European Workers Research Articles

What workers do and how

This paper presents a new and enriched version of the JRC-Eurofound database of tasks indices across jobs in the EU15 economy. After a review of the existing measures and applications, we present the taxonomy of tasks which conceptually underlies the database. Next, the construction of the task indices is presented. We analyse the tasks profile of the European average worker, providing useful insights into work content and organisational methods, and how different indices are distributed across occupations.

How Does Disability Affect Incomes? An Empirical Study on Older European Workers

How Does Disability Affect Incomes? An Empirical Study on Older European Workers

‘My body is my piece of land’: Indebted deportation among undocumented migrant sex workers from Thailand and Nigeria in Europe

Set at the intersection of debt and deportability, this article analyses how undocumented migrant sex workers in Europe navigate deportability and its effects. While sex trafficking into the EU has received mounting attention as part of global migration dynamics, the role of debt in the lives of migrant women has been overlooked. The migrant women in this study arrive in Europe heavily indebted after traveling through the Sahara Desert and across the Mediterranean, or via migration facilitators in Southeast Asia, to find work in the European sex industry. Their deportation might therefore entail returning to their home countries still indebted. The article draws on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the home areas of two of the largest groups of undocumented migrant sex workers in Europe –Thailand’s Isaan province and Benin City in Nigeria’s Edo State – where women’s migration has become a familiar social phenomenon. Moving away from either a criminalizing or a victimizing framework for understanding sex-work migration, I argue for the concept of ‘indentured sex-work migration’ as a meaningful corrective to the narrative on sex trafficking and that the situation of ‘indebted deportation’ need to be better understood within the study of contemporary border control and security.

Applying Elvie - Tool for Psychosocial Risk Assessment: Results of a Case Study

Abstract About half of European workers believe that stress is common in their workplace and that it is the cause of about half of all lost working days. In Europe, 25% of workers report suffering from work stress all the time or most of their working time, with a similar percentage reporting that stress adversely affects their health. Estimates of costs borne by employers and society are considerable, amounting to tens of billions of euros at European level. Considering the exponential increase in the last decade of the impact of occupational stress and the direct implications on the health and well-being of workers, coupled with the low level of attention paid to this risk by employers and labor inspectorates in Romania, this paper aimed at developing a company-level research to validate the applicability of a specific psychosocial risk assessment tool. The preliminary results obtained confirmed the need to increase the real attention paid to this component of the health status of workers - and implicitly of enterprises - allowing the substantiation of a plan of measures designed to minimize psychosocial risks in the investigated company.

Human Resource Management, Employee Participation and European Works Councils: The Case of Pharmaceutical Industry in Greece

Employee participation is a broad notion that encompasses sets of practices that enable employees to participate in the decision-making process on issues affecting them leading to a committed workforce. According to the 2009/38/EC Directive, a European Workers’ Council (EWC) is established in all undertakings and all community-scale groups of undertakings for the purpose of informing and consulting employees. This study investigates the impact of employee participation on employees and organizations and more specifically the potential benefits and the added value of participation for employees and organizations, the potential costs and threats of employee participation and the added value of EWCs in multinational subsidiaries in the pharmaceutical industry in Greece. The data gathering was carried out through in-depth semi-structured interviews with management, HR executives, trade union representatives and EWC representatives using a semi-structured questionnaire based on the state-of-the-art literature review. Organizations participating in the study are subsidiaries of multinational companies with an active European Works Council in the pharmaceutical industry in Greece. Findings suggest that there are potential benefits of employee participation practices for the employees and added value for the pharmaceutical companies and provide a useful perspective for managers and researchers in the field of labor relations and human resource management.

VeraPavlou, Migrant Domestic Workers in Europe: Law and the Construction of Vulnerability, Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2021, 166pp, hb £76.50

VeraPavlou, Migrant Domestic Workers in Europe: Law and the Construction of Vulnerability, Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2021, 166pp, hb £76.50

Training needs assessment of European healthcare workers on vaccinology and vaccine acceptance

