Skip to main content

Grade Inflation Two – Local

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Education, LBOs, Standards. No Comments on Grade Inflation Two – Local

There are times when this blog writes itself. No sooner did my last piece on Harvard’s grading practices get posted than I acquired – by various means – documents that reveal what is going on in my old department regarding undergraduate marking.

First, a memo was sent around (including to me, for some reason) about new grading standards to be followed within the Dept. Instructors in the first year introductory courses and in the second year core theory courses (which almost all students take) have been informed that they should plan to give an average course mark of 75% (a middle B) and to award As and Bs to 60% of their students. Now, this is nowhere near Harvardesque, as that fine institution of higher learning is, as noted, giving As and A minuses to nearly 80% of its students. Even the Econ Dept-inclusive Faculty of Social Science at Harvard is giving out A-range marks to 65% of its students, much more generous than the new UWO Econ guideline, which in any case only applies to first and second-year courses.

None the less, this is a much higher grading expectation for UWO Econ students than reigned in my day, and the reasons for this are illustrative of what goes on in much of higher ed these days.  A separate report to the Department’s Committee on Academic Policy (also sent to me) notes that Economics tends to award fewer As and Bs than other Departments in courses of all levels. This is bad for enrollment in Econ courses, and enrollment in courses is what Departments live on in the 21st century. This is no doubt why the new grading guidelines have been struck.

Further, other information I have seen indicates that enrollment in all UWO Econ programs is on the decline, precipitously so, in some cases. For example, in UWO Econ’s once world-class Econ Honours undergrad program, enrollment in non-required courses has dropped 60% in five years. The PhD program took in 8 new students last year, when it used to take in 15-20 not long ago, when I was still employed. Even the new and previously successful Master’s program in Financial Economics has only 16 new entrants, where it used to have nearly 30.

The reasons for this are many and varied, as is always true, but for the undergrad Honors program, one cause is abundantly clear. Some 20 years back, when the Ivey Business School’s MBA program crashed and burned, Ivey had to find a new way to generate revenue. It chose to massively expand its undergrad HBA program, which students enroll in for only their last two years. Tuition for Ontario students in this program is for this year $25,200/year, so $50K for the program ($60K/year for foreign students). Ivey’s intake into the first year of this program has, since the 2000s, gone from less than 200 to 765 students in 23/24, according to its own website.

Not many programs at UWO have grown like that, although another one that has is also relevant, and its name is MOS. That stands for Management and Organizational Studies, and is a program within the Faculty of Social Science that – so far as I can tell – has also grown massively over the same period. The Faculty of Social Science is the largest at UWO, with nearly 8.000 students, and when I left my position two years ago, half of those Social Science students were said to be MOS students. (I note in passing that MOS now likes to be referred to as DAN Management, as entrepreneur Aubrey Dan left it a couple of large donations, and got the program and Department re-named in his honour some years back.)

Anyway, this quasi-business school’s growth, coupled with that of the older Ivey undergrad program has left UWO as The Business School of Western Ontario, and done much to reduce enrollment in Econ, as well as other non-Bus programs, I expect. The fact that Econ courses are hard, and, as noted last week, Econ profs are not much inclined to be easy markers, has helped feed the recent precipitous decline in Econ enrollment, and the resulting attempt to reverse this downward trend by awarding higher marks. This illustrates one of the forces militating against having grading standards that are difficult for students to meet. Another one can be seen in a document sent to me by one of my not-yet-retired colleagues in Econ. Said document is a product of what UWO calls its ‘Teaching and Learning Centre’ or TLC. It is headed:

Professional Development Workshop

Grading and Assignments

Under the heading ‘Assignment Design’ in the document is included this advice:

‘Cut down on the stuff they have to think about (and perhaps reduce cheating).’

Well yea, less reason to cheat – or study – if you aren’t expected to think about very much. I mean – who comes to university expecting to think about a lot of stuff, right?

The bureaucrats, who are really in charge now at Western, do not want faculty messing things up by making students thinkhard, or – heaven forbid – giving them low marks. It’s very bad for business and business, with a  Capital B – or maybe Capital I – is what BSWO is all about.

Learning, thinking – not so much.

I add an epilogue to further demonstrate what has happened in 40 years to Ontario universities. When I arrived at Western in 1980 I was absolutely floored by how well-prepared, smart and hard-working were UWO undergrads compared to the US undergrads I had taught during my graduate training. When I first was given an Intro Econ course to teach, I was sternly told that the Dept’s undergrad grading guidelines were to give about 1/3 of students an A or B, 1/3 a C, and 1/3 a D or F. Easy to remember, eh? 1/3, 1/3, 1/3.

So, 33% As and Bs versus 60% now, or 79% As, as at Harvard. You do the math. It’s a good bet UWO undergrads can’t. Math requires thinking about many things.

