The Social Dimensions Of Employment

This volume assesses the complex relationship between the economic and non-economic aspects of labour institutions at various levels. Firstly, the book explores the dilemma which calls for increased flexibility in contractual relationships whilst maintaining the present levels of social protection and job security. The discussion goes on to address the criteria that may provide guidelines for evaluating labour market and social protection system reform policies, and finally, the utility criteria usually used in economic analysis is questioned.

This edited volume explores the old and new “collective dimensions” of employment relations. It examines specific challenges stemming from new forms of work of the digital and sharing economy, such as measurement, monitoring, assessment, and remuneration of work, the protection of work-life balance, the impact of new technologies on health and safety, the adaptation of occupational skills to new work processes, and the responses to the digital restructuring of undertakings. It addresses a series of questions such as how the representational action of unions and works councils can adapt to the challenges posed by new production systems and whether the legislative framework needs to be reformed to ensure that digital workers enjoy the right to collective representation. This important collection offers readers a renewed theoretical perspective and justification of the role that the dialogue between workers (representatives) and companies could play in an increasingly complex world of work.

This reference volume reflects the changing world of work. It includes research on the various dimensions of work, such as the structure of the labour force, labour market segmentation, technology, employment/unemployment, trade unions, and industrial democracy. This book provides an integrated view of the various dimensions of work, its distinguishing characteristics and issues both peculiar, as well as common to industrialized countries. By adopting an interdisciplinary and interactional perspective, this volume provides the scholar and the lay reader with a range of approaches and debates that have made a significant contribution toward understanding the changing nature of work and its social impact.

This highly readable and authoritative book on the social economics of job quality comes at a critical time as policy-makers, employers and unions seek to rebuild jobs after the economic crisis. The team of authors are leading experts on European employment trends and policy and have produced an excellent study that proposes a new index of job quality for Europe. Given its depth and breadth of coverage of theory and already existing indicators, the book is likely to be a landmark study. Readers will enjoy the engaging review of past and present works of classical political economy and behavioural economics and will benefit from the expert critical appraisal of more than 20 existing proposals for job quality indices. Most importantly, the authors design and test a new European Job Quality Index that provides a reliable and coherent measure of five critical dimensions of the character of contemporary jobs. Measuring More than Money is a much-needed analysis that will interest both specialists and anyone concerned about job quality. The proposed indicator deserves to be adopted and will enable policy-makers to make good their commitment to sustainability and equality across Europe by monitoring and responding to a good job quality measure. Damian Grimshaw, University of Manchester, UK Is a job a job? If you looked at unemployment data, you would think so. But economists since Adam Smith know that jobs differ in quality: difficulty or pleasure of doing it. Thus they tend to assume that market would equalize wage per unit of difficulty of a job, and that they do not need to worry about intrinsic job quality. Rafael de Bustillo shows that this wrong and that in an era of plenty for many (although not for all), the challenge is to create high-quality jobs and to find ways of comparing them in terms of fulfillment afforded to workers. The book thus addresses a new and growing field of study: for it certainly matters if we are happy or unhappy in an activity that takes almost one-third of our lives and often defines who we are. Branko Milanovic, World Bank and University of Maryland, US This is a book every labour economist or sociologist interested in job quality should read. It provides a well written overview of the depth and breadth of this field, presenting a systematic review of this complex multidimensional concept and discussing more than twenty of the indicators currently in use. The volume goes beyond the current literature by developing a sound, empirically tested Job Quality Index for the European Union. It was definitely a pleasure reading this volume. Kea Tijdens, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Mainstream economics traditionally restricts the analysis of the labour market to purely monetary factors, such as earnings, leaving aside many other characteristics that might affect the desirability of certain jobs. By contrast, this unique volume explores the alternatives and problems faced by researchers in quantifying and measuring a broader notion of job quality. The contributors expertly explore the different approaches to measurement and analyze both the advantages and disadvantages of the various methods within a European context. Job quality is a crucial link between the economy and well-being. This original book proves that it can and should be measured, proposing a theoretically based multidimensional Index of Job Quality that is tested in the EU member States. The index proves particularly useful to measure the differences in job quality by country, occupation, gender and age. Based on solid theory and data, this book will prove essential for postgraduate students, researchers and academics of labour economics, sociology, industrial relations, and European studies as it presents a coherent discussion of the concept and components of job quality, and of the difficulties of measuring it. The book also proposes a new aggregate index of job quality that can contribute to the evaluation of European employ

Why and how do politics, society and economics shape the growth and failure of labour markets? Does government intervention help or harm labour market reforms/adjustments in times of economic downturn? What forces drive such government intervention and do they differ from society to society?In addressing these big-picture questions, this book's analytical scope is heavily centred around the topic of labour markets' performance. The book argues that performance in labour markets across countries are influenced by their labour market policies. In turn, these policies are shaped, in varying degrees, by the country's politics. Each chapter in this book dives into the labour market experiences in various countries to demonstrate why in some countries, labour markets perform better than in other countries. Major findings from this book suggest that countries can produce better economic and social outcomes (e.g. lower socio-economic inequality) if their labour market policies are aimed at fostering a socially and politically stable society via greater equity in wealth distribution across various socio-cultural and income groups.This book is an essential read for any public policy researchers, policy practitioners and undergraduate/graduate students who are interested or vested in the topic of labour markets' performance in the political, social and economic dimensions. Particularly, this book provides a critical synthesis of the labour market experiences in many countries. Hence, the book serves as an ideational tool to advance future labour market research and policy.

This report provides a comprehensive review of all existing trade agreements that include social provisions and discusses impacts for enterprises and workers. It also helps assess the challenges for arising from the multiplication of trade agreements that include different social provisions.

Selected background papers prepared for the regional workshop, 1993.