Labour Market Deregulation Research Articles

Divergent rhythms of motherhood. Patterns of paid and unpaid work and domestic outsourcing among mothers in the United Kingdom and Western Germany

Objective: This article investigates class differences in mothers’ daily organization of paid and unpaid work, and how they are associated with domestic outsourcing in the United Kingdom and Western Germany. Background: Operating hours of schools and daycare facilities often conflict with long working hours in high-skilled jobs and nonstandard working hours in low-skilled jobs. However, little is known on whether advantaged mothers rely on domestic outsourcing to resolve such scheduling conflicts, and how disadvantaged mothers reconcile their daily care responsibilities with paid work, depending on the welfare state context. Method: The study uses sequence and cluster analyses on time-use data to identify typical patterns of paid and unpaid work (N=1,947). Regression models predict how these patterns differ by the mothers’ education and household income, and how they are associated with outsourcing housework and childcare. Results: In both contexts, disadvantaged mothers were more likely to have unpaid workdays rather than nonstandard workdays. However, British advantaged mothers were considerably more likely to outsource childcare to pursue standard workdays. By contrast, the pattern of partial workdays in the morning, combined with more unpaid work allocation, prevailed among Western German mothers. Conclusion: In the United Kingdom, more market-oriented as opposed to conservative family policies, stronger labor market deregulation, and more consistent policy incentives for domestic outsourcing seem more effective than in Western Germany in promoting advantaged mothers’ careers. However, this comes at the expense of greater class differences in how mothers organize their time.

Integrating LGBTI Inclusivity and Innovative Capacity in India: Analyzing the Effects of Globalization

Globalization can have enormous effects if LGBTI people are well blended into the pool of resources and tapped efficiently. This research investigates LGBTI inclusivity and the effects of globalization on economic development since the 2009 legalization verdict favoring homosexuality. The theoretical prospects are trifold: trade liberalization and labor market de-regulation; Becker’s theory of discrimination; and Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson postulate, along with a diagrammatic representation showcasing the impact of LGBTI inclusivity in the labor market. An OLS approach in conjunction to the ECI_Trade and ECI_Technology has been employed to examine the integration of LGBTI individuals into the Indian economy considering capital stock, domestic credit, employment, population and human capital as default controls to the model and year dummies have been incorporated at a later stage of modelling to highlight the precision level. The study found that LGBTI inclusivity is positively correlated with India's ECI_Trade and ECI_Technology value, increasing it approximately by 6.3% and 15.4%. Further, a number of robustness checks show that even after accounting for macroeconomic variables as default controls, the positive association continues to persist. The LGBTI inclusivity increases the ECI_Trade value by 13.2% and ECI_Technology value by 24.4%, respectively. Consequently, the authors emphasized on the economic ramifications of inclusivity in relation to wage gaps, discrimination, and the development of human capital and have tried to exemplify the integration of LGBTI individuals in EPZs, trade and technological advancement, and skill development to justify the default conceptualized postulates in support of inclusivity.

Beyond liberalization: employers’ organizations’ varied responses to employment law

PurposeA key meta-narrative of Employment Relations in the UK over recent decades has been that of labour market deregulation. However, governments have simultaneously introduced workplace rights legislation that juridified individual employment relationships. Within this process, employers and their representatives, Employers’ Organizations (EOs), are generally depicted as opposing the introduction of employment law or attempting to weaken its application. Contrary to this belief, our research identified a range of other responses to ask: how and why have EO responses varied?Design/methodology/approachThis article draws on primary qualitative and quantitative data from three projects; one examined the totality of EOs in the UK while the others examined topic-specific behaviour of EOs and other actors. The main source is the first project and its 98 interviews with representatives of EOs and related organisations between 2013 and 2017.FindingsWe demonstrate that opposition is not the only EO response to individual employment law by identifying three others: compliance, advocating for law and going beyond legally stipulated requirements by promoting voluntary standards/best practice. The article argues that there are two explanations for this pattern. One is that individual EOs possess different sets of member interests, the other relates to differences in their organizational characteristics.Originality/valueThe article makes two contributions to the literature. One is that our identification of varying responses challenges more unitary accounts emphasising neoliberal and deregulatory patterns. The other lies in our identification of causal forces not previously identified. Both combine to illustrate how the neo-liberal order is not characterised by employer consensus as to regulation.

