Post Industrial Labour Markets

Examining the occupational variation within non-standard employment, this book combines case studies and comparative writing to illustrate how and why alternative occupational employment patterns are formed. Through expert contributions, a framework is

In nearly all OECD countries, the labour market has been in flux in recent decades. This book examines the labour markets and the institutional frameworks that condition their functioning in four different countries: Canada, the United States, Denmark and Sweden. Through a comparative study of these cases, the book discusses the nation-specific patterns that exist in a world that seems to become increasingly subject to common social and economic development.

Regulating the Risk of Unemployment offers a systematic comparative analysis of the recent adaptation of European unemployment protection systems to increasingly post-industrial labour markets. These systems were mainly designed and institutionalized in predominantly industrial economies, characterized by relatively standardized employment relationships and stable career patterns, as well as plentiful employment opportunities even for those with low skills. Over the past two to three decades they have faced the challenge of an accelerating shift to a primarily service-based economy, accompanied by demands for greater flexibility in wages and terms and conditions in low-skill segments of the labour market as well as pressures to maximise labour force participation given the more limited potential for productivity-led growth. The book develops an original framework for analysing adaptive reform in unemployment protection along three discrete dimensions of institutional change, which are termed benefit homogenization, risk re-categorization, and activation. This framework is then used to structure analysis of twenty years of unemployment protection reform in twelve European countries. In addition to mapping reforms along these dimensions, the country studies analyse the political and institutional factors that have shaped national patterns of adaptation. Complementary comparative analyses explore the effects of benefit reforms on the operation of the labour market, assess evolving patterns of working-age benefit dependency, and examine the changing role of active labour market policies in the regulation of the risk of unemployment.

As a product of its time, the call centre utilises new developments in telecommunications and information technology to offer cost-efficient delivery systems for customer care. Efficiency, productivity and flexibility are all embodiments of neoliberal market capitalism and are all personified in the call centre operation, as well as the structure of the labour market in general. Thus the individual and the workplace are embedded in a variety of global processes. In order to frame the context in which call centre operations exist today and their employees (mainly young men and women) negotiate the increasingly risky and individualised task of developing an identity or sense of belonging in the world, Labour Markets and Identity on the Post-Industrial Assembly Line sets out the economic, social and political changes over the last three decades that have restructured the labour market, altered the balance between labour, management and the state, and unleashed global market capitalism upon previously sheltered areas of the economy and social life in both Britain and elsewhere. This ground-breaking book offers one of the first real qualitative sociological investigations of a relatively new form of employment, to see what life is like on the 'post-industrial assembly line', whilst also taking a close look at the nature of class, identity and subjectivity in relation to young people coming of age in a world dramatically altered over the last three decades.

The Golden Age of postwar capitalism has been eclipsed, and with it seemingly also the possibility of harmonizing equality and welfare with efficiency and jobs. Most analyses believe that the emerging postindustrial society is overdetermined by massive, convergent forces, such astertiarization, new technologies, or globalization, all conspiring to make welfare states unsustainable in the future.Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies takes a second, more sociological and more institutional, look at the driving forces of economic transformation. What, as a result, stands out is postindustrial diversity, not convergence. Macroscopic, global trends are undoubtedly powerful, yet theirinfluence is easily rivalled by domestic institutional traditions, by the kind of welfare regime that, some generations ago, was put in place. It is, however, especially the family economy that hold the key as to what kind of postindustrial model will emerge, and to how evolving tradeoffs will bemanaged.Twentieth-century economic analysis depended on a set of sociological assumptions that, now, are invalid. Hence, to better grasp what drives today's economy, we must begin with its social foundations.

This new study assesses the welfare state to ask key questions and draw new conclusions about its place in modern society. It shows how the welfare states that we have inherited from the early post-war years had one main objective: to protect the income of the male breadwinner. Today, however, massive social change, in particular the shift from industrial to post-industrial societies and economies, have resulted in new demands being put on welfare states. These demands originate from situations that are typical of the new family and labour market structures that have become widespread in western countries since the 1970s and 1980s, characterised by the clear prevalence of service employment and by the massive entry of women in the labour market. Against this background, this book: * presents a precise and clear definition of 'new social risks'. A concept being increasingly used in welfare state literature. * focuses on the groups that are mostly exposed to new social risks (women, the young, the low-skilled) in order to study their political behaviour. * assesses policymaking processes that can lead to successful adaptation. It covers key areas such as child care, care for elderly people, adapting pensions to atypical career patterns, active labour market policies, and policy making at the EU level. This book will be of great interest for all students and scholars of politics, sociology and the welfare state in particular.

Taken from a series of conferences, this collection of papers by leading labour experts from the United States and the former Soviet Union examines the profound changes in industrial systems and work organisation currently affecting both societies. The authors focus on the emergence of new labour market institutions, the evolution of managerial philosophy, changes in workers' values and attitudes toward economic security, economic inequality, and the legitimacy of worker participation in management and ownership. Comparison reveals both striking differences and similarities in the transformation of the two systems in the post-industrial age, and helps demystify some simplistic notions about the workings of market systems.