Abstract Background Healthcare workers (HCWs) are at the frontline of interaction with those that are taking decisions around vaccination. They need adequate training. The general aim of this systematic review is to assess HCWs’ training needs on vaccinology and vaccine acceptance. This work was performed for the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) under the specific contract No 1ECD.12108 ID.12922 implementing the framework contract number ECDC/2021/005. Methods The search was performed using MEDLINE, Scopus and Google Scholar databases in February 2022. The following inclusion criteria were used: date (from 01/01/2011 to 24/02/2022); language (English, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French and Romanian); geographic location of the study (Europe). Appraisal tool for Cross-Sectional Studies (AXIS checklist) was used to assess the methodological quality of the included papers. Results The scientific literature search retrieved 640 results on PubMed, 556 on Scopus and 15 on Google Scholar. In total, 1211 records were identified. After the duplicate removal and the title/abstract assessment, 132 publications were assessed for eligibility. Finally, after the full-text assessment, only 25 articles were included. As regards for the quality assessment, all studies were judged of moderate-good quality. The majority of studies stressed the need to deepen general knowledge of vaccine preventable diseases, vaccine efficacy, vaccination schedule and adverse effects of vaccines. Conclusions Considering their role in the community, especially as source of information and trust for vaccine acceptance, educational initiatives in vaccinology and vaccine hesitancy should be prioritized for HCWs, aimed at increasing their knowledge, awareness, and attitudes. An important heterogeneity of educational backgrounds, activities performed and training needs of the HCWs involved in vaccination at European level was one of the main critical issue to be addressed for future actions. Key messages

The global polarisation of remote work.

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to the rise of digitally enabled remote work with consequences for the global division of labour. Remote work could connect labour markets, but it might also increase spatial polarisation. However, our understanding of the geographies of remote work is limited. Specifically, in how far could remote work connect employers and workers in different countries? Does it bring jobs to rural areas because of lower living costs, or does it concentrate in large cities? And how do skill requirements affect competition for employment and wages? We use data from a fully remote labour market-an online labour platform-to show that remote platform work is polarised along three dimensions. First, countries are globally divided: North American, European, and South Asian remote platform workers attract most jobs, while many Global South countries participate only marginally. Secondly, remote jobs are pulled to large cities; rural areas fall behind. Thirdly, remote work is polarised along the skill axis: workers with in-demand skills attract profitable jobs, while others face intense competition and obtain low wages. The findings suggest that agglomerative forces linked to the unequal spatial distribution of skills, human capital, and opportunities shape the global geography of remote work. These forces pull remote work to places with institutions that foster specialisation and complex economic activities, i. e. metropolitan areas focused on information and communication technologies. Locations without access to these enabling institutions-in many cases, rural areas-fall behind. To make remote work an effective tool for economic and rural development, it would need to be complemented by local skill-building, infrastructure investment, and labour market programmes.

Foreign workers, product quality, and trade: Evidence from a natural experiment

This paper shows that international labor mobility leads to higher-quality products, more trade, and more effective global value chains. Exploiting variation in the time and intensity at which Swiss localities (identified by their postal codes) were treated by the increasing availability of foreign workers caused by the implementation of the Swiss-EU Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons, I find that the inflow of high-skilled European workers led to an upgrade in the quality of inputs imported from their origin countries. Better intermediates show to be associated with a higher quality of output, making Swiss products more appealing for international markets and boosting exports. Therefore, the efficacy of Swiss global value chains improved both upstream—thanks to higher-quality intermediate inputs brought by the intensification of the existing buyer-seller relations—and downstream—because higher-quality products eased increasing exports to existing buyers and helped finding new customers, especially in distant destinations.

Fairness of earnings in Europe: the consequences of unfair under- and overreward for life satisfaction

AbstractA large percentage of workers in Europe perceive their earnings to be unfairly low. Such perceptions of unfairness can have far-reaching consequences, ranging from low satisfaction to poor health. To gain insight into the conditions that can attenuate or amplify these adverse consequences, comparative research on the role of country contexts in shaping responses to perceived unfairness is needed. Furthermore, justice theory proposes that both types of perceived unfairness—underreward and overreward—cause distress, but evidence on overreward from representative survey data is scarce and laboratory studies have produced mixed results. Data from the European Social Survey (collected in 2018/2019) offer a means of addressing both of these gaps in the research. Studying the association between perceived fairness of personal earnings and life satisfaction in a cross-section of 29 European countries, I find that both underreward and overreward are associated with lower life satisfaction. This relationship is more pronounced in countries where the equity norm is strongly legitimized and weaker in countries where the trade union density is high.