Humanitarian capitalism: The labour regime of aid and the surrogate welfare state in times of global displacement

Recent literature on the geography and political economy of humanitarian migration governance has highlighted the diverse circuits of economic value being forged through ‘refugee crises’ across the world. However, there is a noticeable gap in the examination of what kind of labour relations sustain these new economic circuits. Additionally, there is limited analysis of how humanitarian labour practices intersect with existing geographies of labour precarity in regions where refugee aid operations are conducted. This article aims to address these gaps by exploring the dominant labour relations within the changing landscape of private and public service providers in Greece following the 2015–16 European ‘refugee crisis.’ The article argues that the growth of the refugee aid sector in Greece both capitalised on and exacerbated ongoing processes of labour market deregulation and public sector contraction. The burgeoning aid sector operated as a surrogate welfare state, relying on devalued local labour to address the basic social reproduction needs of global ‘surplus populations’. Extending discussions on the political economy of migration industries beyond profit-making to account for their role in transforming the welfare state and labour relations in spaces of accentuated capitalist crisis, the article demonstrates how the emergency temporalities of aid funding, the rise of public sector managerialism, and employment protection liberalisation impact migrant-facing services, effectively serving as both anti-labour and anti-immigration policy. Furthermore, it illustrates how politically induced migrant ruination is used as a lever to intensify and moralise humanitarian labour in a feedback loop detrimental to both working-class locals and migrants.

Diversity of flexible working time arrangements and workers' health: An analysis of a workers’ panel and linked employer-employee data for France

Flexible working time arrangements (FWTA) have increased over the last decades, favored by labor market deregulation, the decentralization of collective bargaining and the development of new technologies. The negative impact of some non-standard working hours on health (like night work, shift work) is quite well-known but other forms of FWTA have been studied less so far.This article aims to investigate the relationship between FWTA and workers’ health. It focuses on employer-oriented FWTA and uses a job demands-control framework to identify different types of working time demands and control.The study uses individual data from the French working conditions survey, including panel data from 2013 to 2019 (64,981 observations) and cross-sectional employer-employee linked data from 2019 (5687 employees from 4672 workplaces).We identify empirically two main dimensions of employer-oriented FWTA, based on 14 working time variables. The first type involves “atypical working hours”, such as working weekends, nights, early mornings, evenings, or doing shift work. The second type – “work overflow” – is characterized by long working hours, overtime, taking work home, and having variable working hours.Using a fixed-effects model based on panel data, we show that both types of FWTA have a negative impact on workers' self-rated general health and mental health, as measured by the WHO-5 index. The study also finds that workers who have more control – both individual and collective – to face these demands demonstrate better health. Workers with control over their working hours report better health and are less negatively affected by FWTA. Moreover, workplace-level practices have ambiguous relationships with workers' health. However, those involving social dialogue and workers’ participation have more favorable effects: the positive effect of health and safety committees is especially clear.To improve workers’ health in the context of increased flexible working time arrangements, public policies should promote the development of control over working time and participation of workers to social dialogue on working time related issues.

Inequality in English post-16 education

Abstract This commentary examines post-16 education in England from the perspective of equity, with a focus on technical education. It describes how the growth of higher education (HE) has disproportionately benefited those from advantaged backgrounds, and argues that a key equity objective should be to improve the quality of the technical alternatives to HE. This objective faces several obstacles, including a fragmented and volatile landscape of technical education, weak funding and a deregulated labour market. Apprenticeship has potential but is hampered by non-compliance with minimum requirements for wages and training. Numeracy and literacy weaknesses are also magnified in the 16–19 phase of education. In response, the report recommends strengthened funding for the technical alternatives to HE, robust enforcement of minimum wage and training requirements for apprentices and better access routes designed to reintegrate weaker performers into the skills system.

