Ordinary Employee Research Articles

Mandatory Social Insurance in Russia: Ways of Reforming

Despite near 30 years of post-Soviet reforms, Russia has not developed an effective system of mandatory social insurance. This has many negative, social, economic and political consequences. The main ones are low coverage of social risks and mass paternalism. An ordinary employee does not feel involved in the formation of his own well-being, especially in the field of pensions and medical care, and can’t independently dispose of those mandatory contributions that the employer makes in his favor. Therefore, in Russia there has long been a need, not just for cosmetic amendments, but for a radical reform of the mandatory insurance system. Its main element should be the involvement of the employee in the management of funds collected in special insurance institutes. It is proposed to move from a unified rate of deductions to personalized contributions, the amount of which depends on the family status of the employee, his or her health, and other personal characteristics. The organizational form of the updated system of mandatory social insurance can be a United Social Insurance Fund (instead of the current three funds), managed on an equal basis by representatives of employees, employers and the state.

LEGAL LIABILITY AS AN ELEMENT OF THE LEGAL STATUS OF CIVIL SERVANTS

The article reviews the scientific positions on understanding the concept of "legal responsibility", considers it as a positive and retrospective liability, and also proposes its own definition of legal liability of a civil servant. Emphasis is placed on distinguishing the civil servant's legal liability from the ordinary employee's legal liability, since the civil servant's legal responsibility is at the heart of each official's official activity, follows from the powers conferred, is a guarantee of the civil servants' observance of the law, civil service principles and their proper performance ulcers, etc.
 The legal responsibility of a civil servant is considered, which is quite complex and multifaceted in contrast to the legal liability of ordinary citizens, since it is connected with the powers of the individual, the performance of their individual actions and functions, the exercise of administrative and administrative-legal influence on public relations in the state. Accountability of civil servants has both general and specific features of legal liability.
 The scientist has identified a number of features that distinguish the legal liability of civil servants from the legal liability of ordinary workers. Such features include: 1) the legal liability of a civil servant is characterized by an increased level of liability of such persons for similar crimes, offenses or disciplinary offenses as provided by the current legislation; 2) increased possibilities for applying the head of the department, directly subordinate to a civil servant, to have powers to identify disciplinary actions and to bring a civil servant to disciplinary responsibility; 3) the broad effect of the legal liability of a civil servant for the offenses committed; 4) the purpose of legal responsibility consists not only in punishment of the guilty person, restoration of the violated rights and interests of the person, carrying out preventive activity, but also in ensuring in the further proper fulfillment by the civil servant of his official duties, prevention of behavior which could discredit the public service and the public employee as a whole; 5) features of its classification.
 The author of the article emphasizes that applying to a civil servant a certain type of legal responsibility not only condemns a civil servant by applying to him a state coercion, but also encourages other persons to behave properly and properly perform their official duties, to prevent committing actions that directly prohibited by applicable law.

The Imperfections of Financial Education for an Adequate Comprehension of the National Fiscal Policy

