CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS
10th-12th September 2014
Manchester Business School
1
Institutional Solutions to Precariousness and Inequality in Labour Markets
Zoe Adams and Simon Deakin
CBR, University of Cambridge
It has become widely assumed that the standard employment relationship (SER) is in irreversible
decline in industrialised societies. However, precarious work mostly supplements the SER and is not
displacing it as the focal point of labour market regulation. The risk management and coordination
functions of the SER continue to be relevant in market economies, and the SER is evolving as it
adjusts to new conditions. In the European context where the SER originated and achieved its
clearest legal expression, institutional solutions to precariousness and inequality are being
developed, the most innovative of which involve integrated policy responses and a range of
complementary regulatory mechanisms.
2
Public governance and multi-scalar contestation in global production networks: crisis in
South African fruit
Matthew Alford
Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester
Email matthew.alford@manchester.ac.uk
The South African fruit sector is currently experiencing upheaval and transformation, reflected in the
2012/13 labour crisis, which saw casual fruit workers campaigning for a living wage and better
working conditions. The fruit farms at the centre of the unrest supply leading European
supermarkets with fresh produce via co-ordinate supply chains. Previous research using global
production network (GPN) analysis has highlighted the commercial pressure exerted by global lead
firms over a fragmented producer base, by demanding high quality, low cost fruit with short lead
times. Alongside these commercial processes inherent in South African fruit GPNs, multi-scalar
national public (labour regulation); global private (codes of conduct) and local social (civil society
organisations) governance initiatives are in place to address working conditions. However, the role
of public governance in addressing working conditions has received inadequate attention to date in
the GPN literature. Furthermore, the labour dimension has not been sufficiently incorporated into
GPN analysis, particularly in terms of differential governance outcomes for members of a variegated
workforce. Using a GPN/public governance framework, this study aims to unpack the tensions within
and across these multi-scalar commercial and governance dimensions inherent in South African fruit
GPNs, and examine the extent to which public governance is able to protect workers in this setting.
Consequently, the question that this paper seeks to address is; ‘to what extent do multi-scalar
tensions in GPNs challenge the public governance of working conditions, and what are the
implications for labour operating in South African fruit?’
Drawing on the example of the labour crisis in South African fruit, this paper argues that commercial
pressures inherent in fruit GPNs have contributed to a public governance bargaining deficit for
vulnerable, casual workers incorporated into GPNs. Furthermore, multi-scalar governance tensions
have exacerbated the challenges facing public governance, with a lack of localised CSO protection of
casual workers rendering this vulnerable category of worker unrepresented at the national
regulatory framework. Global private governance initiatives provide an additional layer of
enforcement, but rely on national public and local social governance strategies for more
transformative gains such as living wages and freedom of association, and are hampered by
contradictory commercial pressures in the GPN. The policy implications of these findings are that
public governance initiatives are required to transcend traditional pillars of labour governance and
address multi-scalar commercial pressures inherent in fruit GPNs, which fundamentally challenge
public governance outcomes for vulnerable members of a casualised workforce.
Key words: Public governance, GPNs, embeddedness, casualization, purchasing practices,
contestation, multi-scalar, labour, regulation, value chains
3
Segmented production, business system competitiveness and geographical contests for
inward investment: Observations from the UK and Spain
Phil Almond (De Montfort University, UK) and Maria C. Gonzalez (University of Oviedo)
Contact: palmond@dmu.ac.uk
One of the many effects of neo-liberal globalisation is what has been characterised as the
“fragmentation of production” (Herrigel and Zeitlin, 2011), as firms have become increasingly able to
segment activities in terms of both their geographical and organisational location. In attempting to
protect and foster the relatively “good” private sector jobs which tend to be concentrated in the
internationally competitive sector, places (whether nations or localities) are constrained to compete
with each other to attract and retain inward investment.
Extensive literatures on national and local economic governance following the decline of the broadly
Fordist/Keynesian regime have, to greater or lesser extents, argued that places may engage in
relatively high or low road means of competing to host internationally competitive production. The
comparative capitalisms literature, in particular, aimed to analyse and to defend more coordinated
variants of capitalist organisation. However, prior to the 2008 crisis, countries which were either
liberal in their pattern of coordination, such as the UK, or with extensive overt state coordination,
such as Spain, had made (sometimes halting) efforts at creating broadly post-Fordist patterns of
coordination around notions of competitiveness. Within this, attracting and developing inward
investment was an important objective in both Spain and the UK. As much of the contemporary
literature emphasized, many of these efforts were concentrated at regional levels, where, it was
argued, the forms of tailoring business systems to the needs of particular firms or clusters was easier
to achieve.
The current paper reflects on what happened when these attempts at coordination encountered the
financial and economic crisis from 2008 onwards. In particular, it asks how the crisis has affected
sub-national coordination capacity, both in a national state which was subject to the subsequent
sovereign debt crisis as a member of the Euro, and in one which ostensibly escaped the worst
consequences of this. More broadly, what does the crisis tell us about the power of places to
coordinate their economies, and the vulnerability of the forms of regional coordination broadly seen
as an important means by which places should compete prior to the crisis? Finally, in countries that
are clearly not conventional coordinated market economies, what replacement institutional forms
(supra-national government, national government, associational governance, the market) can
perform the coordination necessary in what remain ‘competition states’, and what are their
vulnerabilities?
The paper is based on an international comparative project examining the coordination of the
competition for foreign direct investment in ten regions across five countries (Canada, Germany,
Ireland, Spain and the UK). This involved interviewing a range of regional business system
governance actors, as well as local managers of foreign owned multinationals. While the current
paper will concentrate on the UK and Spain, reference will be made to the other countries involved.
4
Is the distribution of subjective well-being at work fair? Understanding inequalities in job
satisfaction by class and gender.
David Angrave and Andy Charlwood*
*corresponding author: a.charlwood@lboro.ac.uk, Loughborough University
This paper analyses inequalities in subjective well-being at work (job satisfaction) by social class and
gender (class is measured using the National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification). The analysis is
based on the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS, also known as Understanding Society) and
the 2006 and 2012 Skills and Employment Surveys (SES). We find that mean job satisfaction is lower
for those in routine occupations (the working class), and that this is the result of working class
respondents being over-represented both among those who are dissatisfied with their jobs and
those who are neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, while being under-represented in the ‘mostly
satisfied’ category (exhibit 1). This class inequality is noticeable among both men and women, but is
most pronounced among men.
Following the approach of Kalleberg and Griffin (1980), we then examine whether these class
inequalities in job satisfaction are the result of inequalities in job characteristics (wages, job security,
skills, job demands and job control) compared to class and gender differences in work orientations.
Results suggest that lower levels of job security and job control among working class respondents
help to explain the class differences in job satisfaction, but that differences in work orientations
between working class and service class respondents and men and women mute class inequalities in
job satisfaction. If working class respondents had the same work orientations as service class
respondents, and women had similar work orientations to men, class inequalities in job satisfaction
would be greater.
Exhibit 1 – Inequalities in job satisfaction by broad social class
Source: UKHLS Wave 1
Reference
Kalleberg, A and Griffin, L (1980) Class, Occupation and Inequality in Job Rewards. American Journal
of Sociology, 85(4): 731 – 768.
5
Long-term trends in the Swedish jobs structure: a clear pattern of skill upgrading
Dominique Anxo Department of Economics and Statistics. Linnaeus University, Sweden
The main objective of this paper is to analyse the long-term transformation of the Swedish
employment structure. As a small open economy exposed to international competition, Sweden has,
during the last half-century, experienced large structural changes and evolved towards a postindustrial knowledge-intensive economy. The Swedish industrial relation system is also characterised
by high union density, a relatively centralized and coordinated collective bargaining system and a
compressed wage structure. Against this background, we make the hypothesis that the on-going
globalisation process and the increased competition from low wage countries, as well as the low
wage inequality and massive investment in education and innovation in Sweden during the last three
decades should have induced a tendency toward a skill upgrading re-structuring process.
Using
labour force survey data for the period 1970-2011 and applying the so-called job approach developed
initially by Joseph E. Stiglitz, our results suggest a clear pattern of skill upgrading. The destruction of
low paid/ low skilled jobs and the concomitant increase of employment in the upper tail of the job
distribution have been particularly marked during the last two major recessions (early 1990s and
2008-). The development of a modern welfare state and the related feminisation of the labour force
during the seventies and eighties did not lead to an increased job polarisation but have significantly
contributed to the process of skill upgrading in Sweden.
6
The Swedish Welfare State in Times of Crisis: Resilience and Success.
Dominique Anxo Department of Economics and Statistics. Linnaeus University, Sweden
The main objective of this paper is twofold: Firstly, to identify the major transformations of the
Swedish Welfare State focusing principally on the structural reforms initiated during the last two
decades and their impact on economic development, the distribution of social welfare and income
inequalities. Secondly, to explore the role of the Swedish Welfare State in mitigating the negative
impact of the 2008 Great Recession. The early fiscal consolidation measures and the structural
reforms undertaken since the second half of the 1990s have without doubt contributed to
securing the long-term sustainability of the Swedish social protection system and fostering more
healthy public finances. However, the “Swedish success story” during the last recession cannot be
reduced only to early fiscal consolidation measures and structural reforms. It is clear that the
automatic stabilisers embedded in the Swedish Welfare State, the counter-cyclical macroeconomic
policy conducted by the Swedish government and a developed social dialogue have all contributed to
alleviating the negative impacts of the 2008-crisis on employment, welfare and social exclusion. The
Swedish experience illustrates above all the resilience, the long-term viability and the success of a
societal model based on an universal and generous social protection system, egalitarianism, pro-active
policies for promoting gender equality and fighting against social exclusion, and a strong public and
political involvement in the provision of a wide range of services.
7
Using the IAD framework to examine dirty, dangerous and underpaid work in aged care
Siobhan Austen, Therese Jefferson & Rhonda Sharp
Curtin University (Siobhan & Therese); University of South Australia (Rhonda)
Corresponding author: Siobhan.austen@cbs.curtin.edu.au
This paper targets the theme area of “employment practices at the sector, organisation or
occupational group level that are associated with changing patterns of segmentation.” The
practices examined are those associated with the allocation of and compensation for dirty and
dangerous work in Australia’s aged care sector. Aspects of age care work, such as washing, dressing,
and toileting older people are commonly seen as dirty work. They can involve direct contact with
bodily products and with the products of infection, which can be dangerous. Aged care workers also
commonly encounter aggressive patients, a further source of occupational risk. However, the work is
lowly paid and highly segmented by gender, with women comprising more than 90% of the
Australian aged care workforce.
Our analysis of dirty and dangerous work in the Australian aged care sector draws on data collected
from a mixed-methods project that focused on the experiences of mature age women in the sector.
The data collection featured almost 4,000 survey responses from an initial survey; approximately
2,000 responses from a follow-up survey (providing longitudinal data); and an integrated program of
semi-structured interviews. The surveys and interviews included direct questions on working
conditions in the sector, as well as opportunities for the participants to express their own
understandings of the meaning and consequences of their work and its remuneration.
Elinor Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Design (IAD) Framework informs our approach to the
analysis of the data on dirty and dangerous work. The framework focuses on actors, interactions
and, especially, the rules affecting particular situations. Ostrom’s receipt of the Nobel Prize in
Economics in 2009 has created a new impetus for using the institutional approach to study labour
market processes and outcomes.
Our use of the IAD framework is aimed at identifying the formal and informal institutions, including
those associated with the feminine coding of aged care work, that contribute to an apparent failure
to acknowledge the skill and difficulties associated with dirty and dangerous work in aged care. The
paper explores the workplace and rule-making situations where key outcomes (relating to wages
and the allocation of dirty and dangerous work) are determined. It considers influence of different
groups of actors over these outcomes; the various ‘feedback loops’ that can cause a particular
pattern of (low) wages to be reinforced; and the broader social consequences of these processes,
including for the achievement of gender equity and high quality aged care.
8
Generating poverty in Spain: Productive structure, employers’ strategies and public policy
Josep Banyuls (University of Valencia)
Albert Recio (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
In the context of the current crisis it has been taken place important changes in the employers
labour force management strategies and the regulatory framework in the labour market. Beside
these changes we have to add the public policy strategy applied by the present conservative
government, removing the basis of the existing public services and social protection mechanisms. All
together has meant in the case of Spain ta dramatic increase in the poverty, a deterioration of basic
public services such as health and education and, in the end, a worsening of living conditions for a
large part of the population.
This trend cannot be explained only taking into account only one of the aspects pointed out.
Productive sphere, employers strategies and public policy, and the interactions between them, are
drivers going in the same direction, deteriorating the living conditions. If until recently the
employment was one of the basic forms of social integration, with the crisis and changes in
regulatory policies in the labour market is failing to have this function. Also the role of the public
sector rebalancing and correcting inequalities has disappeared. We assist to the emergence of a new
social model in which market logic infiltrates all the areas of the society. Under these premises, in
this paper we first analyse the developments that have recently taken place in the production and
regulatory sphere and help to explain part of the increase in poverty that is taking place in the
country. Secondly, we examine the structural transformation of the public sector in terms of social
benefit and show the impact of these changes on the rise in inequality and poverty. Some
conclusions will end the paper.
9
Organisational Income Inequality and the Financialisation of British Universities: A
Longitudinal and Cross Sectional Study of Pay Disparity in the time periods of 2002, 2007
and 2012
Nicholas Black (PhD Candidate, Manchester Business School)
Universities are the jewels in the British crown and they make an essential social and economic
contribution to society that is difficult to overstate. They are responsible for educating people,
researching new innovations, facilitating social mobility, maintaining public access to cultural
resources, fostering the spread of new knowledge as well as countless other tasks. Yet, over the last
decade British universities have been increasingly conforming to the neo-liberal agenda of
financialisation. This has eroded the notion that universities create public goods and instead
replaced this altruistic ideal with the rhetoric that universities manufacture commodities. British
universities are no longer noble public intuitions that are run for the common good but are
increasingly acting like revenue-seeking corporations that are run for the self-interest of individuals.
Financialisation has had various impacts upon British universities; one of which is changes in the pay
levels of senior staff members and the organisational income distribution. Universities, like much of
the public sector, had been bastions against rising income inequality but over the past decade their
walls have crumbled and they have succumbed to the institutional pressures of neo-liberalism.
There has been an exponential growth in the pay levels of senior staff members whereas the pay
levels of normal staff members have stayed the same and this has created a rapid growth in
organisational income inequality across the time periods of 2002, 2007 and 2012. This paper seeks
to explain this trend in light of financialisation and the changing priorities of universities.
This paper draws on senior (as well as normal) salary data taken from approximately 140 different
universities and measures how it has changed across these three time periods. This should illustrate
how organisational income inequality has grown and how different universities have affected this
process. Further analysis will use statistical modelling to discover which organisational variables
(total revenue, number of students, university ranking, number of staff members, academic
performance, teaching performance etc) determines the pay levels of senior staff across each of the
three time periods. This is to illustrate if there is a link between performance and pay, and if so, this
is to show how the goals of universities have changed in line with agency theory.
10
New representation strategies against job segmentation among Italian independent
professionals
Paolo Borghi* and Guido Cavalca**
*PhD Candidate at URBEUR-Quasi (Urban Studies - Information Society), University of Milano
Bicocca (Italy) e-mail: paolo.borghi@unimib.it; **Researcher at University of Salerno (Italy) e-mail:
gcavalca@unisa.it
Job segmentation and a significant level of heterogeneity can be observed among Italian
independent professionals that experiment very diversified work conditions, job satisfaction, income
levels, career perspectives and opportunities. This is a consequence of multiple and heterogeneous
factors such as the increasing labor market flexibility in a national context characterized by low level
of market dynamism, lack of proper welfare measures supporting people during the unemployment
periods, labor market entry with long periods of underpaid jobs and unrecognized skills, strong
individualism among new generations of professionals generating isolation and scarce collective
identity. All these aspects have been exacerbated by the international economic crisis that has
accelerated companies’ restructuring processes, public expenditure cuts (with a direct effect on job
opportunities for consultants), the worsening of working conditions and earnings both for a wide
range of independent professionals within the traditional liberal professions and among those
belonging to the new unregulated professions.
This paper will consider all these dimensions in order to analyze the recent attempts of some
traditional and new organizations involved in the representation of professionals. These
organizations are trying to face firstly the job segmentation and isolation, secondly the
heterogeneity of ‘objective’ conditions and subjective ‘demands for representation’ of the
independent professionals, thirdly the risk of selective representation strategies which can implicitly
legitimate the trends toward a job polarization. The paper will focus on three organizations with
different historical background and different structures, taken as relevant cases: CGIL
(Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro), the biggest Italian trade union, Re.Re.Pre. (Rete
Redattori Precari – Precarious Network of Editors), a web based network of precarious professionals
working in the publishing sector, ACTA (Associazione Consulenti del Terziario Avanzato – Consultants
Association of the Advanced Tertiary Sector). CGIL is recently developing specific strategies for
representing the increasing number of freelances working in different productive contexts; it will be
especially analyzed the experience of the “Professional Board” (Consulta delle Professioni), the first
structured attempt made by CGIL to activate and organize the heterogeneous and fragmented world
of Italian independent professionals. The second one, Re.Re.Pre., is one of the main experiences of
self-organized network of professionals that denounced the worsening working conditions in
thepublishing sector involved, in the last years, indeep corporate restructuring processes. The last
one, ACTA, represents one of the emerging associations involved in the representation of
independent professionals, aiming in particular at extending welfare guarantees to freelancers. The
strategies and the goals of these three organizations will be compared in order to detect common
points of view and differences related to the changes of labor markets where independent
professionals are more present, to the enhancement of representation supply, to the fight against
job segmentation and job polarization. Finally, European networks of the three organizations will be
explored to understand what strategies and objectives are being developed at transnational level.
11
Disposable Tourists: Australia’s Working Holiday Maker Program
Christopher (Chris) Brennan
School of Social Sciences & Humanities, University of Tampere
Among the thousands of young international travelers that venture to Australia each year, many
arrive with visas obtained through the Australian governments Working Holiday Maker Program
(WHMP). These working holiday makers (WHMs) are given the right to reside, work, and travel incountry for a period of up to 12 months with the ability to legally work for one employer for a
maximum of 6 months at a time, a stipulation communicated openly in visa application processes.
What is not communicated beforehand, curiously, is that ‘casual’ workers in Australia, the most
everyday employment relationship WHMs pursue, are not permitted to make complaints of unfair
dismissal in the workplace if employed for less than six months with any employer. Utilizing
empirical data from my doctoral fieldwork in Australia, this paper discusses the extraordinary power
levels in the employer – employee relationship for working tourists in Australia, and their
relationship to contemporary, and international, discussions of precarious work.
12
Australia’s Fair Work Reforms: Refining, not redefining, a new working order
John Buchanan and Damian Oliver, Workplace Research Centre, University of Sydney
‘Fairness at work’ has been a major concern of Australian public policy in recent years. While there is
widespread popular and political support for ‘rights at work’, the changes in the formal elements of
Australian labour law have not been effective in engaging with the most pressing realities of
unfairness at work today. The Fair Work Act (2009) is best understood as consolidating and
legitimating changes in the way fairness at work has been redefined since the late 1980s. This is a
change that has accommodated – not counteracted – the deepening labour market problems,
especially inequality, that commenced in the 1970s and accelerated in the 1980s.
This paper will explore the changing role of awards in constructing fairness at work in the Australian
industrial relations system. For much of the history of Australian industrial relations, from the 1890s
to the 1980s, the central instrument of fairness at work was the industrial award, legally binding
decisions issued by industrial courts or commissions setting the ages and conditions for an industry,
occupation or enterprise. They could be made by arbitration or with the consent of the parties.
The notion of fair pay relativities, as embodied in awards, was central not just to the management of
disputes but eventually became an integral part of economic management more generally. The
system was really a hybrid of collective bargaining embedded within conciliation and arbitration,
with the relative power of employer and unions varying with the trade cycle and industrial tribunals
shaping relations between the parties and codifying principles that governed both their conduct and
substantive pay and conditions.
In Australia, the reduction in wealth and income inequality that occurred during the initial postWorld War Two period was the result of an integrated policy mix that ensured economic
development was based on sharing the gains of growth more equally. The approach to industrial
relations in this regime – one which helped ensure the gains of the strong were shared with the
weak – worked well nested within such a regime. The current policy approach of severing links
between the strong and the weak simply cannot address long-run fairness. Serious inroads into the
problems of wages, hours and job quality will need a different approach to fairness at work - one
which takes seriously not just social inclusion, but also rights of citizenship over the life course. And
within the domain of competitiveness, the issue is not just ‘enterprise competiveness’ but adaptive
capacity across networks of firms and within regions that is critical. Until policy works on nurturing
and fostering such connections many of the problematic business models at workplace, enterprise
and sectoral level will remain – delivering less than optimal economic outcomes as well as
perpetuating the current deep-seated problems of unfairness at work.
13
A Data Visualisation approach to understanding Occupational Gender Segregation
Brendan Burchell
Department of Sociology
University of Cambridge
(With Vincent Hardy (Cambridge), Jill Rubery (Manchester) and Mark Smith (Grenoble).
Occupational Gender Segregation (OGS), the unequal distribution of men and women between
occupations, is an important phenomenon underpinning the different experiences of men and
women in the labour market, but has proven resistant to research tractability and therefore to policy
intervention.
Some quantitative studies produce indices of segregation, but at a high level of abstraction. Other
qualitative studies on particular occupations lack generalisability or international comparability. This
presentation will explore why it has been so difficult for researchers to measure and understand
OGS. I will demonstrate a new, mainly graphical technique that, I claim, makes analysis of OGS both
intuitive and amenable to comparative research, whilst respecting the complex, non-linear and
socially constructed nature of the phenomenon.
The technique will be demonstrated using the European Labour Force Survey and the European
Working Conditions Survey to show how OGS has been changing over time, how it differs between
countries and its effect on pay and job quality.