Labour market deregulation, austerity measures, and social unrest: Greece in comparative perspective

Labour market deregulation, austerity measures, and social unrest: Greece in comparative perspective

The productivity effects of labor market deregulation: evidence from German firms during 2010–2019

Abstract In the early 2000s, the German government introduced the Hartz reforms, which deregulated German labor markets. These reforms were praised internationally as striking a balance between job growth and productivity growth. While macroeconomic research has shown that the reforms have indeed lowered German unemployment, their effects on labor productivity need to be better understood. This paper addresses the impact of temporary agency work (TAW) on German labor productivity during 2010–2019, based on data from a firm-level panel of the German Institute for Employment Research (IAB). It contributes to the rising number of firm-level studies by extending their results in a broader temporal perspective, during which TAW intensities have increased substantially, especially in TAW-using firms. The system generalized method of moment (GMM) estimations based on a firm-level data set with 13,197 observations for the period 2010–2019 show that a robust hump-shaped relationship exists between the extent of TAW and the firms’ labor productivity. We find that the increase in the use of TAWs following the Hartz reforms has, on average, positively contributed to labor productivity growth in German firms. However, the findings also show that if numerical flexibility is increased too much, productivity growth in Germany will suffer. This is particularly the case for several industrial sectors that are important in the German economy. These results are important given recent calls for more labor market flexibility to help firms grow in an increasingly turbulent global economy.

Unstable employment careers and (quasi-)completed fertility: evidence from the labour market deregulation in Italy

Abstract Most research on the fertility consequences of labour market instability has focussed on the transition to parenthood, ignoring potential ‘catching up’ effects and, thus, the more encompassing view on cohort fertility. This work extends on this point by analysing the consequences of employment instability on (quasi-)completed fertility for men and women in Italy. From a cohort perspective, we look at fertility outcomes at age 41 among those who experienced labour market deregulation (cohorts born between 1966 and 1975) in comparison with the previous cohorts (those born between 1951 and 1965) and relate the fertility outcome to the instability of their employment histories. Based on data from a large-scale, nationally representative retrospective survey, we find that fragmented employment careers and atypical employment periods come with a lower likelihood of ever becoming a parent and a higher probability of having fewer children compared to those with continuous, stable careers. Our study suggests that the consequences of rising labour market instability not only lead to a postponement of childbearing but also lead to overall lower numbers of children, especially for men and younger cohorts. This study adds to previous research by suggesting that recuperation in employment instability-induced childbearing postponement does not take place to a sufficient extent, at least in Italy.

Assessing the impacts of the individual micro-entrepreneur act in Brazil: 10 years later

Abstract Entrepreneurship is widely acknowledged as a phenomenon of central importance in our society. Within the arena of entrepreneurship policy, a more specific trend has been an increase in recent years in informal entrepreneurship. Therefore, this article seeks to contribute to filling a knowledge gap in the entrepreneurship literature using empirical evidence to assess the impact of the implementation of the Individual Micro Entrepreneur Act on the formalization of small businesses in Brazil ten years after coming into force. Based on empirical data, our study provides evidence that this legislation is being used as a large-scale instrument for labor market deregulation. Additionally, we could also observe a strong increase in the number of Brazilian citizens officially registered as individual micro entrepreneurs, especially in urban areas and focusing on activities, such as hairdressers, manicures, pedicures, masonry works, and sales promotion. Keywords: informal entrepreneurship; firm formalization; public policy; regional development; Brazil

Out with the old, in with the new? Institutional experimentation and decent work in the UK

Drawing on an extended critical case study of the Greater Manchester (GM) city region in the UK, this article contributes to debates around the changing role of social actors within local labour markets, and how they contribute to processes of regulatory experimentation and innovation. While recent literature has drawn attention to new actors and novel strategies in responding to labour market disruptions, in this article the authors argue that there is still room for embedded actors and established practices in defending, and advancing, decent minimum standards. This may be through political lobbying, workplace organising, industrial action, extending collectively agreed standards to outsourced workers, or through hybrid forms of trade union–community campaigning. Against a wider background of labour market de-regulation, the authors’ case study points to the layering up of increasingly fluid and context-specific repertoires of conflict and cooperation that shape labour market ‘norms’ and legitimise particular progressive causes within local rather than national capitalisms.