Educating on the revenue enhancement system in state-supported finance is likely an essential issue for the country’s development. This content changes public sector and the sustainability of citizens’ lives; therefore, a significant focus on the broad improvement of finance studies is essential. Furthermore, the activity could be organized in connection with the applicable higher education programs. On the other hand, financial management education is treated differently in different countries. It is becoming increasingly important that such a discussion does not directly benefit common development of financial education in recent years. One of the possible ways to deal with personal finances in different economic conditions could be changing students’ attitude to finance knowledge at universities. Young people could be supported by financial education programs that are clearly incorporated into their undergraduate or postgraduate courses. The correct management of these programs helps to improve students and cadets learning experience and the economic wellbeing. Moreover, the learning based on public administration and public finance probably educates patriots of the country and people intolerant to non-transparent activities of public servants. Eventually, the best way to determine the country’s consolidated tax paid by natural and legal persons could be the tax burden rate. Likewise, the financial data supplied to the main European statistics authority by national statistical institutions sometimes can be slightly incorrect. Therefore, even more important issue could be an ordinary citizen living only from the income related to labour relations (or corresponding relations of income) and having an obviously higher tax burden. Another crucial task of the paper is to reveal how taxation, public debt and spending and fiscal policy are perceived by the citizens. In addition, it also tries to respond to questioning about the financial and economic importance on financial education. Furthermore, the theoretical task of the paper is to show the size of the government debt, its service and expenditure in Lithuania and Latvia during the last crisis in 2008. Therefore, it is possible to consider the increase of direct taxes burden by almost twice comparing to the formally announced country’s tax burden. However, additional tax burden includes hidden taxes related to the aggregated spending of an individuals’ income. In an average case, the tax burden for an ordinary employee could come near to two-thirds of the gross yearly income. Then, the overpaid debt services can be very sensitive given to the assumption that an ordinary worker has an approximately adequate level of financial and economic education. The perception of tax burden can encourage each citizen of the country to be responsible for all public servant activities and budget planning processes. Public revenue enhancement is often difficult due to the use of the same concept of taxes as fixed costs for public sector when a person directly receives nothing but additional payments for the majority of public sector services. Therefore, the confusion of terms is fairly constant, which once again shows the need for public finances literacy in all areas of study programs for students or cadets. An authorized Lithuania’s tax burden has comprised less than thirty percent of the country’s nominal gross domestic product in recent years. Nevertheless, political leaders and socalled experts suggest the necessity for increasing Lithuania’s accumulated tax burden. However, there may be a fundamental mistake that social insurance and compulsory health insurance contributions to the funds are not calculated into private individuals and legal entities tax burden. Fortunately, the last year’s budget considered social payments as part of tax revenues. Unfortunately, there are diminutive amount of signs in the continuity of Lithuania’s fiscal policy in the 21st century.

Giving a voice to managers: forging the desire line through the creation of informal employee voice channels and productive resistance

Within the extensive body of employee voice literature, the voice of the ordinary shopfloor employee has resonated loudly. The important role that line managers play in encouraging or inhibiting that voice has also been well documented. However, within the voice literature there has been silence with respect to line managers themselves being considered as voicers. In this paper, these missing managerial voices are amplified through the presentation of a case study of front and middle line manager voice within a university setting. Within this hierarchical organisation subject to increased managerialism, semi-structured interviews with 26 participants were conducted and it was found that line managers’ voice was thwarted due to relational and structural blockages in their formal voice channels. In some cases, this led to suppressed voice and a sense that line managers had no one to voice to. However, some managers were able to be creative and their actions led to productive resistance. While for others, these blockages motivated line managers to use covert ‘underground channels’ where their voice was raised informally and their interests could be advanced. The paper extends our knowledge by considering the line manager as a voicer, and not merely a manager of voice.

ВИПЛАТИ ПРАЦІВНИКАМ У ЗВІТНОСТІ ПІДПРИЄМСТВА: СОЦІАЛЬНА ОРІЄНТАЦІЯ

The article substantiates the role of reporting as a tool for generating socially important information for a wide range of interested users, in particular the reflection of social indicators of the enterprise. The content of existing forms of reporting in terms of indicators of employee benefits was analyzed and found that they do not outline important socio-economic aspects, do not perform the functions of forecasting and strategic planning, only state the actual situation at the time of reporting. Therefore, there is a need to integrate a range of indicators, including social orientation. Positive changes in the context of presentation of expanded and non - financial information in the reporting by the implementation of the Management Report are investigated. The potential results of combining financial and non-financial information on payments to employees in the reporting areas are presented: novelty of information, communication tools, confirmation of reliability, focus on the interests of employees and customers. The article proposes a platform for the integration of financial and non-financial information on employee benefits to determine management reporting, and in the future the introduction of such information in the Management Report as public reporting, in case it becomes mandatory for all businesses. . The author presents a system of integration of socially-oriented financial and non-financial information on employee benefits in reporting detailing possible sections: financial information (forecast of financial indicators, achievement of key financial indicators, analysis of enterprise indicators and existing risks), non-financial information (corporate values program and compliance principles), them, the creation of a system of continuous personal development from an ordinary employee to the top manager of the company, the program of accrual and provision of benefits, labor protection indicators, indicators of human capital structure).