14
Two temporary migrant workers programs in Australia: Implications for labour markets
and labour market analysis
Iain Campbell, Martina Boese and Joo-cheong Tham
Centre for Applied Social Research, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne 3001, AUSTRALIA
Email: Iain.Campbell@rmit.edu.au
Temporary migrant worker programs (TMWPs), sometimes called ‘guestworker’ programs, are
increasing in importance in many industrialised countries. Such programs, whereby persons are
granted temporary residence in a host country for a period of paid work with a designated
employer, help to restructure specific labour markets, in the first instance by restructuring labour
supply. This paper explores the impact of two TMWPs in Australia - one nominally aimed at skilled
workers in areas such as healthcare, education, IT and business services (though it also extends to
less skilled groups in industries such as restaurants and construction), and a second, which is a
newer, smaller program designed for lower-skilled workers, predominantly in horticulture. The
paper draws on recent research examining temporary migrant workers and precariousness in
healthcare and horticulture. It describes the restricted rights of migrant workers under the two
TMWPs and summarises what is known about their experiences at the workplace. It focuses in
particular on what appears to be the ‘success’ of the first and the ‘failure’ of the second TMWP. This
is in turn anchored in the contrasting employer responses – on the one hand enthusiastic adoption
and calls for further expansion and liberalisation and on the other hand indifference and low take-up
rates. The paper argues that both the experiences of the workers and the differing fortunes of the
two TMWPs need to be understood in terms of segmentation patterns within different occupational
labour markets. Important here are the influence of institutions such as employing organisations,
prevailing patterns of work organisation, predominant forms of employment contract and levels of
work control, and the extent and nature of alternative sources of labour supply. The differing
fortunes of the two TMWPs point to fundamental dilemmas in employers’ pursuit of a more flexible
labour supply in the current period.
15
‘I’m not in Harvey Nichols…I’m not a personal shopper!’: Exploring the relevance of the
triangular relationship and the performance of emotional labour: the case of the retail
industry.
Jo Cartwright and Gail Hebson
Manchester Business School
The article directly responds to Belanger and Edwards (2013) critique of the triangular relationship in
front-line service work and explores the relevance of the competing positions on the customer. The
study draws on the case of the retail industry including two case study organisations in the clothing
industry and two in the electrical industry and each of which reflecting diverse market positions. It
includes 37 semi-structured interviews with management and employees as well as eighteen
customer shopping reports which is a method loosely based on the qualitative diary. The findings
lend initial support to Belanger and Edwards (2013) because two of the cases can, to some extent,
be explained by the management-employee dyad. However, in the other two cases it was necessary
to draw on the customer perspective alongside the management-employee dyad in order to
interpret the data correctly. In these cases the evidence suggests that employees and customers do
not always act as management expect them to, and that there is a certain level of ‘randomness’ to
worker-customer interactions; something Belanger and Edwards (2013) take issue with. Whilst the
concept of triangular relations has been criticised, it is important to recognise that there have been
no studies which include all three perspectives in the analysis and the aim of this article is to address
this and test its relevance. We argue for the continued usage of characterisations of service work as
‘triangular’ between management, employees and customers. Such characterisation should not
assume relationships between parties are ‘equilateral’ but rather recognise there is a certain extent
of ‘randomness’ resulting from the unpredictability of both employees and customers in the
interaction and how this shapes the daily experience of front-line work.
16
Quality of employment in a gender perspective: the case of Italy
Marcella Corsi and Valeria Cirillo
Department of Statistics, Sapienza University of Rome
marcella.corsi@uniroma1.it; valeria.cirillo@uniroma1.it
The economic crisis heighten the risk that the quality of employment declines, because employers
impose inferior conditions in an effort to curtail costs, or because employees are more willing to
accept some worsening if it helps them stay in employment. In our paper we study the deterioration
of employment conditions focusing, in particular, on the rise in involuntary part-time, the use of
temporary employees as buffers, and the reduction of workers’ rights.
After providing an overview of the quality of work in the European countries by means of a
multivariate analysis of data stemming from the last wave of the European Social Survey (ESS round
6), we focus our attention on the case of Italy. The dataset that we use for this purpose is the Third
Isfol Survey on Quality of Work (IsfolQdL) that has been carried out in 2010 on a sample of 5,000
workers.
Building on the theoretical framework developed by Gallino (1976, 1983) and La Rosa (2000) on the
multidimensionality of work (ergonomic, complexity, autonomy, control and economic dimensions),
we claim that the impact of the crisis on the quality of employment must be analysed in a gender
perspective. Different employment patterns have to be recognized between men and women,
especially in order to evaluate the post-crisis scenario. We expect different level of job quality
between women and men both before and after crisis. However, the gender gap in the job quality
might have decreased after the crisis due to significant shifts toward part-time and temporary
contracts experienced by men compared to their initial levels.
At the end of the study, we provide an extensive and updated descriptive analysis on the quality of
work with a gender breakdown in a geographical and temporal perspective.
17
An emancipator model for building mental health at work: the unique role of trade union
education
Elizabeth Cotton
Middlesex University Business School
This paper will examine the difficulties and resistances within trade unions to take up the issue of
mental health at work. It will look at the costs to the labour movement from blocking debate about
the politics of mental health and not engaging with alternative models of mental health at work. The
paper goes on to argue that there is realistic potential for developing a progressive model for
building mental health at work, apart from the dominant model of positive psychology. It will be
argued that trade unions have a unique role in mental health because of the use of emancipatory
education methods. Exploring the conceptual and methodological parallels between trade union
education methods and psychoanalytic processes, the paper proposes an emancipatory model for
addressing mental health at work, which emphasises, consciousness raising, collective problem
solving, solidarity and containment.
18
Compulsory Retirement: An Interdisciplinary Perspective
Dewhurst, E. Johnson, S. Lynch-Wood, G. Horton, D.
People are living longer and there is a rapidly ageing population. The European Health Report (2012)
stated that in 2010 an estimated 15% of the overall population of the European Region was aged 65
years and over with this projected to rise to 25% of the total population by 2050. It was further
reported that the average life expectancy at age 65 is 15.5 years. These population demographic
changes are beginning to affect workforce demographics and will continue to do. There is increasing
incentive to extend working life (European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working
Conditions, 2012) and across the EU there have been changes made to both retirement planning and
pension entitlement.
There have been well publicised changes made to the state pension age in the UK which is set to rise
to age 68 by 2046 (gov.uk, 2013). Alongside this on the 1st October 2011 the default retirement age
in the UK of 65 was scrapped (gov.uk, 2011) meaning employers are no longer able to automatically
retire employees at age 65 without clear justification. These changes may well be necessary but
there has been limited discussion of what impact this will have on individuals and organisations.
Indeed, concerns have been raised by employers as to whether they will be more vulnerable to age
discrimination cases (Equality Act, 2010) if older workers contest a redundancy (European
Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 2012).
This research is a cross-disciplinary initiative (law, governance, regulatory theory, and psychology)
investigating the changes in compulsory retirement in the UK, considering how organisations are
implementing such change and their attitudes towards it. The research questions are:
(1) How do the existing legal norms relating to compulsory retirement operate in the UK and
how are they are being implemented?
(2) What organisational responses arise from the operation of these norms and how do
organizational responses differ?
(3) What are the attitudes of senior management to such norms? This will include exploration of
their perceptions of employee attitudes
The study will commence with a structured literature review investigating legal rules and
organisational responses surrounding retirement. The study methodology will involve a qualitative
assessment of the legal rules, organisational and senior management responses to compulsory
retirement in the legal sector and the retail sector within the Greater Manchester area. Between 3
and 5 qualitative interviews per sector will be conducted with senior management.
The study will conclude by identifying differences in organisational and senior management
responses (if any) between sectors and what their understanding of the currently open and vague
legal rules mean for the successful implementation and enforcement of existing age discrimination
laws.
19
Dependent earners and part-time employment in the household context
Martina Dieckhoff, Vanessa Gash, Antje Mertens and Laura Romeu-Gordo
Martina.Dieckhoff@wzb.eu, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Vanessa.Gash.1@city.ac.uk, City University London
antje.mertens@hwr-berlin.de, Berlin School of Economics and Law
Laura.Romeu-Gordo@dza.de, German Centre of Gerontology
The paper asks whether and under which circumstances female employment can still be considered
to be "dependent" on the partner's labor force participation and income within the household
context. We ask whether the labor market status of men is an important predictor of women's
employment and working hours. For that purpose we compare households in Germany and the UK.
These are two countries with high rates of female part-time employment, which have been
increasing especially in Germany since the 1990s. While in both countries employees have the legal
right to reduce working hours under certain conditions (Act on Part-Time Work and Fixed-Term
Employment in Germany and Employment Act in the UK), both countries studied exhibit important
variation in industrial relations and employment protection legislation and are thus fruitful cases for
a cross-national comparison. The goal of this paper is to answer the question of whether the
determinants for part-time employment lie primarily in the individual or the partner's sphere. Will
women choose part-time only if it can be afforded or do they work part-time irrespective of
household income and the risk of the partner losing his labor income? To investigate this question,
we estimate logit regressions for women based on German and UK Panel Data, where the
dependent variable is the probability of changing working hours from full-time to part-time (or vice
versa) in the next (or subsequent) period respectively. In our estimations, we control for the usual
socio-demographic characteristics, presence of children, life events and household variables,
especially changes in male partner's income or working hours, changes in labor force status of the
partner and changes of self-reported health status. Preliminary results suggest that part time
employment is much more frequent (and increases more) if the partner works full time compared to
if the partner works only part-time or is not employed at all. This is in line with theories claiming that
part time employment is a ‘choice’ and determined together at the household level. As was to be
expected, children are an important factor, with the increase in part-time and decrease in full-time
employment over time being more pronounced in households with children. An increase in
household income in the previous year increases the probability of women moving from full-time to
part-time employment.
Keywords: Female Employment, household context, cross-national comparison
20
What could all the money do? Designing training measures to increasing job opportunities
for low skilled unemployed
Martin Dietz & Christopher Osiander
martin.dietz@iab.de, christopher.osiander@iab.de
Institute for Employment Research (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, IAB),
90478 Nuremberg, Germany
In recent years, matching processes on the labour market have become more difficult. In many
European countries unemployment has sharply increased during the world-wide economic crisis, but
even where unemployment rates are lower, the mismatch between job requirements and the
characteristics of jobseekers may have widened due to skill-biased technological change. This results
in increasing risks of long-term unemployment especially of low-skilled job seekers. Further training
of the unemployed can be applied as one suitable measure to increase the skills of the jobseekers to
match the firms’ job requirements. Thus, it is highly relevant for achieving equal opportunities on
the labour market to design training measures in a way that low-skilled jobseekers are willing and
enabled to participate in these programmes.
For designing training programmes in this manner it is important to learn something about the
reasons why low-skilled unemployed might refrain from engaging in further training measures.
Therefore, we conducted a telephone survey among 4.000 job seekers in Germany to receive
detailed information about obstacles with regard to a participation in further training. The results
show a variety of problems that cannot be easily solved, e.g. motivational problems, negative
learning experiences or health problems. The analysis also confirms the findings of earlier studies
pointing to the importance of financial constraints on the side of the unemployed. Many of them
state that they are not able to cover their cost of living without a work income for a longer period.
Accepting a secure – although often temporary – job opportunity with a higher income than
unemployment benefits will be preferred to a training measure with unsecure outcomes, especially
when programmes are not just short-term. Thus, bonus payments for the successful completion of
courses or monthly extra payments besides standard unemployment benefits might increase the
willingness to participate and help reduce drop-out rates. From a theoretical point of view, these
payments reduce opportunity costs of training programmes, i.e. forgone potential earnings, and
should render them more attractive.
We also used the telephone survey to investigate the question whether changing opportunity costs
might influence the willingness of the unemployed to participate in further training. In order to
analyse the effects of different programme designs we implemented a so-called factorial survey
(also known as vignette analysis). Every respondent was asked to rate three different hypothetical
further training measures, whose central characteristics were experimentally manipulated. We are
able to analyse the impact of four different characteristics of training programmes: their length, the
existence and level of bonus payments for successful completion, the existence and level of monthly
extra payments in addition to the regular unemployment benefits and future labour market
prospects. The design makes it possible to separate these effects of different dimensions by
randomly allocating them to vignettes. The results offer important insights with respect to a design
of training measures that fits the needs of the unemployed in a better way and thus may lead to
more favourite employment prospects for one of the most vulnerable groups on the labour market.
21
The Poor Lonesome Young French in the Crisis
Vanessa di Paola, Philippe Méhaut, Stéphanie Moullet
In France, school to work transition is especially difficult: young are facing both high unemployment
rate and precarious jobs. Some explanations are grounded in a general approach of the French labor
market: Employment protection legislation is high, the high minimum wage creates an employment
disease characterized by a lack of flexibility. Labor market segmentation theories are competing to
explain how the typical framework of internal labor market could lead to such bad results. However
these analyses do not necessarily explain why consequences must be concentrated on the youngest
segment of the labor force. Other researches are introducing skill mismatches, linked to the too
much academic French school system where apprenticeship is lacking. Minimum wages, without any
age modulation, public policies, with not enough work fare components, are also seen as brake to
youth employment.
In the recent years, a key question is how the economic crisis impacts the youth labor market, which
could be seen as a predictor of a more general change of the French labor market, in the global
framework of a segmentation process.
The paper is based on a comparison of few cohorts of young people facing school to work transition
in a different conjuncture. We assume that the consequences of the crisis differ depending on when
it occurs in the path. To investigate the effects of the crisis when a young just enters the labor
market, we compare a cohort of beginners entering the labor market in 2004, with another cohort
facing the international crisis from 2008, entering the labor market in 2007. We study the impact of
the crisis after several years in the labor market through the comparison of longitudinal surveys
along seven years on the labor market (1998-2005 and 2004-2011). Employment status, wages,
working time are key variables to analyze the changes for the different cohorts.
The first part of the paper will develop a literature survey on the question of the segmentation/
dualization, on the French specificities compare to other European countries and on the specific
question of the young segment on the labor market. Hypotheses on the changes will be drawn from
this survey.
The second part provides a methodological framework for the comparative analysis of the several
cohorts.
The third part focuses on the employment and unemployment status, which is one indicator of the
segmentation/dualization process.
The fourth part discusses other indicators of the quality of jobs (wages, working time, over
education) in order to understand changes induced by the crisis beyond the employment status.
In conclusion, we will come back to some institutional approach in order to explain the French
specificity and to discuss the broader theoretical approach and we draw some conclusions on the
public policies.
22
More or better jobs? The gender biases of employment trends and employment policies in
Europe
Anne EYDOUX
anne.eydoux@cee-recherche.fr, Centre for Employment Studies and University of Rennes 2, CEE, 29
promenade Michel Simon – 93 166 Noisy-le-Grand cedex - FRANCE
Gender equality has always been part of the European integration process. It is part of the European
employment strategy (EES) since1997, and combines with quantitative and qualitative employment
targets: increasing employment rates and improving job quality to have “more and better jobs”. But
15 years after the launching of the EES some sort of trade-off between the quantity and quality of
employment seems to have occur for women. The gender equality objective has gradually been
subordinated to employment growth, women being mostly regarded as a (under-utilised) labour
reserve. Employment rates actually increased for women much more than for men at the European
Union (EU) level. Activation policies and/or policies to support women's work (especially childcare
policies) have developed in many countries. The gender segregation of European labour markets,
that remained quite the same, played a role: employment increased mainly in the female-dominated
service sector while it declined (especially during the Great recession) in the male-dominated
industrial sector.
The quality of jobs in the female-dominated service sector is questionable. It however is a secondary
issue in European policies – as job quality in general. This can be explained by the prevailing
economic guidelines and the fiscal discipline imposed on EU member states (especially in the Euro
zone) as well as by the promotion of austerity measures and labour markets “structural reforms”.
These policies contradict both the job quality and the gender equality objectives. They affect
negatively the quality of women's jobs. Women are over-represented in public sector employment,
first hit by austerity, and in the service sector first hit by employment deregulations. Austerity
policies and labour market reforms tend to increase gender inequalities and the polarisation of
women's jobs. These trends are however not well reflected in job quality indexes which largely
remain gender blind and exclude components of job quality (such as social entitlements related to
work) that have deteriorated for women in several member states.
This contribution will rely on the literature regarding gender equality and job quality in Europe and
use Eurostat data as well as EU policy documents. It will first review the dynamics of gender
inequalities in European labour markets since 1997 (regarding the quantity and quality of
employment) and discuss the role and shortcomings of the EES from a gender perspective (1). It will
then illustrate the way women’s employment and gender inequalities have been (or currently are)
affected by economic crises, labour market reforms and austerity policies. If female employment
appears relatively spared during recession, at least in quantitative terms, it has been overexposed to
the negative consequences of labour market reforms and austerity policies (2). An analysis of the
EES and the Europe 2020 strategy shows how the objectives of job quality and gender equality
became secondary ones. Austerity policies and labour market reforms promoted at the EU level now
hamper further progress towards these two objectives (3). The conclusion will discuss counter
strategies to promote gender equality and the quality of jobs (including women's jobs) in European
labour markets (4).
23
Women’s under-representation in the university sector: an exploration of the gendered
nature of scientific leadership
Colette Fagan, Karen Hassell, Liz Seston and Nina Teasdale
The Manchester School of Pharmacy and the School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, UK
Women are under-represented in senior position in universities, reflecting broader gender
inequalities in economic and political leadership in society across the globe. Women have increased
their presence at each academic level in the sector in the UK; and by 2011/12 held 21% of
professorial compared with 7% in 1994/5. Women have gained ground at the senior management
positions in higher education as well, and by 2011 17% of vice-chancellors1 were women, up from
14% in 2007/8 (Baker and Cracknell, 2014). Yet this is still an under-representation given that 39% of
all academic professionals are now women; and some distance from 50/50 gender parity in the
sector. The situation is particularly acute in some science disciplines. For example 92% of professors
in mathematics and 83% of all full-time academics in engineering and technology subjects are men.
Furthermore, within sciences the UK lags behind some of our European neighbours (European
Commission 2012). Barriers to recruiting and retaining women in academic careers are beginning to
be addressed through initiatives such as Athena SWAN, which is a sector-wide voluntary action plan
to redress gender inequalities in STEMM2 disciplines. The action plan was given refreshed
momentum by the government’s decision that from 2015 eligibility for biomedical research funding
will require an institution to have silver level Athena SWAN accreditation. Research on women in
leadership largely addresses the corporate sector. The few studies focussed on the Higher Education
sector found evidence of stereotyping and negative attitudes towards women as leaders, and
organisational cultures which hamper the promotion of diversity. However, little is known about the
similarities and differences in different subject specialisms. A superficial dichotomy between STEMM
and non-STEMM subjects is sometimes drawn in discussions despite marked variations in the
representation of women in leadership positions between different fields within both STEMM
subjects and Humanities subjects. Furthermore, statistics for the UK Higher Education sector indicate
that some institutions have made more progress than others in closing the gender gap (Backer and
Cracknell, 2014). Organisational difference persists when subject specialisms are compared across
institutions, which indicates that the context of the organisational processes and cultures have a
bearing on women’s entry into, and experiences of, academic leadership positions.
Our research examines how women become successful leaders in a range of disciplines (STEMM and
non-STEMM). This paper opens with an overview of the UK’s Athena SWAN action plan. Against this
background we report the first findings from our pilot qualitative study in which we have
interviewed successful female academic leaders and explored their career path into leadership, their
leadership experiences and the nature of their leadership style, and seek to understand how the
enablers and barriers (structural and cultural) of their particular organisational setting shapes their
experience of leadership.
1
A vice-chancellor is the most senior managerial position in a UK university, equivalent to a CEO in a private sector firm. In Universities in
other countries this position is variously referred to as the President or Rector.
2
STEMM encompasses Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medical sciences.
24
Drivers of recent job polarisation and upgrading in Europe
Enrique Fernández-Macías and John Hurley
In the last few years, there has been a growing debate about job polarization and upgrading in the
Social Sciences of developed economies. The debate concerns not only what patterns characterize
structural change in labour markets (polarization, upgrading or a diversity including examples of
both), but also what are the key factors behind them. In this paper, we use a diversity of European
datasets to construct a series of indices operationalizing the main explanatory arguments found in
the literature on job polarization. Those indices are then used to test if recent structural change in
European employment confirms with the main theories´ implications, and to compare the actually
observed patterns in the period 1995-2007 in Europe with a set of theory-based counterfactuals. The
main conclusion is that routine(or task)-biased technical change was not the main driver behind the
observed cases of job polarization in Europe: to some extent, polarization seemed more linked to
the social content of jobs, although it remained largely unexplained by our econometric approach
and plausibly linked to institutional factors difficult to study with a quantitative approach.
25
Gender Pay Gaps and the Restructuring of Graduate Labour Markets in Southern Europe
Hugo Figueiredo, Vera Rocha, Ricardo Biscaia, Pedro Teixeira
Corresponding Author. E-mail: hugo.figueiredo@ua.pt, Postal Address: DEGEI, University of Aveiro,
Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal. Phone Number: +351 234 372 48
Using standard decomposition techniques, we investigate whether growing occupational diversity
and education-job mismatches associated with the massive expansion of higher education are
important explanations of gender pay gaps among university graduates in Southern Europe
(Portugal, Spain and Italy). We further test the implications of controlling for selection bias. Our
results indicate that the emergence of new graduate job profiles, their relative feminisation and
overeducation – dimensions seldom incorporated in the literature – are both gendered processes
and important determinants of earnings inequality. While our focus is on graduates’ first career
years, demonstrating that job-related heterogeneity shapes gender pay gaps at this early stage helps
to contextualise further changes over the life-cycle. Southern European economies are also
particularly interesting to look at since there may be a greater degree of mismatch between the
pace of higher education expansion and changes in the job structure as suggested by the relatively
high levels of youth unemployment.
