How Family and Office Roles Mix

Simpsons_family_dynamic Interesting article on this topic in the NYT last week.

Some highlights:

THE office joker. The mother hen. The king. The rebel. The gossip. The peacekeeper. The dude.

Anyone who has ever been part of a workplace culture can probably recognize at least one of those characters in the cubicle next door.

But workplace roles and the dynamics among colleagues can go much deeper than those somewhat superficial stereotypes, especially in a nation where many people spend as much time with colleagues as they do with their families, where the office so often mirrors the family.

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Return of the Sit Down Strike

Sit_down_woolworths_strike The title of this post is courtesy of Harris Freeman (Western New England) who brings to my attention the current situation in Chicago concerning the developments at Republic Windows:

Harris writes:

Members of the UE Local have started a sit-down strike after the employer shut down on a 3-day notice, violating the WARN Act, after Bank of America cancelled the business’s line of credit.

Union members are rotating in thirty-person shifts to staff the sit-down.   Here is the URL for one of a series of articles in the Chicago Tribune on the sit-down.

The NYT also did an article on the strike.

Harris asks some good questions including: are we going to see some new — and old — tactics by workers who are seeking to defend their unions and livelihoods in response to the rapidly unfolding economic crisis?

He also points out that maybe the news of this sit-down will lead to some interesting exam questions.

Cross posted at Workplace Prof Blog.

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BCS Or Playoff System To Determine Football National Champion?

This year’s Florida-Oklahoma BCS national championship pairing provides strong ammunition for those, including President-elect Barack Obama, advocating there instead should be a playoff system to determine the  NCAA Division I football national champion.  Although Oklahoma and Florida are the two top-ranked teams in the regular season BCS standings, third-ranked Texas defeated Oklahoma 45-35 in October.  Obama’s proposal for an eight-team playoff would work well this year because there are seven one-loss BCS conference teams (but none are undefeated) and two undefeated teams from non-BCS conferences.  (But which one of the nine would be left out?) Obama has suggested he would be willing “to throw his weight around” to make this happen.  What he could do: push to eliminate the federal tax-exempt status of university athletic departments, or perhaps even propose federal legislation to directly regulate the NCAA.  

However, neither is likely to happen because Obama will have more important issues on his plate.  Moreover, reflecting the historically cozy relationship between sports and politics in America, Congress rarely (if ever) has enacted any sports-specific laws that would adversely affect national sports governing bodies and leagues or their respective members.  At most, we might see some future Congressional hearings or calls for a Justice Department investigation regarding whether the BCS system violates the federal antitrust laws — initiated by legislators from states in which a home university’s football team was perceived by constituents to have been treated unfairly.  But, after all is said and done, there will be a lot more said than done.  Besides, Obama’s proposal would make NCAA Division I football even more like the NFL, probably result in the elimination of many of the 34 existing bowl games, and reduce a source of lively debate among college football fans.

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