Labour Market Strategies Research Articles

Immigration, Clandestine Work and Labour Market Strategies: The Construction Sector in the Metropolitan Region of Lisbon

This article discusses the role of foreign workers in the Portuguese labour market, relating the recent changes in the labour market with the need for foreign workers to satisfy the demand in some sectors. Focusing on the secondary labour market, namely in the sectors that require temporary and flexible work (such as construction and public works), an overview is presented of the strategies supporting clandestine work. Using the example of the construction sector in the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon, the role of diverse agents (firms, sub-contractors, workers, state institutions and trade unions) in this network of informal labour is discussed – as well as the different forms of vulnerability to which the foreign clandestine workers are exposed.

Unions and New Shopfloor Strike Strategies and Learning Processes among Public Employees

The construction of a welfare state in most western industrialized countries went hand in hand with the development of an expansive public sector. Having discussed the theoretical arguments social scientists have applied to explain the increasing collective industrial activity among public employees in selected industrialized countries, this article endeavours to test the proletarianization, the organization and the interaction hypotheses alongside the welfare state crisis argument. In light of statistical data on strikes and four detailed case studies of the development of mass organizations and shopfloorbased strike activity, that is base organizations, in Denmark, only a conditional interaction model remains. This model states that the development of the public sector contributed to the growth of modem mass organizations and to the construction of informal base organizations with shared goals, especially through the establishment of large bureaucratic settings with elaborate internal labour markets. The model also confirms that base organizations acquired their main resources from, and partly owed their existence to, the formal labour unions, who themselves could not remain unaffected by the base organizations either. Finally it is argued that the combined, but often unintended, efforts by mass and base organizations introduced durable changes in the system of industrial relations, and opened up new labour market strategies for public employees.

Making Performance Plants from Branch Plants? In Situ Restructuring in the Automobile Industry in the United Kingdom

In this paper a critical examination is made of the alleged change in the branch-plant economy. It is claimed that a new type of branch plant is emerging, with more progressive implications for local economic development. This argument is reviewed with reference to in situ restructuring in existing brownfield plants in the automobile industry. Empirical evidence is examined from ‘Motor Co.’ and ‘Car Co.’ (pseudonyms) in Riverside, across several dimensions of change: role and autonomy; labour process; labour-management relations; labour-market strategies; supplier linkages; and local economic development implications. It is argued that changes in branch plants and their implications for local economies can be understood by addressing the interrelations between structure, agency, and contingency. Evidence of change from Motor Co. and Car Co. in Riverside suggest some heightening of plant responsibility, the limited upgrading of functions, and the introduction of new techniques. The changes are partial, revealing the overlap of new and old practices, and the benefits for local economic development appear limited.

Late effects in survivors of bone tumors

An enduring focus of scholarly work on global production networks (GPNs) is the process of insertion into production networks and the capacity of places to shape their manner of inclusion. Sometimes overlooked are ways in which these insertions are based on an evolving set of exclusions. A disarticulations perspective trains our attention on the mutual interplay between moments of inclusion and exclusion that produce uneven geographies and histories of development, foregrounding place-specific factors and offering a framework for understanding local experimentation. Firms continue to restructure under relentless pressure to improve performance and the concomitant need to experiment, causing firm strategy to shape-shift and re-making relations of inclusion and exclusion. In the distribution function of global supply chains, the prevailing value-creation strategy is downward pressure on the cost of labor, but this perhaps suggests a false sense of stability. Using data gathered in the distribution hub just outside of Chicago, I examine the role of labor market intermediaries in re-negotiating the boundaries of inclusion. This article explores processes of linking and delinking subsets of workers and the differential implications for worker segments and their attachment to the supply chain. Inscribed in the absorption of places and workers into GPNs are ongoing processes of disarticulation, evident in this case through the labor market strategies pursued by local firms and temporary staffing agencies. These processes lay bare the mechanisms that reproduce capital-labor relationships in global supply chains.

Social policy, labour markets, unemployment, and household strategies in Russia

Social policy, labour markets and industrial relations are closely linked, both empirically and conceptually, as described in the first part of the paper using examples drawn from the USA and Europe. The same issues are then explored in more detail for the Russian case. The latter half of the paper presents the results of a new survey of Russian heads of household in St Petersburg, Moscow and Voronezh. The households have been selected from among those unemployed, on forced leave, facing imminent redundancy, or recently re‐employed after unemployment. Interactions between these four labour market states, household labour market strategies, and their variations across the three cities are explored. Conclusions regarding the current mix of social policy, labour markets and industrial relations in Russia close the paper.

Jumping ship: Who benefits from an external labor market career strategy?