Keywords: Education mismatch, Gender Pay Gap, Graduate Employment, Job Structure, Selection
Bias, Wage Inequality
26
The devil takes the hindmost – precarisation of work from a value-chain perspective
Jörg Flecker, University of Vienna (joerg.flecker@univie.ac.at)
In the literature on the precarisation of work outsourcing and subcontracting are often mentioned
among the driving forces (Standing 2011, Dörre 2009). However, the value chain dynamics leading to
high levels of vulnerability are rarely explored in any detail in this field of research. In the research
on industrial relations and labour market segmentation the vertical disintegration of companies, the
outsourcing from the public sector and the lengthening of value chains in general have been
described as weakening collective bargaining and workers’ representation and deteriorating
employment and working conditions (Doellgast/Greer 2007, Marchington et al. 2005, Rubery 2006).
Usually, the main reason for these outcomes is seen in the crossing of the borders of organisations,
industries and countries that allows employers to evade collective agreements, tap less protected
labour market segments or shop regimes internationally. The influence of organised labour on these
restructuring processes is usually rather low (Meil 2009).
In contrast to the effects of the differentials in terms and conditions less attention has been paid to
the dynamics of established subcontracting or value chain relations. Based on the analysis of Global
Value Chains or Global Production Networks inter-firm power relations, forms of governance of
value chains and networks and, more recently, the impact of these dynamics on employment and
working conditions have come into focus. With worsening job quality downstream in the value
chains we find a higher incidence of precarious and informal work at the bottom (Frade/Darmon
2005, Flecker et al. 2013). In order to understand both the drivers of precarisation and the
possibilities to counter this tendency an analysis of value chain dynamics is needed that focuses on
the specificities of industries and employment systems.
Industry studies show the impact of market structures with strong buyers that source products or
services in highly competitive supply chains (Weil 2009, Haidinger 2012). Comparative research
pointed at differences between countries with regard to the impacts on employment and working
conditions of value chain restructuring (Meil 2009) and the contracting out of public services
(Hermann/Flecker 2012). Inclusive employment systems with high levels of collective bargaining
coverage mitigate negative impacts of subcontracting on the quality of jobs. Public procurement
regulation aims at extending protection to weaker segments of the labour market (Schulten et al.
2012) while the legal liability of general contractors in the construction industry or in cleaning in
Germany and Austria aims at containing the evasion of employment regulation by subcontractors.
New forms of interventions putting regulatory pressure on the large buyer companies helped to
enforce adherence to minimum wage legislation in the US (Weil 2009).
The paper analyses the contribution of outsourcing, subcontracting and value chain dynamics to the
precarisation of work and explores countermeasures. It describes, first, industry structures and
employment regimes conducive to a deterioration of employment and working conditions through
value chain dynamics. Second, it focuses on limits and contradictions within these tendencies and
describes possibilities for trade union influence and political regulation.
27
The Spanish labour management model: Crisis? What crisis?
María C. González Menéndez and Gabriel Pruneda
Department of Sociology, University of Oviedo
The aim of this paper is to analyse the extent to which HRM and IR in Spain converge with the
European model of work, employment and labour relations management. In order to evaluate this
convergence, it is necessary to turn to the traditional Spanish model so as to characterize HRM and
IR in Spain, while identifying its main lines of change and continuity.
The European model of work and labour relations management is characterized by the legitimacy of
stakeholders – firms, workers and their representatives – to regulate labour, employment and IR in
the workplace through dialogue and negotiation, as a result of the mutual recognition of their
autonomy. The most distinctive element of this model has been the political and economic
acknowledgement of collective dialogue in the workplace as the initial premise, even though it is
increasingly being brought into question. Additionally, the European model is traditionally
concerned with the improvement of both intrinsic elements of job quality such as job content, and
extrinsic elements such as equal opportunities, remuneration and working environments (González
Menéndez, 2010). In terms of job quality, the traditional model of Spanish HRM is characterised by
the segmentation between temporary and permanent workers by age, segmentation by sex, the low
utilization of part-time contracts, the minimization of labour costs via wages as the main strategy of
HRM and the main competitive strategy of the organisation, low investment by the private sector in
training, low levels of training of HR managers themselves, a workplace culture of long working
hours combined with little concern for the motivation of workers, low levels of direct participation of
workers and an authoritarian management style (González Menéndez, 2011). The frequent
attribution of these hallmarks to the legal framework and inflexible IR is very difficult to justify when
foreign MNCs and even many Spanish organisations have been showing since the 1990s that another
way of managing personnel and labour is actually not only possible, but quite profitable indeed.
One element of concern here is that, while the current crisis has not weakened the debate on the
need for change in the production model, towards the reduction of low labour productivity
industries, it does have silenced the debate regarding the quality of employment, which was
emergent before the crisis (Royo, 2007). Path dependence, i.e. doing what has always been done, is
particularly easy at this time of business strength in the labour market and seems to be reinforced by
the recent labour reform, which, in contributing to the flexibilization of general employment
conditions, cannot reduce the existing polarization of job quality. As for the Spanish traditional
model of IR, the convergence to the European model is more palpable. The rapprochement between
employers’ and workers' representatives in regulation over the last two decades results in the same
or even higher levels of collective bargaining coverage. Consequently, the culture of dialogue is more
established in the organisation, albeit with both parties adopting a strongly defensive strategy, and
this helps explain the widespread poverty of collective agreements in terms of content (González
Menéndez, 2011). The greatest danger that this rapprochement entails consists of some employers
abusing the weakness of workers to implement fraudulent reduced working day schemes and to halt
recruitment in a crisis environment.
28
Economic Crisis and Austerity Policies in Portugal: effects on the middle classes
Maria Pilar Gonzalez and António Figueiredo
Portugal was hit by the international crisis in 2008 and, following worsening difficulties, asked for
financial help from the “troika” (the European Commission, European Central Bank and International
Monetary Fund) in May 2011. Upon signature of a Memorandum, both Portugal and the troika
agreed on a programme to ensure the reduction of the existing fiscal deficit and national debt. Three
years after the programme was implemented, the situation has not improved much as the
Portuguese economy is suffering a sharp recession with severe effects on the labour market and in
life conditions of families. One of the major discussions of the ongoing crisis concerns its effects on
the middle class, the major supporter of democratic regimes. Despite the important discussions on
the concrete meaning of the concept ‘middle class’ it generally refers either to intermediate income
groups or to population groups that anticipate upward social mobility as an attainable goal. In
Portugal austerity packages were implemented in a context of increasing structural unemployment
and have been associated with increasing instability. Instability can bring (in fact is bringing)
increasing feelings of mistrust and lack of expectations with regard to the possibility of attaining a
better future. This can compromise economic and social improvement, deteriorating recovery
prospects, but can also damage democracy itself. This paper aims to discuss the effects of ongoing
austerity policies in the Portuguese middle classes considering some important features of
Portuguese situation namely) i) high structural unemployment; ii) high deficit of school
qualifications; iii) high and increasing inequality, iv) high emphasis of austerity measures targeted at
public employees and (v) particular historical conditions of middle class emergence.
We rely mainly on EUROSTAT statistics (mostly the European Union Statistics on Income and Living
Conditions EU-SILC). We argue that austerity policies are hitting the middle classes hard in Portugal,
namely because:
•
The unemployment rate is affecting the population as a whole. The existence of a high
unemployment rate for university graduates is narrowing upward social mobility and increasing the
number of those trapped in long-term unemployment;
•
Austerity has strongly reduced family income and affected social mobility mainly in the
middle income groups;
•
Austerity affected the income distribution within quintiles introducing less income diversity
mainly in the very low and medium income groups;
•
Public servants, a core group of the middle class, have been losing monetary power due to
tax increases but also because of cuts targeted on them.
•
Public sector workers are also losing social status and face higher risks of unemployment.
The Portuguese middle class (whether represented by those with an intermediate level of income or
by one of its core groups, such as public sector workers) appears to be constrained by the recent
changes. Under pressure from the risk of unemployment, they face, if employed, wage cuts, social
security cuts, tax increases, low probability of upward social mobility and possibly a decline in social
status. Portuguese society seems not only blocked but also fractured due to the effects of austerity
policies.
29
The evolution of the level and distribution of job quality in Britain
Francis Green*, Alan Felstead and Duncan Gallie
*Presenter. Affiliation: LLAKES Centre, Institute of Education.
This paper and presentation will be about the evolution of job quality over a quarter century in a
modern liberal market economy, that of Britain. It draws on material from our forthcoming book
focussed on how the quality varies among groups and sectors.* In economics it is common to focus
on wage gaps and dispersion. Yet jobs differ in respect of many other important features.
Because there is much more to jobs than just the pay packet, and because other job features may
partly or wholly compensate for unduly high or low pay, a more comprehensive examination of job
differentiation is needed. An accurate overall picture is required, and this is typically not provided by
national statistical offices. What has been the outcome of the rise of neo-liberalism, the
intensification of global competition, and the onset of economic crisis? What difference have
regulatory policies made, and do industrial relations still make a difference? How much more of a
difference could good management make to the experience of work? Is it better to be selfemployed? Have public sector workers really had the best jobs?
Our period is framed by the Skills and Employment Survey data series of workers' reports about their
jobs, begun in 1986 and culminating with the latest survey in 2012. During this time the make-up of
the British workforce had steadily changed in several ways, two of which stand out: the workforce
became less male-dominated and much better educated. Both these changes may have affected the
balance of workers’ needs surrounding their jobs. Meanwhile, there were well-known far-reaching
changes in the external political, institutional and macroeconomic context surrounding jobs,
spanning over the years the transitions from Thatcherism to the current coalition government, via
the long interlude of the Blair-Brown "new labour" government.
After a theoretical discussion of expected trends in the level and distribution of job quality the
presentation will use the SES data series to:

examine the relationships between pay and other types of job quality

draw up an overall summary of the changing average level of job quality in Britain: what has
happened over the roughly quarter century since the mid-1980s? We are able to answer this
question in respect of most (not all) of the core aspects of job quality.

examine the comparative standing of job quality in Britain. We ask: where did these trends
leave the average British workplace in 2012, in comparison with other nations?

overview what is known about the evolution of job quality gaps between socio-economic
groups.
* Felstead, A., D. Gallie and F. Green, Eds. (2015, forthcoming). Unequal Britain At Work. Oxford,
Oxford University Press. Other contributors are: Ben Baumberg, Alex Bryson, Tracy Warren, Andy
Charlwood, Hande Inanc, Clare Lyonette, Jo Lindley, Nigel Meager, Vicki Wass, Gerry Makepeace,
Melanie Jones, David Blackaby, Phil Murphy
30
Long-run trends in the UK jobs structure: A story of upgrading with some polarisation but
not for all workers
Damian Grimshaw and Anthony Rafferty, Manchester Business School3
Quantitative analysis of long-run trends since the mid-1970s in the changing structure of jobs,
distributed along a wage spectrum from low to high quality, provides a novel perspective on the
consequences of historical shifts in the rise and fall of key occupations and sectors in the UK
economy (Fernández-Macías 2012). For today’s policy-makers, it is a useful knowledge base upon
which to consider the merits of efforts to rebalance the economy towards high-tech manufacturing
and knowledge-intensive services and the importance of continued support for welfare state
occupations. Moreover, by interrogating who has gained or lost from long-run job changes at the
bottom, middle and top of the wage distribution, this analysis can illuminate patterns of labour
market segmentation that are attentive to women’s employment participation and non standard
forms of employment (part-time work, temporary employment and self-employment).
While several studies have already shed light on the seemingly polarising nature of job change in the
UK since the 1970s, this paper provides a renewed analysis using the jobs quintile approach in two
respects. First, it considerably extends the period of analysis from 20 years (Goos and Manning 2007)
and 18 years (Oesch and Menés 2010) to 38 years, 1975-2013. Secondly, it adopts an alternative
methodology by choosing to disaggregate the period for study into carefully defined sub-periods.
The reason for this is that it provides a more robust analysis that is sensitive to changing
occupational classifications, to economic cycles of job creation and job loss and, perhaps most
importantly, to shifts in the ranking of jobs by relative wage level. The assumption in other studies of
a fixed job ranking over time, while questionable over 18-20 years is clearly inappropriate over 38
years (see, also, Holmes 2010: 5). Aside from likely changes in job rankings, it is also very difficult to
harmonise detailed occupational categories from the 1970s to 2010s without losing a great deal of
jobs information.
Key findings from our analysis are first that long-term change in the structure of jobs (from 1975 to
2013) indicates a general process of upgrading with moments of job polarisation confined to the
periods 1975-1984 and the 1990s. Regarding these periods of polarisation, the evidence suggest
differentiation among men and women; for example, women’s job change during 1975-1984 was
characterised by a hump-shaped distribution, with women in both full-time and part-time
employment in fact experiencing a net loss at the top quintile. Manufacturing jobs account for losses
in the middle and services jobs for growth at the bottom and top, but change in the distribution of
welfare state jobs also displayed a surprising degree of polarisation during the 1990s. Aside from
these moments of polarisation, the key long-term result using this particular statistical method is the
propensity for the UK economy to expand jobs in the top quintile to a far greater extent than other
quintiles. The paper interrogates the degree to which this was shared by men and women and
whether upgrading also covered part-time and other non-standard forms of employment. It also
evaluates the radically distinctive character of the 2011-2013 post-recession period of job change
marked by no upgrading and a strong role of temporary jobs and self-employment.
3
The paper derives from a report commissioned by Eurofound as part of a research programme coordinated by Rafael
Muñoz de Bustillo (Europe) and Enrique Fernández-Macías (Global).
31
The employment effects of market exposure: the case of contract cleaning in the UK
Damian Grimshaw, Jo Cartwright, Arjan Keizer and Jill Rubery, Manchester Business School
The outsourcing and subcontracting of services has fragmented workforces and generated new
problems of inequality of employment experience (Kalleberg 2009). Compared with vertically
integrated, hierarchically structured organisations, several recent studies suggest that a labour
market of subcontracted workforces is likely to be less bound by traditions of customary practices
and collective agreements and simultaneously more exposed to both market pressures of cost
competition and unilateral employer prerogative (Doellgast 2012, Flecker and Meil 2010, Holst 2013,
James and Walters 2011) with adverse consequences for the quality of HR practices and job
conditions. Central to these accounts are notions of the market and the employer. The market
translates into a variety of procurement and contracting practices instituted by clients and suppliers
in response to changing regulatory, social, political and economic conditions (Greer et al. 2013). The
employer relates directly to the contractor organisation and especially to the new breed of Large
Services Outsourcing Firms that enjoy significant scope for choice of strategy, but also indirectly to
the client organisations that outsourced the services and continue to exercise a degree of influence
over the subcontracted workforce (Miozzo and Grimshaw 2011, Rubery et al. 2003).
In this paper we seek to disentangle these influences drawing on qualitative data from the UK
contract cleaning sector. The aim is to contribute to our understanding of how the fragmentation of
production shapes the quality of employment experience - in particular pay, working time and
employment instability. The results show that the market for outsourced cleaning is shaped by the
nature of procurement and contracting and the operational demands of the diverse client
organisations, but also by the strategic intent of the outsourcing firms. For example, downwards
adjustment in job quality can arise out of clients’ concerns over costs which are displaced onto
contracts for outsourced services. But the outsourcing firms may also make independent efforts to
reduce costs through ‘institutional avoidance’ - side-stepping formal agreements or informal custom
and practice; use of zero hours contracts and temporary agency workers are illustrative. However,
other factors set a minimum floor or may even establish an upwards pressure on job quality. Legal
rules that protect outsourced workers (TUPE) and minimum pay (the statutory minimum wage)
provide a vital floor to employment conditions for this highly exposed outsourced workforce. And in
certain circumstances trade unions are able to exploit the reputational risk to clients seen to be
purchasing services from an exploited workforce (e.g. through establishing a living wage). Overall,
the empirical evidence shows how market competition for cleaning services has intensified
downward pressures on employment quality but also illuminated variation among contracts and
their associated employment effects arising from the strategic choices of clients and employers.
32
The role of formal and shared leadership in improving safety climate and safety
performance
Sara Guediri
This study investigates strategies through which leaders and co--‐workers can improve workplace
safety. It examines how transformational and transactional leadership (Bass, 1985) as displayed by a
designated single leader (formal leadership), or distributed among co--‐workers (shared leadership)
influence safety climate and safety performance. Previous research has shown that leadership as
displayed by a formal leader has a positive influence on safety climate (i.e. employees’ shared
perceptions about the priority of safety) and individuals’ safety performance. However, little
attention has been paid to alternative sources for safety guidance other than the formal leader. The
shared leadership approach theorises that leadership is not restricted to one, designated leader, but
that co--‐workers can function as a source of influence. The current study argues that shared
leadership has a positive impact on safety climate and safety performance over and above formal
leadership. Leaders are not always available and co--‐ workers might experience greater proximity to
each other than to their leader (Carson, Tesluk, & Marrone, 2007). Co--‐workers have the same
hierarchical status, which entails greater presence to each other relative to vertical leaders, so that
interactions among co--‐workers occur more frequently and are less restricted than leader--‐
employee interactions. Safety--‐critical issues often arise spontaneously and out of ambiguous
situations where employees experience conflict between safety and other demands (e.g. safety
versus productivity). It is proposed that to manage this uncertainty, employees utilise guidance from
fellow workers to verify the relative value of safety. Thus, co--‐ workers mutual influence might be
important beyond the influence of a formal leader to foster a positive safety climate and enhance
safety performance. Moreover, the study specifically focuses on the influence of transformational
and transactional leadership as a shared attribute amongst co--‐workers to investigate which styles
of shared leadership are effective in influencing safety.
Design and Method: The study is conducted in a UK food manufacturing company with
questionnaire data collected from team members and their team leader. This two--‐source study
design is used to overcome the issue of common--‐source bias. Team members are asked to rate
their team leader’s transformational--‐transactional leadership style using the Multifactor Leadership
Questionnaire (MLQ) and report to what extent their team members engage in shared leadership
using the Team Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (TMLQ). In addition, team members report
their safety climate perceptions. Team leaders provide ratings for each of their team member’s
safety performance.
Implications: The study holds important implications for how safety is managed in the workplace.
Mutual influence among co--‐workers might offer an additional pathway to enhance safety in the
workplace beyond formal leadership. In particular, if formal leadership is absent or inadequate,
shared leadership might provide an important source of guidance for employees to ensure safe
working and ultimately avoid harm.
33
Keeping the movement ……..moving ?
Steve Higginson (UNITE the union, UNITE Community 567 Branch, Merseyside.)
Since 2009, austerity measures have become an increasingly dominant State response to the global
financial and economic crises. In many countries across the developing world and developed world,
measures such as cuts to social protection, welfare budgets and public services, as well as regressive
taxation reform, have all impacted disproportionately on the rights and livelihoods of women, the
disabled, ethnic groups and low income families.
At one time, it was labour which occupied a central role in constituting efforts to challenge
capitalism and shield society from the rapacious aspects of laissez-faire. However, labour is no
longer the principal essence of exploitation with the shift from production to finance as the main
driver of accumulation. Sitting alongside this, is the demobilisation of labour through technological
advance. The traditional world of work is no more…………..Robots of the World Unite.
In 2013 the anthropologist David Graeber, noted:
There was a time when the paradigmatic politically self-conscious working class was a male
breadwinner working in a car factory or steel works. Now it is more likely to be a single mother
working as a teacher, nurse or carer. A post-industrial precariat are beginning to broaden our ideas
of work and hence give new meaning to a post-industrial world.
The loudest message of neo-liberalism is that there is no alternative to the status quo. I will argue to
the contrary, that there is major potential in new and participative forms rooted in community
organising and the discourse of human rights. Poverty has many dimensions, including a vicious cycle
of powerlessness, discrimination, exclusion and material deprivation. The elimination of all these
elements is a pressing human rights issue.
Human rights legislation, in all its manifestations, can be utilised as a tool of resistance in challenging
austerity measures. I will point to how gender has played a leading role in challenging the bedroom
tax and welfare sanctions, through being empowered by the usage of human and disability rights. A
reconfiguration of resistance through the human rights movement is also a means of mobilising and
challenging power structures. It creates a broader terrain for demands for social justice, as the vision
of social and economic rights are being considerably widened.
A reconfiguration of resistance includes the idea that every human being has a right to enough food,
to decent housing, health and well-being and education, and that future generations have the right
to sustainable living. The struggle to maintain rights already won and to extend them to new areas
can create conditions for an effective and coherent counter-hegemonic project in defence of
communities, women, children, the elderly, disabled and non-disabled alike.
Major bases of mobilization are now taking place within new forms of trade union community
organising, thus allowing for a more inclusive, diverse and participatory approach.
34
The influence of national institutions on the convergence and divergence of job design in
Europe from 1995 to 2010
David Holman & Anthony Rafferty
A high quality job design is typically thought to include high job discretion, high cognitive demand
and low workload. There has been much debate on whether the quality of job design in Europe is
improving or declining, whether this is leading to convergence or divergence in job design among
European countries, and the role of national institutions (e.g., trade unions, welfare regimes) in
shaping these trends (Eurofound, 2012; Greenan et al., 2013). To address these issues, the aim of
this paper is to establish the influence of national institutions on the growth, convergence and
divergence of job design in the EU-15. Data from four waves (1995-2010) of the European Working
Conditions Survey is examined using pseudo-panel latent growth modelling. Results indicate that,
within the context of a general decline in job discretion and cognitive demand, slower declines in
one cluster of countries (typically Nordic) are resulting in divergence from another cluster of
countries in which job discretion and cognitive demand are converging. National differences in trade
union influence (measured by wage coordination structures and union density) appear to be one
reason for this pattern of growth across EU-15 countries, as greater trade union influence
ameliorates or slows declines in job discretion and cognitive demand. Workload is generally
increasing and converging due to faster growth in countries with lower levels of workload, although
there was no evidence that national institutions were influencing these trends.
