Job Contract Research Articles

Industry Trade Exposure and the Quality of Employment in India’s Manufacturing Sector

Globalization, trade and labour institutions have implications on the labour market affecting the regular nature of jobs and increasing dependence on contract labour. Using worker-level data for India’s manufacturing sector, this paper evaluates the influence of outward orientation of the worker’s industry on the informal nature of employment. We find that higher import penetration and export orientation of the manufacturing industries of workers promote employment of regular nature. However, the regular jobs come tied up with lack of job contracts in industries facing higher import competition. Export-oriented industries increase the chances of regular jobs with a written job contract.

A national survey of Italian emergency medicine residents: it's time to stay and play

At the end of October 2023, CoSMEU (Italian Society of Emergency Medicine Residents) conducted an electronic survey among the Italian Emergency Medicine (EM) residents. Technical skills, lecture programs, research, and types of employment have been investigated. 421 (21.5.%) residents from all the 34 Italian EM schools responded. Great heterogeneity of training and the lack of opportunities in research about EM topics are reported. The importance of research in EM was recognized by half of those surveyed, but only one-third are actively engaged in the EM scientific community. While one-third of EM residents have accepted a job contract, nearly all of them are against contracts with Calabria Decree from the 2nd year of residency. The ideal workplace is a combination of in-hospital and pre-hospital settings, and almost all of the EM residents believe that the most frightening part of being an EM doctor is the hard-working condition.

Does job stress mediate the risk of work disability due to common mental disorders among social workers compared with other health and social care, education, and non-human service professionals? A prospective cohort study of public sector employees in Finland.

This study aimed to investigate (i) the risk of work disability (>10-day sickness absence spell or disability pension) due to common mental disorders (CMD) among social workers compared with other health and social care, education, and non-human service professionals and (ii) whether the risk was mediated by job stress. A cohort of 16 306 public sector professionals in Finland was followed using survey data from baseline (2004 or if not available, 2008) on job stress [job strain or effort-reward imbalance (ERI)] and register data on work disability due to CMD from baseline through 2011. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to analyze the risk of work disability due to CMD between three occupation-pairs in a counterfactual setting, controlling for age, sex, job contract, body mass index, alcohol risk use, smoking, and physical inactivity. Social workers' job stress was at higher level only when compared to education professionals. Thus, the mediation hypothesis was analyzed comparing social workers to education professionals. Social workers had a higher risk of work disability due to CMD compared with education professionals [hazard ratio (HR) 2.08, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.58-2.74]. This HR was partly mediated by job strain (24%) and ERI (12%). Social workers had a higher risk of work disability than non-human service professionals (HR 1.54, 95% CI 1.13-2.09), but not compared with other health and social care professionals. Job stress partly mediated the excess risk of work disability among social workers only in comparison with education professionals.

The Influence of Employment Quality on Employee Health Complaints: A Parallel Mediation Model

AbstractEmployment quality is a social determinant of employee health. However, little is known about the psychological mechanisms underlying this relationship. In this study, we investigated whether work engagement and affective job insecurity mediated the relationship between three employment quality indicators: type of contract (0. temporary vs. 1. permanent), employment relationship (0. part-time vs. 1. full-time), and salary, on the one hand, and employee health complaints, on the other. We implemented a time-lagged design with three time points. Our sample was composed of 247 employees. The data analysis using Structural Equation Modelling methods showed statistically significant negative indirect effects of the job contract type and salary on employee health complaints via the two mediators investigated in the case of salary and via affective job insecurity in the case of job contract type. Our study contributes to understanding why some employment quality indicators are related to employee health complaints. It also highlights that promoting high quality employment arrangements is not only a way to create engaging and secure jobs, but also an avenue leading towards employees’ health.