The authors evaluated a sample of 610 managers working in 20 Fortune 500 companies in a longitudinal study to test hypotheses about male and female managers' compensation associated with internal and external labor market strategies. Both managers' gender and their labor market experience were hypothesized to affect their total cash compensation. Data confirmed hypotheses, but analyses of differences between male and female managers showed that only the male managers benefited from an external labor market strategy. Female managers who used an external labor market strategy did not receive greater compensation than female managers who used an internal labor market strategy. The discussion focuses on why female managers do not receive the same benefit from an external labor market strategy as male managers.

Taxonomy of firms with reference to human resource strategies

Presents the results of a survey of employers, investigating the human resource strategies and policies of firms with particular reference to women returners. Produces a taxonomy of firms with regard to their organizational responses to external environmental change and their external and internal labour market strategies of recruitment, selection and training. Details four types of firm based on their personnel policy. Discusses the implications of this taxonomy for prospective employees, especially women returners.

Preferred vs. Actual Working Hours - A Ten Years Paneleconometric Analysis for Professions, Entrepreneurs and Employees in Germany

Labour market dynamics according the individual working hour tension (preferred working hours minus actual working hours) of active people with focus on the self-employed, as professions and entrepreneurs, and employees are investigated in our study. The individual longitudinal analysis based on panel data allows us to follow the individual process of working time preferences and actual outcomes in its individual convergence/divergence balancing process in the course of time. Our microanalytic and paneleconometric results (with pooled, one and two factor fixed and random effects models) quantify the working hour tension developments and its determinants in a decade from the mid 80s to the mid 90s. Microdata base is the German Socio-Economic Panel with ten waves from 1985 to 1994. Finally, we discuss impacts of our results for labour market strategies and a targetedeconomic and social policy.

From split labour market strategy to political co‐optation: the Palestine Labour League

Jewish immigration, aimed at creating a Jewish settlement in Palestine, and eventually a Jewish National Home (JNH) began in the latter part of the nineteenth century and expanded rapidly after the establishment of the British mandate, in the aftermath of the First World War. Jewish immigrants, in search of employment, confronted Arab labour in similar search. While Jewish labour was in need of work, being immigrants with no other means of making a living, Arab labour was in similar need due to the inability to sustain itself adequately in the rural sector of Palestine with its deteriorating state of agriculture. The availability of these two groups of workers, with their very different history and differential ability to secure the value of their labour in the market, created a complex split labour market in Palestine. Jewish immigrant labour, who had had previous experience in wage labour and in labour organization, and who was able to elicit the cooperation of other sectors of the Jewish settlers' community, was able to obtain a higher value for its labour and yet, was at the same time, under threat of displacement by much cheaper Arab labour. As a result, consolidating its organization to maintain its relative advantage, Jewish labour aimed at acquiring the monopoly over labour in the sector of the market owned by Jews. This policy was known as the 'Hebrew Labour' policy and became one of the central organizational themes and rallying cries of the Jewish settlers' community in general and of Jewish labour in particular. The propagation of 'Hebrew labour' has until recently been taken for granted by the historiographers of the period. This is primarily the case for those writing from a Zionist perspective, who tended to contain themselves within the boundaries of the Jewish settlement - the Yishuv. The notion of the boundaries of the Jewish settlement is in itself highly problematic as discussed by Kimmerling' and Horowitz.2 To the extent that explanations were offered for the demand for 'Hebrew labour', they were primarily ideological ones - the commitment of Jewish pioneers to physical labour as an integral part of the goal of national redemption. Recently students of the formation of Israeli nation and society have

Global and local subcontracting: Space, ethnicity, and the organization of apparel production

Labor-intensive apparel production has shifted to low-wage Asian nations, yet continues to flourish in the United States and other high-wage areas. This paper explains this apparent contradiction by concluding that in addition to labor costs, firm size, ethnicity, market strategy, and trade regulations powerfully affect the location of apparel production. Large firms are more able to disperse production globally than small firms, US-based firms owned by ethnic Asians are more likely to produce in Asian factories than firms of other ethnicities, and firms producing for rapidly changing fashion markets are less likely to produce offshore than firms producing less fashion-intensive products. Finally, trade restrictions powerfully affect the location of production, albeit in ways different than intended by policy makers.

Constructing the post‐fordist state? The politics of labour market flexibility in Spain

This article addresses several issues surrounding the politics of flexibility in Spain. First, it argues that the strategic role of trade unions develop and condition public policies on labour market reform by couching their strategies in terms of the post‐war labour market strategies and structures of the state, especially as governments attempt to move away from established forms of fordist regulation. Hence, second, a broader political and historical perspective is required that understands the complex political dynamics of state‐labour relationships and their structuring over time. The state's role and its labour market presence becomes itself the object of distinct political interventions and calculations by unions, governments and employers. Any discussion of a ‘post‐fordist’ state, determined to increase the flexibility of the labour market, must look at the complex and difficult ‘transitional’ process.