Union Postures, CBC Reports It – Updated

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Education, LBOs, News Media, Safety. No Comments on Union Postures, CBC Reports It – Updated

[Note: I posted this first on Sept 26, after which another article (read it here) about this appeared on the CBC website. This caused me to update/amend various bits of the post on Sept 28, which you will see below. ]

A union, any union, is just another LBO, and so those in charge do what those in charge of any LBO do – stop behaving like sensible human beings. They become organization people, whose primary mission is the maintenance of the LBO and hence, of course, their own positions.

The faculty at The University of Western Ontario are ‘represented’ by UWOFA, a local union not directly affiliated with the Teamsters or CUPE or any other national labour organization, as are some unions at Western. I think it is affiliated with CAUT, the Canadian Association of University Teachers, and I think some of one’s union dues to UWOFA get shoveled up to CAUT. This faculty unionization at Western happened in the oughts, I voted against it back then, but having seen it happen anyway, was sure that it meant the end of good working conditions at Western. In fact, it took awhile for that expected deterioration in things to happen, in large part because there were enough reasonable faculty (including a couple of my Econ Dept colleagues) who were willing to serve in important union positions (like negotiating and salary committees) to keep things from going entirely off the rails immediately.

All those reasonable folks eventually got old and retired, like me, so the Union was becoming more and more unreasonable by the time I retired. A story on the Sept 26 CBC-London website (read it here) makes it clear that UWOFA has moved into full LBO posturing mode.

If you didn’t already know, CUPE local 2361, which includes caretakers, groundskeepers and many other folks tasked with keeping UWO running, walked off the job on Aug. 30 after contract negotiations with the university broke down.  They remain on strike as I write this.

The Sept 26 story headline and sub-headline from CBC was as follows:

Western faculty flag ‘critical safety violations’ amid strike, launches complaint to province

Infractions include: Eyewash stations, safety equipment not being tested and asbestos found in old buildings

If you had read this CBC story early enough, the first thing you would have seen was the photograph below, with the caption below that:

“Some students at Western University say they have seen full garbage and recycling bins on campus since facilities employees walked off the job on Aug. 30. It’s prompted the university’s faculty association to launch a complaint with the province. (Kendra Seguin/CBC)”

So, ‘some students’ have said they have seen full trash bins, but apparently the intrepid CBC reporting team, including photographer Seguin, couldn’t find a trash bin that was actually full, so they took and published the photo above. That doesn’t look staged at all, does it?

A picture is worth a thousand words – just maybe not the words intended.

If you wondered ever if the CBC thinks we’re all fools, their publishing that photo and caption perhaps provides some evidence. However, eventually someone must have pointed out to someone at the CBC that this photo and caption was rather  embarrassing, journalistically speaking, and it is no longer part of the story if you go read it now.

There are other photos, which I will get to in a minute.

The article’s sub-title raised some questions for me, as follows –

1.How do UWOFA people know that things have not been inspected or tested? Are they going around and checking? Interesting work for faculty to be doing, if so, but even if they are, how does a professor of Sociology know if a fire extinguisher or eyewash station has been inspected or tested?

2. Who ‘found’ this asbestos in old buildings? Are UWO faculty also going around buildings removing drywall and checking for asbestos? I mean, if there is asbestos in old buildings (and there certainly is in some, including the building in which I used to work) it has been there since the building was constructed. It all was certainly there before the CUPE strike, so just what does it have to do with said strike?

Well, as to 1, there are new photos in the story, taken apparently by UWOFA members, so yes, faculty really are spending their time on this – or UWOFA is paying someone else to take them, I suppose. Here’s one below, showing a station behind a glass case that holds a fire hose and fire extinguisher.

The point being that there are initials on the red sticker dated up to July, but not August or September. So what we can infer is that no one has come by and put their initials there. What does that certify? Well, that no one has come by to check that the equipment hasn’t disappeared. You don’t ‘test’ a fire extinguisher or fire hose, right? In the case of the extinguisher, that renders it useless, and in the case of the fire hose, it makes one hell of a mess.

Here’s another photo from the new and improved CBC story:

Well, someone wearing jeans and sneakers is apparently putting a new plastic liner in a plastic garbage can. I don’t know how UWO faculty can possibly concentrate on their work knowing such things are going on, possibly in the same building in which they are working.

But wait, there’s more –

So, there is indeed an eye wash and safety shower which may have not been tested since the 16th of August. That doesn’t mean the station doesn’t work, of course, but no one has put an initial on that card since then.

[Amendment: The more recent CBC story includes the following statement from the UWO administration:

A spokesperson for the university said weekly checks of eyewash stations inside labs are the responsibility of lab staff, not CUPE 2361 employees. 

Thus, if indeed these stations are not being checked and tested, it has nothing to do with the CUPE strike. I wonder who UWOFA may have gotten into hot water over this photo?]

But wait, there’s still more. Another quote from the story:

The faculty union also said HVAC systems in student residences are malfunctioning and replacement workers aren’t wearing adequate personal protective equipment.

How does the faculty union know what is happening in student residences, and who among these dedicated faculty guardians of safety is aware of what ppe is required by workers in any particular situation?

