Johanna Weststar

What Makes for Effective Labor Representation on Pension Boards

This article examines the efficacy of labor representation on pension boards. Using existing literature and interviews with labor trustees, this article develops a model where a more formal approach to recruitment and selection, skill acquisition, and accountability is hypothesized to aid labor trustees in achieving effective integration and representation on pension boards. Data indicate that labor trustees are placed in a challenging environment with insufficient support from their union, other trustees, or the board. These findings have important implications for the selection, training, and integration of labor trustees and the success of a labor agenda on pension issues.

The perils of project-based work: Attempting resistance to extreme work practices in video game development

This article examines two blogs written by the spouses of game developers about extreme and exploitative working conditions in the video game industry and the associated reader comments. The wives of these video game developers and members of the game community decry these working conditions and challenge dominant ideologies about making games. This article contributes to the work intensification literature by challenging the belief that long hours are necessary and inevitable to make successful games, discussing the negative toll of extreme work on workers and their families, and by highlighting that the project-based structure of game development both creates extreme work conditions and inhibits resistance. It considers how extreme work practices are legitimized through neo-normative control mechanisms made possible through project-based work structures and the perceived imperative of a race or ‘crunch’ to meet project deadlines. The findings show that neo-normative control mechanisms create an insularity within project teams and can make it difficult for workers to resist their own extreme working conditions, and at times to even understand them as extreme.

Understanding video game developers as an occupational community

The video game industry has rapidly expanded over the last four decades; yet there is limited research about the workers who make video games. In examining these workers, this article responds to calls for renewed attention to the role of the occupation in understanding project-based workers in boundaryless careers. Specifically, this article uses secondary analysis of online sources to demonstrate that video game developers can be understood as a unique social group called an occupational community (OC). Once this classification has been made, the concept of OC can be used in future research to understand video game workers in terms of identity formation, competency development, career advancement and support, collective action, as well as adherence to and deviance from organizational and industry norms.

Worker Control as a Facilitator in the Match between Education and Jobs

This article examines the relationship between worker control and subjective underemployment among workers who have more education than is needed for entry into their jobs (credential underemployment). Results indicate that social and technical controls are related to a greater sense of education–job matching. Workers who have credential underemployment are less likely to report subjective underemployment (underutilization and lack of fit between education and job) if they have higher levels of workplace control. This article contains implications for job design and the role of employers and managers in fostering the utilization of their workforces.

Worker Control and Workplace Learning: Expansion of the Job Demand-Control Model

This paper uses a sub-sample (N = 5,800) of a unique data set on work and lifelong learning to develop the learning dimension of the Job Demand-Control model (Administrative Science Quarterly [1979] 24:285). The model is expanded by including three distinct learning behaviors to allow for a complete assessment of workplace learning. Worker control is also expanded to include often confounded dimensions of Social and Technical Control. The results confirm that different types of learning are related to different determinants and that Social and Technical Control are key factors in learning participation.

A Review of Women’s Experiences of Three Dimensions of Underemployment

Concerns about the prevalence of underemployment have grown with rising educational attainments and economic slowdowns in most industrialized countries. However, women have been facing underemployment for some time. Familiar terms abound to describe the experiences unique to women in the paid labor market (e.g., glass ceiling, sticky floor, old boys club, pay equity, occupational ghetto, pink collar, double day, and second shift). These denote the reasons for women being more at risk of underemployment. Systemic discrimination, occupational and job segregation, wage inequality, the sexual division of unpaid labor, and more limited returns to education and experience all challenge a woman’s ability to achieve labor market equity with her male counterparts because they prevent the full usage and recognition of her knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs).

Work hour congruence: the effect on job satisfaction and absenteeism

This study examines the effect of work hour congruence on employee job satisfaction and absenteeism using a large, longitudinal sample from the Canadian Workplace and Employee Survey (WES). An employee is said to have work hour congruence when they actually work the number of hours that they desire. Results indicate a difference between employees who desire more hours and those who desire fewer hours: employee desire for and receipt of more hours was related to positive changes in job satisfaction, while employee desire for and receipt of fewer hours was related to reduced absenteeism. In addition, the results suggest that employees respond to employers who at least try to meet their needs, those who desired more hours and received some, but not all of these additional hours showed a positive increase in job satisfaction. This study contributes to the literature by using of a precise measure of work hour preference and change, differentiating employees who desire fewer hours from those who desire more and examining both full and partial work hour congruence.

The recruitment and selection of pension trustees:an integrative approach

The role of a pension trustee is significant, which makes the recruitment and selection of labour trustees an important issue. In this article, we examine and combine aspects of two approaches to recruitment and selection: the political nomination model and the more professional HRM approach. We argue that an integrative approach would acknowledge the political, regulatory and organisational context while incorporating valid selection criteria such as domain-specific skills and performance on the job. Such an integrated process can help trade unions in filling labour trustee positions with talented individuals who are more likely to be effective in achieving labours goals in pension governance.The role of a labour pension trustee is significant, which makes the recruitment and selection of labour trustees an important issue. In this paper we examine and combine aspects of two approaches to recruitment and selection, the political nomination model and the more professional HRM approach. The political nomination model is often used by trade unions to elect or appoint trustees. In contrast, a professional HRM approach emphasizes open recruitment and selection based on job-related criteria of expertise and continuous learning. We argue that an integrative approach would acknowledge the political, regulatory and organisational context while incorporating valid selection criteria such as domain-specific skills and performance on the job. Such an integrated process can help trade unions in filling labour trustee positions with talented individuals who are more likely to be effective in achieving labour’s goals in pension governance.

Women’s Experiences on the Path to a Career in Game Development

This chapter seeks to identify whether there is a dominant, presupposed career pipeline to a career in game development and then looks for women and women’s experiences at each stage of that pipeline. It concludes that a dominant pipeline does exist and that this pathway both disadvantages women who attempt it and marginalizes other pathways. Along the way women deal with obstacles that can delegitimize their choices and experiences and/or make the assumed pathway inhospitable. This chapter relies on published literature as well as data from the 2014 and 2015 Developer Satisfaction Surveys (DSS) conducted by the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) in partnership with the authors.

Why Might a Videogame Developer Join a Union

This paper contributes to the union renewal literature by examining the union voting propensity of workers in the high-tech tertiary sector of videogame development toward different forms of unionization. We used exclusive data from a survey of videogame developers (VGD) working primarily in Anglo-Saxon countries. When looking at the factors related to voting propensity, our data indicated that the type of unionism matters and that industry/sectoral unionism is an increasingly salient model for project-based knowledge workers. This is an important policy dimension given that the legal structures and norms in Anglo-Saxon countries still tend to support decentralized enterprise-based unionism. It is also important for unions insofar as their organizing tactics remain geared toward a shop-by-shop approach or, at least, a localized geographical approach. Although additional work is required, our analyses lends support to the argument that high-commitment and high-involvement workplaces can engender a desire for collective representation and voice such as is offered through unionization. Whether this is because such workplaces step over a breaking-point line where the requirement for full alignment with employer goals becomes untenable and a source of discontent, whether this represents the existence of dual commitment where a representative agent like a union is seen as necessary to protect the work that people love, or whether there is a combination of these forces is not yet clear, but it is a critical area of future study for project-based knowledge workers.