Estimating the Economic Model of Crime with Panel Data

Previous attempts at estimating the economic model of crime with aggregate data relied heavily on cross-section econometric techniques and, therefore, do not control for unobserved heterogeneity. This is even true of studies that estimated simultaneous equations models. Using a new panel data set of North Carolina counties, the authors exploit both single and simultaneous equations panel data estimators to address two sources of endogeneity: unobserved heterogeneity and conventional simultaneity. Their results suggest that both labor market and criminal justice strategies are important in deterring crime but that the effectiveness of law enforcement incentives has been greatly overstated. Copyright 1994 by MIT Press.

“Normalization,” “leading ladies,” and “free men”: Affirmative actions in Sweden and Australia

Most affirmative action programs assume, quite rightly, that labour market strategies are needed to give women equal economic privileges to those accorded men. But where, one may ask, are the affirmative action strategies according men an equal place in the labour of child, family, and household care? Sweden's “Free Men” campaign is one such attempt, an indication that in Sweden the arbitrary boundary between paid and family work is being placed under considerable stress. I compare it with two traditional approaches to affirmative action, one Australian and one Swedish. The analysis suggests that if the current gendering and division of work and care is to be effectively challenged, feminists may need to provide more accounts of the devices that serve advantages to men.

Regional Patterns of Small Firm Development in the Business Services: Evidence from the United Kingdom

The growth of business services in the United Kingdom during the 1980s is reviewed, and especially the role of small firms. Reports the results of an intensive questionnaire survey, undertaken in 1991, of a sample of small management consultancy and market research companies in three areas; inner London, the outer south east, and north west England. In interpreting the demand and supply characteristics of these firms, emphasis is placed on their interactions with the internal labour market strategies of predominantly large client organisations. Generally, the sample firms offer consultancy and marketing expertise which such clients do not provide from their own skill resources. Their founders were also often originally employees of such organisations, especially outside London. Regional economic and social characteristics mould the activities of these firms, even though many engage in a significant degree of interregional trade. The markets served, types of specialisation, the originating process, and the ages of founders show marked differences between the two sectors and the three areas.

Labour Market Strategies and Adult Education in Europe

(1991). Labour Market Strategies and Adult Education in Europe. Studies in the Education of Adults: Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 145-153.

French trade unions: crisis in the 1980s

France has had a Socialist President since 1981, and yet support for French trade unions has declined markedly. This article assesses the nature of this decline and examines the role of government, changes in the labour market, employer policies and trade union strategies, in order to explain this apparent paradox.

Towards a local labour market strategy

Towards a local labour market strategy

Women and Work: preparing for an independent future

Positive action in favour of women in the provision of training has helped to identify the practices that discriminate against women and to counter their effects. In the past, the European Social Fund has supported training initiatives run by and for women. In the future, however, because of changes to the allocation of the Fund, women’s training may not receive the same priority. This article examines women’s training needs and argues that naming women as a priority in resource allocation encourages the development of local labour market strategies that address gender and, thereby, make visible the circumstances and needs of women.

Resisting economic conscription

The British left's response to the Tory government's labour market strategies has been piecemeal and ineffective. It has been severely compromised by the historical involvement of the Labour Party and the TUC in the MSC. The adherence of the labour movement to the work ethic, the idea that each should be paid according to labour contributed rather than to need, has become a stumbling block. Gray argues that a left labour market strategy must first protect the weak, the growing part-time, temporary and casual ‘under-class’, and enable them to refuse low-paid work. The present mood of defeatism, of demanding jobs at any price, must be challenged. With workfare on the state's agenda, the ‘right to work’ is the wrong emphasis; what matters is the right to an income.

British Employment Measures: Policy and Evidence

ABSTRACT: This paper examines how British labour market policy has developed over the decade up to mid‐1986 and summarises the evidence available on the effects of the so‐called 'special employment measures'. Given the wide range of schemes and the variations in rules governing them as they evolved, no attempt is made to give details of the different schemes. The aims are to identify the main shifts in policy and to address the principal methodological and empirical issues which arise in attempting to evaluate policy.The main focus of the paper is on those measures which have been designed to increase employment without threatening the attempts by successive governments first to restrain the growth of public expenditure and then to reduce the level in real terms. The mainstream macroeconomic and labour market strategy continues to stress the need for fiscal and monetary restraint combined with much greater labour market flexibility.Whilst the paper is concerned with employment measures, the Youth Training Scheme is also included. It represents the biggest of all the programmes initiated during the last decade or so of policy intervention and is concerned with providing employment as well as training opportunities.