Here are two clarifying quotes from UWOFA’s stalwart president:

“For a replacement worker, the difference between a sneaker and a safety shoe is very significant when a heavy or sharp object falls on their foot,” said UWOFA president Johanna Weststar.

Ah, of course, this is about UWOFA’s concern for the replacement workers.

She is further quoted –

“A malfunctioning eye wash station could mean blindness for faculty, staff or students who work with hazardous substances. Western works because CUPE workers do. We need them back now.”

It could, indeed. Here’s a crazy idea, but stay with me on this. Suppose UWOFA members who go into a room or lab in which there is an eye wash station or shower check to see if it is working before they begin their class or lab work. You know, turn it on, and see what happens. Now, I know that would be doing the work of a member of another union, a definite Solidarity No-No, but….it would prevent, you know, blindness from happening.

That crazy idea aside, this last quote does kinda indicate what is really going on – UWOFA is trying to put pressure on the Administration to settle with the striking CUPE members. More precisely, they are trying to get a provincial minstry to put pressure on UWO to settle. I have no doubt having CUPE on strike is a pain in the ass for faculty, but it is of course never going to happen that UWOFA tries to put pressure on the strikers themselves, or good ol’ CUPE, to settle. Solidarity, right?

So, this is posturing by UWOFA to try to get something they want – the Admin to settle with the CUPE workers. I am no friend of the UWO Admin, I think the place was and continues to be incredibly badly run, but I think UWOFA is just as badly run, and does not in any sense operate in the interests of most faculty members. It was a tossup in my last years working whether it was the Admin or UWOFA that did the most to make my working life unpleasant.

I will close with one last bit of the CBC story. Another quote attributed to UWOFA:

The faculty union said it’s “alarmed by the potential for asbestos exposure in older buildings, where water and steam leaks occur frequently and require special precautions that may not have been properly communicated to replacement contractors.”

Ah, so those ‘special precautions’ that are required ‘may not have been properly communicated to replacement contractors’. Indeed, they may not have been. Or, maybe they were, it doesn’t sound as though UWOFA actually knows, does it?

But, being fair to UWOFA, it is unlikely anyone within UWOFA actually claimed to have ‘found’ asbestos in old buildings. That wording at the beginning of the story is almost surely pure CBC, devoted as ever to accurate reporting.

[Amendment: The later CBC story includes this quote from the UWO Admin:

“There is no reason to suggest that asbestos-related hazards have increased during the current strike – and the University is not aware of any contracted employees exposed to any hazardous conditions,” said Ledgley.

As I wrote, asbestos has been known to be in some UWO buildings for years – this has nothing to do with the present CUPE strike.

Again from the UWO Admin, quoted by CBC:

“In the unusual circumstance that asbestos abatement work was necessary, it would be conducted by individuals properly trained in asbestos work with proper personal protective equipment and the worker would be monitored by Workplace Health.”]

I suspect none of this posturing by UWOFA’s leaders is going to have an impact on the Provincial Ministry of Labour, and thus on the duration of the strike, but I suppose one shouldn’t blame an LBO for trying.

[Amendment: I was just wrong on this. The more recent CBC story includes this:

The ministry told CBC News on Thursday that it received two health and safety complaints from the university on Sept. 24, and has assigned an inspector to investigate.

“The ministry prioritizes worker health and safety, enforcing the Occupational Health and Safety Act to ensure compliance. While the investigation is in progress, we cannot provide further details,” a spokesperson told CBC News in an email.

The ministry is indeed investigating. I look forward to what happens next, and whether this has any impact on the duration of the strike. I suppose I should say ‘Well played, UWOFA’, but I’ll wait to see what actually comes of all this.]

 

 

 

Municipal and Hospital Spending – At Your Service?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, LBOs, London. No Comments on Municipal and Hospital Spending – At Your Service?

This article was triggered by my reading a story in the Aug 12 Freeps that had the following sub-headline:

Two city politicians want their colleagues to pull $3 million from municipal savings to slightly reduce the relatively large tax increases that will hit Londoners over the next three years

In the story itself one then finds the following:

“The new motion proposes pulling $1 million from a city reserve fund each year from 2025-27. This amount would cut next year’s property tax increase by 0.13 per cent (from 8.7 to below 8.6), which [Councillor] Pribil acknowledges isn’t much.”

No, Jerry – not much, but I know we ratepayers appreciate the gesture.

In case any of you Londoners haven’t been paying attention, the current and future property tax increases in the multi-year city budget are:

  • 2024: 8.7 per cent
  • 2025: 8.7 per cent
  • 2026: 5.7 per cent
  • 2027: 6.7 per cent

The two years at 8.7% represent greater increases than I can remember seeing in my 40+ years of living here. I do wonder how they arranged things so that the percentage increase in every year was x.7. Someone at City Hall believes in lucky 7?

