Job Protection Research Articles

An Opportunity to Promote Health Equity: National Paid Family and Medical Leave

* Abbreviations: COVID-19 — : coronavirus disease 2019 FMLA — : Family and Medical Leave Act PFL — : paid family leave PFML — : paid family and medical leave > When my daughter was born prematurely at 27 weeks, I was faced with the agonizing choice of staying with her in the neonatal intensive care unit or going back to work at my federally qualified community health center. Even as a pediatrician who is familiar with the enormous benefits of kangaroo care and singing, talking, and reading to newborns, I returned to work within two weeks of her birth because of my own economic situation. At the time, the state I lived in, Massachusetts, did not offer paid family and medical leave (PFML), and the clinic I worked at offered unpaid leave options. As a physician, I am enormously privileged with respect to job protection and income. However, the families I care for are particularly vulnerable to the adverse impacts of unpaid leave. I have come to recognize PFML as a health equity crisis that requires an urgent national policy solution. > > Dr Kimberly Montez The United States is the only developed nation that fails to guarantee any kind of paid leave to workers. We lack a national paid family and medical leave (PFML) policy that encompasses: (1) paid parental leave, which would apply to both mothers and fathers after the birth of a child, adoption of a child, or fostering a child; (2) paid family leave (PFL), which would apply to caregivers of a hospitalized child, a medically complex child, or a family member such as a declining parent; and (3) paid medical or sick leave, which would allow one to manage personal or family illness. Although the 1993 Family and Medical … Address correspondence to Kimberly Montez, MD, MPH, Department of Pediatrics, Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, 1 Medical Center Blvd, Winston-Salem, NC 27157. E-mail: kmontez{at}wakehealth.edu

Varieties of Precarity: How Insecure Work Manifests Itself, Affects Well-Being, and Is Shaped by Social Welfare Institutions and Labor Market Policies

Precarious Lives addresses one of the most important developments in employment relations in the neoliberal era: increase in labor precarity and the subsequent decline in employee well-being. Drawing on data on social welfare institutions and labor market policies in six rich democracies, the author shows that work is less precarious, and workers are happier, when institutions and policies provide job protection, and put in place support systems to buffer job loss.

Evaluating the potential economic, environmental, and social benefits of orange-spotted grouper aquaculture in the United Arab Emirates

Residents of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are among the largest consumers of fish in the world with annual per capita fish consumption of around 27 kg. The orange-spotted grouper is one of the most popular fish species in the UAE, but it has been pushed to the brink of extinction, which makes its procurement from aquaculture ever more important. This paper evaluates the potential economic, environmental, and social impacts of grouper aquaculture in the UAE and identifies four key findings. First, under a business-as-usual scenario and after internalizing environmental and social costs, the production cost of wild-caught grouper is estimated to increase by 4.8% from $15.96 to $16.72 per kg. Second, large-scale grouper aquaculture is found to be economically viable. Third, the production cost of farmed grouper is estimated to be as low as $4.65 per kg. Fourth, procuring fish from aquaculture can yield significant environmental benefits arising from reduced fish landings and the protection of marine habitats. It can also yield social benefits through the protection of fisheries jobs and the preservation of the cultural value of fishing in UAE society. The procurement of all consumed fish in the UAE locally from aquaculture could contribute upwards of 3933 jobs to the labor market, valued at $13.9 million. This study highlights the importance of aquaculture for sustainable fisheries and suggests that the introduction of grouper aquaculture in the UAE may be economically sound, environmentally beneficial, and socially enhancing.

Snitches Get Stitches: An Historical Overview of Whistleblower Laws and Perceptions

In the U.S., whistleblower protection comes in two forms, anti-retaliation assurance, and bounties. To receive job protection under the Dodd-Frank Act, the U.S. Supreme Court held that employees must report to the SEC, or they will not satisfy the definition of a whistleblower. Since the time of the Civil War, with profiteers abusing their government contracts, the False Claims Act has rewarded employees reporting on organizations stealing from the government. While the U.K. and France protect whistleblowers, who are targeted by their employers, no other government provides a bounty.

