Organization Of Labor Market Research Articles

Labour Market Organisations’ Participation in Swedish Public Policy–Making

Unions and employers are political actors. Besides defending their interests on the labour market they act in the political arena. In order to weaken the trade unions, neoliberal parties and employers’ organisations have tried to change existing systems in Sweden and elsewhere. Hence, the general questions being asked in this article are: Do Swedish labour market organisations still participate in (i.e. try to influence) public policy–making on a large scale? Are there any substantial differences in the degree to which unions and employers’ organisations participate or in their access and strategies of participation? In this article it is argued that while participation of labour market organisations in the old institutionalised framework has decreased, it has not vanished. Labour market organisations are also very much involved in public policy–making by informally contacting politicians and public servants. The unions have extensive contacts with politicians on all levels, but especially with the Social Democratic Party, while employers’ organisations have more intense contacts with the public administration and public servants. The overall picture being presented in this article is that labour market organisations in Sweden have not at all been left out in the cold. It is clear that Sweden is far from the British situation and still remains similar to its Scandinavian neighbours.

Workers without Traditional Employment: An International Study of Non-Standard Work

Part 1 The incidence of non-standard employment: non-standard employment - incidence and definitional problems. Part 2 Explaining non-standard employment: the determinants of the rise in non-standard employment empirical evidence on the determinants of non-standard employment. Part 3 The economic and social implications of non-standard employment: job stability and job satisfaction implications for labour market organizations and economic performance work and family issues summary and conclusions.

The new Swedish national public health policy

By international comparison, Swedish public health public sector and a restructuring of Swedish welfare policy. The labour market underwent transformations work has been successful. The age-standardized mortality ® gures are low in most age groups. Although and there was a signi® cant decrease in the total employment rate. Furthermore there was an increase in job inequity in health is considerable in relative terms, the number of excess deaths in lower social classes is strain, especially in the care sector. These changes took place without any governmental agency taking responssmaller than in most other countries. In spite of this rather positive picture, Sweden has ibility for an analysis of the health consequences. In 1994 the new social democratic government no comprehensive public health policy. It has been recognized that politics is a health determinant in declared that public health was a central political issue. In 1997 a public health committee with a broad parliadiVerent sectors of society but there has not been any eVort to coordinate diVerent governmental oYces in mentary base was formed. The major objective was to propose a national strategy and speci® c goals for public order to promote public health. The problem of how to implement a public health health that would guide governmental oYces, regional and local public authorities, and NGOs. The committee policy has been discussed for more than a decade. In 1987 the Swedish government appointed a task group at comprised members from all major political parties and a number of experts, representing governmental high administrative level with the participation of oYcials and scientists in the ® eld of public health. The aim authorities, scienti® c institutions, labour-market organizations, and representatives for immigrants and was to outline a national public health strategy. An allembracing objective was to promote increased equity in retired persons. The committee worked openly and in dialogue health. Another important issue was how to integrate public health with the general welfare policy system. with public health activists. Two preliminary reports were published and distributed to several hundred The task group proposed a new governmental authority, the National Institute of Public Health. The authorities and voluntary organizations. In the end of 2000 a green paper was published with purpose of the institute was to direct health promotion and disease prevention activities at a national level and proposals for 18 national public health goals. All goals were formulated in terms of health determinants and to cooperate with other national authorities and NGOs in health matters. fundamental infrastructure for preventive work. The goals related to structural and environmental determinThe National Institute of Public Health was established in 1992. At that time there had been a change ants of health as well as lifestyles. All goals are broken down into a number of sub-goals and quantitative of government, which may have contributed to the fact that the institute did not take on its intended strategic indicators have been constructed. It is presumed that the targets will be achieved in 2010. It is also proposed role in the Swedish public health work. Instead its activities focused on programmes directed towards that each respective public sector will be accountable for contributing to the achievement of the goals. speci® c health problems such as alcohol, illicit drugs, HIV/AIDS, injuries, allergic disorders and tobacco use. At present the government is revising the goals and a governmental bill will be put forward to the Swedish There was a quite strong emphasis on information directly to the public. parliament in the end of 2001. There are a number of advantages in expressing the In the 1990s there were considerable cutbacks in the

Filling the Gaps in Redundancy Support: Lessons from Leeds

Large scale redundancies are usually accompanied by a concerted response from a wide range of labour market organizations. In contrast to these high profile cases, however, there is serious concern about the range and quality of support for those losing their jobs in smaller scale redundancy situations. This article reflects on the lessons that can be learned from an initiative to develop a city-wide redundancy support service for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Leeds. The experience of clients, companies and partners involved in the project highlights some of the gaps in local redundancy support and how they might be filled.