However, we Londoners are not alone. A report from the Fraser Institute called Municipal Dollars in Ontario – Where did the Money Go?, dated April 2024, reports the following:

“Municipal budget season in Ontario recently ended and the evidence reveals some fairly substantial tax increases around the province. For example, Waterloo Region approved a property tax increase of 6.9 per cent while Toronto passed an increase of 9.5 per cent. Hamilton ultimately saw an increase of 5.8 per cent after fears of a double-digit tax increase were unveiled in the fall while Kingston saw one of the lower increases coming in at 3.5 per cent.”

Note that London’s 2024 increase came in second to only that of Toronto, at least in this group.

What I found most interesting in the report was the discussion of how the increased tax revenues are being spent. Again quoting from the report:

“So, pulling everything together, here’s the story that emerges. Municipal operating expenditures in Ontario over the period 2000 to 2022 have grown 2.5 times faster than general inflation and double that of population. They have also grown a bit faster than the province’s output.”

“The increase in spending is driven by spending on wages and salaries but not in the manner one might think. Average salaries in the municipal sector for those making more than $100,000 annually since 2000 have grown by only 8 per cent but the number of individuals making those salaries has grown in the thousands of per cent. Within the broader public sector, in 2000 municipal employees accounted for 6 per cent of individuals on the salary disclosure list whereas by 2022 they accounted for 23 per cent.”

So municipalities are not necessarily employing very many more people, as one might think they must to serve increasing populations, but rather they are paying the people they employ much better.

Now, to be fair, this could be because they are employing people with different sets of skills than they did in the past. More folks with university degrees or highly specialized (and highly remunerated) training. Another factor left out of the report is the extent to which Ontario municipalities have shifted from having services provided by city employees to having them provided by private firms that bid for the city contracts. To the extent this happens, it will reduce the number of city employees, and – I suspect – reduce most the number of relatively low-paid employees. A municipal sanitation division is going to employ a lot of low-wage workers and a few managers, so if you contract out garbage pickup to a private contractor, that takes a lot of low-wage jobs off the city books, but only a few better-paid managerial positions. The cost of the contract with the private provider then does not come under the heading of ‘employee compensation’, but rather ‘payments for goods and services’. I suspect that has happened a good bit over the last 20 years, but can’t find any data on it: the Fraser report is silent on this possibility.

If you’re wondering how much of municipal spending goes to employee compensation (and you know you are) the Fraser folks have the answer for you:

“The composition of major expenditures is revealing: 37% of operating expenses are in employee compensation, another 28% are from the purchase of goods and services to run municipal operations, and 20% are expenses associated with fixed capital-consumption costs.”

So, yea – employee wages are kinda driving the expenditure bus, but as noted above, not because municipalities are employing more people to serve you better; they’re just paying the people they employ better. Or, putting it another way, they’re just employing more people who are better-paid.

I’d guess that will not surprise anyone who has tried to get any kind of service out of London City Hall. So far as I and those around me can tell, no London City employee ever answers their phone if they know (and they do) the call is coming from outside the building. ‘Your call is very important to us, please leave a message.’

Well-Paid Bureaucrats

We live in the Age of The Well-Paid Bureaucrat. This is not just a government phenomenon. I would suggest that all LBOs (Large Bureaucratic Organizations), whether government, non-profit or for-profit, see over time an increase in the proportion of their employees who are highly paid; say $150k+.  As an org grows, it tends to increase its employment of senior management types faster than its general increase in employees. (This is absolutely inarguable for universities….) Why? Wish I knew……

An illustration of this general principle shows up in another article published in the Freeps over the weekend. London Health Sciences Centre, the administrative monster that is now being run by an ‘interim chief executive’ brought in to reorganize it (and deal with a looming $150 million deficit), has let go two of its senior administrators. According to the Freeps, the administrators are

  • Brad Campbell, corporate hospital administration executive, was in charge of overseeing the presidents of University Hospital, Children’s Hospital and Victoria Hospital
  • Sandra Smith, who was regional vice-president for the southwest regional cancer program at LHSC

The title ‘corporate hospital administration executive’ is suitably vague, and his job was ‘overseeing three presidents’. Well, that clarifies his duties, right?

For this he was paid, according to the Freeps again –  ‘$475,423 in 2023, a significant raise over the $217,007 he made in 2022’. Significant raise, indeed, but what the heck did he do to earn such a salary? What does ‘overseeing presidents’ entail, exactly? (Smith made a modest $244k in 2023. I don’t know what a regional VP does, either.)

Sadly, as high as those salaries are, eliminating them from the LHSC budget is no more than a drop in the $150 million bucket.

Of course, LHSC is not a City of London operation, and I suspect (but don’t know) that there is no one in the London City administration making the lofty salary that Mr. Campbell did in 2023 – at least I hope not. But the general principle remains. As amalgamation turned three hospitals into one giant org, the number of senior administrators – and the salaries they earn – went up, and just kept going up. It takes a lot of highly paid people to run a LBO – just ask those highly paid people, they’ll tell you its true.

