its profile internationally. The bigger questions are
a) Do you have a project or something that you want to execute that requires IP approval and funds? 
b) IS there a long term plan and strategy i.e. some goal that you would like to reach with your international outreach efforts? I.e., how do you know when you are successful and are there milestones along the way that will be useful markers?
c) How to develop cross-overs and linkages between what you do and what the faculty (research an teaching)  are doing, and it would be nice to see that (e.g., franklin projects).
S
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At 11:39 AM 4/17/2008, you wrote:

Dear All,
From time to time, I get a question about my role in International Programs here at ILR. I thought I should give you a brief explanation and example.

As many of you know, I have played a major role in establishing and/or maintaining relations with the ILO, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, Hans Boeckler Foundation, the ESCP-EAP (European School of Management) in Paris, the University College Dublin, and other organizations and individuals in Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and here in N. America. I do this primarily through my ability to leverage information services for the advantage of all parties. I do this through the IWS Documented News Service. See a brief overview of the public policy issues that this service is designed to address --
http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/iws/news-bureau/faq.html

I continually get requests from many of these organizations and their leaders to help them disseminate their intellectual product -- working papers, studies, reports, etc. In addition, they often write to ask me to place more of their colleagues on my distributions lists.

As a quick example, today I received two e-mails. One from Simon Cox and another from Andranik Tangian --
(1) Simon COX, Coordinator in charge of Transnational Companies and European Works Councils. EFFAT is the European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions (in Brussels)
(2) Andranik TANGIAN, Head of Econometrics and Development of New Indicators at the Institute for Economic and Social Research (WSI) in the Hans-BÄockler-Foundation, DÄusseldorf, Germany & Privat-dozent at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, course \Theory and practice of decision-making in politics and economics

The correspondence follows:

(1)

Subject: New addition to the Weekly Bulletin
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:46:18 +0200
From: "Simon Cox" <s.cox@effat.org>
To: <smb6@cornell.edu>


Hi Stuart,

I continue to get the weekly bulletin and I take this opportunity to thank you again for your excellent work. This is a great resource. Could I also ask you to add my collegue Daria Cibrario at the IUF to the list? Her email is:

 daria.cibrario@iuf.org

thanks

Simon Cox
EFFAT

(2)
Subject: Report on indexing decent work

Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:35:14 +0200
From: "Andranik Tangian" <Andranik-Tangian@BOECKLER.DE>
To: "Stuart Basefsky" <smb6@cornell.edu>, <smb6@postoffice8.mail.cornell.edu>


Dear Stuart,

I would be most grateful if you could inform the subscribers of the REINET about the report announced below (dated December 2007 but available in Internet only since yesterday).

Thank you in advance.

Yours sincerely

Andranik Tangian
WSI
Hans Boeckler Foundation
Hans-Boeckler-Str. 39
40476 Duesseldorf
GERMANY
Tel: +49 211 7778-259
Fax: +49 211 7778-190
Email: andranik-tangian@boeckler.de


Andranik Tangian
Is work in Europe decent? A study based on the 4th European survey of working conditions 2005
Hans Boeckler Foundation, Duesseldorf, WSI-Diskussionspapier Nr.157
(Print)  ISSN 1861-0625
(Internet)    ISSN 1861-0633
http://www.boeckler.de/pdf/p_wsi_diskp_157_e.pdf

Abstract
Composite indicators of Decent work for 31 European countries are constructed with the data of the Fourth European Working Conditions Survey 2005 (EWCS 2005) of the European Foundation. Partial indices reflect 15 aspects of working conditions as in the recently published German DGB-index Gute-Arbeit. In a sense, the German indicator is extended to European data. Two methodologies, of the OECD and of the Hans Boeckler Foundation, differing in scaling, give very similar results. The main findings are as follows:

1. Evaluation of working conditions. Working conditions are evaluated on the average with 61 conditional % (= low medium level), ranging  from 51 in Turkey (inferior level) to 67 in Switzerland (upper medium level). A good evaluation (>80) is inherent only in the meaningfulness of work (81). Two aspects got a bad evaluation (<50): qualification and development possibilities (33) and career chances (49).

  Importance of different aspects of working conditions. Stepwise regression reveals that job stability is the most important factor for the satisfaction with working conditions. Strains, career chances, meaningfulness of work go next. Income and collegiality are ranked 5th or 6th, depending on the evaluation method. Creativity and industrial culture make no statistically significant impact. Learning and good management are regarded as shortcomings rather than as advantages.

  Disparities among countries and social groups. The evaluation shows significant disparities among European countries and social groups. Those who work in finances have by far better working conditions, even comparing with the next best group of business people, women have worse working conditions than men with respect to 9 of 15 aspects, and all types of atypical employees (other than permanent employees) have working conditions below the European average, to say nothing of those with permanent contract.

  Insufficient quality of work. The evaluation reveals bad qualification possibilities (33) and career chances (49), low transparency (51), emotional strains (52), inconvenient time arrangements (55), and  modest income (55) show how far is Europe from creating 'more and better jobs' for the Agenda 2010. In particular, poor qualification and development possibilities mean that the European Employment Strategy oriented towards flexible employment and life-long learning is not yet consistently implemented.

  Role of strong trade unions for job stability. A high job stability is observed in some countries with relaxed employment protection and strong trade unions. At the same time, a low job stability is inherent in some countries with strict employment protection but weak trade unions. It means that the institutional employment protection alone does not guarantee job stability, and other factors, like strong trade unions,  can be even more important.

To stimulate employers to equalize working conditions it is proposed to introduce a workplace tax for bad working conditions which should protect 'the working environment' in the same way as the green tax protects the natural environment. Indexing working conditions at every workplace developed in our study can be regarded as prototype measuring the 'social pollution' and used to determine the tax amount.


I hope the above provides some understanding of my uncommon role in this organization. Please note, I get correspondence regularly from our ILR contacts around the globe. Currently, the IWS Documented News Service reaches approximately 2,000 people including journalists (NYT, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and more), faculty (at universities around the globe), practitioners (lawyers, hr professionals, etc.), policy makers (in NY, Washington, ILO, European Union, etc.) and others.
Best regards,
Stuart Basefsky

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Stuart Basefsky                  
Director, IWS News Bureau               
Institute for Workplace Studies
Cornell/ILR School                       
16 E. 34th Street, 4th Floor            
New York, NY 10016                       
                                           
Telephone: (607) 255-2703               
Fax: (607) 255-9641                      
E-mail: smb6@cornell.edu                 
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