Report of recommendations to the Public Employment Relations Board for the year ending, June 30, 2010

Report of recommendations to the Public Employment Relations Board for the year ending, June 30, 2010

Correctional Industries preparing inmates for re-entry: Recidivism & post-release employment, September 30, 2005

Using a matched sample of 1091 inmates released between April 1,1999 and June 30, 2001, Prison Industries Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP) participants re-enter society more successfully than Traditional Industries (TI) or other than work (OTW) releasees in terms of employment. The primary findings of this research are that Iowa state prison inmates who worked in open-market jobs in PIECP were found to be significantly more successful in post-release employment. That is to say, they became tax-paying citizens quicker and remain in that status longer than TI and OTW releasees. Additionally, PIECP releasees were incarcerated post release at a slower rate than OTW releasees.

Facts about Iowa Law Enforcement Physical Standards for Pre-employment Testing, 2011

The Iowa Law Enforcement Academy Council, in recognizing the importance of physical fitness status for job performance, established this physical test regimen as a employment standard effective February 15, 1993. No person can be selected or appointed as a law enforcement officer without first successfully passing all of the elements of this test. (See 501 IAC 2.1, adopted pursuant to Section 80B.11(5), Code of Iowa.) Upon entry into the Academy every candidate will be given the same test as an assessment for training purposes and to ensure that each recruit can undergo the physical demands of the Academy without undue risk of injury, and with a level of fatigue tolerance to meet all Academy requirements. If at the time of entrance into the Academy an officer does not meet minimum standards, he or she will not be admitted. This pamphlet will provide information on the rationale, purpose, testing procedures, standards of performance and fitness activities to prepare for the fitness testing. It is intended to answer the basic questions pertaining to all aspects of the fitness testing process.

State of Iowa Diversity Plan and Report Affirmative Action/Equal Employment FY 2010 Progress, 2010

The State prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, religion, national origin, sex and sexual orientation, age, or mental and physical disability in its employment policies and practices and is an equal employment opportunity and affirmative action employer. Please insert any additional statements of policy or commitment to achieving and maintaining a diverse workforce in your agency.

Exaggerated pulmonary hypertension during mild exercise in chronic mountain sickness.

BACKGROUND: Chronic mountain sickness (CMS) is an important public health problem and is characterized by exaggerated hypoxemia, erythrocytosis, and pulmonary hypertension. While pulmonary hypertension is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with CMS, it is relatively mild and its underlying mechanisms are not known. We speculated that during mild exercise associated with daily activities, pulmonary hypertension in CMS is much more pronounced. METHODS: We estimated pulmonary artery pressure by using echocardiography at rest and during mild bicycle exercise at 50 W in 30 male patients with CMS and 32 age-matched, healthy control subjects who were born and living at an altitude of 3,600 m. RESULTS: The modest, albeit significant difference of the systolic right-ventricular-to-right-atrial pressure gradient between patients with CMS and controls at rest (30.3 +/- 8.0 vs 25.4 +/- 4.5 mm Hg, P 5 .002) became more than three times larger during mild bicycle exercise (56.4 +/- 19.0 vs 39.8 +/- 8.0 mm Hg, P < .001). CONCLUSIONS: Measurements of pulmonary artery pressure at rest greatly underestimate pulmonary artery pressure during daily activity in patients with CMS. The marked pulmonary hypertension during mild exercise associated with daily activity may explain why this problem is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with CMS.

Employment risk, unemployment insurance and search strategies: a disaggregated equilibrium approach with application to the Swiss labour market in the 1990-ies