The Long-Run Effects of Wage Replacement and Job Protection: Evidence from Two Maternity Leave Reforms in Great Britain

This paper examines the effects of maternity leave coverage on women’s employment and career trajectories in Great Britain using data from the British Household Panel Survey. Using a difference-in-differences identification strategy and two changes to the national maternity leave policy, I distinguish between the effects of expanding access to wage replacement benefits and the additional effects of providing job protection benefits. Access to paid maternity leave increases the probability of returning to work after childbirth in the short run, but has no effect on long-run employment. Expanding the amount of job protection available to new mothers results in substantial increases in maternal employment rates and job tenure more than five years later. However, job protected leave expansions lead to fewer women holding management positions and other jobs with the potential for promotion. Although these maternity leave policies have large employment effects on the extensive margin, there is little evidence of effects on average earnings.

Civil service reform, self‐selection, and bureaucratic performance

AbstractI use a formal model to analyze the effect of civil service protections on bureaucratic performance. In a two‐period model, a public manager observes a bureaucrat's actions for a period and decides whether to retain or attempt to remove the bureaucrat. Bureaucrats vary in terms of their intrinsic motivation and choose between careers in government or the private sector. I show that bureaucratic performance is greater in any separating equilibrium in which motivated bureaucrats choose government than in all equilibria in which they do not. Stronger civil service protections reduce the amount of effort that motivated bureaucrats must exert to distinguish themselves from their unmotivated peers in order to ensure retention. This strengthens incentives for motivated bureaucrats to choose careers in government. Stronger civil service protections, however, also reduce the ability of public managers to remove unmotivated bureaucrats. These competing effects yield a non‐monotonic and discontinuous relationship between civil service protections and bureaucratic performance. I use the model to analyze recent reforms to U.S. state and federal personnel management that have significantly rolled back traditional job protections.

Towards Employees' Job Protection and Security: Roles of National Industrial Court (NIC) in Ensuring Peace in Nigeria Workspace

The study justified the veracity of National Industrial Court (NIC) in playing role of final arbiter in industrial matters. The National industrial Court was essentially established to adjudicate on all issues emanating from industrial relations and labour market breakdown.NIC combines the rule of law applicable in conventional law courts with flexibility, expediency, reliability and affordability often associated with specialized courts.The potency of NIC was demonstrated in this study with clarity in its resolution of three industrial disputes among numerous others. Ultimately, hydra-industrial conflict which is an unavoidable phenomenon in the world of work now becomes resolvable with the machinery of NIC when properly explored. Keywords: National industrial conflict, conflict resolution, employees' union, labour dispute. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-5-12 Publication date: February 29 th 2020

Sick leave absence and the relationship between intra-generational social mobility and mortality: health selection in Sweden

BackgroundPoor health could influence how individuals are sorted into occupational classes. Health selection has therefore been considered a potential modifier to the mortality class gradient through differences in social mobility. Direct health selection in particular may operate in the short-term as poor health may lead to reduced work hours or achievement, downward social mobility, unemployment or restricted upward mobility, and death. In this study, the relationship between social mobility and mortality (all-cause, cancer-related, cardiovascular disease-related (CVD), and suicide) is explored when the relationship is adjusted for poor health.MethodsUsing Swedish register data (1996–2012) and discrete time event-history analysis, odds ratios and average marginal effects (AME) of social mobility and unemployment on mortality are observed before and after accounting for sickness absence in the previous year.ResultsAfter adjusting for sickness absence, all-cause mortality remained lower for men after upward mobility in comparison to not being mobile (OR 0.82, AME -0.0003, CI − 0.0003 to − 0.0002). Similarly, upward mobility continued to be associated with lower cancer-related mortality for men (OR 0.85, AME -0.00008, CI − 0.00002 to − 0.0002), CVD-related mortality for men (OR 0.76, AME -0.0001, CI − 0.00006 to − 0.0002) and suicide for women (OR 0.67, AME -0.00002, CI − 0.000002 to − 0.00003). The relationship between unemployment and mortality also persisted across most causes of death for both men and women after controlling for previous sickness absence. In contrast, adjusting for sickness absence renders the relationship between downward mobility and cancer-related mortality not statistically different from the non-mobile.ConclusionsHealth selection plays a role in how downward mobility is linked to cancer related deaths. It additionally accounts for a portion of why upward mobility is associated with lower mortality. That health selection plays a role in how social mobility and mortality are related may be unexpected in a context with strong job protection. Job protection does not, however, equalize opportunities for upward mobility, which may be limited for those who have been ill. Because intra-generational upward mobility and mortality remained related after adjusting for sickness absence, other important mechanisms such as indirect selection or social causation should be explored.