35
A Social Justice Score Card In Dismissal Protection
Rene Huyser & Paul Smit
Nelson Mandela said :
“For a revolution is not just a question of pulling a trigger; its purpose is to create a
fair and just society”. (Mandela as cited per Inagist, 2013)
Today, South Africa boasts with “The Mandela University for Social Justice” sustaining Madiba’s
legacy to create a fair and just society. It is then not surprising that concepts like social justice,
human rights, fair treatment and equality have become part of a universal “language”
Correspondingly, international organisations like the United Nations (UN), the International Labour
Organisation (ILO), European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) have made resolute endeavors toward social justice as a necessary world
policy initiative.
Whereas these concepts are founded in almost every aspect of civilized society, these morals are of
particular concern in terms of employment protections. Further, a judge in the South African Labour
Court equated dismissal with a death sentence for an employee, emphasizing the nature and
significance of morality and social justice vital in dismissal protections.
This paper is premised on the conviction that a generic social justice theory can assist in the
identification and design of social justice indicators which reveal a social justice score card, capable
of measuring and comparing social justice compliance inherent to a particular legal doctrine. The
purpose of this paper is to develop such generic social justice theory and apply this theory to a
selected doctrine namely, employment protections relating to dismissals.
This application exposes a customized social justice theory which demands the formulation and
identification of a number of social justice indicators. Collectively, these social justice indicators
reveal a score card competent of measuring and comparing social justice compliance in dismissal
protections across divergent jurisdictions. This additionally necessitates, that the relation or
interaction between social justice and human rights is exposed.
In this research paper the international notions on social justice and its place in the world of work
are depicted. Three particular international organisations, namely the UN, the ILO and the OECD,
have made resolute endeavors toward social justice as a necessary world policy initiative. These
organisations and their perspectives were analysed and interpreted for contextual purposes in so far
as they relate to the development of a measuring instrument that can measure social justice notions
in dismissal protections and dispute resolution. In short, we argue that having successfully
developed of a social justice score card foreign legal jurisdictions may be measured and compared in
terms of their allegiance to social justice and with minor modification it can also be used inter alia by
employers, to measure social justice compliance in company policies and procedures.
36
Compliance and enforcement of minimum wages
Karen Jaehrling (IAQ, Univ. Duisburg-Essen)
Karen.jaehrling@uni-due.de
The bulk of research on legal minimum wage has focused on their effects on employment and on
wage levels and structures, mostly starting from the assumption that lowest paid wages effectively
correspond to the legal norm. However, evidence of a lack of compliance with and enforcement of
minimum wages is far from anecdotic, as a few recent investigations show (Bernhardt et al.; Voskoh
et al.). This seems to be both due to a considerable number of legal exceptions from the minimum
wage and to inefficient control mechanisms. The presentation takes stock of existing studies on the
issue of compliance and enforcement of minimum wages in different European countries and aims
to draw lessons for the design of the German legal minimum wage coming into force from 2015.
37
Determining the Decency of Domestic Work in India: An Empirical Study
Amir Jafar*, Shabana Jafar**
Several studies have been carried out to understand the working and living conditions of the
domestic workers in different parts of India. But there is negligible literature on the domestic
workforce in West Bengal. Most of the studies have focused on the main cities of India like Delhi,
Mumbai, Jaipur and grossly the suburbs and villages have been abandoned. The domestic helps of
the suburbs and villages deserve more attention since their conditions are much more regressive
than their counterparts in the cities. This study has been carried out in the state of West Bengal in
India. In a report published in the Wall Street Journal, India on 12th February 2014, it has been
disclosed that West Bengal had the highest number of cases of abuse in 2012, with 549 domestic
helps filing complaints against their employers. From our previous studies on domestic workers and
the existing literature on domestic workers in India, we feel that the context in which the domestic
workers operate in West Bengal is quite different from the other states in India. In West Bengal
earlier attempts have been made to unionize the domestic workers but the efforts of the trade
unions failed miserably. The consequences were more against workers than pro workers. It has been
realized that unionization of domestic workers is not in coherence with the prevalent socio-cultural
factors. The unionization process lead to an unfavorable change in the attitude of employers and
workers and the employers were apprehensive about employing unionized workers. Thus
‘organizing the unorganized’ won’t do much good at least in West Bengal. Over the last decade, the
work environment for the domestic workers has drastically changed due to several reasons. The
domestic workers are now operating in a newer environment with a new set of challenges. The
parameters portraying the decency of work for the domestic workers need to be redefined.
This study is based on the premise that ‘what cannot be measured cannot be managed’. Thus in this
study attempt has been made to measure the level of decency of the domestic work in West Bengal,
India. The decency level has been measured on the basis of the various indicators, many of which
have been selected from the extant literature. This study will help us to identify the concern areas
through which the domestic workers can be provided a ‘decent’ work life and to understand the
roles to be played by the state and non-state actors in order to provide a decent work life to the
domestic workers. This paper is based on empirical study and the data have been collected through
questionnaire surveys. The questionnaire has been self administered to the various actors like
employers, trade union leaders, political activists, and social workers, government officials in the
Labour department and researchers and academicians in social sciences. The questionnaire includes
items relating to the decent work indicators. In this study, the views of the key actors have been
assimilated to improve the working and living conditions of the domestic help and alleviate their
impoverishment. Appropriate research methods have been applied to deduce inferences from the
data collected for the study.
Key words: Unorganised sector, domestic workers, labour conditions, decent work.
*
Assistant Professor & Teacher-in-Charge, Department of Business Administration (Human Resource), The
University of Burdwan, Golapbag, Burdwan-713104, West Bengal, India, Email- aamirjafar@gmail.com
**
Student of Masters in Business Administration, DDE, The University of Burdwan, Golapbag, Burdwan713104, West Bengal, India, Email- shabana.akbari@gmail.com
38
Ageing and emotional competency in the UK workforce
Niven, K. Johnson, S. Yap, M. Farrow, T.
Increases in life expectancy and the average age of the population are producing changes in the
composition of the working population. In the European Union, for example, the number of younger
adults has been decreasing since 2005, and simultaneously the total working population (16-64
years) is forecast to shrink by 20.8 million by 2030 (Schalk & Veldhoven, 2010), creating an increased
reliance on older workers. The greater dependency on ageing workers must be seen against a
backdrop of discrimination and prejudices in the workplace, with ageing workers perceived to have
poorer cognitive functioning and to be less capable with new technology and more resistant to
change (McGregor & Gray, 2002). Stereotypes such as these have been compounded by a body of
literature that has largely overlooked emotional competences, despite early indications from
computer science and neurology suggesting that emotional competencies may be higher among
older people (e.g., Levenson, Cartensen, Friesen, & Ekman, 1991; Williams, Brown, Palmer, et al.,
2006), and more recent workplace research indicating potential improvements in emotional
competencies with age (Johnson, Holdsworth, Hoel, & Zapf, 2013).
Emotional competencies include skills involved in managing one’s own emotions and others’
emotions, and there is a strong body of research suggesting that emotional competencies are crucial
to most working environments, particularly those that involve contact with members of the public
(Rafaeli, 1989). For example, retail employees are expected to manage their own emotional
expression to meet ‘display rules’ (e.g., service with a smile), and to manage the emotions of their
customers to maintain pleasant emotions and to reduce negative emotions such as anger and
frustration (e.g., when customers are making a complaint). Such competencies are crucial, not just
for effective performance, but also for employee well-being; those employees with higher
competencies typically provide better customer service and experience lower levels of strain
(Grandey, 2003).
The present research is an exploration of the existing literature across 3 disciplines and explores the
central questions of (a) whether emotional competencies grow with age, and (b) if so, why. The
conference presentation will give a review of the literature on age and emotional competencies with
a focus on the three main areas that have provided insight into age and emotional competency:
(i)
Psychology. Studies are starting to explore links between age and emotional competency, and
between age and relevant aspects of performance (e.g., customer service quality)
(ii) Computer science. Studies are beginning to explore age-related differences in emotion
recognition and expressivity
(iii) Neurology. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and neuromodulation studies are
emerging, which identify age-related differences in emotional competencies
The increasing need for organisations to consider hiring older workers, and the pervasive
stereotypes about deficits among this group, suggest a clear need for research concerning potential
areas of strength among older workers. Such research could contribute towards helping
organisations to understand the benefits of employing older workers, and developing training
programmes tailored to maximising emotional competencies.
39
The Living Wage in Local Government: Fair Pay and the Redesign of Internal Pay Structures
Mathew Johnson (PhD. candidate, Manchester Business School)
The current article contributes to a greater understanding of the tensions between macro- and
micro-level pay setting dynamics in a context of centralised sector-level collective bargaining. The
findings indicate that firm-level low wage strategies have to strike a balance between flexibility and
assurance, and the permanent raising of entry rates may offer protection from cost of living
pressures but can interact with existing pay systems in unexpected ways particularly where
hierarchies are relatively compressed. Furthermore, the evidence suggests a degree of misalignment
between elements of business and HRM strategies: voluntary efforts to shield wage rates from
external market conditions when set against pressures to reduce workforce costs through job cuts
and privatisation means that an increased hourly rate for the lowest earners may not be sufficient to
protect total take home pay.
40
“Good and bad times of Displacements” - Labour Market Attachment of Displaced
Workers after Plant Closings - A longitudinal analysis based on Finnish Employer-Employee
Data
Arja Jolkkonen, Pertti Koistinen, Arja Kurvinen, Liudmila Lipiäinen, Tapio Nummi & Pekka Virtanen
Plant closings and collective displacements of workers are one of the most studied areas of the
sociological and economic studies. Previous studies have reported that those who lose their job due
to plant closings are actively searching for a new job, but the re-employment is a selective process
(Gibbons & Katz 1991; Jolkkonen, Koistinen & Kurvinen 2012). The success of re-employment
depends on individual characteristics and demand for labour (Frederiksen & Westergaard-Nielsen
2007; Korkeamäki & Kyyrä 2008; Farber 2011) as well as on institutional regulations. In spite of the
extensive research in this area there are still many open questions for methodological and data
reasons. Most of the previous studies have been based on case studies and have had short follow up
periods. Therefore there is a need for representative data, longer follow-up periods and new
methods of analysis. In this study, the point is to analyse the employment trajectories of displaced
workers in the long run and under various economic preconditions.
In this study we use the Longitudinal Employer–Employee sample data (FLEED, Statistics Finland)
which combines information from several administrative registers. The FLEED sample data is a 1/3
random sample data of people aged 15 to 70 living in Finland between the years 1988 and 2011. In
this study 1992, 1997 and 2003 are the baseline years. Year 1992 represents deep recession, 1997
economic growth and 2003 time of structural change and recovery from a minor economic
downturn in 2001-2002. The study included employees of the plants that employed at least 10
employees and were closed in 1992, 1997 or 2003. The follow-up time covers 7 years after and 3
years before the baseline year. Attachment to the labour market was measured by the number of
months in employment per year and employment patterns were analysed by trajectory analysis.
The labour market statuses of the different trajectory groups were analysed by the main status
during follow-up years.
The objectives of the study were twofold: Firstly, how do the displaced workers attach to the labour
market under various macro-economic preconditions? Who will be re-employed immediately? Who
ends up outside the labour market, and what kinds of labour market transitions displaced workers
have? Secondly, how do the employment trajectories of displaced workers develop in the long run?
How much are employment trajectories shaped by status transitions and public interventions, such
as pension schemes or re-training?
The results clearly indicate that re-employment varies strongly according to economic cycles and
labour market fluctuations. The recession year 1992 was an exception. The employment trajectories
differentiated also according to the individual characteristics, where the age and education seem to
be the most important selectivity criteria. The effect of institutional factors, such as pension systems
and reforms in the unemployment pension system, affected the changes of the main statuses during
the follow-up years. On the basis of the results it is clear that the employment opportunities for
those who had no vocational education were the weakest, especially during the recession years.
41
Greek youth in the great Greek depression: from difficult transitions to emigration
Maria Karamessini (Panteion University)
Even before the 2008 financial crisis, young people in Greece experienced difficult transitions from
education to work which delayed their access to stable employment until their late twenties and
even early thirties. Protracted transitions became a structural feature of the Greek labour market in
the 1980s and 1990s with the rapid growth of youth unemployment and its duration at labour
market entry. After reaching its peak at the end of the nineties, youth unemployment retreated
through the 2000s, but still stood at 22% in 2008. The mainstream explanations for delayed
transitions was stringent employment protection legislation, a high minimum wage pricing youth out
of jobs, the poor quality of education that was unable to cater the skills needs of firms and
overprotection of youth by their family that raised their reservation wage and caused “wait
unemployment”. Inadequate job creation during the period of economic stagnation (1980-1993) and
a mismatch between the occupational structure of the new jobs and the outflows from education,
with an increasing share of higher education graduates, constitute alternative explanations.
During the austerity phase of the current crisis, employment protection legislation was loosened, a
special minimum wage for youth under 25 was first established and fixed at 68% of the the minimum
wage in the beginning of 2012 and 10% less than the new minimum wage for those 25 and over, and
new labour market policy schemes were created offering youth employment and training for no
more than five months. However, these measures did not prevent youth unemployment from rising
from 22.2% to 58.3% between 2008 and 2013 and long-term unemployment from 8% to 30.5%
across the same period. This is accounted for by the dramatic fall in economic activity and job
opportunities, even for fixed-term contracts. The paper deals with the impact of the great Greek
depression on the transitions of youth from education to work and their decision to migrate.
42
Incidence and intensity of employer-funded training in Finland – does the type or motive
of temporary or part-time work matter for the outcomes?
Merja Kauhanen1, Jouko Nätti2 and Satu Ojala2
1 Labour Institute for Economic Research, email: merja.kauhanen@labour.fi
2 University of Tampere, emails: jouko.natti@uta.fi, satu.ojala@uta.fi
Skills development including employer-funded training has been regarded as one of the core
dimensions of job quality in the literature given the importance of skills for employees’ life chances
and employability. This article studies the impact of different job contract types on participation in
the employer-funded training and on training intensity. In the analysis job contract types are
adjusted to take into account the heterogeneity in different types of temporary and part-time work..
As a comparison group to different groups of temporary and part-time workers we use permanent
and full-time workers. In the statistical analyses we use data from the Finnish Quality of Work Life
Surveys from years 1997, 2003 and 2008. As our data covers a period of over ten years, we are also
able to study changes in the incidence and intensity of employed-funded training and the impact of
the type of employment contract on this.
We investigate the impact of the type of job contract on receiving employer-funded training using
probit regressions where in addition to the job contract type we control for a large number of
individual-specific characteristics and job-specific characteristics. Our preliminary results imply that
there does not only exist differences in the predicted probabilities of participation in the employerfunded training between full-time, permanent workers and workers in flexible employment
contracts , but that there are also differences between the workers in different types of temporary
and part-time work. We found that temporary and part-time employees attended employer-funded
training clearly less often than permanent full-time employees. Within temporary employees
participation in employer-funded training was lowest among substitutes and the combined group of
temporary workers such as seasonal, on-call workers and workers in subsidised employment.
Probabilities of participation in the employer-funded training have increased for all groups from
1997 to 2008, but the differences between the groups have remained around the same.
Our results from hurdle regressions studying the intensity of the employer-funded training show
that there are also differences in the training intensity by the contract type. According to the
preliminary results the number of training days attended by substitutes is on average 1.4 days less,
by part-time workers 1.1 days less when the effect of other background factors is controlled for and
the number of training days is greater than zero. By contrast no statistically significant differences
were found in the number of training days attended by project workers and the combined group of
temporary workers and permanent full-time employees. Our results indicate that our earlier
assumption about temporary and part-time workers being in a poorer position requires a more
analytical approach that takes account of intergroup and intragroup differences as well as changes
over time.
Keywords: skills development, training, incidence, intensity, job quality, job contract type
43
Does one-size fit all? Restructuring collective bargaining institutions in Romania and
Greece during the crisis
Aristea Koukiadaki and Aurora Trif
(University of Manchester, Dublin City University Business School)
Against the background of a profound economic crisis in Europe, the implementation of structural
adjustment programmes that accompany the loan agreements provided by the ‘Troika’ of creditors
(i.e. the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Bank) are
radically transforming the national systems of labour market regulation in a number of EU Member
States. Driven by a logic of ‘internal devaluation’, significant changes have taken place with respect,
in particular, to collective bargaining arrangements, including among others, decentralisation of
bargaining, suspension of extension mechanisms and use of non-union representatives for the
conclusion of agreements. The paper examines the implications of these reforms for the articulation
of collective bargaining in two countries where the reforms have been most profound, these are
Greece and Romania. While pre-crisis the collective bargaining systems in both countries were based
on an elaborate system of multi-level collective bargaining, there were significant differences with
respect to issues around the competitiveness of the national economies and the overall type of
capitalism adopted, i.e. Romania has a special type of neoliberal capitalism whilst Greece was
traditionally represented as an example of a ‘Mediterranean style of capitalism’. Despite these
country specificities, the collective bargaining reforms in both countries share a number of common
characteristics and risk destabilising multi-employer collective bargaining and other forms of coordination with negative implications not only for trade unions, but also for employers’ associations
and central government/regional authorities. This paper compares the process for the
implementation of the reforms as well as the substance of the latter, as influenced by supranational
institutions, the direction of national policy and the social actors’ approach, and critically assesses
the implications of the reforms for the role of collective bargaining in regulating the employment
relationship.
44
Stable Employment, Permanent Adaptation or Labour Deprivation? Considering
Trajectories of Labour Market Integration among Immigrants in Finland
Oxana Krutova, Liudmila Lipiäinen, Pertti Koistinen (University of Tampere)
Immigration has become imprescriptible part of the Finnish labour market that also predetermines
especial character of labour market integration for immigrants. Previous studies verify clearly that
the labour market integration of foreign-born population is often more inefficient, time consuming
and socially selective then the labour market integration of host population (Forsander 2002;
Heikkilä&Pikkarainen 2008; Timonen 2004). As an analytical concept, the theory of transitional
labour markets provides an interesting analytical tool for dealing with an individual’s whole labour
market career as a holistic unit. It sounds especially important to increase risk-taking and the
security necessary for it, taking the regionally large, but functionally thin, labour market of Finland
into account. (Räisänen&Schmid 2008; Roed & Shoene 2012)
The main research aim is to define what trajectories, as “paths” of labour market integration that
immigrants follow through the time, are typical for careers of immigrants in a long-term perspective.
Considering the labor integration process as a dynamic development, during which immigrants carry
out multifarious transitions between statuses at the labour market and outside it, we focus on
characterization and summarization of longitudinal characteristics of individual sequences during the
process of labour market integration by means of applying the sequence analysis and the cluster
analysis methods.
For our research, we use the Finnish Longitudinal Employer-Employee Data (FLEED), created by the
Statistics of Finland. We chose from the FLEED sample data only those immigrants, who have been
registered in the Register Office of Finland after receiving a first residence permit in 2000. Then we
follow their carriers during 2000-2010 and classify trajectories of “sequences” as consisting of such
statuses as employment, unemployment, apprenticeship, economic inactivity and pension. The
sequence analysis and cluster analysis are carried out by means of the TraMineR R package, which is
available from the Comprehensive R Archive Network.
General tendency shows that after several years of living in a country, the employment rate
essentially increases as for men as for women. Heterogeneity of immigrants’ groups on age, gender
and education implies also heterogeneity of ways of integration. Certain categories of immigrants
have a stable trajectory to job-placement (as immediate as delayed), while trajectories to jobplacement for other categories of immigrants are more complicated, diverse and hazardous. Women
are more exposed to be unemployed, partially employed or outside the labour market.
Earlier entering the labour market predetermines faster integration and more sustainable
employment whereas delayed entering the labour market decreases probability to be sustainably
employed. Based on labour adaptation, labour of migrants becomes more flexible that implies more
circulated character of behavior at the labour market. In general, first and longer second statuses of
immigrants at the labour market are still directed to future employability. Further circulation of
statuses (“spin”) signify active adaptation to external conditions, the labour market attachment and
aspiration for any employment. This is a culmination and a point of bifurcation of integration. The
third stage of the integration period becomes a decisive as leads to final employment, isolation
outside the labour market, labour deprivation or withdrawal and recurrent resettlement.
45
Labour market segmentation and youth employment insertion in France: a job-finding
channels approach
Guillemette de Larquier and Géraldine Rieucau
(EconomiX, Paris Ouest Nanterre & Centre d’études de l’emploi, France, Centre d’études de l’emploi
& Paris 8, LED, France)
How do young people find their first job and the following ones ? Is it thanks to their school,
employment agencies, personal contacts, direct applications or job adverts? Do they mostly find
their successive jobs through the same channel or not? Drawing on a longitudinal French survey
(Enquête Génération 20044), this contribution explores the individual paths to job finding. We argued
that “job-finding channels trajectories” highlights the segmentation young people face at the start of
their working life.
Job-finding channel changes with the job’ rank (from first to fifth job). For instance, the weight of
employment agencies raises with the job’ rank. The weight of each channel varies as a function of
gender and educational level. Interestingly, the first job-finding channel predicts in a good part the
second one. We built a typology of the “job-finding channels trajectories”, with the method to build
careers' typology used in Larquier and Remillon (2009). A Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
followed by an Ascending Hierarchical Classification (ACH) reveal five classes. In the first class, we
gather trajectories characterised by one specific channel (returns in a firm where one has already
worked); the second class brings together trajectories marked by an important use of social
networks. There are two classes of trajectories through external labour markets: one is dominated
by intermediaries (agencies, job adverts) and the other one by direct applications. In the last class,
trajectories take place within an “extended internal labour market” (Manwaring, 1984)
characterised by school and internal mobility. Finally, drawing on binomial regressions the sociodemographic profiles of people who belong to each class were analysed, taking into account the
characteristics of the job in 2011, the number of the jobs held since school, the number and duration
of unemployment episodes. These analyses suggest that young people who return in a firm where
they have already worked and those who are in the extended labour market are more likely to have
stable employment trajectories. By contrast, external labour markets are associated with unstable
trajectories, with swings between employment and unemployment. People belonging to the class
dominated by networks are more likely to have fewer jobs and longer out of work episodes.
