Rogers Communications Inc. is a Canadian communications and media company. It operates primarily in the fields of wireless communications, cable television, telephony and Internet connectivity, with significant additional telecommunications and mass media assets. Rogers has its headquarters in Toronto, Ontario. The company traces its origins to 1960, when Ted Rogers and a partner bought the CHFI-FM radio station; they then became part-owners of a group that established the CFTO television station.The chief competitor to Rogers is Bell Canada, which has a similarly extensive portfolio of radio and television media assets, as well as wireless, television distribution, and telephone services, particularly in Eastern and Central Canada. The two companies are often seen as having a duopoly on communications services in their regions, and both companies own a stake of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. However, Rogers also competes nationally with Telus for wireless services, and primarily indirectly with Shaw Communications for television service.
In this Article, the authors explore – through a survey of collective agreements, case law, unions’ constitutions and websites – how trade unions in Canada and Israel balance and effectively support the interests of older and young workers. While unions in both countries promote age diversity to some extent (Canadian unions more than Israeli unions), they do not take sufficient action to promote intergenerational solidarity and sometimes even inhibit solidarity between generations. The authors conclude with some policy recommendations and emphasize the importance of viewing the interests of older and young workers as common and interrelated rather than competing or conflicting.
Organizations increasingly rely on external management consultants to restructure their businesses in an effort to improve performance, competitiveness, and profitability. This article focuses on the ramifications of such arrangements for the client organization’s employees. Management consultants generally wield substantial influence on their clients, and often perform managerial functions, directly interacting with, and exercising significant control over, the client’s employees. As a result, consultants may directly or indirectly contribute to labour and employment law infringements by the client organization. The author argues that while existing laws may provide some mechanisms of enforcement and protection, there is a need for more robust regulation to ensure that management consultants are made directly responsible for their actions where the effect of those actions is to cause a violation of employees’ rights. Accordingly, using “Lean” consulting as an example, specifically the implementation of Lean in the Saskatchewan healthcare system, the paper states the case for recognizing and expanding the liability of management consultants directly to their clients’ employees. Among other proposals, the author advocates a broad interpretation of existing employment and labour laws to capture the activities of management consultants where there exist the requisite elements of influence or control, and raises the possibility of establishing a regulatory scheme for the management consulting profession.
The dynamical equations of motion of a discrete one-dimensional harmonic chain with side restoring forces is analogous to the relativistic Klein-Gordon equation. Dirac factorization of that discrete Klein-Gordon equation introduces two equations with time reversal (T) and parity (P) symmetry breaking conditions. The Dirac-factored equations enable the exploration of the properties of the solutions of the dynamical equations under P and T symmetry breaking conditions. The spinor solutions of the Dirac factored equations describe two types of acoustic waves, one with a conventional topology (Berry phase equal to 0) and the other one with a non-conventional topology (Berry phase of π). In this latter case, the acoustic wave is isomorphic to the quantum spin of an electron, also known as an acoustic pseudospin, which requires a closed path corresponding to two Brillouin zones to recover the original spinor. The interface between topologically conventional and non-conventional chains supports topological surface states. The Dirac-factored equations of motions of the one-dimensional harmonic chain with side springs can serve as a model for the investigation of the properties of acoustic topological insulators. [Work supported by NSF Award No. 2242925.]