Spreading the Culture of Economic Growth: Productivity Missions and the Americanization of the German Economy

This article examines how the Marshall Plan stimulated a culture of economic growth in postwar Germany, specifically through an international exchange programme known as ‘productivity missions’. From 1948 until the late 1950s these missions facilitated thousands of encounters between American and European managers, workers and experts in order to spread American industrial and managerial practices and, as a consequence, to boost postwar economic recovery in the capitalist world. Run by the Economic Cooperation Administration and the Organization for European Economic Co-operation, the productivity campaign enjoyed the support of both national governments as well as business associations and trade unions. While there is ample historiography on the political intentions and the economic consequences of the Marshall Plan, we know less about the productivity missions as vehicles of cultural transformation. Based on first-hand reports and archival evidence from both sides of the Atlantic, this article explores the cultural dimensions of the productivity campaign. It argues that the missions were an important catalyst for the dominant role of productivity and economic growth in postwar German society.

“A Revolution in Labor”: African Americans and Hybrid Labor Activism in Illinois during the Early Jim Crow Era

“A Revolution in Labor”: African Americans and Hybrid Labor Activism in Illinois during the Early Jim Crow Era

Skill Needs among European Workers in Knowledge Production and Transfer Occupations

Skills needed in jobs and skills mismatches are important topics for research and policy in the field of economic development and the labour market. Understanding skill needs is essential for improving education and training policies, as labour markets experience dynamic transformation driven by rapid technological progress and increased complexity of work. On the other hand, knowledge economy is considered an important driver force of economic growth. This paper aims to assess skill needs in knowledge production and transfer occupations. We analyse data from online job advertisements and from the European Skills and Jobs Survey in order to provide a comprehensive picture of skills needed in occupations related to science, technology and ICT, as well as teaching positions from higher education in Europe. We find that workers involved in knowledge production and transfer activate in highly changing and challenging working environments. They differentiate themselves by other professionals and technicians mostly by the increased need for ICT skills, problem-solving, communication and learning skills, the ability to collaborate and adaptability. Our results are relevant for designing better education and training programs targeting occupations supporting knowledge production and transfer.

‘The half I keep’: John Berger’s Booker Prize speech fifty years later

Fifty years after John Berger’s controversial acceptance speech for the Booker Prize in 1972, in which he highlighted Booker McConnell’s involvement in the colonial exploitation of the Caribbean and announced that he would donate half of the prize money to the British Black Panthers and use the other half to research the situation of European migrant workers, the author reflects on the implications of the speech for anti-racist struggle in the 1970s and today, as well as the direction of Berger’s work after this pivotal intervention.

Informality on the rise: Dissecting quasi-formal employment in the EU

AbstractIn spite of a growing body of literature on quasi-formal employment in the European Union (EU), there is still limited knowledge regarding the exact functioning of this illegal employment scheme. To fill this gap, we report data from the 2019 Special Eurobarometer on undeclared work, which reveals that 30.1% of European workers have higher income from employment than reported to tax authorities. Explicitly, 2.6% of registered dependent employees are entitled to cash top-ups to the official wage, for 7.8% of them the amount of supplementary payments depends on the work efforts, whereas 9.2% receive informal remuneration under multiple arrangements. In addition to these ‘regular recipients’, we also found that 10.5% of employees in the EU can be classified as ‘sporadic quasi-formal workers’. Besides showing that wage underreporting is far more pervasive than previously assumed, the study also offers a more nuanced insight into different manifestations of this illicit practice in the EU. Results of a two-level random intercept multinomial logit model reveal that women are less likely to receive fixed and variable cash-in-hand payments, whereas older individuals have a lower propensity to receive work-time-related income. The analysis also highlights that professionals, service sector employees, manual job workers and individuals whose jobs require travelling are more prone to variable wages compared to the rest of the population. Given a modest success in combating the phenomenon to this date, these findings will be particularly valuable for policymakers in their endeavours to devise tailored policy measures.