4
The Génération 2004’s survey questions young people in 2007, three years after they left the school, and
then in 2011. Questions mainly focus on employment, educational and training topics. The survey is
undertaken by the Céreq (Centre d’études et de recherche sur les qualifications)
46
Living in different worlds? Challenges to transnational labour solidarity in the
Eurozone crisis
Steffen Lehndorff
Institut Arbeit und Qualifikation (IAQ) / Universität Duisburg-Essen, Abteilung Arbeitszeit und
Arbeitsorganisation
In today’s Europe, trade unions are facing the challenge of ‘building bridges’ across borders. In the
ongoing crisis in, and of, the Eurozone, the link between the areas of conflict trade unions have to
confront at their respective national levels and the issues at stake at EU level may be obvious for
workers and unions in the so-called “periphery” but are far from obvious for their counterparts in
the so-called “core” countries. Thus, the question what ‘solidarity’ actually means in practice is far
from trivial. The paper proposed to the conference argues that unions in individual countries have
no choice but to fight the dominant EU crisis management policies primarily at national level. This is
where transnational action must be founded, unless solidarity becomes a matter of lip service.
The argument is developed by a comparison between the problems faced by trade unions in Greece
and Spain on the one hand, and in Germany on the other. In the “periphery” countries trade unions
confront a dramatic dismantling of labour standards which impacts substantially on the institutional
potentials of future interest representation of labour. In contrast, unions in Germany may give the
impression of a “sleeping giant” as they appear to focus on cooperative measures geared to
moderate wage increases and the safeguarding of jobs at firm level. As a closer look at the first half
of the 2000s reveals, however, German trade unions were the biggest pre-crisis losers. The
weakening of the German collective bargaining system and the defeat in the struggles around the
Agenda 2010 were at the heart of the growing economic imbalances within the Eurozone which
have surfaced dramatically in the Eurozone crisis. The crisis, in turn, is now being exploited to
dismantle trade unions’ institutional power resources in other countries with a degree of radicalism
that goes far beyond the German model. Thus, mainstream policy approaches within the EU have
made the disempowerment of one union into a problem for the others. To acknowledge these
boomerang effects could be the starting point of serious transnational cooperation.
47
Employment transitions and turning points in individuals’ life course in times of recession
and austerity: the cases of Spain and the UK.
Martí López-Andreu (Marie Curie Fellow, MBS, University of Manchester)
The presentation presents first results of an ongoing research that has the aim to analyse how
individuals cope with the employment changes that 2008 recession has provoked in the UK and
Spain. Although restructuring and flexible labour markets are far from a new development, the
recession and its aftermath imply in many countries even more instability and insecurity in the
labour market (unemployment, non-standard or insecure employment, etc.). The effect of the
recession in individuals in many countries has been a change in employment and working conditions.
In addition, these employment transitions interact with changes in social and employment policies
(austerity policies, changes in social benefits, employment policies, collective bargaining, etc.) that
reinforce and deepen trends already existing since the 1980s towards a greater fragmentation of
society. In many countries there is an erosion of the institutional supports and resources in
employment and life course that traditionally have shaped them. The research is focused in the
effects of the crisis as a turning point; that is it is interested in individuals who experienced a
downward move in their employment situation. Once these groups have been identified by a
quantitative analysis, the research uses narrative biographies to investigate how these individuals
cope with these employment changes in terms of what supports and resources they use and have
access to reach their employment, personal and social objectives. The research question that
emerges is which groups and in which employment situations have been more affected by different
employment transitions? How individuals with different social profiles and resources cope with
these changes? And how are the changes affecting their living and working conditions? Such a
perspective requires an interaction between labour market trajectories and life course as options,
choices and projects in the labour market are closely linked to household and family situation, the
institutional context, community networks and personal and social orientations. In the current stage
we will present first results using the EU-SILC longitudinal data base in order to identify the social
and employment profiles in which the recession has been a turning point. We will discuss main social
and employment characteristics of different employment transitions and present first results of
narrative biographies with the profiles identified.
48
The Decentralization of Minimum Wage Setting in Russia – Courses and Consequences
Anna Lukiyanova and Nina Vishnevskaya
Centre for Labour Market Studies, National Research University – Higher School of Economics,
Moscow
As scholars of comparative industrial relations have frequently noted there are large cross-national
differences not only in the level of minimum wage but in the minimum wage setting mechanism as
well [Eyraud and Saget, 2005]. Minimum wage setting procedure determines inter alia the level and
dynamics of this indicator [Boeri 2009]. In Russia, the role of minimum wage is more than a floor for
the wage structure to protect low-wage earners. The wage minima in Russia is used as reference
value for several welfare provisions. More than that, the level of statutory national minimum wage
influences the wage formation in the enterprises through collective bargaining [Vishnevskaya
Kulikov, 2009]. All these explain the special attention, which social partners -- trade unions and
employers’ organizations – pay to the minimum wage fixing.
Large countries with vast territories often use regional minimum wages, which are fixed by local
authorities. The Russian model of minimum wage setting, on the contrary, was very centralized since
regions were completely deprived of the opportunity to influence its level. However, the certain
regional differences still existed due to the fact that in the considerable number of Russian regions,
mostly northern territories, the federal minimum wage multiplied by regional coefficients.
Starting in 2007, a number of dramatic changes in minimum wage setting were introduced. The most
significant one was the gradual decentralization of minimum wage setting. Now 83 Russian regions
have the right to define their own regional minima. The only conditions – the regional minimum
wage should be set above the federal flow. Simultaneously, under the decentralization policy was
eliminated the link between the federal minimum wage and the Northern multiplier, previously set
in federal legislation
The main motivation of the paper is to analyze the courses that initiated the decentralization
process and its main consequences. Russia uses the method of minimum wage fixing which is based
on cost of living and aims to determine a rate that will cover the basic needs of workers. Price
differentiation in Russian regions has caused the vast differentiation in the purchasing power of the
minimum wage. The empirical analysis of 83 regional minimum wage agreements leads to the
conclusion that under the decentralized model the level of the regional minimum wages better
reflect not only the climatic conditions but also the economic situation of individual regions: the
level of prices, the dynamics of average wage, employment and unemployment, the proportion of
minimum wage earners.
At the same time the regional minimum wage applies only to companies that participated in the
negotiation process, and excludes federal employees. The co-existence of the federal minimum
wage and regional wage has led to the emergence of new imbalances, which studied in detail in the
presentation. In particular, the lower minimum wages for public employees lead to the negative
selection to the public sector. Despite the fact that the law on the Russian minimum wage has been
seriously modified the task of improving the minimum wage setting mechanism is still relevant.
49
Disability services workers under individualised funding models: new challenges for
fairness and decency at work.
Fiona Macdonald and Sara Charlesworth
University of South Australia
Radical reform of Australia’s disability support system will rapidly expand service provision under an
individualised market-based funding model. Consumer-centred support and individualised funding
arrangements are key features of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), underpinning the
objectives of greater choice and control for people with disability (COAG, 2012). Support funds for
individuals are now portable between service providers and it is anticipated that a growing
proportion of funds will be self-managed by consumers rather than managed by service providers.
It is anticipated that the current disability workforce will need to double by 2018 to fully implement
the NDIS (Commonwealth of Australia, 2013:17). The success of this model of disability support
assumes a skilled and responsive workforce of well-supported workers who are able to provide high
quality services (COAG 2012; Productivity Commission 2011: 736). However, surprisingly little
attention has been paid to the current or future employment conditions of disability workers that
underpin the provision of high quality services. Further, while the evidence base in Australia is
limited, experience elsewhere suggests there may be considerable risks for fairness and decency at
work associated with individualised funding models such as the NDIS (Cortis et al., 2013). Service
provider organisations faced with increased uncertainty and limited funding may transfer risks to
individual workers with other threats to fair and decent work arising from shifts away from
organisational employment to direct employment and contracting and to increased home-based
work (Rubery & Urwin 2010). In the Australian context, in particular, there is a danger that the
existing, although porous, employment regulation safety net for disability support workers may be
eroded via the implementation of NDIS. State governments who employ a small proportion of
disability support workers are looking to ‘divest’ themselves of these employees, while some
employers in the community services sector want a specific (lower) set of conditions for care
workers who provide in-home care.
Drawing on an analysis of policy documents and interviews with unions and disability advocates we
examine policy tensions inherent in the NDIS model. We focus on the apparent conflict between the
provision of decent jobs and flexible responsive disability services and the ways in which a funding
model that provides one unit price for care delivered under the NDIS might impact on working
conditions. We examine the early piloting of the NDIS and consider the longer-term prospects for
fairness and decency at work for disability services workers under the NDIS reforms. Our analysis
draws out the implications for care workers under individualised funding models more generally as
well as the use of disability support work to undermine the conditions of other care workers.
50
Manolchev, C and Lewis, D. "Channelling Employment Voice against Pressures of
Workplace Displacement: A Network Approach to Fairness at Work"
Constantine Manolchev
MPhil/PhD Researcher and Associate Lecturer Human Resources and Leadership
Postgraduate School of Management Faculty of Business, Mast House, Drake Circus,
Plymouth, PL4 8AA
The hypothesised overlap of employment and social spheres, re-structured into a new, ‘tertiarised’
environment (Standing, 2011), has been a complex and multifaceted process (Bauman, 2000;
Doogan, 2013). The number of employees on ‘atypical’, zero-hour contracts has reached 3% of the
workforce, or approximately 1’000’000 people (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Survey, 2013). Overall usage of agency, temporary and fixed-term contracts may have remained
unchanged, yet other non-standard types of employment (shift work, annualised hours) are on the
increase (Wanrooy et al, 2013). These developments, combined with recent (Local Government
Authority Media Release, 2014) projections that around 8 million of the UK’s current labour-force
will either be jobless or over-qualified for their role within the next ten years, make for an
increasingly precarious employment experience (standing, 2011; 2012). This parallel existence of
changes alongside continuities, therefore, not only adds complexity to the employment
environment, but makes trend identification difficult.
Global markets have placed economic, social and employment pressures on national economies
creating a “fluid” environment of international demand, and requiring businesses to adopt an
equally flexible approach (Bauman, 2000). This demand on local employers to expand, or contract,
labour costs in line with global capital flows has arguably (Standing, 2011; Kalleberg, 2012) put an
end to secure forms of employment, and despite this view being contested (Fevre, 2007; Doogan,
2013), levels of poverty among UK workers appear to be on the rise (Barnes and Lord, 2013; Lawton
and Thompson, 2013). Links between growing employment precarity and insecurity has been
explored widely, but disagreement on what its causes are, and which groups are affected the most,
remains (Doogan, 2013; Spencer, 2012). Crucially, a key perspective appears to be missing from the
discussion – that of the workers, themselves.
Such consideration of worker experiences is likely to uncover a rich variety of perspectives, or
‘reference points’ (a concept to which we return later), ranging from East European migrants seeing
work in the UK as a coveted Utopia, through employees on permanent contract fearing redundancy,
to underemployed UK workers (working less hours than they would like to) who are no longer living
the dream. This richness of reality construction (cf Coupland, 2007), leads us to conclude that
resultant experiences and perceptions of fairness at work are also likely to vary in kind. Grounded in
a constructivist paradigm, our paper, therefore, seeks to address what appears to be a disparity in
prevalent approaches in the structured conceptualisation of organisational justice. Our proposal is
for the adoption of an inclusive theoretical framework, in order to explore key (external and
personal) influences on the experiences of fairness in the workplace, setting them against a
precarious external environment and within a social identity theory framework (Tajfel and Turner,
2004 in Worchel et al. (eds), 2004; Brewer and Miller, 1984 in Miller and Brewer (eds), 1984). Our
construct, however, applies this social identity framework in a conceptually distinctive way and we
propose three types of group (‘network’) attitudes towards individuals, corresponding to levels of
tolerated integration: “seductive displacement”, “reductive displacement” and “destructive
displacement” (cf Todorov and Brown, 2010; Brewer and Miller, 1984 in Miller and Brewer (eds),
1984). “Seductive displacement”, here, refers to attitudes which lead to individual assimilation into
an organisation, with employees substituting the organisation’s collective identity for their own.
Employees are able to voice concerns of unfair practices through network channels but may choose
instead to enact the group identity and conform to the ‘groupthink’ of the majority (cf Janis, 1972).
51
“Reductive displacement” addresses discrimination of the ‘one’ by the ‘many’, based on the
reduction of individuals to a single, possibly stigmatised characteristic and denial of employee voice
(Goffman, 1971; Todorov and Brown 2010). “Destructive displacement” on part of the network is a
refusal to engage with individuals or allow them to enter the organisational network, thus,
effectively silencing employee voice. We hypothesise the latter two conditions to be likely
antecedents of unfair treatment experiences at the workplace.
In proposing a cohesive framework for the theoretical integration of “self-interest” and “groupvalue” approaches, this paper positions itself as a succession to earlier work by, for instance, by Lind
and Tyler (1998), Blader and Tyler (2003), Cropanzano and Folger’s (1989) and so on. Incorporating
an external “plug-in” into our model, however, allows us to extend preceding approaches. We do so,
by hypothesising a range of employee behaviours, informed by the corresponding level of perceived
workplace unfairness and conditioned through an a priori process of ‘dynamic displacement’.
52
The incidence and structure of flexible employment in Latin American countries: revisiting
the evidence and explanations
Adriana Marshall
(CONICET-CIS/IDES)
As extensively described in the literature, “flexible” employment relationships (e.g. direct fixed-term
and casual contracts, contracts through labour agencies, subcontracting, and employment lacking
formal contract) generally may be characterised as being of lower quality in terms of dimensions
such as stability, pay, access to social benefits, right to unionise, and collective bargaining coverage.
Further, those employment relationships tend to be over-represented in jobs requiring less
schooling and skills.
It has often been speculated that sustained economic growth during a reasonably long period,
particularly if manufacturing industry plays a leading role in the growth process, accompanied by
improving labour market situations, is a favourable conditions for the reduction of the incidence of
such flexible, lower-quality employment relationships. On the other hand, legal regulation of the
employment relationship has been shown to be a crucial determinant of the frequency of the
different types of flexible employment. However, the latter may up to a point be impervious to the
influence of both the economic growth context and legal norms. Sustained economic growth and
manufacturing development may not suffice to ensure the expansion of good, better protected jobs,
while employer practices may fail to respond in the expected way to the positive or negative
incentives brought about by labour legislation reforms, as those practices may also be dependent on
historical traditions and previous trajectories in each country.
The study reported in this article is expected to contribute to the understanding of these issues
through the analysis of trends in the employment structure in three Latin American countries Argentina, Chile and Peru – and the factors that may help explain them, focusing in the 2000s-early
2010s. Throughout most of this period these countries, even though implementing dissimilar
economic policies, experienced persistently high (Argentina and Peru) or moderate (Chile) economic
growth rates, and similarly improved global labour market indicators, but employment regulations in
each country followed distinctive courses. This context seems appropriate to investigate the
relationships between pace and modality of growth, regulation and the incidence and structure of
poor-quality jobs.
The article is organised as follows. The framework of analysis is presented first. Next, and focusing in
the period 2000s-early 2010s, the economic policies applied in each country, as well as global
economic and labour market trends, are sketched in section 2, and the implemented labour
legislation affecting employment contracts is reviewed in section 3, paying attention also to
enforcement policies. In the fourth section, the above-mentioned flexible employment forms in each
country are typified in terms of dimensions such as stability, pay, skill requirements, protection, right
to unionisation, and collective bargaining coverage, drawing on evidence available in the literature
and my own estimates based on survey data. The evolution of each country´s employment structure
in terms of the relative incidence of the different types of those low-quality jobs is examined in
section 5, discussing the respective influences of economic, institutional and cultural factors in
shaping employer practices, and therefore the job structure.
53
Justice for Janitors ‘Goes Dutch’: the Introduction and the Implementation of New Organizing
Model in the Netherlands.
Stefania Marino, Miguel Martinez Lucio, Heather Connolly
Since 2005, parts of the Dutch trade union movement started adopting a “new organizing approach”
with the aim of recruiting new groups of workers and as a broader strategy for union renewal at the
grassroots level. The adoption of such (supposedly) militant/confrontational strategies seemed
unusual for the Dutch system that has been referred to as an example of “corporatism par
excellence” (Lehmbruch, 1979) characterized by a high degree of consensus, cooperation and
coordination among responsible ‘social partners’ (Hemerijck, 1995).
This paper aims to study the influence of external contextual factors and internal trade union
processes on the adoption and implementation of this approach in the Netherlands. Furthermore it
explores the role played by a set of individual actors and specific moments of change within the
trade unions and the extent to which they have been able to promote renewal: thus critiquing a
path-dependent approach. Finally, the paper comments on the effects that the implementation of
such a mobilising oriented approach is having on a corporatist model of industrial relations.
To answer these questions, this paper draws on empirical research, in the form of interviews with
trade unions officials at different union levels including organizers and participant observation.
The paper shows that the introduction of the new organizing approach in the Netherlands has been
supported by individuals who have almost acted as “political entrepreneurs” (See Greer and
Hauptmeier, 2008) and have established a community of interest and networks around organizing
including international links with the US Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The approach
has been successful in some sectors leading to the improvement of working conditions and
increased membership. It has also stimulated organisational changes within the Dutch trade union
movement that are emerging from a systemic tension with traditional state oriented models of
industrial relations. The paper also underlines the relevance of specific external and internal factors
on the way in which trade unions and individuals have framed and adopted organizing. In particular,
the analysis shows how in the Dutch context, similar to the UK case, the new organizing approach
seems to be adopted as a response to the (threat of) decline of trade union influence. However,
when compared to the UK, the specific trade union structure and traditions in the Netherlands have
produced differences in the way the organizing approach has been framed and implemented.
From a more theoretical point of view, the article argues that institutional and cultural factors
related to both the external contexts and the labour organization itself have a clearly recognisable
impact on trade union strategies. However, explanations of trade unions renewal strategies based
on the influence of such variables often trace a deterministic causal relationships between
dependent and independent variable. In this respect, this paper tries to remain alert to this danger
by paying attention to the individual actors, perceptions and political motivations as well as to the
role of the internal political micro-processes as source for trade union renewal.
54
New Management Practices and the Question of Regulation: A Reflection on
the Incapacitation of State Intervention
Miguel Martínez Lucio
The paper attempts to review certain aspects of the HRM and New Management Practices (NMP)
debate since the late 1980s in the light of discussions of regulation. It will outline debates on NMP
and HRM in relation to the way the workplace has been engaged with by management in an attempt
to re-define representation and regulation. It will argue that there is an increasingly coercive and
interventionist dimension to the state that is driving a more performance driven agenda which does
not link clearly to the new governance and indirect roles it has attempted to develop. This is as much
due to the fracturing of the state and the limited remit of its legitimation role as anything else in the
light of the changing neo-liberal context. It as much the outcome of the strategies of ‘de-regulation’
and ‘disorganisation’ as they are the outcome of a systematic move to a ‘Taylorised’ state. The state
has in effect become an inconsistent and unstable feature of work and employment relations giving
rise to new challenges in relation to the role of the political at work. Within organisations
themselves the focusing on performance management reflects this ongoing fragmentation of
control.
55
Preaching to the ‘unconverted’: the broader benefits of taking an intersectional approach
McBride, A.1, Hebson, G1. and Holgate, J.2
(1) University of Manchester (2) University of Leeds
Intersectional analysis has been developing since its emergence from critical race feminism in the
1980s when it was used to conceptualize the experiences of discrimination and marginalization of
black women in employment. While its contribution has been much debated within sociological and
gender specific journals, its use still remains relatively limited to researchers of discrimination,
exploitation and marginalization. This, we argue has led to missed opportunities in the
understanding, recording and analysis of diverse experiences in studies of work and employment
more generally. This presentation will indicate how Crenshaw’s (1989; 1991) conceptualisation of
intersectionality reminds us how the single axis of analysis conflates or ignores intragroup
differences and is a useful caution against over-generalization. Bringing the concept of
intersectionality to the fore prompts us to acknowledge the implications of voices that are both
present and missing. The authors argue that all researchers could benefit from reflecting on the
implications of being more intersectionally sensitive. While not everyone conducts research on
discrimination and fairness at work, we all have a duty to problematize relationships within groups
such that we don’t just capture the experiences of the ‘otherwise privileged’ (Crenshaw 1989).
56
Health and safety at work, psychological risks in the public urban transports
Philippe Méhaut and Cathel Kornig Lest/CNRS
Contact : philippe.mehaut@univ-amu.fr
Public urban transports (here namely bus transportation) are under pressures. On the one hand,
scarcity of funds, new kinds of public management, privatizations are challenging the economic
models of firms: who is the client (the public authority, the final consumer)? What are the rules for
the prices and rewards for the firms? How increase productivity. The use of new technologies
(direct information of the client on his mobile phone, on line quality control and watching within the
bus) is expanding and put more pressure on the work organization.
On the other hand, workers are twisted between new rules of productivity and of quality of services,
and new behaviors of customers, including just in time demand and also, sometimes, aggression,
harassment. Despite better equipment which allow to avoid some physical injuries, stress and
tensions in the relationship with the clients as well as with the other users of the roads seems to
lead to new kinds of work injuries or diseases. In some firms, absenteeism and/or labor turnover is
increasing and is more expensive. However, firms are depending on long term public contracts and
public funds from the township authority. And, in the French case, they have inherited of
employment rules and status coming from before privatization.
The key question of the paper is how firms (management, unions) are facing to these new risks. How
to take into account the fact that external cause (changes in the society, urban segregation) matter,
with which it is not easy to tackle. It is well known in the literature that work organization, working
time (early/late night shifts), support from hierarchy and colleagues are key variables. Less is said
about the various human management devices, including reward and sanction and about the
external factors.
The paper is first based on longitudinal data on some 200 private firms providing public
transportation services for local authorities. Data allows providing new analyses on the relationship
between working conditions, health and safety and costs of absenteeism. The paper is also based on
in depth case studies of some firms, including interviews and follow up of drivers, union’s
representatives, on the questions of who is the client, how to deal with (eventually) contradictory
tasks prescription, how to work and to face to various human management tools.