The influence of SHRM functions on job satisfaction of employees through organisational support in a man power agency of Chennai International Airport

The growth of successful organisation is determined by the employee's performance and their achievements towards organisation goals. Strategic human resource function plays an important role for organisation performance and individual performance which paves way for job satisfaction. The researcher has identified employee's poor performance due to job dissatisfaction. Need of management support is an essential criteria for employees job satisfaction which pull down labour turn over in the organisation. In this regard, the study is conducted for 100 customer service agents of a manpower agency at Chennai International Airport by distributing well-structured questionnaire. The researchers found that the organisation treats the employees differently based upon the gender, age, designation and working experience. Investigating the results of the findings would trace out the various ways to perform better and suggestions given for the steps to be taken for converting an ordinary employee to sustained and satisfied employee.

Healing notes: singing for well-being in an African bank

In 2005, Dr Steve Booysen - then Group Chief Executive of the Absa Group - initiated an internal choir festival as a platform for social interaction and teambuilding of staff across all cultures, age groups and post levels in the bank. Towards the end of 2005, based on the widely held perception that the effects of the project had exceeded all expectations, it was decided to repeat the initiative, which has since become an annual event. To date, Absa has invested, and continues to invest, millions of rands in their choir project - confirmation that choir participation offers valuable benefits to the ordinary employee. This paper uses data from an investigation into the ‘extra-musical benefits of this project to reflect on the value of the 2005-2008 Absa choir project for building social capital and strengthening individuals’ sense of coherence (SOC) through singing together.

Removal of Public Officers from Office: Law and Justice in a Flux

This paper examined the state of the law on removal of public officers from office. It observed that there are competing interests of labour and industry to be served by the rules on disengagement from public office. Workers need security of employment while industries need discipline and efficiency to survive. The courts have striven with changing trends in ensuring balance and justice for both the workers and the industries. The author’s appraisal of case law puts in view the state of both substantive and procedural law on the discipline of public officers as expounded by judges in the exercise of their power of judicial review. On the one hand is the attempt to maintain freedom of contract, which assumes the equal bargaining power of the parties. On the other hand is the need to give effect to statutory provisions which secure the tenure of public officers above that of the ordinary employee through legislation. The paper concluded that the divergent interests are not necessarily in conflict; they can be reconciled and adjusted to be mutually complementary.Keywords · Public officers · Discipline · Public management

Prediction of Whistleblowing or Non-reporting Observation: The Role of Personal and Situational Factors

This study examined whether it was possible to classify Australian public sector employees as either whistleblowers or non-reporting observers using personal and situational variables. The personal variables were demography (gender, public sector tenure, organisational tenure and age), work attitudes (job satisfaction, trust in management, whistleblowing propensity) and employee behaviour (organisational citizenship behaviour). The situational variables were perceived personal victimisation, fear of reprisals and perceived wrongdoing seriousness. These variables were used as predictors in a series of binary logistic regressions. It was possible to identify whistleblowers on the basis of individual initiative, whistleblowing propensity (individual and organisational), fear of reprisals, perceived wrongdoing seriousness and perceived personal victimisation. It was concluded that whistleblowers are not markedly dissimilar to non-reporting observers. Based on the two most influential variables (perceived personal victimisation and perceived wrongdoing seriousness), the average Australian public sector whistleblower is most likely to be an ordinary employee making a good faith attempt to stop what they perceived to be a serious wrongdoing that was initially identified through personal victimisation.