The distributional effects of labour market deregulation: Wage share and fixed-term contracts

Since the 1980s, most advanced economies have massively ‘flexibilized’ their labour markets by reducing the protection against layoffs and introducing temporary and flexible contracts. Concurrently, a well-established economic stylized fact – the stability of the wage share of income – has been challenged as empirical evidence reveals a substantial decline in labour share across numerous countries. In this study, we aim to empirically investigate the causal link between these two phenomena by examining the impact of changes in the regulation of fixed-term contracts, as measured by variation over time in the temporary contracts EPL index, on the functional distribution of income. We employ Jordà’s local projection method for a panel of 18 advanced countries over the period 1985–2019 and show that reforms that deregulate fixed-term contracts consistently reduce the wage share.

Employment Instability and Childbirth over the Last 20 Years in Italy

Family formation is fostered by circumstances of plannability and economic and social stability. Conversely, as documented in previous literature, employment instability can hamper fertility decisions. Based on data from the Italian Labour Force Survey, this paper examines the association between employment-related instability and the likelihood of having a first or additional child from 2000 to 2020 in Italy, covering a period characterised by increasing labour market deregulation. Our results show that individual employment instability, such as temporary employment or unemployment, negatively influences the likelihood of having a first and second child, while the progression to higher parities is less affected by employment situations. Building upon previous research, we demonstrate how the negative association between fertility and employment instability has intensified over recent decades, especially for women. The large sample size also allowed for the examination of specific differences by educational levels and both partners’ employment situation. In contrast to traditional views about gender roles, the employment situation of one’s partner seems to matter less for women than for men.

Employer associations in light of the Great Recession and radical labour market deregulation in Southern Europe: An analysis from the perspective of company membership

AbstractThis article analyses the impact of the Great Recession and radical labour market deregulation on employer associations’ (EAs) membership levels and composition in Southern Europe. It also reviews the literature and advances it in four relevant aspects. First, it verifies a general decrease in membership of EAs in Southern Europe, almost to the point of collapse in Greece. Secondly, it identifies the greater importance of large companies (more than Fordist economic sectors) in the composition of this membership. Thirdly, it confirms that sectoral bargaining (as a major determinant) and union representation (an element weakened by reforms) are strong company-level incentives for membership in EAs. Finally, it re-examines the reasons put forward in the scholarly literature to explain why EAs in Southern Europe have not been in favour of these significant institutional changes.

Quo vadis Patria Gaucha? Uruguayan pathways of land use change

South American grasslands, socio-ecological systems used heavily for a long time, are currently experiencing dramatic land-use changes due to implementation of large-scale afforestation and agro-industrial cash crops. Applying the conceptual framework of “Multifunctional and sustainable productive landscapes” to Uruguay, we explored the impacts on rural ecosystems and communities based on a long-term monitoring network by assessing species richness of plant and terrestrial arthropods and socio-economic data from national census. We found that silvi- and agricultural industry established mainly at the expense of extensively grazed grasslands and local family farms with traditional techniques, accompanied by a deregulation of the rural labor market, depopulation and aging of rural society. Governmental nature protection efforts increase the native forest cover and establish nature protection areas focusing mainly on forests. We also discuss pathways of land-use change in recent decades and related discourses of local stakeholders.

Women's leadership and the gendered consequences of austerity in the public sector: Evidence from IMF programs

AbstractDuring times of economic turmoil, women often bear the cost of cuts in public spending and labor market deregulation. We argue that the adverse gendered consequences of austerity are mitigated when women occupy more political leadership positions. We test our argument using two independent sources of evidence. First, we use cross‐country time‐series data for 95 countries from 2000 to 2018 on public‐sector employment outcomes and panel regressions to show that women leaders mitigate the adverse consequences of IMF programs for women in the public sector. Second, we use individual‐level data from the World Values Surveys covering 50 countries from 2004 to 2015 to show that women in the public sector are more likely to fear job loss and endure income loss under IMF programs when the women share in the government of their country is low but that these adverse effects disappear once women are represented in the government. These results have important implications for debates on women's leadership as well as the impact of austerity on the public sector.