The Organization of the Thesis The remainder of the thesis comprises five chapters and a conclusion. The next chapter formalizes the envisioned theory into a tractable model. Section 2.2 presents a formal description of the model economy: the individual heterogeneity, the individual objective, the UI setting, the population dynamics and the equilibrium. The welfare and efficiency criteria for qualifying various equilibrium outcomes are proposed in section 2.3. The fourth section shows how the model-generated information can be computed. Chapter 3 transposes the model from chapter 2 in conditions that enable its use in the analysis of individual labor market strategies and their implications for the labor market equilibrium. In section 3.2 the Swiss labor market data sets, stylized facts, and the UI system are presented. The third section outlines and motivates the parameterization method. In section 3.4 the model's replication ability is evaluated and some aspects of the parameter choice are discussed. Numerical solution issues can be found in the appendix. Chapter 4 examines the determinants of search-strategic behavior in the model economy and its implications for the labor market aggregates. In section 4.2, the unemployment duration distribution is examined and related to search strategies. Section 4.3 shows how the search- strategic behavior is influenced by the UI eligibility and section 4.4 how it is determined by individual heterogeneity. The composition effects generated by search strategies in labor market aggregates are examined in section 4.5. The last section evaluates the model's replication of empirical unemployment escape frequencies reported in Sheldon [67]. Chapter 5 applies the model economy to examine the effects on the labor market equilibrium of shocks to the labor market risk structure, to the deep underlying labor market structure and to the UI setting. Section 5.2 examines the effects of the labor market risk structure on the labor market equilibrium and the labor market strategic behavior. The effects of alterations in the labor market deep economic structural parameters, i.e. individual preferences and production technology, are shown in Section 5.3. Finally, the UI setting impacts on the labor market are studied in Section 5.4. This section also evaluates the role of the UI authority monitoring and the differences in the Way changes in the replacement rate and the UI benefit duration affect the labor market. In chapter 6 the model economy is applied in counterfactual experiments to assess several aspects of the Swiss labor market movements in the nineties. Section 6.2 examines the two equilibria characterizing the Swiss labor market in the nineties, the " growth" equilibrium with a "moderate" UI regime and the "recession" equilibrium with a more "generous" UI. Section 6.3 evaluates the isolated effects of the structural shocks, while the isolated effects of the UI reforms are analyzed in section 6.4. Particular dimensions of the UI reforms, the duration, replacement rate and the tax rate effects, are studied in section 6.5, while labor market equilibria without benefits are evaluated in section 6.6. In section 6.7 the structural and institutional interactions that may act as unemployment amplifiers are discussed in view of the obtained results. A welfare analysis based on individual welfare in different structural and UI settings is presented in the eighth section. Finally, the results are related to more favorable unemployment trends after 1997. The conclusion evaluates the features embodied in the model economy with respect to the resulting model dynamics to derive lessons from the model design." The thesis ends by proposing guidelines for future improvements of the model and directions for further research.

Offender Education Leads to Increased Employment, Data Download, Iowa Department of Corrections, June 2010

A recent Iowa study found that offenders who obtained a high school diploma or GED (with the majority achieving the latter) had higher employment rates than those who did not.

More Offender Reentry and Employment Issues, Data Download, Iowa Department of Corrections, July 2010

The previous Data Download reported that a recent Iowa Workforce Development study found that offenders who obtained a high school diploma or GED (with the majority achieving the latter) had higher employment rates than those who did not. In addition, offenders with a high school diploma or GED consistently earned higher wages than those who did not.

IWD to Study the Effect of Prison Education on Employment, Data Download, Iowa Department of Corrections, February 2009

The Iowa Department of Corrections recently entered into a data sharing agreement with Iowa Workforce Development (IWD), the purpose of which is to better ascertain the effect of prison education on postprison employment. This study is important because the DOC partners with community colleges to provide prison-based education, with a goal of increasing the numbers of inmates completing GEDs. We are demonstrating success toward that goal, but what we lack is empirical evidence showing the level of success that Iowa prison education programs have on Iowa offenders’ employment success upon their return to communities here in the state.

Iowa Private Sector Prison Employment Works, Data Download, Iowa Department of Corrections, November 2006

This issue of the ICON Data Download describes highlights from the findings for the Iowa sample, which tracked 1,091 inmates who worked in private sector prison industries jobs and were released from prison between 1999 and 2001, and compared their results with similar offenders who had worked in either traditional prison industries, or other institutional jobs. All offenders were tracked through mid-2003. This results in a follow-up period of slightly less than two years up to four and one-half years.

Report of recommendations to the Public Employment Relations Board for the year ending, June 30, 2011

Audit report of the Public Employment Relations Board for the year ended June 30, 2011

2011 Annual Employment Report on All Projects Let by the Iowa DOT Racial/Ethnic Minorities and Females, September 15, 2011

The following data was derived from 1391 reports of participating contractors for the annual 2002 through 2011 reporting periods. The workforce data is reflective of one peak work week for highway contractors during the most active time of the season, the last full week of July. The summary data on pages 4 and 5 was compiled by Iowa DOT staff from the 1391 reports received. Interesting changes and trends have been addressed in the written analysis.

Ex-Offenders in Employment, 2005

Currently, Iowa law lacks statutory language that would include Iowans with a criminal history as a protected class (this lack of coverage mirrors most of the nation). However, Iowa has been shown to parallel EEOC guidance that states that an employer may exclude an individual from employment on the basis of a conviction record only if the employer’s decision was “justified by business necessity.”