‘You're Only as Good as Your Last Job’: the Labour Process and Labour Market in the British Film Industry

Recent debates surrounding the future of work and non-standard forms of employment have, especially in the United States, used the film industry as an exemplar and signifier of future industrial change. Much research conducted in the film industry implicitly or explicitly draws on the flexible specialisation framework to understand industrial organisation and labour market operation. It is the contention of this paper, however, that the dual labour market analysis associated with flexible specialisation explanations is too simplistic, failing to reflect the range of factors affecting labour market organisation and operation. The resulting static and atomised analysis is, as such, ill-equipped to conceptualise the complex patterns of organisation and movement evident in the highly uncertain context of film making. Furthermore, the operation and organisation of the labour market cannot be understood independently of the management of labour within the labour process. Production company management set the context and targets of work (in terms of work scheduling, pay, and conditions) and departmental heads retain method autonomy and control the recruitment and performance of ‘their’ group members. However, this is the case within a context in which people need to continually re-secure work and maintain positions within groups and contacts. Therefore, a seeming lack of control over tasks at the point of production is reinforced by the use of labour market mechanisms and influences their form.

`You're only as Good as Your Last Job': The Labour Process and Labour Market in the British Film Industry

Recent debates surrounding the future of work and non-standard forms of employment have, especially in the United States, used the film industry as an exemplar and signifier of future industrial change. Much research conducted in the film industry implicitly or explicitly draws on the flexible specialisation framework to understand industrial organisation and labour market operation. It is the contention of this paper, however, that the dual labour market analysis associated with flexible specialisation explanations is too simplistic, failing to reflect the range of factors affecting labour market organisation and operation. The resulting static and atomised analysis is, as such, ill-equipped to conceptualise the complex patterns of organisation and movement evident in the highly uncertain context of film making. Furthermore, the operation and organisation of the labour market cannot be understood independently of the management of labour within the labour process. Production company management set the context and targets of work (in terms of work scheduling, pay, and conditions) and departmental heads retain method autonomy and control the recruitment and performance of `their' group members. However, this is the case within a context in which people need to continually resecure work and maintain positions within groups and contacts. Therefore, a seeming lack of control over tasks at the point of production is reinforced by the use of labour market mechanisms and influences their form.

The Future European Labor Supply: The Critical Role of the Family

The European employment strategy initiated in 1997 is critically dependent upon the further integration of women into the labor market. The European Union has set a specific target employment rate for women of 60 percent by 2010 and is also committed to providing more and better child care facilities. This gender focus is reinforced by the requirement for gender mainstreaming in all aspects of European employment policy. There is an implied Europe-wide, universal policy of encouraging female labor-market participation and reducing the care work performed by domestic labor. However, the European Commission continues to have limited competence in areas of family, social, and welfare policy. As a result, these common employment objectives for women are thus being pursued against a background of quite different systems of social, family, welfare, and indeed labor-market organization. These systems have different economic and employment implications, such that the outcomes of the common European employment strategy will also be highly variable.

Australian Labour Market Institutions Through Time: A Perspective from the New Institutional Economics

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Australian economy over most of the past century has been its labour market institutions and organizations. Recently these institutions have changed to become more decentralized. Douglas North has argued that examining and explaining institutional change through time is an important and comparatively unresearched topic facing economic historians. In this paper, changes to Australia's labour market institutions are examined from the perspective of the New Institutional Economics. Following North, it is argued that further research should be directed to identifying the role ideological beliefs have played in shaping Australia's labour market institutions over time.

The strategic choice of union–oligopoly bargaining agenda

This article analyzes the optimal choice of union–oligopoly bargaining agenda (i.e., Right-to-Manage versus Efficient Bargaining) under possible market entry. It is shown that agreement by both the union and the incumbent firm about Efficient Bargaining emerges as equilibrium in Nash strategies, even more so under non-blockaded entry for deterrence motives. This is consistent with the common empirical findings that unionized firms do not behave according to the prediction of the Right-to-Manage model that employment will be on the labor demand curve. The entry deterrence effect highlighted in this paper also suggests that labor market organization should not be overlooked as a component of the welfare analysis of product market competition.