NEETs and Youth Guarantee Registration: Examining the Link to Past Undeclared Work

A myriad of factors influence young people’s vulnerability and the likelihood of becoming NEET. Moreover, the share of young NEETs in European countries is very high. Institutional and governmental initiatives aiming to promote the inclusion of young people in the labour market are of paramount importance. However, the socio-economic conditions and the level of vulnerability alongside other socio-demographic characteristics are likely to influence the extent to which young people ultimately engage with such programmes. The current study ascertains whether previous experience of informal work increases young people’s propensity to participate in programmes offered by public employment services, such as the Youth Guarantee Programme. Indeed, we hypothesise that the experience of working without a contract makes young people more aware and concerned about the risk of remaining trapped in a spiral of vulnerable jobs. To test this, we used data from a survey of 4,273 NEETs and focused on Italy, Portugal, and Spain. The study’s findings contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between past experience in the informal economy and engagement with the Youth Guarantee. Besides contributing to the literature, the study can also contribute to policy making and practitioners’ assessment of the relative efficacy of Youth Guarantee initiatives among different subgroups of young NEET and tailor the interventions accordingly. In other words, the outcomes of this study should signal to governments that greater efforts should be made to implement initiatives reaching out to young people, as well as acting to reduce the precariousness in job contracts, which negatively impacts their quality of life.

Wage Differentials and Inequality in Managerial and Professional Jobs: Quantile Regression Analysis

In the economics literature, it is vividly portrayed that there is a great deal of disparity in wages received by workers across economic activities and occupations in India. The primary purpose of this article is to identify factors determining wage differentials and to measure wage inequality in managerial and professional occupations. Using unit-level records of periodic labour force survey (PLFS) published by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), we apply quantile regression model to examine how wage distribution is determined by personal, household and labour market characteristics. Our analysis is limited to persons aged between 15 and 65 and employed in managerial and professional occupations. The findings suggest that rural–urban dichotomy, gender, technical education, social group, job contract, type of enterprise and enterprise workforce size are statistically significant across quantiles and are important in explaining the wage distribution of managerial and professional workers in India. From a policy perspective, the invigoration of gender-based measures coupled with the expansion of technical education and labour market institutions are essential for bridging the wage disparity in India. JEL Classifications: J16, J24, J31

“It Was Very Hard for Me to Keep Doing That Job”: Understanding Troll Farm’s Working in the Arab World

This article investigates the production culture and routines of “troll farms” in three Arab countries—Tunisia, Egypt, and Iraq—from a production studies approach. A production studies approach enables us to focus on the working conditions of paid trolls. We employed qualitative methods to look inside the “black box” of Arab troll farms. From February to April 2020, we conducted semi-structured interviews with eight disinformation workers at both managerial and staff levels. We propose to understand disinformation work as a specific type of digital labor, characterized by very intense shifts and emotionally burdensome daily tasks, absence of legal job contracts, and highly surveilled work environments. The article contributes to understand disinformation practices outside and beyond the West; it situates disinformation activities within the broader context of digital media industries; it provides a detailed analysis of the features that distinguish troll farms in the Arab world from those that emerged in other regions of the Global South; and it reconnects the research on disinformation to digital labor studies.

Social factors in the management of youth participation in the labor market in Asia: Justification of causal dependencies

The study aims to determine social factors in the management of youth participation in the labor market in Asia based on causal analysis. The information base involves youth employment and youth working-age population by education levels, rural/urban areas, marital and disability status, time arrangement, and job contract. The sample covers 14 countries the ILO assigned to the Asia group for 2012–2021. Correlation analysis identifies dependencies between social factors and youth employment and determines their nature and strength, considering time lags when this influence becomes maximally significant. Granger causality analysis contributes to the establishment of causal dependencies within identified relationships. The greatest causal effect on youth employment is identified for educational level (basic educational level is a cause of positive changes in youth employment level in four countries, and youth employment level is a cause of growth of basic educational level in eight countries, including three countries with bidirectional causality, mostly with strong/very strong strength without lag). Quantitative indicator of youth working-age population by gender influences youth employment in Azerbaijan, Israel, the Philippines, and Thailand (from moderate to strong strength with lag from 0 to 2 years), by marital status – in Cyprus, Georgia, Korea, and Thailand (mostly very strong, time lag – from 0 to 2 years), by social factor of disability – in Shri-Lanka and Mongolia (very strong with 1-year time lag). The results can be used to form directions for managing youth participation in the labor market to improve social, educational, and youth policy.

How Does the Statutory Retirement Age Affect Older workers’ Employment in Relation to Individual and Work‐Related Factors?