EU law, In-Work Poverty, and vulnerable workers

AbstractThe focus of the present contribution is the role of European Union (EU) law in shaping the working conditions of four groups of vulnerable workers. It assesses to what extent the impact of EU law favours, on these particular groups, an increased risk of In-Work Poverty (IWP) and explores whether the recent attention to IWP at EU level and the latest initiatives adopted may change the picture in the near future. The purpose is, therefore, to contribute to the debate on the role of EU law and policy in structuring vulnerability from the perspective of IWP. What is commonly known as EU labour law is a fragmentary legal corpus that has grown in a rather patchwork fashion as part of a social dimension of the European project that was, broadly speaking, functional to the logic of market integration. This originates in the early division of competences between the EU and the Member States in the Treaty of Rome, which left labour law and social protection outside the EU sphere of action. It partly explains why the protection of workers, particularly those that do not engage in cross-border situations, does not seem to be the EU’s primary goal, or at least it is not formulated as contrary to other potentially clashing rationales such as market integration, flexibility, enhanced competitiveness and so on. The prevention of IWP was not, in any case, one of the concerns of the original European project. Yet, EU law has produced several pieces of legislation that directly or indirectly contribute to shaping the working conditions of European workers, including those more exposed to IWP. The paper assesses the relevant EU legal framework and discusses its impact on the working conditions of those more at risk of IWP. It concludes by estimating the potential of a series of recent initiatives to enhance the protection of the most vulnerable workers, thus making a positive change.

Social Innovation in Home-Based Eldercare: Strengths and Shortcomings of Integrating Migrant Care Workers into Long-Term Care in Tuscany.

Italy is one of the main receiving countries of migrant care workers in Europe. Its migrant-in-the-family model has developed since the 1990s, and, today, home-based eldercare is unimaginable without the work of the almost one million care workers employed in private households, of whom over 75% are migrants. Despite forming one of the most important pillars of eldercare provision in the country, the employment of migrant care workers is not addressed in national policy. However, regional policymaking is far from inactive in the face of growing gaps in care as regions and municipalities play a crucial role in regulating, organising, and providing eldercare. With a focus on comprehensive solutions, cross-sector collaborations, and interactive learning processes, social innovation becomes an important element in reforming eldercare in the context of institutional inertia, fragmentation, and permanent austerity. In what ways are regions using social innovation to respond to challenges in eldercare provision and integrate migrant care workers? This study is based on interviews with experts from the region of Tuscany, which is running the project Pronto Badante (emergency care worker). The results suggest several advantages of local interventions breaking with the institutional silo mentality, as well as ongoing challenges regarding the impact and sustainability of these interventions.

Determinants of the Willingness to Retire of Older Workers in Europe

Determinants of the Willingness to Retire of Older Workers in Europe

Research on the exposure of workers in a courier company to the exhaust emissions of diesel engines

The paper presents the research on the development of a method for analysis of elemental carbon from diesel emissions in the workplace based on existing methods and studies on the exposure of workers in a courier company to emissions of diesel engines in the context of occupational exposure limit in Directive (EU) 2019/130 on the protection of workers from the risks related to exposure to carcinogens or mutagens at work. It is estimated that more than 3.6 million workers in Europe are exposed to diesel emissions. Occupational exposure takes place mainly in mining, construction, transport, agriculture and other activities using diesel vehicles and equipment. New data on the carcinogenicity of diesel engine emissions and the change in their classification from potentially carcinogenic (Group 2B) to carcinogenic (Group 1), as well as the high number of workers exposed to these types of chemical pollutants, highlighted the need to set occupational exposure limits for emissions diesel engines in the work environment.

Barriers to EU mobility: Facilitating mobility of workers in the EU

Free movement of workers within the European Union is the second fundamental principle of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and one of the four freedoms enjoyed by the European citizens. Its main objective is to enhance the living standard of each individual but also of European society in general. However, even though the free movement of European workers provides citizens with plenty of opportunities, mobility rates are particularly low. By all the EU citizens of working age in 2020, only 3.3% resided in an EU country apart from that of their own citizenship in accordance with Eurostat. Under those circumstances, a few policy ideas are provided in order to boost the mobility of EU workers:
 
 Access to extended and more valid information
 More effective response by the Commission when it comes to the breach of the Directive
 More effective management of petitions
 Reinforcement of SOLVIT
 Adaptation of national legislation to the Directive
 Removal of unnecessary hurdles
 New framework of cooperation between member states
 
 The scope of this policy paper is to delve deeper into the factors that hinder the movement of European citizens and to provide some policy ideas which could facilitate this procedure.