Journal Article

In earlier work (Oreopoulos 2009), thousands of resumes were sent in response to online job postings across Toronto to investigate why Canadian immigrants struggle in the labour market. The findings suggested significant discrimination by name ethnicity and city of experience. This follow-up study focuses more on better understanding exactly why this type of discrimination occurs, that is, whether this discrimination can be attributed to underlying concerns about worker productivity or simply prejudice and whether the behaviour is likely conscious or not. We examine callback rates from resumes sent to online job postings across multiple occupations in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Substantial differences in callback rates arise again from simply changing an applicant's name. Combining all three cities, resumes with English-sounding names are 35 percent more likely to receive callbacks than resumes with Indian or Chinese names. This is remarkably consistent with earlier findings from Oreopoulos (2009) for Toronto in better economic circumstances. If name-based discrimination arises from language and social skill concerns, we should expect to observe less discrimination when 1) including other attributes related to these skills on the resume, such as language proficiency and active extracurricular activities; 2) looking at occupations that depend less on these skills, like computer programming and data entry; and 3) listing a name more likely to be an applicant born in Canada, like a Western European name compared to an Indian or Chinese name. In all three cases, we do not find these patterns. We then asked recruiters to explain why they believed name discrimination occurs in the labour market. Overwhelmingly, they responded that employers often treat a name as a signal that an applicant may lack critical language or social skills for the job, which contradicts the conclusions from our quantitative analysis. Taken together, the contrasting findings are consistent with a model ofsubconscious' statistical discrimination, where employers justify name and immigrant discrimination based on language skill concerns, but incorrectly overemphasize these concerns without taking into account offsetting characteristics listed on the resume. Pressure to avoid bad hires exacerbates these effects, as does the need to review resumes quickly. Masking names when deciding who to interview, while considering better ways to discern foreign language ability, may help improve immigrants' chances for labour market success.

This year marks exactly 30 years since I published a book introducing the social model of disability onto an unsuspecting world and yet, despite the impact this model has had, all we now seem to do is talk about it. While all this chatter did not matter too much when the economy was booming, now it no longer booms it is proving disastrous for many disabled people whose benefits and services are being severely cut back or removed altogether. In the article I restate my view of what the social model was and what I see as its potential for improving the lives of disabled people. Finally I focus on the unfortunate criticisms of it and the disastrous implications these have had for disabled people.

Thousands of randomly manipulated resumes were sent in response to online job postings in Toronto to investigate why immigrants, allowed in based on skill, struggle in the labor market. The study finds substantial discrimination across a variety of occupations towards applicants with foreign experience or those with Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, and Greek names compared with English names. Listing language fluency, multinational firm experience, education from highly selective schools, or active extracurricular activities had no diminishing effect. Recruiters justify this behavior based on language skill concerns but fail to fully account for offsetting features when listed.

At the 10th Meeting of the Council for the Realization of Work Style Reform (comprising union and industry representatives as well as experts, chaired by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe) on March 28th, Japan’s “Action Plan for the Realization of Work Style Reform” was approved. The Action Plan covers initiatives including measures to reduce working hours by introducing overtime regulation with penalties for violation, and the preparation of legislative rules and guidelines to ensure the effectiveness of equal pay for equal work. From now on, steps will be taken to amend relevant laws and draw up guidelines with a view to executing this plan, following deliberation by the Labor Policy Council, in line with the roadmap incorporated in the Action Plan.

We use experimental data from a résumé audit to estimate the impact of particular college majors and internship experience on employment prospects. Despite applying exclusively to business-related job openings, we find no evidence that business degrees improve employment prospects. By contrast, internship experience increases the interview rate by 14%. The returns to internship experience are larger for (a) nonbusiness majors and (b) applicants with high academic ability. Our data support signaling as the most likely explanation regarding the effect of internships on employment opportunities.

The authors use data from a résumé audit to estimate the impact of unemployment and underemployment on the employment prospects of recent college graduates. They find no statistical evidence linking unemployment spells of different durations to employment opportunities. By contrast, college graduates who are underemployed have callback rates that are 30% lower than those of applicants who are adequately employed. The null effects associated with unemployment and the adverse effects associated with underemployment are robust across cities with relatively tight and loose labor-market conditions. Internship experience obtained while completing one's degree substantially reduces the negative effects of underemployment. The data support the proposition that employers view underemployment as a strong signal of lower expected productivity.

I introduce the construct of climate for inclusion, which involves eliminating relational sources of bias by ensuring that identity group status is unrelated to access to resources, creating expectations and opportunities for heterogeneous individuals to establish personalized cross-cutting ties, and integrating ideas across boundaries in joint problem solving. I show that within inclusive climates, interpersonal bias is reduced in such a way that gender diversity is associated with lower levels of conflict. In turn, the negative effect that group conflict typically has on unit-level satisfaction disappears. This has important implications, as unit-level satisfaction is negatively associated with turnover in groups.

We investigated the impact of employment equity legislation, compliance regulations, and the absence of these requirements on the diversity practices of Canadian firms. Afield survey involving CEOs and Human Resource Executives of 286 firms covered under the Legislated Employment Equity Program (LEEP), Federal Contractors Program (FCP), and Financial Post 500 (FP 500) companies was conducted. Results indicate that CEOs of LEEP firms reported a greater commitment to managing diversity. LEEP firms, and to some extent FCP firms, also had adopted more practices (e.g., policies, recruiting, training, and accountability) supportive of employment equity than FP 500 firms. It appears that employment equity remains the most effective tool for promoting equity and diversity in Canadian organizations. Copyright © 2010 ASAC.

Organized labour in Canada, as well as elsewhere, argue that globalization has led to work restructuring, job loss, and depression of wages, thereby impoverishing the livelihood of working people