A worthy research project, if one could get the data – and I bet one could not – would be to look at a large set of LBOs of all types and see how the number of highly paid senior administrators has changed relative to total employment over, say, 20 years. My hypothesis obviously is that proportion has gone up over time, but I wonder in which type of org it has gone up the most. Non-profits, universities,  for-profit corporations, government bureaucracies? It would be interesting to see if there is any discernible pattern. My money would be on universities as the leaders, but that’s probably because I saw it happen in one of those first hand over the last 20 years.

But I betcha $100 no LBOs of any type would give one the data one would need to find out.

PostScript

Just as I was about to post this, a story popped up on the CBC-London website, saying that LHSC had just fired 5 more senior administrators. To quote the CBC story:

“Five executives with a combined tenure of over 20 years, and a combined 2023 salary of over $1.6 million, are no longer with the organization, Musyj said. They are:

  • Abhi Mukherjee, CFO, who joined LHSC in September 2022

  • John French, clinical diagnostic executive, who joined LHSC in September 2022

  • CJ Curran, corporate health disciplines executive, who joined LHSC in September 2022

  • Dipesh Patel, capital redevelopment and environmental operations executive, who joined LHSC in July 2013

  • Jatinder Bains, corporate academic executive, who joined LHSC in April 2021

‘….combined tenure of over 20 years’? C’mon, CBC, only one of them has been around more than three years, the other four are all very recent hires. CBC did not give their salaries (I suspect the public broadcaster is a little sensitive about executive salaries these days), but you could look them up on the sunshine list. I think I know what a CFO does, but the other titles? Like, ‘corporate academic executive’? Surely they just made that up.

Let me quote once more from the article.

“Dr. Jackie Schleifer Taylor, the former CEO, left this past spring after a seven month medical leave. Her salary in 2023 was almost $804,000. ”

“During Dr. Schleifer Taylor’s tenure, president positions were created, one at each Victoria, University and Children’s, replacing the former structure which had just one one[sic] president for the entire hospital system.”

So, now we know what the afore-mentioned Brad Campbell did to earn his big salary. When Schleifer Taylor created three presidential positions where there had previously been only one, she of course had to create a fourth position – held by Campbell – to oversee those three. Now that is bureaucratic thinking par excellence.

What the Google Just Happened?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, LBOs, News Media. 1 Comment on What the Google Just Happened?

Much of the material I write about in this blog is taken from the news media, obviously, but sometimes I write about the story or issue that the media piece is covering, while other times I am writing about the media piece itself. This article is going to be of the second type.

You have likely read or heard that the US Department of Justice brought an antitrust case against Google (four years ago, actually), and that the judge presiding over this case has just recently found against Google. Most headlines say something like ‘Google found guilty of being a monopolist’. This is an oversimplification. The DoJ accused Google of violating a rather specific US antitrust statute, and the judge found that it did. In this case (you can read the judge’s decision here) it was Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, and here is what the judge himself had to say about that statute in his decision:

“Section 2 of the Sherman Act makes it unlawful for a firm to ‘monopolize.’ ….The offense of monopolization requires proof of two elements: (1) the possession of monopoly power in the relevant market and (2) the willful acquisition or maintenance of that power as distinguished from growth or development as a consequence of a superior product, business acumen, or historic accident.”

Thus, it is indeed true that the DoJ had to show that Google has ‘monopoly power’ in the search engine market (arguing that aspect of the case is where a bunch of economists made big consulting fees, you can bet). However, it also has to show that Google did something willful to acquire or maintain that monopoly power. Being a monopoly due to, say, selling a superior product, implies no harm, no litigation.

From what I have read, it is Google’s agreements with other companies – like Apple – to make Google the default search engine on the devices they sell in return for a payment from Google that were found to violate part (2) above. For example, Google paid Apple $20B (yea, that’s a B) for making Google the default search engine on every iPhone’s Safari browser.

A lot has been written about the consequences of this decision for average Joes and Jills like you and I. How, if at all, will it change what happens on the internet, particularly in searching the web?

I haven’t read everything written about this, and there has been a lot, but I did come across an article on the National Post website, posted on August 9, written by one Matt Stoller, with the title:

Landmark decision means Google’s control of the web is ending

Wow. I am aware that Mr. Stoller almost certainly did not write that headline for his article, but a note to whoever did – this case was about Google’s search engine only, and if you know anything about Google, you know they have plenty of other operations on ‘the web’ (the parent company, Alphabet, owns Youtube, just to name one). In any case, it is a bit much to talk about Google’s ‘control of the web’. (If any firm could be said to ‘control the web’ my money would be on Microsoft, but that’s a blog for another day).

However, the rest of the article I have to credit to Mr Stoller, and he has some remarkable things to say about this just-issued decision. For example, he writes: ‘So there we go, Google’s control of the web is ending.’

Ah. So, maybe he did write that headline.

Then there’s this –

‘The implications of this decision will have ripple effects across the internet, the law, and big business for generations.’