The effects of IMF conditional programs on the unemployment rate

The fundamental mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is to ensure global financial stability and to assist countries in economic turmoil. Although there is a consensus that IMF-supported programs can have a direct effect on the labor market of recipient countries, it remains unclear how IMF participation decision and conditionalities attached to IMF loans can affect the unemployment rate of borrowing countries. Using a world sample of countries from 1980 to 2014, we investigate how lending conditional programs of the IMF affect the unemployment rate. Our analyses account for the selection bias related to, first, the IMF participation decision and, second, the conditions included within the program. We show that IMF program participation significantly increases the unemployment rate of recipient countries. Once we control for the number of conditions, however, we find that only IMF conditions have a detrimental and highly significant effect on the unemployment rate. There is evidence that the adverse short-run effect of IMF conditions holds robust in the long-run. Disaggregating IMF conditionality by issue area, we find adverse effects on the unemployment rate for four policy areas: labor market deregulation, reforms requiring privatization of state-owned enterprises, external sector reforms stipulating trade and capital account liberalization, and fiscal policy reforms that restrain government expenditure. Our initial results are found to be robust across alternative empirical specifications.

Labor adjustment and productivity in the OECD

Labor productivity is more procyclical in OECD countries with lower employment volatility. To capture this new stylized fact, we propose a business cycle model with employment adjustment costs, variable hours and labor effort. We show that, in our model with variable effort, greater labor market frictions are associated with procyclical labor productivity as well as stable employment. In contrast, the constant-effort model fails to replicate the observed cross-country pattern in the data. By implication, labor market deregulation has a greater effect on the cyclicality of labor productivity and on the relative volatility of employment when effort can vary.

Decent work and innovative work behaviour: Mediating roles of work engagement, intrinsic motivation and job self‐efficacy

In nowadays highly competitive and dynamic environment where employees' innovative work behaviour (IWB) has become critical source for business success, employees' quality of work lives is severely challenged by the global deregulated labour market. As an institutional effort to combat the challenges faced by labour world, the concept of decent work was proposed by International Labor Organization (ILO) in 1999, which is defined as work—and work‐related contexts—that provides adequate and fair income, social protection, security at workplace, opportunities for personal development and voice and participation in the decisions that affect their lives. This study examines whether realization of decent work promotes IWB. Based on a seven‐dimension construct of decent work, we propose that decent work promotes IWB through enhancing work engagement, with intrinsic motivation and job self‐efficacy partially mediating the positive effect of decent work on work engagement. By means of data with 517 supervisor–employee dyads, we test the hypotheses using structural equations modelling. Our results show good fitness of the hypothesized model, pass for the comparison of alternative models and testing of mediation effects and hence support all the hypotheses. Implications for theories and practices are discussed.

Bezpieczeństwo ekonomiczne państwa w warunkach finansyzacji

Retaining economic security has become one of the main goals of internal and external politics of the states. Economic security consists in ensuring the undisturbed functioning of economy as well as maintaining comparative balance with economies of other states. The concept of economic security is related to the states and its elements are the values which are considered important for the state, however not necessarily under its direct control. The effort of the state’s politics in terms of economic security ought to be directed at shaping its economic potential. Economic potential is the function of available resources to the subject at a given time, such as: natural, material and human. Shaping the bases of the state’s economic security currently faces some objective difficulties connected to the globalisation process – in fact, it has limited real possibilities of fast and effective impact on the economy. Globalisation has changed the state’s institution and limited the possibility of political influence on economic and social processes. The impact of globalisation has been achieved through: quick and uncontrolled capital flow, mass and equally quick information flow, deregulation of labor market and ‘financialisation’ of social life. Financialisation has been the subject of an in-depth analysis for over three decades. Financial capitalism is a new ‘invention ‘and the process of shaping this system is not finished. This system should be deliberately oriented towards the needs of the future. The point is to democratize and ‘socialise’ the financial institutions, so that these institutions will have a positive impact on the quality of the environment.