The Justice and Development Party in Turkish Politics: Islam, Democracy and State

Reviewed Books: • Umit Cizre, Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party (New York: Routledge, 2008). • Cihan Tugal, Passive Revolution: Absorbing the I...

Fast-weighted secret image sharing

Thien and Lin [Comput. and Graphics 26(5), 765-770 (2002)] proposed a threshold scheme to share a secret image among n shadows: any t of the n shadows can recover the secret, whereas t−1 or fewer shadows cannot. However, in real life, certain managers probably play key roles to run a company and thus need special authority to recover the secret in managers' meeting. (Each manager's shadow should be more powerful than an ordinary employee's shadow.) In Thien and Lin's scheme, if a company has less than t managers, then manager's meeting cannot recover the secret, unless some managers were given multiple shadows in advance. But this compromise causes managers inconvenience because too many shadows were to be kept daily and carried to the meeting. To solve this dilemma, a weighted sharing method is proposed: each of the shadows has a weight. The secret is recovered if and only if the total weights (rather than the number) of received shadows is at least t. The properties of GF(2r) are utilized to accelerate sharing speed. Besides, the method is also a more general approach to polynomial-based sharing. Moreover, for convenience, each person keeps only one shadow and only one shadow index.

The Use of Cone Valves in Distribution Systems

WATER works operators have long been familiar with the lengthy process of shutting a gate valve as far as possible and then repeating the procedure at the next valve up the line, to absorb some of the pressure differential. By working back and forth it is possible to shut off a large line with gate valves, but a great deal of time is consumed while the damage from a break continues to increase. The installation of rotary plug (cone) valves offers relief from these difficulties. A plug valve can be operated by one man to a full shut-off against a differential of the full designed pressure of the valve, and can be opened again without special measures for equalizing the pressure on both sides. Further comparison of plug and gate valves discloses the difference in friction between the two types. Plug valves present a smooth passage for the water, resulting in a friction loss of approximately half of that sustained in the use of gate valves. Thus, a direct saving in head loss is provided, or the size of a plug valve may be reduced without additional head loss. On the other side of the ledger are two important drawbacks: high cost and a complicated mechanism. Plug valves as usually designed cost several times the price of the ordinary doubledisc gate valve. The operating mechanism is rather complicated for the ordinary employee, and there are several adjustments that he would find difficult to accomplish without engineering advice. Plug valves can be built with single seats that are intended to give a tight shut-off with pressure in only one direction. Such a valve will serve to

The Status of Agricultural Labor

It has long been customary to regard the farm laborer, not as an ordinary employee, but as a farmer's apprentice. Often he was a neighbor's son or a thrifty, hardworking immigrant from northern Europe. Farmers complained that as soon as he became really useful he left for a farm of his own. This was the only labor problem. Today, however, in some quarters, this view is held to be quite obsolete. The farm laborer is described as an economic half-caste, cut off from any chance at ownership and denied even the meagre legislative protection which is given the worker in industry. For the picture of the hired man eating at the farmer's table is substituted that of a group of ignorant Mexican field hands camped by a ditch at the roadside. The status of the farm hand on the is truly a matter of significance. If the laborer is a tenant in the making, his conditions of employment are of less importance than if he is destined to remain a laborer for life. It has been saidc that it is doubtful if, in this country, farm wages ever have been high enough to warrant any man deliberately adopting farm labor as a life occupation,-that, as a matter of fact, wages have ordinarily been only part of the remuneration, the rest consisting of training in the business of running a farm.' More recently, however, it has been asserted that the agricultural ladder has become difficult, if not impossible, to climb. Many tenants and small owners, debt-burdened, have become laborers. The proportion of owner-operators of farms has decreased while that of tenant operators has increased. It is suggested, moreover, that in such movement through tenancy to ownership as does occur, the rate of ascent has of late been much retarded.