Generations. One senses a taste for hyperbole in Mr. Stoller’s writing, no?

Here are two facts about this case that seem relevant to understanding how important it will turn out to be for average internet users.

  1. Google has already said it will appeal the judge’s ruling.
  2. The judge’s decision is the final step in what is only the first stage of this trial, which is called the ‘liability’ phase. What now follows is the ‘remedy’ phase.

Regarding point 1, some of you may recall that in the early 2000s the US brought a case based on the same Section 2 of the Sherman Act against good ol’ Microsoft, accusing it of monopolizing the market for personal computer operating systems. The government won that case too, but it was then overturned by the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. So, it’s a bit too soon to be counting any chickens, and the judicial appeal process could drag on for some time.

Stoller ignores my point 1 in his article, but not point 2, since he writes the following:

“This part of the trial was what is called the liability phase, which is to determine whether Google broke the law. Judge Mehta found that it did. The next stage is called the remedy phase, during which the court will hear arguments about what to do to address the bad conduct.”

What to do, indeed. A company the size of Google, even just its search engine division, is an incredibly complex organization. It is fair to say that no one working in Google’s search engine division – including the person at the top – is aware of everything that happens within it. It’s just too big and complicated. So, what do you suppose are the chances that the DoJ and the judge, who agree that Google has behaved badly, but know approximately nothing about running a tech company, can figure out what remedy is needed to force Google to behave better in the future?

They can, presumably, do the obvious thing of declaring illegal Google’s contracts with Apple and others regarding the Google search engine’s status as the default search engine on their installed browsers. But it will still be true that Apple et al are going to choose some search engine to be available on the devices they sell. Do we really believe that Google can find no other way to persuade those companies that Google’s search engine is the one they should have as the default on their installed browsers? Given that (according to the Financial Times) Google currently handles more than 90 per cent of online queries  and that ‘google’ has become a synonym for ‘search for’, why indeed would all the companies with whom Google currently has agreements not leave it as their default search engine? It’s already the one most people use. What can the learned judge and assorted lawyers and economists working for the DoJ possibly come up with to change that simple fact?

Finally, a comment on the Stoller article’s most hyperbolic paragraph:

“What about the rest of business? Well, this decision means monopolization law is back. Exclusive contracts and arrangements are pervasive in American commerce, and until recently, executives could reliably exploit such deals without fearing that they might face any legal liability. But that era is over. This case is in the headlines, which means every single competent executive in America in any firm with market power is going to get a memo from their antitrust or general counsel on what they can and can’t do going forward. And they will likely begin changing their behaviour to avoid being brought to court for monopolization.”

So Stoller thinks the case will trigger memos from counsel all across the corporate universe. Well, maybe not. Even if this Google decision is not reversed on appeal, and even if the DoJ and judge come up with some way to actually reduce Google’s ongoing share of the search market, it is simply not true that any Google executives are going to face ‘legal liability’. Google might have to pay a fine, and it might be a whopper. However, for any person within Google to face a legal sanction, the DoJ would have had to bring a criminal case against Google (and its executives) under Section 2 of the Sherman Act. The DoJ can do this, but they did not in the Google case, and in fact they almost never do. What they did was sue Google, a very different matter. The reason for this is simple; the DoJ can only win a criminal case against Google or any of its executives if it proves its allegations beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s a much higher standard than the standard of proving one’s case by a preponderance of the evidence, which is what is required in a civil lawsuit. The DoJ wanted to win this case and change Google’s business practices, so they filed a lawsuit, not a criminal case. Google executives might get fired by their company, but legal liability is not on the table.

The only antitrust violations that are typically prosecuted as criminal cases in the US (Canadian law and practice are similar in this regard)  are those of price-fixing or bid-rigging, which violate  Section 1 of the Sherman Act. In such criminal cases executives can indeed be fined or even imprisoned if the government wins the case, but again, this is not what happened in the US vs Google case.

Going forward, there is perhaps some reason to think executives of other companies need to worry about ‘legal liability’ for entering into exclusive contracts that violate Section 2, but only because in 2022 the DoJ announced that they would start pursuing more criminal cases under Section 2 of the Sherman Act. The Department has in fact filed two Sherman section 2 criminal cases in the last 50 years, one in 2022 and the most recent in 2024. However, they didn’t pursue a criminal case against Google, and the two recent cases in which criminal charges were brought were against executives of relatively small companies.  So, if other executives have reason to be worried about legal liability, it does not arise from the judge’s decision in phase one of this case against Google.

If executives in other companies got memos about what to do or not do from their legal counsel, it would have happened after the DoJ’s 2022 announcement, not after judge Mehta’s recent decision in this case. And….did those memos cause executives in other companies to change their behavior? No way to know, really, until and unless more criminal Section 2 cases actually are brought – and maybe not then.

So maybe ‘….monopolization law is back’ is a bit premature. However, it is not fair to be too hard on the enthusiastic Mr. Stoller. If you go to the Financial Times article on this case, available here, you will find other worthies waxing equally hyperbolic about the meaning and significance of this still-incomplete case.