JOB SEARCH, SOCIAL NETWORKS, AND LOCAL LABOR-MARKET DYNAMICS: THE CASE OF PAID HOUSEHOLD WORK IN SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

Drawing on original interview and survey data, this paper examines the local labor-market dynamics for immigrant Mexicana household workers in San Diego, California. The study focuses on paid domestic “job workers” who clean the homes of several different employers each week and who are generally paid “under the table.” This paper addresses two questions: (1) What is the social and geographical organization of the local labor market for paid household workers in San Diego? and (2) What are the implications of the local labor-market dynamics for the social relations of domestic workers and the space of the city? The analysis particularly emphasizes the role of job search in defining the terms of employment in paid household work. Because one of the most important ways of finding house-cleaning jobs is through personal referrals, the social networks of workers are also explored. The paper argues that the labor-market dynamics for paid household work contribute to the residential clustering of immigrants, and help create and maintain differences among domestic workers and hierarchical relations between workers and their employers. The findings of this case study have implications for other expanding contingent and informal labor markets.

Research in hospitality human resource management and organizational behaviour

This paper surveys 156 books and articles on organizational behaviour and human resource management in the hospitality industry in order to assess the current state of research in this area. The paper looks at what research has been conducted within the following topic areas: labour market trends, employee attitudes, organization structure and culture, hospitality managers and management work and human resource practices. A picture emerges of a rich research area producing a very diverse range of work which is increasingly published in mainstream human resource management and organizational behaviour journals as well as in the hospitality journals; but where researchers are primarily engaged in applying mainstream ideas to the hospitality industry rather than influencing mainstream research. The paper identifies several gaps in current research.

Labour Market, Work Mentality and Syndicalism: Dock Labour in the United States and Hamburg, 1900–1950s

SummaryThis international comparison firstly examines labour market organization, casual labour and work mentality in North American seaports and in Hamburg. By contrast to British ports, these ports finally dispensed with casual labour between the world economic crisis and the Second World War, and labour markets there were centralized. Secondly, the industrial militancy of mobile dockworkers without permanent jobs is examined through a consideration of syndicalist organizations (1919–1921), and interpreted as an interplay of experiences with power in the network of labour market, workplace and docklands. The study refers repeatedly to the decisive dividing line between regularly and irregularly employed dockworkers. National differences in trade union representation and dispute behaviour are analysed by reference to dockworkers' direct actions.

Lean production and the German model

Traditionally the German employment system has been hailed as the surpreme example of how a symbiosis between equity and efficiency can be established in an economic system. A defining characteristic of the German employment system is how the world of work is embedded in a highly co‐ordinated system of industrial relations institutions inside and outside the enterprise. The argument of this paper is that this model of labour market organisation is coming under severe pressure as a result of a range of developments, not least the emergence of lean production as a credible alternative system of work organisation. Lean production which is based on techniques moulded and fine‐tuned in Japan affronts virtually every aspect of the prevailing model of economic citizenship in Germany. It is argued that important modifications will have to be made to key industrial relations institutions in the country so that enterprises can respond effectively to the lean production challenge.

Politics or market forces? The determinants of the relative wage movements of female industrial workers in Sweden, 1960–1990

Abstract From 1950 to 1990 the gender wage gap of blue collar workers in Swedish manufacturing shrank from 31 to 11 per cent. The Swedish discussion of this quite extraordinary development has traditionally focused on political factors within a simplistic model where the movement of relative wages is determined by policy changes. That view is challenged in this article which focuses on the impact of long-term shifts in the structure of labour supply and demand on female relative wage movements. The results demonstrate that the renewal of labour market institutions, wage policy changes, and even the ideological reorientation of the labour market organisations were not independent of labour market forces, i. e. the structure of labour supply and demand. Thus, wage policies conformed to established trends in the wage structure rather than the other way around.

Sociology and Economics: Crossing the Boundaries

Studies that cross the boundaries between sociology and economics help to enhance our understanding of both economy and society. Economics has had a greater influence on sociology than vice versa. several core subfields of sociology - such as labor market sociology, strati fication, and work and organizations - have been significantly influenced by economic theories; but sociology has had relatively little impact on economics. Communication between economics and sociology is hindered by intellectual barriers such as fundamentally different assumptions with regard to the roles of induction and deduction, as well as by institutional and professional obstacles. Opportunities are grawvingfor integrating sociological and economic explanations, as the interests of sociologists and economists are converging and more work is now occurring on the border between the two disciplines. Economic institutions and processes are intimately related to sociological phenomena. The relationship between economics and sociology has a long tradition: the classic sociologists - Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim drew heavily upon ideas from the older discipline of economics; while the founders of economic institutionalism in America - John Commons, Wesley Clair Mitchell, Thorstein Veblen - all looked to sociological insights as they sought to explain the nature of economic institutions. Economic sociology is a meeting place for economists and sociologists, since it involves the analysis of economic institutions from a sociological perspective (Schumpeter 1954). There have been at least three distinct sociological traditions

