Compensating workers for permanent partial disabilities

There is substantial variability in how state workers' compensation laws provide benefits to workers who have a permanent partial disability. The basic approaches used by the states can be classified into four groupings, although important differences exist within each group. Depending on the approach used, workers with similar injuries can receive substantially different amounts of benefits. Because compensating permanent partial disabilities frequently involves contention, the matters in dispute will depend on the approach used to determine benefits. The continuation of such differences in approach suggests that the states have not found a single "best practice" for determining what such benefits should be.     

The impact of different government units in the regulation of the workplace environment

This study examines the issue of whether or not state and federal job safety agencies provide the same levels of public output. Tests are conducted on the hypothesis that state takeover of regulation from the federal program serves to reduce the costs of firms. These costs are comprised of two components: the penalties for noncompliance and the uncertainty costs of regulation. The public policy implication that is drawn from these tests is that it matters to firms which government unit regulates them.     

Mandated justice: The potential promise and possible pitfalls of mandating procedural justice in the workplace

This study addresses the question of whether and how legal authorities ought to intervene in work organizations in order to most effectively regulate the behavior of employees. This question is examined empirically, by exploring whether the association between the level of fairness employees experience in procedures regarding pay and benefits, and their adherence to workplace rules, differs depending upon whether those procedures are enacted by companies voluntarily or mandated by law. This question was addressed using both a survey of a representative sample of employees in Israel, as well as their reactions to an experimental vignette. The results generally suggest that evaluations of the procedural justice of performance appraisal hearings more strongly influenced judgments of overall workplace fairness, perceptions of management legitimacy, and employee rule‐adherence behavior when employees believed fairer workplace procedures were required by law.     

Local workplace organising in the wake of globalisation: Street vendors and autoworkers in Puebla,Mexico

Global changes that seem to limit the intellectual and physical space in which workplace organising takes place, have led many analysts to suggest that labour organisations have become less important politically in recent years. While conceding that global processes have made the workers’ task more difficult, the argument here is that the nature and character of resistance by workers continues to influence political and economic outcomes. When that resistance is ineffective, as is the case to varying degrees with the disparate groups of Pueblan workers compared here, it may appear that global forces are too strong to be challenged. This paper argues, however, that workplace organisations that creatively adapt their structures and strategies to changing circumstances should be able to defend the interests of their constituents, as well as potentially influence political outcomes at local, national and perhaps even international levels.     

Workplace and Non‐workplace Pro‐environmental Behaviors: Empirical Evidence from Florida City Governments

Public employees are expected to be good stewards of public resources and engage in pro‐environmental behaviors (PEBs). Using different categorizations of PEBs, this article examines whether public employees perform these PEBs in workplace and non‐workplace settings. The article further investigates how PEBs are influenced by salient characteristics of public organizations—that is, public service motivation (PSM) and civic participation categorized as civic engagement and cognitive engagement. Data were collected through a survey of public employees in two city governments in Florida. A structural equation model was employed to test the proposed model. Findings indicate that PSM has a positive influence on workplace PEBs and similar PEBs in the non‐workplace settings. Civic engagement has a positive influence on both workplace and non‐workplace PEBs. Barriers significantly moderate the effects of PSM and cognitive engagement on workplace and non‐workplace PEBs.     

Equity and information: Information regulation,environmental justice,and risks from toxic chemicals

Decreases over time in pounds of industrial chemical emissions have led to concerns that nonminority, higher‐income communities have benefited disproportionately in reductions in risk. Toxic chemical release data, modeled for toxicity and dispersion in square kilometer units across 45 states, are used to test six sets of hypotheses of potential interactions between facilities and the communities surrounding them. The results provide mixed evidence that ethnicity explains chemical emission changes. Stronger support is found that changes in emission patterns are affected by a community's ability to process complex information and its capacity for collective action, and industrial production factors. Some support is found for the efficacy of state environmental policies that both do and do not fit the traditional regulatory model in encouraging risk reductions. © 2005 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management