The first part will review briefly the literature and provide an overview about some specificity of the
French public urban transports. The second part will draw the picture of the costs of the heath
injuries at work, including the new risks, such as the psychological risks, linked to the contact with
the client and the other users of the roads. The third part will examine the way by witch firms and
unions are managing this new environment and the new risks at the work place. Conclusion will
come back to theoretical framework and provide some policy recommendations.
57
Well-being: Thick concepts and strict science
Gitte Meyer
All over Europe, attempts are currently being made to scientifically measure the well-being of
various groups, be it the populations of nation states, pupils in schools, members of professional
groups or employees of different industries or companies. This paper reports on an ongoing study
into the relationships – and the discources on those relationships – between strict, scientific norms
and the thick concept of well-being, descriptive and normative at the same time.
A preliminary series of interviews has been conducted with Danish academics and professionals,
drawn mainly from the areas of work-related research, intervention and regulation: How do they
manage to combine the object of well-being with demands for strict scientific evidence? A brief
answer appears to be: They don't. There is much frustration around.
Moving into Sweden and the UK and supported by general studies of academic and public discourses
on the uses of well-being and kindred notions as scientific concepts – in the Scandinavian countries
the ancient Nordic term trivsel (thriving, flourishing) is in vogue – the study aims at identifying and
describing different positions in relation to the issue.
Difficulties relating to attempts to measure human well-being are recognised in the academic
literature. Focusing on how subjective experiences may be described objectively, it tends, however,
to approach the issue area by area and to deal with it by way of suggesting possible expansions of
the lists of factors to be included in studies.
According to the present study, there is a tendency among medical doctors to understand well-being
in the objective and restricted sense of not being exposed to disease-causing stress. There is
frustration because scientific research into how possible psychological stress factors might cause
disease seems prone to move in circles and mess up causes and effects. At the the same time, there
is a tendency among psychologists to argue that investigations and interventions should include
additional complex concepts – such as recognition, fairness and cooperation – in order to capture
and, at the end of the day, increase subjective experiences of well-being.
From a pragmatic position one source suggests a radical separation of science and practice. Scientific
research proper, then, must live up to strict methodical demands, but tends, as a consequence, to
produce only scarce evidence concerning causes and effects of human well-being or its defect,
stress. On the other hand, the well-being surveys, for instance, that have become standard in many
work-places, should be regarded as merely practical means to provide the management and
employees with food for talk. But do those who are exposed to well-being surveys, rhetorically
appearing to represent the authority of science, appreciate such enterprises as non-scientific?
Should they? And does a radical separation of science and practice make sense in the context of
work-related research? The rise of human well-being as a scientific research topic is an opportunity
to further reflection and exhange across disciplines and research areas on how to deal scientifically
with inherently normative concepts without harming the well-being of science and its objects.
Gitte Meyer
CBS Center for Civil Society Studies
58
Barriers facing mature graduates in the labour market
Francine Morris
In the UK, much of the discourse on age inequality within organizations remains polarized, focusing
on the under-employment of the young and the winding down of the graying population.
This paper reports on alternative age issues. The expansion of higher education over the last decade
has led to an increased number of mature students, a group eager to gain qualifications to improve
their life position and career prospects (HEFCE, 2013), but who challenge norms associated with
linear careers and life courses. This paper explores whether or not age barriers potentially limit some
of the assumed labour market gains. By understanding the transition between the education
system and the labour market it is hoped that we can learn more about the way unequal
treatment might influence career patterns (Kerckhoff, 1996).
Thirty qualitative semi-structured interviews with mature graduates probed drivers to higher
education and subsequent experiences in attempting to secure appropriate ‘graduate’ level work.
Thematic analysis revealed findings that age barriers are reproduced in a variety of ways. First,
graduates themselves seem to accept normative, arguably discriminatory recruitment practices as
embedded and unchangeable processes; second, structural barriers are reproduced within
recruitment agencies, university careers services, assessment centres and graduate recruitment
fairs; and finally the organization of graduate work reveals elementary training regimes which ignore
life and previous work experience and are based upon an excessive long hours culture. There was
also significant empirical evidence of cumulative or intersecting forms of inequality, as the impacts
of gender, class and ethnicity worsen age barriers.
The findings show an apparent lack of synergy between the main objectives of widening
participation in higher education and initiatives to broaden age diversity in organizations. It is
therefore vital that careers processes and human resource management practices of organizations
are aligned with institutional efforts to support such individuals.
The paper argues that at the organizational level, the traditional notion of the ‘graduate’ as young,
could be revisited to eradicate unconscious bias and age discrimination practices associated with
embedded stereotypes. In addition, organizations are ill prepared to capitalize on age diversity
opportunities (CIPD, 2014) and they must now consider how best to maximize the potential of
different age groups. One way in which this could be achieved is by paying attention to the talent
management and development needs of mature graduates. At the institutional level there are
implications for careers practitioners and others responsible for supporting graduates in their
transition into the labour market. The research is timely because it highlights tardy labour market
responses to widely debated demographic forecasts, skills deficits and state driven widening
participation initiatives.
59
Good managers know to check with HR: the doing of equality compliance at work
Helen Mortimore
Plymouth University Business School
helen.mortimore@plymouth.ac.uk
Equality regulation in the UK reflects, in the main, Jewson and Mason’s (1986) ‘liberal’ conception of
equal opportunities, with the Equality Act 2010 considered ‘a major landmark in the long struggle for
equal rights’ (Hepple, 2011: 1). The breadth of the act in respect of how many characteristics, and
therefore workers, are protected arguably merits an empirical analysis of how HR and line managers
do compliance in practice. This developmental paper makes a contribution to the literature by
examining HR practitioner and line manager roles in the doing of compliance. This provides a
contemporary perspective on the roles defined in the competing paradigms of HR.
The empirical findings of this paper are drawn from interviews with operational HR practitioners in
the South West of England, the original research question being: how is the doing of equality and
diversity constructed in HR practitioner talk? The research takes a phenomenological, (lower case)
critical social constructionist perspective which does not seek a particular critical narrative; rather
critical analyses may emerge from the data. Purposive sampling was used to identify operational HR
practitioner participants, and transcriptions of their talk analysed using a coding framework with a
view to analysing how the doing of equality is constituted.
The findings demonstrate that people management practice focuses on doing equality and
compliance rather than diversity in the context of the threat posed by potential litigation. The paper
identifies HR practitioners’ reliance on employment law specialists for input of content and
sanctioned decision-making, and a second, similar reliance of line managers on the guidance of HR
practitioners, with ‘good’ managers who know ‘to check’ with HR, and ‘dinosaur’ managers who
‘bulldoze ahead’.
The findings support Keenoy’s (1990) observations that personnel and HRM are complementary
rather than mutually exclusive. Talk of practice reflects paradigms of ‘personnel’ in that practice
remains operationally located and demonstrates a lack of devolution to line managers, devolution
being considered a central tenet of strategic HRM (Cunningham and Hyman, 1995, 1999). Talk
however reflects strategic HRM in that this paradigm concedes that legal matters will still require the
involvement of HR specialists (Holt Larsen and Brewster, 2003). Talk further reflects the strategic
HRM paradigm as the task for HR practitioners is to treat employees with dignity whilst ensuring that
goals of efficiency and performance are foregrounded (Francis and Keegan, 2006: 234; Foote and
Robinson, 1999). In respect of doing equality, efficiency and performance are constructed in talk as
the avoidance of litigation. The need to avoid litigation generates and vindicates the need for
specialist employment law advice and the requirement to control line manager decision-making.
60
Changes in the structure of employment in the long run: the Spanish case 1977-2013.
Rafael Muñoz de Bustillo and José-Ignacio Antón
University of Salamanca
The aim of this paper is to study the changes of the structure of employment in the long run in Spain
from 1977-2013. To do so, we adopt the methodology known as the "jobs approach" popularized by
recent research of the Eurofound. Following this approach, we develop a job matrix (sector of
activity by occupation at two digit level) for the whole Spanish economy at different moments of
time and rank the defined jobs according to their wages. After allocating, using the developed
ranking, the jobs of the Spanish economy to the different quintiles of the labor market, we follow
the evolution of such job quintiles during more than 3 decades that include periods of strong
employment and economic growth as well as important recessions, in order to find out whether
there is an overall distinctive patter of change in the structure of employment. We discuss the
results obtained from the perspective of the debate about technological bias employment change,
routine bias employment change, upgrading, etc.
61
Does technological change inevitably lead to occupational polarization? Census-based
evidence for Ireland and Switzerland, 1970-2010
Emily Murphy and Daniel Oesch
Life Course and Inequality Research Centre (LINES) & NCCR LIVES University of Lausanne, Switzerland
emily.murpy@unil.ch & daniel.oesch@unil.ch
Numerous studies in labour economics explain why technological change polarizes the structure of
affluent OECD countries (e.g. Autor et al. 2008). These studies develop imaginative models showing
that technology must lead to polarization – that is, to expanding employment at the top and the
bottom of the occupational hierarchy, but to falling employment in the middle. However, empirical
evidence for occupational polarization is scarce, and limited to Britain and the US over the last
decade (e.g. Goos and Manning 2007). Comparative studies show a more diverse picture for other
European countries, with occupational upgrading as the predominant trend (e.g. Fernandez-Macias
2012; Oesch 2013). Yet all this research is based on surveys (and thus relatively small samples) and
short time periods (10 to 20 years). In order to assess long-term trends in occupational change and
account for its determinants, a longer time frame and larger samples – ideally census data – are
necessary. In particular, studies should also cover the years prior to the 1990s and the ascent of
information technology (IT), the alleged driver of polarization. This paper analyses the pattern of
occupational change for two countries, Ireland and Switzerland, based on census data spanning the
last four decades, 1970-2010. The objective is to put the technological polarization thesis to an
empirical test – a thesis that attributes no influence to institutions in shaping occupational change.
For this thesis to hold, a common trend of employment polarization should be observed in Ireland
and Switzerland – a trend that echoes the American and British trajectory and appears no earlier
than 1990. However, if institutions matter, we would expect substantial variation over time and
between the two countries. During much of the period under study, Switzerland was a labourimporting specific-education conservative regime, whereas Ireland was a labour-exporting, generaleducation liberal regime.
Keywords: technology, job polarisation, occupations
62
A critical examination of diversity and leadership progression in small and medium
enterprises (SMEs)
Juliet Nagy
In terms of this research background, academic and business interest in diversity has materialised
late; compared to its extensive political narratives. Business interest in diversity only blossomed
when linked with competitive advantage and potentially-increased profits. The polemic ‘business
case’ still necessitates evaluation. Given this corporate interest, there is a theoretical requirement to
integrate leadership with diversity, to be applicable for the modern-day amid new social
environments and changing workforce demographics. The emergence of intersectionality
(Crenshaw, 1989) has been proposed as an innovative paradigm to investigate connections between
marginalised groups and to examine discriminatory practices in diversity management studies.
Although being powerful drivers of the UK economy, and forming 99% of all European businesses
(European Commission, 2014), SMEs remain insufficiently investigated with respect to diversity. The
objective of this research is to discover how diversity affects career progression within the SME
context. This shall be supplemented via evaluation of the significance assigned by SMEs to diversity
management programs. Intersectionality theory shall analyse the representation of diversity within
the workforce and assess the existence of potential career progression obstacles issues. A greater
awareness of diversity and cultural values will aid formulation of leadership theories and procedures
to best fit modern workplace practices.
Many authors have cited the limited leadership research available addressing diversity. The majority
of SME literature covering diversity involves ethnic-minority start-up firms. This research aims to
widen this scope. Culture, both at an individual and organisational level, may initiate employee
progression and empowerment; if correctly managed. Past literature has tended to employ leadermember exchange models and theories. No literature known to the author considers
intersectionality within an SME context to examine career progression barriers. Advocates of
intersectionality argue for clearly established definitions, methodology and practical applications to
further enhance its study.
Although the research methodology is dependent upon the sizes of the accessed SMEs, the initial
research design outline is as follows: mixed-methods within case study evaluation. Data collection
involves an employee questionnaire, from a maximum of 6 SMEs. Questions are centred upon:
perceived successful leadership practices; individual and organisational culture influences; and
career progression. This will be triangulated against document analysis, semi-structured interviews
and ethnography to further validate outcomes. Diversity and leadership require a profound,
contextualised approach; unachievable by other methods. Data analysis comprises a ‘diversity-ratio’
approach (Riaz Hamdani and Buckley, 2011) - the proportion of diverse employees - as a diversity
gauge, with fieldwork outcomes compared to conclude the literal replication progress (Yin, 1994).
With regards to expected contributions, this research advances theories of intersectionality and
argues for a fusion of leadership and diversity. The practical aim is using intersectionality to generate
a framework combining leadership; specifically career progression, and diversity. This will provide an
enhanced understanding of these complementary concepts and will pioneer the design of creative
diversity management programs and allow new management practices to emerge.
63
Building a supportive infrastructure for gender equality in the UK?
Helen Norman, Nina Teasdale and Colette Fagan
In the UK, the main policy developments intended to support gender equality in labour market
participation and employment rates have been tax and benefit reform to ‘make work pay’ for lowincome households, expansion of pre-school and out-of-school childcare, a modest reform of
parental leave to facilitate a greater take-up by fathers, and the promotion of the employee right to
request part-time or flexible hours. However in reality, these reforms have done little to advance
gender equality or improve reconciliation for women given they continue to be more exposed than
men to inactivity, unemployment and low wage traps.
This paper discusses the main developments in the fiscal system (taxation and social benefits),
reconciliation policies and working-time policy over the last five years. We show how progress
towards gender equality has been especially hampered since the Coalition Government took office
and implemented a stringent emergency budget of cuts to in-work tax credits and benefits. These
reforms have had a particularly detrimental impact on women because they are more reliant on this
support due to their higher participation in unpaid care work and their lower earnings. Recent
reforms to childcare provision, parental leave and flexible working, which are designed to support
work-family reconciliation, are likely to have a negligible impact on gender equality while the
incentives for men to take leave or adapt their work schedules to take on more responsibility for
childcare are low.
Thus, women continue to be the ones to make adjustments to reconcile employment with care
responsibilities, mainly by switching to part-time work, for it is difficult to remain employed full-time
due to the cost of full-time childcare combined with the long full-time hours expected in many jobs.
However, part-time employment tends to be poorly paid, lower skilled and with less opportunity for
progression, which perpetuates occupational segregation in the UK labour market.
In order to address this, we argue that the UK Government should focus on improving the availability
and quality of childcare provision for all children, progressing and supporting quality part-time
employment and encouraging fathers to make use of reconciliation measures, such as improving
opportunities for men to work flexibly, in order to support maternal employment and promote a
more gender equitable sharing of care responsibilities.
64
What makes fathers involved? Exploring the relationship between paid work and childcare
Dr Helen Norman and Professor Colette Fagan, University of Manchester, UK5
Although fathers’ roles have been adapting over the last three decades financial provisioning
remains the essence of ‘good’ fathering and the work schedules associated with fathers’
employment is a key factor that shapes their involvement in childcare and domestic work. However,
the relative impact of fathers’ and mothers’ employment on paternal involvement in childcare is
unclear, and little is known about the longer term impact, that is, whether the way parents’ organise
their work and childcare arrangements in the first year of the child’s life impacts on paternal
involvement as the child grows up.
This paper, based on work by Norman, Elliot and Fagan (2014), investigates some of the tensions
between employment and a father’s involved caregiver role. We open with a review of the
qualitative and quantitative results from previous studies concerning father’s contributions to
childraising, including the facilitating influence which statutory parental leave policies and other
reconciliation measures have played in some countries. Then we focus on employed couples to
explore the association that mothers’ and fathers’ employment hours have with paternal
involvement when their child is aged three. Multivariate analysis using the UK’s Millennium Cohort
Study reveals it is the mothers’ employment hours when the child is aged three that has the largest
association with paternal involvement in childcare at this stage in the child’s life, independent of
what hours the father works. Furthermore, both parent’s employment hours when the child was
nine months old have a longitudinal influence on paternal involvement when the child reaches
three, but it is the hours a mother works when the child was aged nine months that has the stronger
association with paternal involvement at age three. This suggests that mothers’ work schedules are
more important for fostering paternal involvement in both the immediate and longer term.
Keywords: Paternal involvement, fathers, childcare, employment, gender roles
5
School of Social Sciences, Arthur Lewis Building, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester. M13
9PL.
65
JOB QUALITY IN PART-TIME AND TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT IN FINLAND FROM 1970s TO 2010s
Satu Ojala, Jouko Nätti, Merja Kauhanen
(University of Tampere, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, and Labour Institute for Economic
Research, Finland)
The European Union aims towards more and better jobs. Job quality has been seen as a critical issue
in gaining these aims because it closely links with increased productivity. Job quality, for its part, is
linked with the employee wellbeing and coping at work and the length of working careers. However,
increased part-time and temporary employment may challenge these aims. In Finland, as in many
other countries, the long term development of the labour markets has brought some more atypical
contractual arrangements. It has been assumed that temporary and part-time employees may be in
a more vulnerable situation not only because of the insecure nature of their employment contract
but also because of, for example, lower autonomy and skills needed at work.
There has been a lack of studies that focus on the connections between the varying forms of atypical
jobs and job quality, and especially on the long-term developments of employees’ working careers.
Our research project “Job quality and later work career in part-time and temporary work” (The
Finnish Work Environment Fund 2013–2014), has examined job quality in part-time and in
temporary work and their connections with later working careers since the 1970s.
Job quality has several approaches. We refer to the theoretical and empirically tested job quality
framework by Munoz-Bustillo et al. (2011). It assumes five pillars of job quality: (1) Pay, (2) Intrinsic
quality of work, (3) Employment quality, (4)
Health and safety and (5) Work-life balance. Job
quality is treated as a mediator that may add more quality to later employment; the results are
compared between atypical and typical jobs (permanent, full-time contract). We take into account
the heterogeneous natures of atypical workers and their preferences. Especially the aspect of
voluntary or involuntary part-time or temporary employment will be analysed.
The Finnish Quality of Work Life Surveys 1977, 1984, 1990, 1997, 2003, 2008 and 2013 have been
analysed from the scope of job quality among short (0–19 hours/week) and long (20–34
hours/week) part-time workers as well as among temporary employed workers. The time series data
with more than 25,000 respondents allow the analysis of the development of job quality among
atypical workers in the Finnish labour markets over five decades.
66
Hermeneutics of OSH Regulation: empirical application of equal standards for a
determinate unprotected group
Ugo Orazulike
The paper provides an assessment of the way that the ILO regulation concerning occupational safety
and health (OSH) produces unwelcome and unintended consequences. The analysis seeks to show
why contemporary international labour law relegates the OSH rights of some indigenous workers. In
doing so the paper looks at how the ILO created internationally accepted rules, definition and
standards for OSH, and which, although it envisaged to protect workers in all occupations,
nevertheless fails to secure measures for protecting many excluded or unprotected workers in the
informal economic sectors – in this case, some determinate local indigenous workers working in
natural environments. In light of this, the paper reviews the commitments by actors, to indigenous
local workers, within the auspices of international labour regulations that deal with OHS. In other
words, do the systems for ensuring that the goals of international OSH policies trickle–down to
operate effectively and equitably, for these local workers in some developing countries? By
providing an assessment of this process the analysis provides a framework for answering whether
the current international labour regime actually helps to solve the OSH challenges facing local
farmers/fishermen and their workers in the Niger Delta.
Keywords: unprotected/excluded workers, right to OSH, ILO OSH regulation, natural working
environments, international labour law
Ugo Orazulike
FairWRC: Fairness at Work Research Centre
University of Manchester UK
67
Consequences of non-standard working hours for work intensity: a cross-national
comparative perspective
Agnieszka Piasna
Increasingly diversified and flexible working time arrangements contribute to a redefinition of the
boundary between standard and non-standard working hours, as well as a renegotiation of norms
related to the expected remuneration for work at atypical times. However, from workers’
perspective, jobs with non-standard hours of work still differ considerably from jobs with standard
hours. This paper explores one such area of divergence and investigates whether non-standard
working hours further segment workers into bad quality jobs characterised by increased work
intensity. The timeliness of this issue stems from the fact that working time has become one of the
main adjustment mechanisms in the labour market reforms undertaken across the EU, largely in
response to the current crisis. A number of measures were introduced that aimed to increase
employers’ scope for flexibility by allowing for adjustments in working time duration and the
allocation of working hours. It is thus necessary to consider what consequences and costs for
workers might be linked to working time adjustments.
Work intensity, defined as a compression of work activities in a unit of time, is of central importance
from the point of view of organisational performance, as well as workers’ health and wellbeing.
Despite the salience of this issue, little is known about sources of work intensification and in
particular how adjustments in working hours may affect it. This gap is addressed by exploring the
possibility that non-standard working hours represent an important mechanism to achieve a closer
fit between labour demand and supply with consequences for work intensity. Fragmented and
employer-controlled schedules become a means to pass the multiple pressures faced by
organisations on the labour force and intensification of work is expected to be an outcome.
A conceptual framework for the analysis is proposed where time and intensity represent two
interrelated components of overall labour input. Moreover, an internationally comparative
perspective is developed to consider institutional factors that impact the relationship between nonstandard working time arrangements and work intensity. In particular, greater equality in work
intensity is expected in countries with stronger collective workers’ representation, less standardised
model of organising working time and where employee discretion is more prevalent.
The analysis uses the European Working Conditions Survey (2005 and 2010) and a sample of 39,780
employees from twenty-two EU countries. Overall, findings point to a divergence in working
conditions along the lines of non-standard working time arrangements. Long weekly working hours,
unsocial hours and employer-led flexibility are all related to increased work intensity as compared to
standard hours. Marginal part-time work that involves flexibility for employers and unpredictability
for workers is linked to particularly high levels of work intensity. The analysis also provides further
evidence about the importance of workers’ discretion and autonomy at the workplace. Finally, there
is less difference in work intensity between jobs with standard and non-standard working hours in a
group of countries where trade unions are stronger and highly diversified working time offers the
greatest scope for employee discretion.