ABSTRACT Policies aimed at increasing employment among older people often focus on the statutory retirement age. Taking into account the characteristics of workers and work-related factors, we examine the impact of reaching the statutory retirement age on continuing employment. In addition to the use of survival trees, we propose a novel method to predict the probability of staying in employment based on an ensemble of survival trees. We focus on Poland as an example of a European country with a particularly low share of older workers in the labor force. Moreover, reform was carried out in Poland in 2017, lowering the previously raised pension eligibility age. Like other EU countries, pension eligibility in Poland starts after reaching the statutory retirement age. Our results suggest that the timing of retirement is determined by the statutory retirement age to a limited extent compared to other factors. In the case of women, a match of education and occupation, the employment sector, and holding a managerial position had a greater impact on continuing employment than reaching retirement age. In the case of men, the type of job contract had the greatest impact on continuing employment. Our findings indicate that the policies and initiatives aimed at extending working life should pay more attention to work-related factors and gender differences in employment.

Management of Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas in Andhra Pradesh: The Perceptions of the Stakeholders

The introduction of Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas (KGBVs) in the educationally backward blocks of the country poses challenges for the mobilisation, retention and educational activities of students. The children admitted to these schools are different from those of mainstream schools. The socio-economic background of the girls has been indicating that they are child labourers, never enrolled, dropout from schools with, risk-ridden family backgrounds, single parents, orphans, migrant workers, labour families, Below Poverty Level (BPL) and from educational accessibility-denied areas. The Special Officers (SOs), who are appointed for the management of KGBVs in terms of evolving strategies for building awareness and mobilisation of girl-child-labour to admit, retain, and motivate them for education and reaching the goal of educational attainment. In course of interaction with the SOs, it was found that in discharging their responsibilities, they face several constraints such as service conditions like contract jobs, low-level of salary, and management issues. Despite having several issues, the SOs have been working to achieve academic goals.

PRAKTIK SAMSÂRAH DALAM JUAL BELI SEPEDA MOTOR DI KABUPATEN BONDOWOSO PERSPEKTIF FATWA DSN-MUI

Brokers, now known as intermediaries in the world of commerce, play a significantly more crucial role in the present compared to earlier periods. The strong interconnection between collective traders and individuals in trade renders the broker's role highly important. A broker is someone who sells goods belonging to others in return for compensation commensurate with their efforts. In fiqh literature, activities of this nature are referred to as Samsârah. This research employs a qualitative research method utilizing data collection techniques such as observation and interviews. The primary sources in this study are traders or owners of motorcycles and individuals working as brokers. The research findings indicate that before commencing work as a broker, one must first transact with the motorcycle owner to establish the terms of the job contract. This involves determining the duration of work and the amount of commission earned. Based on the actual facts, the samsarah transactions occurring in Bondowoso align with the principles established by DSN MUI.

‘Required to Care’: Emotional Labour and the Futures of Work in Catherine Lacey’s The Answers

The concept of emotional labour pervades recent popular discourse. However, this discourse tends to emphasize the unpaid work performed in personal and familial relationships. This erases Arlie Russell Hochschild’s distinction between emotion work and emotional labour, the latter of which is a waged ‘management of feeling’ that ‘create[s] a publicly observable facial and bodily display’. This focus on unwaged emotion work identifies a real site of exploitation, but tends to obscure the recent historical tendency of care work to be subsumed increasingly into new forms of low-waged labour. I examine this tendency by turning to Catherine Lacey’s speculative novel The Answers (2017), which follows an indebted young woman, Mary, who takes a contract job in an experiment run by a celebrity seeking love. Alongside ‘girlfriends’ with other intimate roles, Mary is paid to be an ‘Emotional Girlfriend.’ I argue that the novel’s thought experiment of splitting the various roles of a romantic partner into separate, waged jobs not only commodifies affective labour, but also replicates the process of industrial deskilling in its depiction of the real subsumption of affective work into the service sectors. Next, I discuss the role of the experiment’s Research Division, which not only monitors experimental subjects via cameras, sensors, and interviews, but also directly influences their behaviour using ‘internal directives’, or chemical instructions that biologically optimize emotion. I argue that these directives intensify the management of feeling to make working subjects’ emotions more productive for capital. The argument concludes that The Answers updates Hochschild’s theory to account for work that is now often less secure, but fails to address the political questions it raises.