What Isthe Intent of Davis-Bacon Act: Aninference By Means of Cluster Statistical Method?

What Isthe Intent of Davis-Bacon Act: Aninference By Means of Cluster Statistical Method? Keren Sun Abstract The Davis-Bacon Actwaspassed in 1931, Armond Thieblot (1975) put forward a new point of view, i.e. at least in part, the Davis-Bacon Act was motivated by racial bigotry. Thieblot’s point of view resulted in controversy, formed a bipartisan view, and is still in dispute.This article uses clustering statistical method to cluster the data on the occupational status of the Whites and the Blacks of construction industry of Virginia in 1909, 1910, 1911, 1920, and 1928, divides the occupational status of the Whites and the Blacks of construction industryinto fivegroups, then, the characteristics of these five occupational groupshave been analyzed, further, the relationship between the Whites & the Blacks’ employment rate and average wage level in these five occupational groups have been studied. The study shows that the change in wage levels is not a means to control the employment rate of the Black, and it is inferred that the intent for the enacting of the Davis-Bacon Act is not out of racial bigotry, but of job protection under the premise of maintaining existing local standards. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/jeds.v8n2a2

People management after state socialism: A literature review and research agenda

This paper reviews the existing evidence base on the practice of people management in the context of post-state socialist countries of Asia. The focus is on Asian successor states of the Soviet Union and those under direct Soviet domination. In an undeniably diverse region, in all the countries under review there appears to be a disarticulation between liberal market reforms, economic progress, the ability to attract FDI and the development and persistence of a formal employment base. Extended informal networks of support often play an important role, inter alia, in informing recruitment, although clan based networks appear as quite impermeable to outsiders. Regulatory coverage is uneven but in many instances job protection is high. Drawing on the available research base, this paper consolidates and extends the existing state of knowledge on people management within the institutional contexts examined and draws out the implications for theorising and practice. The study highlights how reforms in one area may lead to counter-movements in others, shoring up existing modes of people management. Again, whilst clans and middle classes both have channels for political advocacy, there are fewer opportunities for workers and their representatives; this means that there is little impetus for legislation to promote better practice, workplace inclusivity and equity.

Paid family leave: supporting work attachment among lower income mothers

ABSTRACT Around the time of childbirth, low-income families are at particular economic risk for reasons including mothers’ relatively high levels of separation from work. Lower wage jobs typically come with minimal paid leave that can be used at childbirth. Paid Family Leave (PFL) programs provide partially subsidized wages to new parents. Quantitative research links PFL with greater post-birth work attachment among mothers, including lower wage mothers. This qualitative study sought to explore factors that facilitate – and inhibit – lower income mothers’ returns to work following childbirth and the role of PFL programs. Seventy-one percent of the 75 mothers in the study returned to work. They cited their need for income, desire for financial independence, preference for combining work and caregiving, supportive workplace practices, family help, and accessible and trustworthy child care. They described ways PFL supported employment, especially for single mothers and those with the fewest family resources. Twenty-nine percent of the mothers left work after childbirth for reasons including child care costs, a desire (or need) to remain home rather than work, low job quality, lack of job protection, and PFL program limitations. The findings suggest future research directions and pathways for service providers and others to support these families.

Challenges and progress in integrating knowledge: cases from clothing and textiles in South Africa