Sociology and Economics: Crossing the Boundaries

Studies that cross the boundaries between sociology and economics help to enhance our understanding of both economy and society. Economics has had a greater influence on sociology than vice versa: several core subfields of sociology — such as labor market sociology, stratification, and work and organizations — have been significantly influenced by economic theories; but sociology has had relatively little impact on economics. Communication between economics and sociology is hindered by intellectual barriers such as fundamentally different assumptions with regard to the roles of induction and deduction, as well as by institutional and professional obstacles. Opportunities are growing for integrating sociological and economic explanations, as the interests of sociologists and economists are converging and more work is now occurring on the border between the two disciplines.

Gender Segregation in Societal Context

Current controversies over indices of segregation emphasise the issue of measuring the level of segregation at the expense of analysis of the meaning of segregation. Comparative research into patterns of segregation across European member states has revealed that there is some evidence of similarities in patterns and trends, but to understand their significance for women's employment outcomes an appreciation of differences in the structural organisation of labour markets and in `gender regimes' is required. A dynamic analysis is also necessary, in which not only the pattern of segregation, but also the nature of jobs and rewards is subject to change. Linking gender segregation research more closely to labour market outcomes reveals the need for equal opportunities policies to be closely linked to the specific systems of labour market organisation in European member states.

Academic Knowledge and Work Jurisdiction in Management

Relations between formal, academic knowledge, training in high-level expert ise and practical problem-solving activities vary considerably across fields of practice, as well as across societies. Four major kinds of skills development, certification and extent of jurisdictional control over tasks and jobs can be distinguished: craft professional, academic professional, contested academic and research based. Most academically credentialed managerial skills are sim ilar to contested academic skills. These variations in types of skill formation and jurisdiction result from differences in dominant institutions and char acteristics of fields of practice. Of particular importance are: the extent of professional élite power, state licensing, the prestige of modern science and of universities, the level of student demand, the nature of the employment system and labour-market organization and the contextual dependence of prob lems and issues. Academics in some managerial fields have extended their jurisdictional control in some countries by developing technical skills for dealing with complex, yet well-bounded and general, kinds of problems invol ving quantitative information.

Destruction, Adjustment and Innovation: Social Policy Transformation in Eastern and Central Europe

This article discusses the problems that occur when post-communist societies rebuild their welfare systems. The first section reconstructs the academic and political discourse on how to balance cost considerations and demands for `socral justice' in eastern and central Europe. It outlrnes four different polrcy options political actors have, to replace the old firm-based, state-budget financed, autboritarian social policy systems. Secondly, the unfavourable political preconditrons of social policy making are taken into account. Post-communist governments have great difficulties in finding sufficiently competent and powerful actors to perform social polrcy tasks in lieu of the party state, be it labour market organizations, pro fessional interest groups, local governments, or non-profit organizations. The third section attempts to explain the specific paths of social policy transformation chosen in four east and cerrtral European countries, namely Bulgaria, the Czech and Slovak Republics, and Hungary. In this section, agam, emphasis is laid on ana lytical issues rather than on presenting empiri cal findings. The aim is to sketch a preliminary framework for comparison that may be easily enriched with empirical data and further elab orated in future work. The concluding section briefly deals with the prospects of welfare state consolidation in the countrres surveyed.

The British production regime: a societal-specific system?

The ’Hoover‘ affair has reawakened interest in Europe in the British production regime as the closest to a free market regime in Europe. This paper argues that in fact the British production regime is another example of a societal-specific system in which institutions and social arrangements are central to the specific characteristics of the British system. The low-skilled, low-wage employment system, with high shares of long and part-time employment emerges out of the interaction of institutional and social arrangements, including family and distribution systems as well as the institutions of labour market and industrial organization. This interaction creates both internal coherence and internal conflicts, but adjustment to internal conflicts does not necessarily result in escape from the vicious circle. Similarly the impact of international integration is not necessarily convergence of notional models, for, as in the British case, ‘internationalization’ takes effect through institutions, sometimes resul...