Peeps are gonna believe what peeps wanna believe.

 

 

People Can Disappoint You; Bureaucrats, Almost Always

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Education, LBOs. No Comments on People Can Disappoint You; Bureaucrats, Almost Always

In my post of June 2, ‘People can Surprise You’ I had a number of complimentary things to  say about a statement put out by the University of Western Ontario’s president, Alan Shepherd, regarding the protest encampment on the university campus. I said at the end of my post that I would wait with hope to see if the university would actually put into action the principles put forward in that statement.

I expected to be disappointed, frankly, and I am.

First, included in the President’s statement was this:

“These commitments – to the extent that they are new and not already in place – are contingent upon organizers agreeing to dismantle the encampment and not return, and to not disrupt Western’s convocation ceremonies out of respect for their fellow students.”

And this:

“What’s more, individuals participating in the encampment have several times crossed the line. They are intimidating visitors including high-school students on campus tours. They are harassing our campus community members, including students and caretaking staff. They are committing acts of vandalism. And some have even engaged in assaultive behaviour towards our staff.

This is unacceptable and cannot go on.”

UWO’s convocation ceremonies are about to wrap up, and the encampment remains. I suppose that all the first quote above requires is that whatever ‘new commitments’ the University had made might now not be honored.

Further, there was a photo (no story) in the  June 21 London Free Press with the following caption:

“GRADUATES FACE PROTEST: Western University graduates are met by about 200 loudly chanting pro-Palestinian protesters in front of the Ivey school of business during convocation ceremonies Thursday afternoon.”

The photo shows two security personnel walking from the left side of the picture toward the right, where the protestors can be seen chanting into the faces of the graduates walking along in their graduation gowns.

As I said, there is no story beyond the quoted caption in the Freeps, and I do wonder why not.

So, here on June 21, the encampment remains, graduates – and I expect others – are being harassed, the Free Press appears to have no interest in reporting this beyond a photo caption. I fully expect that next week the encampment will remain and people on campus will continue to be shouted at by the campers.

I have to conclude that all of this is in fact perfectly acceptable to the UWO Admin, despite their noble words.

I am disappointed, but not surprised.

 

People can surprise you

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Education, LBOs. 2 Comments on People can surprise you

Those not living in a hermitage over the last several months will be aware of the protests and – in many cases – encampments that have occurred on university campuses across North America. So far as I can tell, all of these have been generated by people – students or otherwise – who wish to support the Palestinians in Gaza in what has become known as the Israel-Gaza [see addendum below]*war. They have called for the universities in question to do a variety of things, from divestment of university endowments in weapons manufacturers to the ending of all academic or other relationships the university has with Israel, Israeli universities, or in some cases, any organization that is thought (by the protesters) to be linked to Zionism, however they define that.

Universities have responded to these protests in a variety of ways, and while I cannot claim to have investigated every such occurrence, my impression is that universities have only rarely been willing to refuse to accede to the demands of the protesters, and have even less often been willing to use law enforcement to remove encampments that are, by any reasonable definition, illegal. At minimum, these encampments entail trespassing on university property, and in some cases, according to reports, the people in the encampments have been seen to be harassing members of the university community going about their daily business.

Many of the university responses – such as at U of Toronto – have featured the setting of repeated deadlines to abandon an encampment, deadlines that have been moved forward in time each time the previous one is violated. Here are the opening lines of a Globe and Mail article of June 2 about the U of T encampment:

“Convocation ceremonies for graduating University of Toronto students begin Monday against the backdrop of a pro-Palestinian encampment that has remained on campus for weeks despite a trespass notice and looming legal action.

More than 30 ceremonies are scheduled to take place through June 21 and the university says all events will proceed as planned with ‘extra precautions.’”

This particular encampment has been in place since May 2, and U of T has gone to court seeking an injunction order to clear it. Stay tuned….

Not surprisingly, the UWO campus is also home to an encampment located near what has always been referred to as ‘the concrete beach’ just outside the University Community Centre; a high people-traffic area. There have been ongoing discussions/negotiations between representatives of those in the encampment and UWO’s senior administration regarding the dismantling of said encampment, which has been there at least since May 3. (That was the last time I was on campus, and it was there on that date.)

I am writing this blog about the UWO situation because I got an email in which the administration of my former employer set out their response to the situation. You can read this at this link. – it’s public. However, going to that url will confront you with a whole series of dated updates and statements, and what I want to call your attention to is the one titled:

“Responding to calls from the Western Divestment Coalition – May 29, 2024”

I am about as far from being a fan of UWO’s current senior administration as you will find on planet earth, but I am writing this post because I read the above statement, and was pleasantly surprised by (most of) its content.

In particular, I direct you to the following statements in this response:

“There are also roles we do not – and should not – play.

For instance, with few exceptions throughout history, universities do not take unilateral stances on political or social issues. Why? Because by our very nature, universities do not speak with one voice. To do so would be antithetical to our mission as a place where all are welcome and where diverse ideas can be openly and respectfully debated and explored.

