Public attitudes towards unions: Some Canadian evidence

Despite a growing body of research on attitudes towards unions in the U.S. and, to a lesser extent Britain, surprisingly little is known about this topic in Canada. We attempt to fill this gap by examining data from a survey of 736 randomly selected residents of the western Canadian cities of Winnipeg and Edmonton. We find a high degree of latent unionism among non-unionized labor force members: 40 percent would join a union if one existed in their workplace. Union attitudes are better predictors of willingness to join than are demographic and socioeconomic variables, although we can predict instrumental beliefs about unions with some accuracy using such objective measures. This article is based on a paper presented at the Canadian Industrial Relations Association annual meeting, June 1983, in Vancouver, British Columbia. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Population Research Laboratory at the University of Alberta and its Director, Professor L. W. Kennedy, in making available results of the 1981 Edmonton and Winnipeg Area Studies. We also thank Val Caskey for typing services. Helpful comments on an earlier draft were provided by an anonymous reviewer.     

Recent trends in public support for unions in Canada

This paper investigates trends in public support for unionism during the 1980s. Comparing data from two western Canadian cities in 1981 and 1987, we examine the impact of the recession of the early 1980s on public perceptions of the role of unions, whether the differences between cities documented during 1981 had increased or decreased by 1987, and if “hard times” had resulted in more nonunion employees expressing a willingness to join a union. There is little evidence of growing support for negative “big labor” opinions about unions in the two cities. Despite a well-publicized labor dispute involving the use of strikebreakers in one city, there was no increase in support for legislation restricting the practice. Residents in the same city, however, were significantly more likely to agree with “business unionism” sentiments, an opinion trend accompanied by a growing willingness to join a union. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meetings of the Western Association of Sociology & Anthropology, February 1988, Edmonton. We thank the Population Research Laboratory at the University of Alberta and Dr. Raymond Currie, Department of Sociology, University of Manitoba, for making available results of the 1981 and 1987 Edmonton and Winnipeg Area Studies. We also acknowledge the research assistance provided by Alan Law and Mary Thompson, and the word processing done by Linda Abbott.     

‘All in all it is just a judgement call’: issues surrounding sexual consent in young people’s heterosexual encounters

In the UK, there has been growing concern about young people’s understanding of sexual consent, with the views of young people themselves often lost in academic and educational policy debates. However, the focus on high rates of sexual violence has meant a lack of attention on the everyday negotiation of consensual heterosexual activity, leading to assumptions being made regarding young people’s lack of understanding of sexual consent. This paper emerges from a wider study of over 500 young people which sought to uncover their understanding of the issues. Drawing on data from workshops and the open text responses to an on-line survey the findings presented in this paper show that the majority of heterosexual young people understood the complexity of sexual consent as an embodied process, which can be difficult to define, talk about or practice uniformly. This complex understanding, in which sexual consent is a continuum rather than a dichotomy, has implications for sexual education initiatives. We argue that it is only by providing a closer understanding of how – within consensual sexual activities – young people understand and enact sexual consent through a range of embodied communication strategies that education surrounding sexual assault will become meaningful.     

Accident Epidemiology and the U.S. Chemical Industry: Accident History and Worst-Case Data from RMP*Info

This article reports on the data collected on one of the most ambitious government-sponsored environmental data acquisition projects of all time, the Risk Management Plan (RMP) data collected under section 112(r) of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. This RMP Rule 112(r) was triggered by the Bhopal accident in 1984 and led to the requirement that each qualifying facility develop and file with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency a Risk Management Plan (RMP) as well as accident history data for the five-year period preceding the filing of the RMP. These data were collected in 1999-2001 on more than 15,000 facilities in the United States that store or use listed toxic or flammable chemicals believed to be a hazard to the environment or to human health of facility employees or off-site residents of host communities. The resulting database, RMP*Info, has become a key resource for regulators and researchers concerned with the frequency and severity of accidents, and the underlying facility-specific factors that are statistically associated with accident and injury rates. This article analyzes which facilities actually filed under the Rule and presents results on accident frequencies and severities available from the RMP*Info database. This article also presents summaries of related results from RMP*Info on Offsite Consequence Analysis (OCA), an analytical estimate of the potential consequences of hypothetical worst-case and alternative accidental releases on the public and environment around the facility. The OCA data have become a key input in the evaluation of site security assessment and mitigation policies for both government planners as well as facility managers and their insurers. Following the survey of the RMP*Info data, we discuss the rich set of policy decisions that may be informed by research based on these data.     

The challenge of partnership: a national foster care charter in the United Kingdom

The National Foster Care Association, in the United Kingdom, offers here its Foster Care Charter and its philosophy, which includes distinguishing "foster carers' from "foster parents' according to the plan for short- or long-term care.     

Crisis,charisma, values,and voting behavior in the 2004 presidential election

This study extends Pillai and Williams [1998, Pillai, R., Williams, E.A., Lowe, K.B., & Jung, D.I. (2003). Personality, transformational leadership, trust, and the 2000 U.S. presidential vote. The Leadership Quarterly, 14, 161–192] and examines leadership in the context of the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Data were collected at two time periods from respondents in three locations across two major regions of the U.S. Our results indicate that respondents' perception of crisis was related to charismatic leadership in the negative direction for the incumbent George W. Bush and in the positive direction for the challenger John Kerry. For Bush and Kerry the relationship between crisis and voting behavior was mediated by charismatic leadership. For Bush, decisiveness was related to charismatic leadership, which in turn predicted voting behavior. For Kerry, decisiveness and charismatic leadership predicted voting behavior. Implications of the findings for leadership research, in particular with respect to an incumbent and the challenger to an incumbent leader, are discussed.     

Participation and enjoyment in Out-of-School activities during adolescence as predictors of activities in adulthood

This study examined associations between adolescents' participation in out-of-school activities and their participation in activities at age 26 (N = 1041, 50% girls, 77% White). More frequent adolescent participation in sports, arts, volunteer/community service, and religious activities increased the odds of participating in the same type of activity at age 26. Adolescents' enjoyment of activities partially explained the developmental continuity in activity participation. There was limited evidence that individuals' participation across different types of activities was associated. Finally, the diversity or breadth of adolescents' activity participation was associated with larger activity breadth at age 26. These findings suggest that adolescents' out-of-school activities help set the stage for participating in similar, but not different activities during young adulthood.