PurposeThe central purpose of this paper is to explore how implicit knowledge capabilities and sharing helps secure organizational survival and success. This article explores the challenging in better management knowledge in the South African clothing and textile industry. In moving from a closed protected market supported by active industrial policy, South African manufacturing has faced intense competition from abroad. The ending of apartheid removed a major source of workplace tension, facilitating the adoption of higher value-added production paradigms. However, most South African clothing and textile firms have battled to cope, given cutthroat international competition. The authors focus on firms that have accorded particularly detailed attention to two instances characterized by innovative knowledge management. The authors highlight how circumstances may impose constraints and challenges and how they paradoxically also create opportunities, which may enable firms to survive and thrive through the recognition and utilization of informal knowledge, both individual and collective.Design/methodology/approachThis study is based on in-depth interviews, primary company and industry association and secondary documents.FindingsThe study highlights how successful firms implemented systems, policies and practices for the better capturing and utilization of external and internal knowledge. In terms of the former, a move toward fast fashion required and drove far-reaching organizational restructuring and change. This made for a greater integration of knowledge through the value chain, ranging from design to retail. Successful firms also owed their survival to the recognition and usage of internal informal knowledge. At the same time this process was not without tensions and paradoxes, and the findings suggest that many of the solutions followed a process of experimentation. The latter is in sharp contrast to many South African manufacturers, who, with the global articulation of production networks, have lost valuable knowledge on suppliers and their practices. At the same time, both firms have to contend with an increasingly unpredictable international environment.Research limitations/implicationsAt a theoretical level, the study points to the need to see informal knowledge not only in individualistic terms but also as a phenomenon that has collective, and indeed, communitarian features. Again, it highlights the challenges of nurturing and optimizing informal knowledge. It shows how contextual features both constrain and enable this process. It further highlights the extent to which the effective utilization of external knowledge, and rapid responses to external developments, may require a fundamental rethinking of organizational structures and hierarchies. This study focuses on a limited number of dimensions of this in a single national context but could be replicated and extended into other contexts.Practical implicationsThe study highlights the relationship between survival, success and how knowledge is managed. This involved harnessing the informal knowledge and capabilities of workforce to enhance productivity, in conjunction with improvements in machinery and processes, and a much closer integration of design, supply, production and marketing, underpinned by a more effective usage of IT. Paradoxically, other clothing and textile firms have survived doing the exact opposite – reverting to low value-added cut-and-trim assembly operations. At a policy level, the study highlights how specific features of South African regulation (above all, in terms of job protection), which are often held up as barriers to competiveness, may help sustain the knowledge base of firms.Social implicationsThe preservation and creation of jobs in a highly competitive sector was bound up with effective knowledge management. The study also highlighted the mutual interdependence of employers and employees in a context of very high unemployment and how the more effective usage of informal knowledge bound both sides closer.Originality/valueThere is a fairly diverse body of literature on manufacturing in South Africa, and, indeed across the continent; however, much of it has focused on challenges. This study explores relative success stories from a sector that has faced a structural crisis of competitiveness, and as such, has relevance to understanding how firms and industries may cope in highly adverse circumstances.

Job protection deregulation in good and bad times

Abstract This paper explores the short-term employment effect of deregulating job protection for regular workers and how it varies with prevailing business cycle conditions. We apply the local projection method to a newly constructed dataset of major regular job protection reforms covering 26 advanced economies over the past four decades. The analysis relies on country-sector-level data, using as identifying assumption the fact that stringent dismissal regulations are more binding in sectors that are characterized by a higher ‘natural’ propensity to make regular adjustments to the workforce. We find that the response of sectoral employment to deregulation depends crucially on the state of the economy at the time of reform—deregulation increases employment if implemented during an economic expansion, but reduces employment if carried out in a recession. These findings are consistent with theory and are robust to a battery of sensitivity checks.

The posting of workers in the European road transport industry: An approach based on the discourses of social and institutional stakeholders

The posting of workers is a challenge for national regulatory and job protection frameworks in the EU. We address the specific case of road transport, analysing the discourses of the principal social and institutional stakeholders (trade unions, employers’ associations, European institutions and labour inspectors) and identify the controversies that have arisen around the definition, regulation and assessment of worker posting. We consider, more generally, the direction in which the European unification project is heading.

Corrigendum

Corrigendum

Protection of Private Equity Investors under the Dodd-Frank Act

In securities law, investor protection means that an issuer of securities, here partnership interests for private equity, must register with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and be subject to disclosure, reporting, record-keeping compliance and examination programs. This Article argues that the Dodd-Frank Act has fulfilled part of its objective to protect private equity investors by forcing private equity managers to disclose information on their operations. Disclosure has provided greater transparency about how the business of private equity is conducted. The increased SEC scrutiny started in 2014 has uncovered unfair practices and violations of fiduciary duties that sophisticated investors could not detect on their own. Notwithstanding this improved transparency, the Dodd-Frank Act still falls short of imposing the main tool securities laws uses to protect investors: that is, full and fair disclosure. In other words, Dodd-Frank does not provide all the required protections that are important for investors to assess the quality of their investments and make informed decisions. This Article offers to expand transparency by additional public disclosure of investment returns, fees, and managers’ income.For other policy issues unrelated to the protection of investors, that is, jobs or tax, Title IV of the Dodd-Frank Act does not offer the appropriate setting. Applying or enacting legislation concerning tax, labor or bankruptcy laws can better curve the controversial practices of private equity firms.