Exploring the Factors that Make Filipino Seafarers Quit Their Sea Jobs


 
 
 This study used the normative-descriptive method. A modified- standardized survey questionnaire was employed in this research. Majority of the Maritime Instructors as respondents of the study agree on the following factors as the causes which make the Filipino seafarers quit their sea jobs: hectic life; personal/ family problems; homesickness and seasickness within a few months; long distance relationships suffered; they hardly adjust to other crew onboard; they suffered fatigue onboard ship; inability to cope with the strenuous nature of life at sea; inhumane and unsupportive attitude
 from mentors at sea;; ill treatment of seafarers through unfair contracts; desertion by shipowners and salary arrears; insufficient shore leave; the lack of support from shore side staff can lead to frustrations for seafarers; the peculiar nature of working in the shipping industry; separation to work at sea creates disruption in the marital life; there have been many unlawful arrests of seafarers due to criminalizing unintentional marine pollution, the industry runs the risk of exposing seafarers to media criticism as well as discouraging disclosure of needed feedback regarding accidents in order to prevent their occurrence; unprecedented volume of regulations and conventions in the shipping industry; workplace safety issues onboard ships ; and the aging factor. But majority of the Maritime Instructors disagreed on the following factors: on-board politics; differences in the level of expectations between the younger and older generations in the seafaring industry; shipowners are reducing the size of crew onboard their ships due to shipboard technology; and that short-term job contracts reduce commitment. Maritime shipping companies must take care of their employees by improving employees’ job retention and career growth opportunities. Thus, the Maritime Instructors must be well-educated on the benefits, privileges and rights as a Maritime professional through relevant trainings and social awareness programs.
 
 

Changes in Income Poverty Risks at the Transition from Unemployment to Employment: Comparing the Short-Term and Medium-Term Effects of Fixed-Term and Permanent Jobs

Unemployment is a major risk factor of poverty and employment is regarded key to overcoming it. The present study examines how the income poverty risk of unemployed individuals changes in the short and medium term, when they take up work, and whether the effects differ according to the type of employment. The focus is on permanent and fixed-term job contracts, as the political promotion of fixed-term employment has often been framed as an effort to reduce long-term unemployment and poverty. Drawing on longitudinal data from the German panel study ‘Labour Market and Social Security’ (PASS) 2010–18, we apply a first difference estimator with asymmetric effects to examine the effect of starting a job out of unemployment on income poverty risks in the subsequent four years. Strikingly, starting in a fixed-term and permanent contract have similarly strong and lasting poverty-reducing effects in the short and medium term. Thus, with regard to risks of income poverty, starting a permanent job does not appear more beneficial than starting a fixed-term job for unemployed persons. We discuss the reasons for this finding and also explore how the poverty-reducing effects of transitions from unemployment to fixed-term versus permanent employment vary by household type, occupation, working time and firm size.

Are we nearly there yet? New technology adoption and labor demand in Peru

Abstract Forecasts about the effects of new technologies on labor demand are generally pessimistic. However, little is known about the current level of technology adoption and its effect on labor demand, particularly in developing countries. This paper exploits a national representative employer survey and administrative data from Peru to offer empirical evidence in this regard. Our results show that the adoption of new technologies by firms is still incipient in the country. However, when adopted, they slightly reduce the demand for workers in the medium term, particularly those in high-skilled and non-routine occupations, with a temporary job contract, and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

‘Bread for all, and Roses, too’: satisfaction with job stability and pay among young Italian workers

ABSTRACT Over the last 20 years, the Italian labour market has seen increasing unemployment, job contract instability and lower wages as a result of the global economic crisis and the policies fielded by successive governments to reduce labour market rigidities, regarded as the primary cause of high unemployment, for young people and women in particular. This paper analyses young workers’ job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is relevant for workers’ well-being, but it has also been shown to affect workers’ productivity and hence firms’ performance. We analyse overall job satisfaction and satisfaction for two job dimensions, stability and pay. We contribute to the existing literature by investigating whether job stability can compensate for a lower wage and whether the opposite is true, i.e. if a higher pay can compensate for job instability. Our findings show that overall job satisfaction is affected only by pay level. However, when we consider satisfaction with stability and pay satisfaction jointly, the type of contract seems to be more relevant than the pay in determining the probability of being either satisfied or dissatisfied with both dimensions. Therefore, if different dimensions of satisfaction are considered, both stability and pay are relevant, and there appears to be no compensating effect.