68
The Right To Work In The 21st Century: Legal Promotion Of Employment For Young People
In Italy, Sweden And The UK
Vincenzo Pietrogiovanni
Post--‐Doctoral Researcher --‐ Department of Business Law, School of Economics and Management –
Lund University, Sweden
The paper analyses the state of health of the right to work of young people as a fundamental legal
principle in a comparative perspective. One of the most devastating effects that the current crisis is
producing is the huge increase of youth unemployment, a phenomenon that is occurring in a
singular way in terms of form and consistency. First of all, the paper starts from the analysis of the
right to work as conceived and interpreted in three representative legal systems within the EU
members: Italy as one of the Southern Europe countries, Sweden for the Nordic ones, and the
United Kingdom as a system of common law. The paper, then, takes into account the different
meanings of the right to work: it is characterized by different regulatory contents which determine
its shape as a positive or negative liberty, and as a social right, a right of citizenship, a fundamental
or a human right, with all the consequences on the level of protection which may derive from these
different qualifications. So the paper draws an overall picture on which the European legal system
with its employment policies overlaps. The second part of the paper finally takes into account the
different legal instruments for the promotion of the right to work of young people in the
aforementioned countries, where youth unemployment rates are very heterogeneous, underlying
diversities and consonances. The paper focuses on the special contracts of employment --‐ as the
apprenticeship, for example --‐, on the particular incentives provided in order to promote
employment for young people and on the educational and vocational training systems. The
conclusions stress the weaknesses and the strengths of the regulatory systems in order to ensure
effectiveness to the right to work of this particular category of this disadvantaged part of population.
69
Same system, same working time patterns of women in reunified Germany? Determinants
of women’s working time patterns
Dominik Postels and Christine Slomka
Institute for Work, Skills and Training (IAQ), University of Duisburg-Essen
Almost 25 years after German reunification systematic differences in labour market participation of
women and in gender roles in the population between the former German Democratic Republic
(East-Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (West-Germany) still can be noticed. The GDR
supported female employment by the provision of a broad range of childcare facilities. For each child
– even on Sundays and public holidays and during the holiday season – a cheap kindergarten place
was available. As a result, the employment rate of women was at some times almost 90% and fulltime work of women was widespread. In comparison, West-Germany promoted the traditional
breadwinner-model, which resulted in women, especially mothers, not or only part-time working, if
indicated by a women’s employment rate of 53%. Thus, it can be assumed that there is a strong
connection between prevailing gender role models, social policy frameworks and working time. In
the wake of the reunification process in 1989/90 the political and economic institutions of EastGermany have been broadly replaced by the system of West-Germany. This development gives
reason to assume that gender role models and working time patterns of women in East-Germany
would gradually assimilate to patterns predominant in West-Germany. To test this hypothesis we
used data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) which provides information on
gender-role attitudes, and of the German Microcensus with which evaluations of working time are
possible. The chosen analysis period of working time refers to the years of 1999 to 2010 taking into
account that working time was influenced by economic crisis in the last two years. Our analyses
show, despite having the same institutional framework now, that there are still striking differences
related to gender roles in East- and West-Germany with East-Germans still far more progressive then
West-Germans. These differences still lead to working time differences between West and East
German women. Especially the analysis of working time patterns over the life course and by Eastand West-Germany shows the impact of the different gender roles in both parts of Germany on
working time. In East-Germany women with children still have much longer working hours than
women in West-Germany. Furthermore, our analysis shows that part-time work in East-Germany is
very often not desired while in West-Germany a larger part of women chose part-time work
deliberately.
70
Separating workforce from community: Fly in Fly Out Workers and the West Australian
resource Sector
Al Rainnie*, Caleb Goods*, John Burgess* and Grant Michelson**
Curtin University, Perth, Australia*; Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia.**
In any given week over 50,000 workers go through Perth airport bound for the resource sectors
various operations in the North of the state. They were bound for places like Karratha, some 1,500
kilometres or around 16 hours by car away from Perth. This helped make Karratha the 4 th largest
domestic destination from Perth airport with around 700,000 passengers annually. Karratha was far
from being the only FIFO flight destination and not all FIFO workers went through Perth, increasingly
they flew in from regional ‘hubs’ in towns like Busselton in south WA, or from emerging ‘hubs’ on
the Sunshine Coast (east coast Australia). FIFO workers were known to base themselves in Bali and
then fly in for their shifts. In its most extreme it also encompasses high skill professionals and semi
skilled trades that are flown in from other countries for short periods of time.
The impact of FIFO on source communities, particularly on FIFO families was taken to be
problematic. Such was the level of concern that the Australian Federal House of Representatives set
up a Committee of Enquiry, which took masses of evidence and reported in 2013 (HRSCRA, 2013).
The report (HRSCRA,2013: 4) defined FIFO as work which is undertaken by long-distance commuting
on a regular basis for an extended period at such a distance from the employee’s home that they are
not able to return to their permanent residence at the end of a shift. Discussion of FIFO tends also to
include Drive In, Drive Out (DIDO) and Bus In, Bus Out (BIBO).
We develop a Global Production Network framework of analysis to investigate a phenomenon new
to the resources boom in Western Australia – the emergence of the Fly-In, Fly-Out (FIFO) worker. We
argue that this represents the third wave in a series of spatial fixes whereby resource companies
mining in far north WA have sought to manage relationships between themselves, their workforces
and the communities in which these workers live. We move GPN analysis beyond a narrow
workplace focus to incorporate issues such as environmental landscapes, households and
livelihoods, and social and spatial unevenness of development. In so doing, we develop the form of
analysis of GPNs, labour and uneven development outlined in Rainnie et al (2011).
In analysing the FIFO workforce we will locate it in the context of the structural changes in the
mining sector, especially around the concentration of ownership, the advances in technology, the
growing scale and capital intensity of production, integrated production networks and in the
restructuring of the workforce (Manky Bonilla, 2014). The FIFO workforce applies to all phases of
resource operations and represents a fundamental separation between employment and
community. There are clear lines of segmentation of the resources workforce based on the
contractual conditions of employment; the shift patterns of employment; the relationship between
workplace and home community. The article considers the factors shaping the management of
resource sector workforce, it then examines the implications of these workforce arrangements for
workers and communities, and then identifies the subsequent policy challenges that arise from the
scale of such practices (Ellem, 2013; FIFO Families, 2013; HRSCRA, 2013; Hoath and McKenzie, 2013;
Storey, 2010; Taylor and Simmonds, 2009)
71
Changes in Employment Structure in Brazil: 1991-2010.
Rodrigo Rodrigues-Silveira
Freie Universität Berlin
What are the changes in labour market structure in Brazil in the last two decades? How they
affected different social groups? What were the impacts on formal labour? What were the
connections with the overall macroeconomic trends experienced by the country? Using census data
from the 1991, 2000 and 2010 Brazilian Demographic Census, this work performs an inquiry on the
trends in the transformations experienced in the Brazilian labour market during the period between
1991 and 2010. The purpose is to disclose general patterns and how the employment structures
affected different social groups. It also intends to provide the empirical basis for comparative studies
in transformations in employment among countries in different parts of the globe.
In this respect, this work is part of the Global Jobs projects, conducted by EUROFOUND and research
partners in different research and labour market institutions in developing countries. The method
employed to analyse the comparative evolution (both in time and among cases) of labour market
structure was to classify different jobs – the intersection between activities and occupation –
according to quintiles of their average wage. For this purpose the employment of ISCO and ISIC
classification at two-digit levels was required. The general structure was also decomposed by
gender, ethnicity and informality for the periods: 1990-2000, 2000-2010 and 1991-2010.
The results are in tune with the overall macroeconomic changes experienced by the Brazilian
economy during the last two decades. The first period reveals the destruction of employment in the
top four quintiles of income, while the first quintile – characterized by low-quality, informal
employment – reduced the trend of job destruction experienced by other quintiles. The second
period, on the other hand, reflects the continued growth based on the commodity boom in Latin
America. This can be observed by the recovery of employment on higher quintiles, the incorporation
of women and non-white workers into higher quintiles and the strengthening of formal
employment.
72
Regulating for gender equality in an age of increasing inequalities
Jill Rubery (Manchester Business School)
The crisis and subsequent austerity policies are increasing segmentation and labour market
inequality and leading to renewed debates about whether current approaches to labour market
regulation are fit for purpose. Women are identified as one major group poorly served by current
regulatory arrangements. Their overrepresentation in the growing forms of non standard
employment, the increasing pressure on lone parents to seek wage work whatever the working
conditions or care arrangements and the continuing problems of high penalties for those who
undertake care work (both paid and unpaid) all point to the need to reform employment and social
regulation. While much of the pressure to reform regulation still comes from the deregulationist
/neoliberal wing of policy, there is also a growing group of academics across a range of disciplines
and interests (Vosko, Stone and Arthurs, Fudge, Fraser, Standing, Supiot) who are calling for a
rethink of employment and social protection policies, justified at least in part by the impact of
current regulation in creating outsiders, including women . Some of these writers have called for an
end to the standard employment relationship which has been variously described as hierarchical and
gendered (Vosko 2010), labourist (Standing 2011) or only supportive of median voter interest (Rueda
2005).
The argument made in this paper is that the positive contributions made by these analyses in
focusing on both the need to address the interests of gender equality through increasing protection
for the precariat and revaluing care work to reduce penalties for non linear careers should not divert
attention from the continuing need to hold employers to account for employment quality and
conditions. This is the case even if this requires new ways of addressing the behaviour of the
increasingly invisible corporations or employers of last resort in the labour market. We thus need
policies that both delink social protection from employment relationships where appropriate and
policies which reinforce employer obligations and potentially reverse some of the trends in
employment arrangements.
We also address the rather strange faith in a benevolent state in some regulatory prescriptions for
greater equality, including gender equality. Not only is it the case that legal regulations that are not
supported by complementary institutions are likely to have restricted and uncertain impact but in
the age of austerity the risk of perfidy by the state is more than evident. This calls for continued
development and growth of non state bodies including trade unions and citizen-based NGOs to press
for more effective implementation of regulations and monitoring of employment rights.
The mix of policies depends on the specific objectives of employment regulation; these arguments
are pursued with respect to seven objectives of employment regulation namely social protection,
income and employment security, voice, fairness in processes and conditions, equality, human
rights, stability of the economy and a productive economy.
73
Verbal Abuse, Contract Practices and Overtime Violations: Evidence from Apparel Firms in
Vietnam
Janet Rubin, Drusilla Brown, Laura Babbitt (Tufts University), Rajeev Dehejia (New York University)
Contact:
Drusilla Brown, Department of Economics, Tufts University
Medford, MA 02155 USA, drusilla.brown@tufts.edu
Excess overtime is one of the most persistent and difficult compliance violations to eliminate in
apparel factories. Apparel firms typically employ a fixed proportion technology. Optimal use of
capital requires that that capital and employees work up to 23 hours per day. While such a work
configuration can be compliant on hours, it requires that firms employ multiple shifts. A common
practice in apparel firms in developing countries is to use an array of behaviors such as
noncompliance on regular wages, verbal abuse, and threats of termination to induce workers to
accept overtime.
In this paper we construct a theoretical model of the behavior of firms seeking to induce overtime.
The firm is assumed to face a participation constraint required to induce the worker to remain with
the firm and an incentive compatibility constraint necessary to induce the worker to accept
overtime. The firm then attempts to use noncompliant regular wages and the threat of termination
to shift the participation and incentive compatibility constraints to a higher profit configuration. In
particular, the firm can reduce the regular wage to incentivize overtime while raising the overtime
wage to satisfy the participation constraint. We consider two additional possibilities. First, the firm
may be employing psychological devices to affect the worker’s sense of agency and belief in the
ability of the worker to act, thereby shifting in the participation constraint. Second, the firm may be
increasing the threat of termination when overtime is rejected to affect the position of the incentive
compatibility constraint.
Empirically testing the model with data from apparel factories in Vietnam, we detect a transition in
regions where the participation constraint binds to regions in which the incentive compatibility
constraint binds. Firms fall into two categories. The highest profit configuration involves the use of
low regular hour wage and verbal abuse to satisfy the participation and incentive compatibility
constraints. However, some factories in the data set are constrained to pay the minimum wage.
Under a binding minimum wage constraint, the firm opts to use the threat of dismissal to induce
overtime. Threat of dismissal is accomplished by raising the regular wage, lowering the overtime
wage and reducing the contract duration below the legal minimum.
Only those factories that are constrained to comply with regulations on the regular minimum wage
and contract duration exhibit a wage profile that is legally compliant. A legally compliant profile is
one in which there is a linear relationship between wages and overtime hours. The intercept is at
least as large as the minimum wage and the slope is 1.5 times the intercept.
Using the empirical estimates of the model, we then simulate the impact of compliance on all
behaviors on wages and hours worked.
74
Reconstructing The Fairness Of Health Care In The United States: The Case Of The ‘Cadillac
Tax’
Joel Rudin
Health care reform in the United States, popularly known as Obamacare, is a complex and uniquely
American solution. In many ways it is a repudiation of the European model of health care delivery
notwithstanding the superior health outcomes that Europeans generally enjoy compared to
Americans. Certain components of it are relatively well known because they are easier to
understand or have been subject to greater publicity and scrutiny, such as the ‘individual mandate’
that all eligible adult Americans purchase health insurance or pay a fine for failing to do so. An
important feature of Obamacare that will become much more prominent in the near future is that
those Americans who already have health insurance will see an enormous increase in the cost of
spending a night in the hospital. Rather than the current nominal fee, a night of hospitalization will
now cost hundreds or possibly thousands of dollars depending on the health insurance policy that is
chosen, where a lower monthly premium leads to a higher nightly expense. The rationale underlying
strong governmental support for making hospital stays more costly is that this will motivate
Americans to change their lifestyles in order to reduce the likelihood of needing hospitalization.
It is ironic that such health insurance plans are called ‘consumer-directed’ as no consumer would
choose to spend thousands of dollars for something that currently only costs a nominal fee. But the
government will impose a 30 percent ‘Cadillac tax’ on plans that continue to charge small amounts
to employees for hospital services. The use of the term ‘Cadillac tax’ is meant to create a perception
that an inexpensive night in the hospital is an unnecessary luxury. A small number of employers will
continue to offer such plans in order to attract and retain high-quality employees in industries where
the added costs can be passed on to consumers, but the market share of consumer-directed plans is
anticipated to soar. In early versions of the enabling legislation there was going to be an exemption
from the Cadillac tax for unionized workers’ health care plans. This would have been a tremendous
benefit to beleaguered American unions, as union members would have been the only large group
of Americans to escape consumer-directed health insurance and its high hospitalization costs. This
feature was stripped from the legislation and unions continued to support it even though
Obamacare in its final form erodes one of the incremental advantages of unionization by making it
easier for workers in non-unionized companies to get health insurance. There are undeniably
progressive aspects of health care reform in the United States, such as the increase in the number of
Americans who now have health insurance and the subsidies for low-income workers. But
Europeans need to be wary of the success of Obamacare as it could lead policy-makers in other
countries to reconstruct an inexpensive hospital stay as a luxury rather than a right.
75
From public to private. Contracting out, public procurement, and equal
opportunities.
Eva Katherine Sarter
In the last decades, contracting out of social services has been a common development in Western
European Welfare States. Contracting out detaches jobs from the provisions referring to the public
sector and places the provision of the services under the scrutiny of European legislation. The
presentation focusses on the impact contracting out and the placement under public procurement
regulations have on the regulation of decent working conditions and equal opportunities.
In the last years, however, attempts to (re-)regulate the process of contracting out with a stronger
focus on decent working conditions, gender equality and the promotion of disadvantaged groups
have taken place at various levels. Placing a focus on equal opportunity measures and the promotion
of women, the presentation outlines the legal constraints for the integration of gender equality
measures and the promotion of women in public tendering. Drawing on the German case, the
presentation outlines the development. Addressing the current state of gender equality measures in
public procurement, the presentation argues that gender equality measures largely take a back seat
against other social considerations in public procurement German regulations and are characterized
by limitations in scope as well as vulnerable to pitfalls in practice.
76
Sustaining the GPN in times of crisis? Women’s unwaged work as fallback position in the
table grape GPN in Archanes, Greece
Eleni Sifaki
PhD in Development Policy & Management , Institute for Development Policy and Management
(IDPM), University of Manchester
There have been major changes taking place in export agriculture over time that have been
compounded by the recent economic crisis. Women have played a major role as both waged and
unwaged labour in these shifts but have also been significantly affected by them. Although we know
about women’s engagement in GPN expansion as waged workers and its effects on women we know
less about their interlinked role and effects as unwaged labour. In addition, the impact of the crisis in
GPN on women who are both waged and unwaged workers in export agriculture has not yet been
studied. This paper addresses this gap by looking at the relationship between women’s waged and
unwaged work and the implications to women’s labour agency in a period of crisis. It specifically
addresses this issue by looking at women waged and unwaged workers in the table grapes
production network from Archanes, Greece to the Europeam market. GPNs can be understood as
geographically dispersed and centrally coordinated systems of production that are controlled by
large lead firms. The paper thus addresses the following research question? How did the relationship
between the waged and unwaged work of women in the table grape GPN manifest in the crisis and
what are the implications for their labour agency?
This paper draws from the Global Production Networks (GPN) approach to unpack the commercial
processes that affect the relationship between women’s waged and unwaged work. The GPN
approach unpacks the power relationships and dynamics between different actors in the commercial
process. However, it does not normally include a gender analysis. Thus I contribute to the
development of the Gendered Global Production Networks (GGPN) approach which combines the
GPN with a concept of gendered societal embeddedness to interrogate the ways in which
commercial drivers and women’s labour agency interact. I draw from the intra-household bargaining
literature to incorporate the unwaged farm labour and women’s labour bargaining in the household
to ‘unpack’ the concept of labour agency. I investigate empirically how the commercial shifts in the
crisis affected the relationship between women’s waged and unwaged work through using a placebased case study approach.
The central finding of the paper is that the unwaged farm work of women constituted a fallback
position in the face of the ‘precarisation’ of waged work in table grapes and the scarcity of off-farm
employment in a period of crisis. In addition, the unwaged work of women helped to sustain the
GPN in the crisis through supporting the family farm and enhancing the quality of the grapes through
their work. The pivotal role of women in the family farm during the crisis gave them a leverage to
bargain for higher decision-making power in the farm. Thus, it is not just the GPN that affected the
waged/unwaged work relationship but also women’s labour agency. This shows the significance of
women’s work and labour agency for agricultural GPNs and hence the consideration of intrahousehold bargaining in gender interventions to achieve a fairer integration of women in GPNs.
77
Taking Summers seriously. Secular stagnation and the labour share.
Annamaria Simonazzi
“Thus we are so sensible, have schooled ourselves to so close a semblance of prudent financiers,
taking careful thought before we add to the “financial” burdens of posterity by building them houses
to live in, that we have no such easy escape from the sufferings of unemployment” (Keynes 1936, p.
131).
Summer’s suggestion that we may be in a period of secular stagnation has caused turmoil in the
academic community. The prospect that sluggish growth, output and employment at levels well
below potential, and problematically low real interest rates might coincide for quite some time to
come, not only in Japan, but in the US and in the EU, has called the supply-side story into question:
“our economy is constrained by lack of demand rather than lack of supply” (Summers, 2014) and
increasing capacity to produce will not translate into increased output unless there is more demand
for goods and services. With the important corollary that “training programs, reform of social
insurance, [greater flexibility] may affect which workers get jobs, but they will not affect how many
get jobs. Indeed measures that raised supply could have the perverse effect of magnifying
deflationary pressures”. Summers advocates more government spending and employment, taking
advantage of the current period of economic slack to renew and build out our infrastructure.
Strikingly absent from his list are measures to reduce income concentration at the top, so as to grow
effective demand in the rest of the population (Wade 2014). Even the IMF (2014) now maintains
that “lower net inequality is robustly correlated with faster and more durable growth”.
The paper intends 1. to re-asses the relation between distribution and the fragility of growth, and 2.
investigate the conditions under which a recovery based upon “green” and environmental policies
can favour a different, growth friendly distribution.
78
Modern forms of workplace servitude
Noemi Sinkovics
A recent CIPD (2013) report entitled “Megatrends: The trends shaping work and working lives”
indicates a rapid growth in highly skilled knowledge-intensive areas. At the same time, the report
points out that the total number of voluntary job separations has significantly decreased since 1996.
However, the growth and success of organisations such as Escape the City with the purpose of
helping highly skilled professionals leave their well-paid positions and do something that they deem
as more “meaningful” and “satisfying” (Sinkovics, 2013) may indicate a trend that needs attention
from both employers and academia. The present paper explores this phenomenon through the lens
of the three core values of development employed by development economists to describe the
extent of countries’ economic development (Todaro & Smith, 2011). Sustenance refers to the ability
to meet basic needs related to food, shelter, health and protection. Self-esteem is connected to
human dignity, a sense of worth and self-respect. The third value, freedom from servitude, goes
beyond physical incarceration and forced labour and also includes the ability to choose from a wide
range of options in a wide range of areas in one’s life such as education, products, housing etc.
(Todaro & Smith, 2011).
Although the absence or restriction of these values are more visible in developing countries (Acs,
Boardman, & McNeely, 2013), Sinkovics, Sinkovics, and Yamin (2014) demonstrate that while the
underlying basic needs are the same in both developed and developing countries, their
manifestations and the way they need to be addressed are context-dependent and thus may differ.
This is due to the fact that economic, socio-demographic, political, and geopolitical changes are
constantly bringing about systemic disruptions (Guillén & Ontiveros Baeza, 2012) that lead to new
forms of “unfreedom” in both contexts (Sen, 1999) which are to various degrees path-dependent.