With this mission in mind, universities have historically not taken up wholesale calls for boycott, divestment, and sanctions – and Western University is no different.”

To be sure, there is wiggle room in the last sentence in particular. They write that universities have ‘historically not taken up’ calls for boycott, rather than ‘Western will not take up a call for boycott, divestment and sanctions”. Only time will tell whether what UWO does varies from what they say universities have done ‘historically’.

Later in the administration response one reads:

“But the larger point is that, as an institution of higher learning, our role is to make room for the broadest range of views.

With that in mind, our investment policy is driven not by political motives or any institutional position on particular global affairs, but by a fiduciary duty to ensure the University is financially equipped to carry out its mission in support of all students, faculty and staff – today and well into the future.”

Later on there is this:

“Our goal is to end this unlawful encampment safely and soon. We are seeking a peaceful resolution, and we hope to continue engaging with our students to do so.

“Students should not fear repercussions simply by speaking with us and negotiating on behalf of their peers.

That said, any individual who chooses not to respect the bounds of peaceful and lawful protest cannot be guaranteed amnesty.”

And, as my final quote from the Admin response, there is this:

“These commitments – to the extent that they are new and not already in place – are contingent upon organizers agreeing to dismantle the encampment and not return, and to not disrupt Western’s convocation ceremonies out of respect for their fellow students.

The protracted occupation of the popular gathering place outside the University Community Centre is not only unsafe and unlawful but is making it impossible for Western to fulfil our promise of creating inclusive spaces across our campus for all our community members.

What’s more, individuals participating in the encampment have several times crossed the line. They are intimidating visitors including high-school students on campus tours. They are harassing our campus community members, including students and caretaking staff. They are committing acts of vandalism. And some have even engaged in assaultive behaviour towards our staff.

This is unacceptable and cannot go on.”

Once again I note that there is a rather large hole in this quote, through which one could drive almost anything. The last sentence says nothing definite about what will happen if this ‘unacceptable’ situation does go on until convocation. More negotiation, more statements, another deadline….? I do not want to see a confrontation between the protesters and law enforcement on the UWO campus. But I agree that what is described as happening there is ‘unacceptable’, and that word has no meaning without a willingness to bring it to an end.

Still, I write here not to bury the UWO Admin but to praise them. I am not happy with every word in the UWO Admin’s response – I should not expect to be – but the quoted statements lay out principles that align with my own principles regarding the mission of a university, and the bounds of what is acceptable behavior within them. That is not something I have said often about statements coming from that source, so I am tipping my hat to them, for one of the few times in my life.

What remains to be seen is the extent to which said Administrators are willing to take what will be  unpopular (with some) actions in order to uphold these principles. I wait to see what happens with admitted doubt in my heart, but hope in my soul.

*In fact, it is more often referred to in the media as ‘the war in Gaza’ or ‘the Israel-Hamas war’. My bad.

That Unfriendly Law Thing

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, LBOs. No Comments on That Unfriendly Law Thing

Over lunch one day, a friend of mine said to another friend of mine – ‘The law is not your friend’. I am not always in agreement with Friend 1, but in this case I could only say ‘Amen’.

But never mind what I say, the Globe and Mail featured a story on April 12 titled:

 ‘Foreign landlord fails to pay taxes, CRA goes after tenant’

that is eloquent as hell on this very topic.

The story is as appalling as it is instructive. A tenant in Montreal had a landlord who was an Italian resident for tax purposes, and that landlord did not pay the Canadian income taxes owed on the rents he received from said tenant. If ya earned it in Canada, ya gets taxed in Canada. The CRA, noble institution that it is, told the tenant he was on the hook for the unpaid taxes, because he was supposed to withhold 25% of his rent for that purpose. You know, just like you do when you pay those Swedes at Ikea for that sofa you purchased, or pay for that pack of Slim Jims at Mr Kim’s Convenience.

The tenant took the CRA to court over this – Tax Court, natch – and lost.

Here’s my favourite part. Really. Quoting directly from the Globe article, now –

The judge acknowledged “the harsh consequences,” in her decision, but still held the “resident payer,” or renter, liable.

The tenant’s lawyer pointed out that there was no reasonable way for the tenant to even know his landlord was not a Canadian resident for tax purposes. That, of course, was deemed to be no excuse.

My second favourite part is the last line of the G&M piece on this:

The CRA did not respond to requests to comment.

Really? No comment?

However, I am not kidding about my ‘favourite part’, as the judge’s attitude is a perfect illustration of The Central Fact about Large Bureaucratic Organizations (LBOs) – and our legal system is one Really Large BO. Those who are in such an org can always justify to themselves and to the world treating people in any way that is consistent with The Rules of the Org, however inhumane such treatment may be.

The judge could acknowledge harshness, could even shed a tear, perhaps, but, ya know – the law is the law. And, as my friend said, it is not your friend.