The Tide of Equality Raises All Boats

When my husband and I were expecting our firstborn, we thought it would be a good idea for him to take time off from his job to be home to care for me and the new baby and support one another through early parenthood. There was a policy at his office for women to take time off without pay beyond the usual 6-week paid leave that included job protection for up to 1 year. We assumed that male staff could, too. Wrong. There was no equivalent policy for men. My husband’s request for unpaid parental leave was denied. The request went up the “chain of command” without success. The employee union was unable to assist him. Department Editor Denise G. Link, PhD, WHNP-BC, CNE, FAANP, FAAN, is a clinical professor at Arizona State University College of Nursing and Health Innovation in Phoenix. Denise welcomes ideas for future columns and can be reached at [email protected]

Sustainable Adoption of Digital Health Innovations: Perspectives From a Stakeholder Workshop.

BackgroundThere are various complex reasons that influence sustainable adoption of innovations in health care systems. Low adoption can be caused by a lack of support from one or more stakeholders because their needs and expectations are not always considered or aligned.ObjectiveThis study aimed to identify stakeholders’ perceptions of barriers and facilitators toward the sustainable adoption of digital health innovations.MethodsA stakeholder workshop was attended by 12 participants with a range of backgrounds on August 25, 2017, including people representing the views from patients, carers, local hospitals, pharmacy retailers, health insurers, health services researchers, engineers, and technology and pharmaceutical companies in Switzerland. On the basis of adoption of innovation frameworks, we asked participants to interview each other about 3 factors influencing the adoption of digitally delivered health interventions: (1) Facilitators and barriers in the external system, (2) Needs and expectations of stakeholders, and (3) Safety, quality, and usability of innovations. The worksheets and videos generated from the workshop were qualitatively analyzed and summarized.ResultsFacilitators for adoption mentioned were high levels of income and education, and digital health is a high priority to stakeholders. Main common interests of different stakeholders were patient satisfaction and job protection. Health care spending was a misaligned interest: although some stakeholders were keen on spending more to obtain or provide the highest quality of care, others were focused on reducing health care spending to provide cost-effective services. Switzerland’s diversity and complexity, in terms of its organization with 26 cantons (administrative divisions), were barriers as these made it harder to ensure interoperability of interventions. A culture of innovation was considered a push factor, but adoption was inhibited by persistent paper-based systems, a fear of change, and unwillingness to share data. The sustainability of interventions can be promoted by making them patient-centered, meaning that patients should be involved throughout their development.ConclusionsPromoting sustainable adoption of digital health remains challenging despite various push factors being in place. Barriers related to fragmentation, patient-centeredness, data security, privacy, trust, and job security need to be addressed. A strength is that people from a wide range of backgrounds attended the workshop. A limitation is that the findings are focused on the macro level. In-depth case studies of specific issues need to be conducted in different settings.

State‐led wage devaluation in Southern Europe in the wake of the Eurozone crisis

AbstractSouth European labour markets have gone through a substantial level of downward adjustment in wages (internal devaluation) and liberalisation in the aftermath of the Eurozone crisis. Yet, there have been differences in the extent of change between Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy. These differences cannot be explained by the size of the economic crisis alone. While existing analyses focus on the extent of external pressure or party ideologies, this article focuses on the pre‐existing level of regulation by the state as opposed to regulation by social partners. It shows that devaluation and liberalisation were the most extensive in countries where governments possessed more tools to force down wages (statutory job protection, state regulations of collective bargaining, minimum wages), sometimes even against the will of employers. In contrast, countries with a higher level of autonomy for social partners (and fewer policy instruments available to governments to influence wages) devalued less. In some cases, the crisis led to more power to the state, rather than less. The article shows that state intervention can be a facilitator rather than a barrier to wage adjustment.

Effects of parental leave policies on female career and fertility choices

This paper constructs and estimates a dynamic discrete choice structural model of female employment and fertility decisions that incorporates job protection and cash benefits of parental leave legislation. The structural model is used for ex ante evaluation of policies that change the duration of job protection and/or the arrangement for cash benefits. Counterfactual simulations indicate that introducing an initial 1‐year job protection policy increases maternal employment significantly, but extending the existing job protection period from 1 to 3 years has little effect. In addition, the employment effects of cash benefits seem modest. Overall, parental leave policies have little effect on fertility.