Based on the findings of Sinkovics (2013) this paper proposes that the need to “escape” a well-paid
position represents a proxy for such a new form of “unfreedom”. Here, this new form of
“unfreedom” is termed “modern forms of workplace servitude”.
To this end, the paper aims at answering the following research questions:
1. What are the dimensions, and implications of these new forms of workplace servitude?
2. Why do individuals stay in jobs or work environments where they feel trapped, when at the
same time they have the skills and the opportunity to do something more satisfying?
3. What causes individuals to break free from such environments and choose the path of
liberation?
79
Changing employment stability? Longitudinal analysis of tenures in Finland 1991-2008
Tiina Soininen
University of Eastern Finland, Karelian Institute
In my presentation I will discuss the paradox between growing insecurities in labour markets and the
phenomenon of employment stability. Even though, the theoretization and empirical research on
temporary employment, insecurity and flexibility has gained wide attention among international
scholars during the past decades, there is contradicting statistical evidence on the actual situation in
employment stability of Western labour markets (for example OECD records show only minor
changes in employment tenures). It is of the uttermost importance to know, how the possible
changes in employment stability are related to simultaneous changes in educational levels, ageing of
labour force and industrial restructuring of Western societies. I tie these results in flexibility
paradigm, segmentation and polarization in labour market and transitions discussions. It might be
that simultaneously with institutional changes, employers have changed their usage of labour force
in globalizing economy, or that individuals have become less locked in employment.
My data is individual follow up, longitudinal register-base data of Finland during 1991-2008. The
individual level information is combined to establishment level information of the employers (for
example their economical situation). It is 1/3 sample of all working aged population in Finland.
The results show that, in accordance to OECD findings, the mean duration of tenures stays roughly
the same in Finland during 1996-2008. However, the share of short tenures (under one year long)
has increased rather strongly during the 2000s. I execute Cox regression to see, which social reality
levels (individual, firm or labour market level) influence the changes in tenures the most. In
individual level I target factors like gender, age and labour market transitions, in firm level I target
industrial branch, financial turnover etc, and in labour market level I target on the general pay
structures influence on tenures, among other factors. All together, I have included 14 independents
in the model. For delineating the establishment level influence I have performed corresponding
stratified and competing risks Cox regressions. The results of the multivariable models show how the
employment stability in Finland is varying in relation to economic trends, and how, for example, the
restructuring of industrial sectors, firms economical situations, ageing of labour force and rise of
educational level have influenced the employment stability. Further, I detect some important
changes in the employers’ usage of labour force.
80
Changes in Korea’s job quality: 2001~2013
Deok Soon Hwang (Korea Labor Institute)
This study is on the changes in Korea’s job quality based on common approach to compare trends in
job quality in European countries and some other countries outside EU. This study covers the period
after the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s considering consistency of data on wage and
employment. Overall change in job quality before the Global Financial Crisis affected Korean
economy in 2008 can be regarded as job polarization if we exclude the effects of shrinkage of the
agricultural sector. On the other hand, the trend in job quality shows upgrading after the crisis.
Similar change can be found in the other indexes such as incidence of low-paid work, earnings
dispersion, and Gini-coefficient of household income. Korea’s incidence of low-paid work is still the
highest among OECD countries and the earning dispersion is very large. The weakness of labor
market institutions in protecting the disadvantaged in the labor market from negative effects of
changes in job quality has contributed the expansion of wage inequality before the crisis. Common
factors, like globalization, RBTC, and SBTC have been drivers of changes in job quality in Korea. The
shrinkage of the agricultural sectors and the expansion of personal social service to tackle rapid
demographic changes are country-specific factors which contributed to the changes in job quality.
The effects of RBTC and SBTC have been different among industries and occupations and overall
change in job quality was the aggregation of outcome in each industry and occupation which may be
different in different periods.
Key words: job quality, polarization, upgrading, SBTC, RBTC
81
On Borrowed Time: Restructuring, labour hire and its impact on Qantas employees’ lives,
incomes and security prospects.
Professor Lucy Taksa, Dr Alison Barnes, Dr Sasha Holley (Macquarie University)
In this paper we consider the problem of employment and income security at the meso and micro
levels by examining evidence collected in 2012 during an industrial dispute between the Australian
airline, Qantas and the Australian Transport Workers Union (TWU) over the protection of job
security. Although Qantas had initiated strategies to recruit labour-hire workers over the preceding
decade, during enterprise bargaining in 2011 Qantas refused to retain security provisions that had
previously prevailed (Forsyth and Stewart, 2013: 790).This case throws light on the way the growing
use of labour hire arrangements affects the life-course, incomes and security prospects of the socalled ‘permanent’ employees in range of ground staff occupations in the aviation sector. Hence, our
paper’s focus shifts attention from the impact of labour hire arrangements on insecure workers to
the impact on those who have traditionally been regarded as secure.
The Qantas/TWU dispute occurred against the backdrop of increasing insecurity of employment in
Australia and polarisation in its labour market, which led to the establishment of an Independent
Inquiry into Insecure Work in Australia by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) in 2011. The
resulting Report, published in 2012, identified key indicators of insecure work and found that ‘a new
divide has opened in the Australian workforce …. between those in the “core” … and those on the
“periphery”’, with the former ‘likely to be in full-time employment, either permanently within
organizations .. or possessing skills for which there is steady demand and for which they can charge a
premium’ (Howe, 2012: 5). A critical issue not considered was the impact of labour hire on ‘secure’
or ‘permanent’ workers, an issue of prime significance to those employed by Qantas.
Although numerous scholars have questioned the efficacy of the core-periphery dichotomy, and a
number of studies have considered ‘blended workforces’ where core and peripheral workers work
side-by-side, as Davis-Blake and Broschak, 2009) have pointed out there has been limited research
on how core workers have perceived the effects of strategies to increase flexibility through labour
hire arrangements. We address this neglected issue through a close reading of 32 affidavits (27
permanent Qantas staff, 1 labour-hire employee, 3 union officials and 1 economist hired by the
TWU) presented to the Fair Work Commission during the dispute. This approach allows us examine
how the so-called secure employees perceived the impact of workforce blending on their job
security, income security and training and career opportunities. We argue that Qantas management
has used the spectre of labour hire to undermine wages and working conditions, leaving permanent
employees feeling vulnerable and uncertain about their positions and their potential to earn a
sustainable wage. Thus labour hire and secure workers now experience similar threats, as they
compete against each other for overtime shifts and promotions. This threatens workplace cohesion
and solidarity and thus creates barriers for both labour hire and ‘permanent’ employees to maintain
and/or improve their prospects.
82
Employment, welfare and gender equality under recession and austerity in southern
Europe: The case of low educated women in Portugal
Isabel Tavora
Manchester Business School, Fairness at Work Research Centre, University of Manchester
This article focuses on the effects of the recession and the associated austerity measures on the
organization of employment and welfare in Portugal in the context of southern Europe and
considers the implications of these changes for women and gender equality.
Many of the features that enabled high levels of female employment in Portugal are now changing.
The current crisis and the associated austerity measures - which have included unprecedented
moves towards employment de-regulation and welfare cuts - are likely to have a negative impact on
women’s employment opportunities, the quality of their jobs and their ability to reconcile work and
family.
Using policy documents and cross-national reports and data, this paper firstly examines the key
changes to employment and social policy in Portugal during the crisis in comparison to the other
southern European countries. Secondly, drawing on case-based interview data, it analyses the
significance and implications of these policies for women’s employment access and quality –
particularly those with lower levels of education, who in Portugal have enjoyed much higher rates of
formal employment than in the other southern European countries but are nevertheless one of the
social groups most vulnerable to employment insecurity, low pay, unemployment and poverty.
83
The legal situation of people in non-standard jobs in Germany
Dr. Karin Tesching
Institute for Employment Research (IAB) of the German Federal Employment Agency (BA)
Over the past ten years the German labour market has changed structurally. The standard
employment relationship has increasingly been replaced by more flexible forms of employment such
as part-time work, marginal employment (“mini-jobs”), fixed-term contracts or temporary agency
employment. The increase in so-called non-standard or atypical employment has not only been
driven by economic needs but also by political decisions on the reform of the labour market.
In public debates the increase in non-standard employment is often discussed critically. Criticism
does not only focus on the negative effects of non-standard employment on income, employment
stability and financial security in old age, but also relates to the working conditions of atypically
employed people. From a legal perspective non-standard employment is equal to standard
employment in Germany. For example, in case of sickness, public holidays or vacation people
working in non-standard forms of employment are entitled to the same employee leave benefits as
regular employed people. However, in public debates it is often criticised that this legal equality is
not thoroughly implemented into companies’ day-to-day business.
Using new and unique data on the situation of atypically employed people in Germany we
investigate whether people who are working part-time, in marginal employment, or with a fixedterm contract are treated differently from people employed in standard employment relationships.
The data contain information about 7.500 employees of which about 4.200 work in one of the three
non-standard forms of employment. In our analysis we focus on employees’ knowledge about legal
regulations and employees’ access to benefits such as paid vacation, paid sick leave or paid public
holidays. We show that people employed part-time or having a fixed-term contract do not differ that
much from people in standard employment relationships, neither with respect to their knowledge
about legal regulations, nor with respect to their access to benefits. However, people in marginal
jobs turn out to differ systematically from people in other types of employment. Within this group of
employees the proportion of people that do not have knowledge about legal regulations is much
higher than in any other group. In addition, we find that even among those who do know the
regulations a substantial part does not receive the benefits legally granted. We propose several
explanations for this finding.
84
Gender inequalities in Spanish Labour Market: the continuum between precariousness
and informal work
Teresa Torns and Carolina Recio
Centre d'Estudis Sociològics sobre la Vida Quotidiana i el Treball (QUIT),
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
The existence of gendered labour market inequalities is commonly accepted a fact by the feminist
theories some time ago. Since then a large number of studies have pointed out the reality of
subordination and labor discrimination for most of working women even though women’s activity
rates have been increasing. On the other hand it seems that existing structural features are getting
worse for women while new ones are appearing.
This paper looks at women’s presence in the Spanish labor market focusing on the persistence of
horizontal and vertical segregation by gender as well as indirect discrimination. A persistence that it
is getting harder in the context of Spanish present crisis. In this sense, in Spain the labour transitions
are characterized by a continuum between precariousness and informal work. Moreover we can also
observe a process of polarization among women workers. In this sense, social class inequalities
persist but they have been reinforced by other inequality axis: ethnical —increasingly the
inequalities between nationals and immigrants— and age —which are perpetuating the transition to
steady work. These changes are taking place in a crisis in the framework of which politicians are
putting into practice measures that are probably intensifying the inequalities mentioned above. At
the same time this reveals the fragility of legal measures on gender equality adopted a few years
ago.
Thus, the aim of this paper is to analyze the recent labour market changes, accompanied by austerity
policies, and their impacts on women work. Our hypothesis is that gender inequalities are far from
disappearing but transforming.
85
Gender pay equity at the organisational level: exploring the impact of formal, consistent
and transparent HR practices.
Sebastian Ugarte, Damian Grimshaw and Jill Rubery
What are the conditions that facilitate gender pay equity at the organisational level? We propose
that the formalisation of human resource pay practices, in combination with transparency and
availability of information generates conditions for gender pay equity. We follow a single in-depth
case study approach where we analyse detailed personnel data for 2005-2010, supported by 21
semi-structured interviews, documentation review and direct and participant observation for two
months in the year 2011. Our findings support our proposition that formalisation, transparency and
consistency of the pay system are key enablers for gender pay equity. The results from our
multivariate analysis approach that test pay and career progress at the point of recruitment, annual
pay review, and promotion indicate that under these organisational conditions, there is no
identifiable gender bias in pay and career advancement. Despite the relative gender neutrality of our
general results, our micro analysis also revealed that the unpredictability of promotion decisions to
more senior posts is subject to gender bias leading to an unequal share of women in leadership
roles. In sum, HR is an effective moderator to foster equity in labour allocation only up to the middle
organisational level. From then on, promotion decisions shift from a formal to a relatively informal
and discretion-driven approach led by senior managers overriding the centralised and formal role of
the HR department.
86
The impact of recession on trajectories and life chances viewed through the lens of the
Capability Approach.
Joan Miquel Verd
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology,
Centre d’Estudis Sociològics sobre la Vida Quotidiana i el Treball (QUIT) and Institut d’Estudis del
Treball (IET). Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona.
From a biographical perspective a period of economic downturn such as the Big Recession that
began in 2008 could imply a complete shift in the labour trajectories of many workers. Indeed, this
shift could have a triggering effect of a cumulative disadvantage process. This seems to be the case
of many young workers in Spain. Existing studies on the Spanish labour market show that job
destruction during the present economic recession has been concentrated in the younger groups of
workers, thus producing a quasi-exclusion from the labour market. This situation in the labour
market can develop in an even more dramatic situation of social exclusion, especially if public
policies are unable to halt the cumulative disadvantage process.
Besides, there are events that trigger a process of cumulative disadvantage that have a markedly
individual character and are much more specific or occasional in the trajectory (e. g. having a baby,
or partnership dissolution). These shifts cannot be directly attributed to period characteristics or to
opportunity structures that surround individuals, but their impact on trajectories is not negligible.
Moreover, the effect of these events is stronger among the most vulnerable social groups. Thus, the
fight against cumulative disadvantage processes must consider both the individual characteristics
and circumstances as much as the collective and structural factors. These different dimensions seem
to be largely ignored by social protection measures. These measures continue with a rationale of
“catch all policies” that many times have no effect at all on specific individuals or profiles.
The paper will use the essential concepts of Sen’s Capability Approach to reflect on the necessity of
more context specific and tailored policies addressed to youngsters. Particularly, the focus on the
Senian concept of conversion factor will make possible to consider what policies, measures and
practices really make a difference for young people on their search for employment, and social and
economic independence. Empirical data on particular young unemployed groups will be used in
order to illustrate that resources alone do not suffice and that taking into account individuals’
circumstances, objectives and perceptions in relation to their working lives would help to develop
more effective social policies.
87
Gender equality, European leadership and the economic crisis – the case of gender
pay equity in the EU
Paola Villa (Università degli Studi di Trento) and Mark Smith (Grenoble Ecole de
Management)
Over a number of decades the European Commission and European-level institutions have
acted as leaders in the promotion of gender equality policies in the EU. This leadership has
required the combination and coordination of a number of key actors and their interactions
with member states - at times productive and at times strained. While certain periods can be
regarded as rather progressive, there have been other periods when there has been evidence of
a stall in progress or even something of a regression. The economic crisis provides a good
illustration of these competing tensions.
In the context of the economic crisis, changes in policy direction and leadership among
European institutions can have potential negative consequences for equality outcomes. These
changes reflect both the change in the framework of the European Employment Strategy
(ESS) and also new pan-national systems of governance to address the crisis, not least
financial assistance programmes in certain states. Under these conditions policies towards
pay equality highlight some of the tensions that exist in all equality policies when there is a
lack of leadership and coherence at the European level. On the one hand, European
commission has continued with specific actions towards pay equity up to, but not including,
additional legal interventions, while member states have also undertaken specific initiatives
to address certain aspects pay inequality at the national level. On the other hand, austerity
measures and the impact of financial assistance programmes have had significant drawbacks
on areas of female employment and what were previously good quality jobs in the public
sector. The absence of a gender dimension to wider macroeconomic policies and their
position outside existing frameworks for European policy development have negative
consequences on for both short- and long-term progress towards pay equity.
This paper uses information collected by the European Expert Group on Gender Equality
(EGGE) and the analysis of European policies to explore implications for gender pay equality
during challenging and changing policy environment. The paper is organized in five sections
and provides an overview of the EES and the position of gender equality within it, an
exploration of the position of pay equality throughout identifiable phases of the trans-national
project and a focuses on the changes in policy making during the crisis period. We give
consideration to the limited progress in closing the gender pay gap and the challenges for the
future.
88
Things just got better: job quality in Australia before and after the crisis
S. Whelan, S. Wright, C. Warhurst, J. Teicher, F.L. Cooke and A. North-Samardzic
Universities of Sydney, Warwick and Monash
There is evidence of a long-term trend of polarisation in job quality as measured by pay in Europe
and the US as an outcome of employment restructuring. This trend that has been exacerbated by
the global financial crisis of the 2000s and subsequent major job losses in these economies
(Eurofound 2013; Kalleberg 2011). Across industrialised countries, Australia is unique in that it has
experienced over two decades of uninterrupted economic growth while undergoing significant
structural change. Throughout the financial crisis, total employment in Australia continued to grow.
The analysis in this paper employs the ‘jobs-based’ approach of Eurofound (2013). It draws on two
waves of Australian labour force survey data from before and after the global financial crisis: 2006
and 2010. The analysis shows that jobs, most job growth in Australia over the period 2006-10
occurred predominantly in high paying jobs. Jobs in the highest paying quintiles grew significantly,
jobs in the middle quintile flat-lined and some, though relatively less, growth occurred in jobs in the
lowest paying quintiles. Faced with continuing demand for natural resources and ongoing structural
change, employment increased substantially in high wage service industries and the mining sector
leading to a substantial up-scaling of job quality as measured by pay during this period for Australia.
Eurofound (2013) Employment polarisation and job quality in the crisis, Dublin: Eurofound.
Kalleberg, A.K. (2011) Good Jobs, Bad Jobs, New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
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Workplaces, careers and conjunctures: migrant professionals in the construction industry
moving through time and space
James Wickham
Sociological research on work and careers pays little attention to short-term changes in the business
cycle. We use the concept of employment conjuncture to understand the specific economic, social
and political context of the labour process at different points in time. The individuals in a workplace
may however change workplaces and even countries. These ‘careers’ also occur within changing
contexts or again employment conjunctures. Context shapes but does not determine, and crucially
contexts can be chosen. Because migrants deliberately move from one country to another they
explicitly choose the contexts within which they work. Migrant careers thus highlight agency and its
potential.
The paper develops this approach through a study of the work and careers of migrant professionals
(architects and engineers) in the construction industry in different employment conjunctures. In
addition to interviews with employers and recruitment specialists in Ireland, the UK and Australia,
our data is drawn primarily from two sets of interviews. Firstly, we studied Poles who entered
Ireland during the boom of the ‘Celtic Tiger’: using a Qualitative Panel Study (QPS) we carried out
repeat interviews with Polish professionals between 2008 and 2010 (Krings et al, 2013) and again
during 2013. These careers thus traverse an initial goldrush labour market and a subsequent
disaster labour market. Crucially the QPS methodology ensured that we interviewed these
individuals whether or not they stayed in Ireland. Secondly we studied recent Irish graduate
emigrants. During 2012-13 we interviewed construction industry professionals who have left Ireland
and are now working in the UK or Australia. At least in construction, the latter destination has many
features in common with Ireland at start of century. Preliminary comparative analysis shows how
goldrush labour markets shape the workplace, loosening employer control over the labour process
and casualising even professional recruitment; predictably the subsequent collapse leads to a
tightening of control. Like the locals, migrants develop strategies of survival but are also
disproportionately likely to simply escape by moving on to another country. Their subsequent
careers suggest that just as starting the working life in a slump has long term scarring effects,
starting in a boom can bring long-term benefits.
Reference
Torben Krings, Elaine Moriarty, James Wickham, Alicja Bobek and Justyna Salamońska (2013) .New
Mobilities in Europe: Polish migration to Ireland post-2004. Manchester University Press.
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Multiple disadvantage and its impact on pay: an analysis of the “snowballing” penalty
effect
Carol Woodhams, Ben Lupton and Marc Cowling.
While the gender pay gap has been extensively researched and its causes debated (Metcalf, 2009;
O’Neill, 2003; Blau and Kahn, 2007; Manning and Swaffield, 2008; Dex et al., 2008, Wass and
McNabb, 2006; Kirton and Greene, 2010; Hakim, 2004), less attention has been given to the pay
penalties experienced by other subordinate or minority groups. Although there is a long-standing
literature on ethnicity and pay in the USA (Green and Ferber, 2005; Greenman and Xie, 2008), much
less is known about this in other countries, and there is a smaller literature on the impact of
disability and age on remuneration. Still less is known about how dual or multiple sources of labour
market disadvantage – or intersectionalities (Crenshaw, 1991; McCall, 2005; Hofman, 2010;
Hancock, 2007; Walby et al. 2012) – affect pay (Browne and Misra, 2003). These gaps in knowledge
are significant because an incomplete empirical picture inhibits the development of a sound
theoretical grasp of the impact of multiple disadvantage in employment, and of appropriate policy
responses.
Recent work (Woodhams, Lupton and Cowling, 2012) suggests that pay penalties accumulate for
those with multiple labour market disadvantages in relation to gender, age, ethnicity and disability.
Researchers identified a ‘snowballing’ effect where people’s average pay is comparatively lower the
more disadvantaged strands of identity they have. This follow-up research paper provides a detailed
analysis of this effect, showing the impact on pay of sex, ethnicity, disability and age in each
combination. The analysis, in a tightly controlled empirical context, represents a unique
contribution. Combinations of identities that are associated with better or worse than expected pay
outcomes are identified. A second contribution is to show how multiple disadvantaged identities
combine to affect people’s pay. An unresolved issue is whether the effects of multiple disadvantage
are additive or interactive. This research sets out to address this. The research draws on an analysis
of multiple years of UK pay data (n= 470,724) in a large private sector organisation. It applies
Berthoud’s framework (2003) to interpret the relationship between intersectionality and pay.
It reveals that within a broadly consistent pattern of increasing detriment there are some clear
interaction effects. Most notably, women suffer more than expected from having additional
disadvantaged identities – particularly in relation to age and disability. Explanations for these
findings and their implications for theorising pay inequality are considered. An agenda for equal pay
policy and practice is set out. The following suggestions for policy are made. To diagnose multiple
inequalities in pay (and other rewards), workforce data should be disaggregated utilising as many
dual, triple and quadruple axis sub-groups as is practicable. This advice should be delivered through
advisory channels such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission in the UK. It should form part
of the advice on equal pay audits and the UK’s public sector equality duty (EHRC, 2013).
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