Does Certifying Foreign Qualifications Lead to Better Immigrant Skills Utilization?

Using a novel panel dataset on recent immigrants in Switzerland, we study the relationship between the degree of skills utilization, the foreign-acquired education and its certification in the host country. We find that the relationship with foreign education is negative, especially when acquired in a non-EU country, in line with the literature documenting the imperfect international transferability of human capital. Obtaining a “Certificate of Equivalence” in Switzerland makes this relationship statistically non-significant: in other words, the certification enables immigrants to enjoy the same degree of skills utilization in the Swiss labour market as those with Swiss education. Additional results suggest that immigrants with a foreign but not Swiss-certified education keep the degree of skill utilization as high as it would be if they were Swiss educated when they obtain a job contract or job offer before migrating to Switzerland. These findings are robust to controlling for self-selection on unobserved characteristics.

Determinants of Young People with Secondary Education Being Employed

The aim of this paper is to find out the main factors that determine whether young people with secondary education are employed or not in Lithuania. A survey of young people, aged 18–25, was carried out to gather information about individual characteristics and to find out the reasons why they are not employed. The analysis of the collected data was performed using independent samples tests and the calculation of the contingency coefficient. The research showed that young people start work quite young and are willing to enter the labor market. However, they find it difficult to combine work and study. The regression analysis found five significant variables to explain why young people are employed or not, i.e., their job contract, satisfaction with other work conditions, gender, the opportunity to work remotely, and 40 h worked per week. The probit model showed that temporary and full-time jobs reduce the probability of being employed; meanwhile, the opportunity to work remotely and greater satisfaction with other work conditions increases the probability of employment. The probit model also provided evidence that women are more likely to work than men.

Remuneration level of security guards from Samburu community working in Nairobi

This study investigated the remuneration level of security guards from Samburu Community working in Nairobi. The study adopted, as its theoretical framework, the Interests Theory of human rights as described by Raz. In examining these issues, the study looked at the following indicators, which provided evidence for granting or non-granting of employee rights: shelter, diet and investments made by the employees; existence of job contracts, insurance cover, retirement benefit plan and health cover; membership to a trade union; promotion at work and salary increment; and the nature of equipment and training for the job. The study involved all security guards from the Samburu community working in Nairobi as the population of study and individual security guards as the unit of analysis. Five areas of the city, that is, Westlands/Kabete, Lavington/Kangemi/Waithaka/Muthaiga/Thika Road, Karen/Lang’ata, South C/South B and Embakasi, were marked out as the places from which the study sample was taken. The study adopted a survey design, and data was collected through questionnaires, which were applied to 200 security guards who had been randomly selected from 5 administrative clusters in Nairobi. The findings indicated that security guards were poorly remunerated. It recommended that the government of Kenya enforce a minimum salary of at least at the level of maximum un-taxable income and proper job contraction for security guards.

Remuneration level of security guards from Samburu community working in Nairobi

This study investigated the remuneration level of security guards from Samburu Community working in Nairobi. The study adopted, as its theoretical framework, the Interests Theory of human rights as described by Raz. In examining these issues, the study looked at the following indicators, which provided evidence for granting or non-granting of employee rights: shelter, diet and investments made by the employees; existence of job contracts, insurance cover, retirement benefit plan and health cover; membership to a trade union; promotion at work and salary increment; and the nature of equipment and training for the job. The study involved all security guards from the Samburu community working in Nairobi as the population of study and individual security guards as the unit of analysis. Five areas of the city, that is, Westlands/Kabete, Lavington/Kangemi/Waithaka/Muthaiga/Thika Road, Karen/Lang’ata, South C/South B and Embakasi, were marked out as the places from which the study sample was taken. The study adopted a survey design, and data was collected through questionnaires, which were applied to 200 security guards who had been randomly selected from 5 administrative clusters in Nairobi. The findings indicated that security guards were poorly remunerated. It recommended that the government of Kenya enforce a minimum salary of at least at the level of maximum un-taxable income and proper job contraction for security guards.