Documents Furåker, Bengt 13 results

"This article analyses the speech activities of trade unions at European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) Executive Committee meetings, 2005–2012. It is based on the minutes of 48 meetings and direct observations of some of them. The most frequent themes are economic issues, communications and labour law, followed by common activities and intra-organizational issues. Analysis by different regime types shows marked differences in the extent and focus of participation; an important factor behind these differences appears to be the unions' role in their national industrial relations systems. The impact of the economic crisis in Southern Europe is also highly visible. Another aspect is the number of seats the organizations hold, mirroring size as well as financial and human resources. Moreover, speech patterns seem to reflect ideological and cultural differences."

"In 1983, the Social Democratic government in Sweden proposed that wage-earner funds should be implemented in the country and this proposal was adopted by parliament. The reform was initiated by LO, the large blue-collar trade union, and had been debated for more than a decade. Its purpose was to develop economic democracy, counteract the concentration of capital ownership but also to increase collective savings and supply capital for investments. When a coalition government, led by the conservatives, took office in 1991, the wage-earner funds were abolished. It is unlikely that this type of reform will reappear on the Swedish political agenda in the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, collective funds of some kind might be a way to start dealing with the lack of economic democracy and the unequal distribution of capital. In light of the Swedish experience with wage-earner funds, this article discusses some issues related to such a strategy. "

"Using survey data collected in 2010-2011, this article examines patterns of lock-in among employees in the Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish labour markets. Workers are defined as locked-in if they have considerable difficulty in finding an equally good job with some other employer. Empirically we measure the concept by means of the employees' own assessment of their labour market prospects. Our results indicate that lock-in is a matter of the interplay between employers and employees. The proportion of those locked-in is lower in Norway - with its higher demand for labour and lower levels of unemployment - than in Finland and Sweden. Young age and good health are associated with relatively optimistic views of job prospects, probably because these attributes impact on the ability to adapt to the demand for labour and because employers tend to be cautious about hiring older workers and those with health problems. The most significant obstacles to finding another job reported by the respondents are the labour market conditions in their place of residence or within commuting distance and their age."

"The so-called flexicurity approach suggests that security for employees can be successfully combined with flexibility for organizations and companies. This article studies if affective job insecurity (worry about losing one's job) is compensated for by perceptions of employment security (possibilities of finding an equal or better job) and income security. Data derive from a survey carried out in 2010 among employees in Sweden. The main findings are that cognitive job insecurity (the perceived risk of job loss) increases affective job insecurity, whereas both employment and income security have the opposite effect. Moreover, cognitive job insecurity and employment security interact, implying that the effect of cognitive job insecurity on affective job insecurity is reduced in the presence of employment security but is reinforced in the absence of it. These results are discussed in relation to the flexicurity approach, concluding that flexicurity may be a risky venture for employees."

"In light of internationally declining union density, this article examines to what extent employees derive advantage from trade unions. Data collected in 21 countries through the European Social Survey 2010 are being used. Multilevel analyses show that it is not so much individual membership but unions' collective power that matters. Perceived union influence and a union-friendly industrial relations regime (mainly the organized corporatism in the Nordic countries) are positively linked to the occurrence of regular workplace meetings and to the impact of these meetings on organizational decisions. Employees also appear to benefit from unions' collective power in terms of appropriate pay and job security, although the regime pattern is then less clear."

"Legislation on minimum wages exists in most EU Member States, but European trade unions have very different views on it. Nordic unions are especially negative, whereas many other union organizations are strongly positive. The present article examines these differences, explores how they can be understood and discusses their possible consequences for transnational union cooperation on issues related to statutory minimum wages. It is primarily based on survey and interview data. "

"Economic globalization and political developments within the EU have put pressure upon trade unions to engage in cross-border cooperation. The most realistic step in the foreseeable future is transnational coordination of collective bargaining, but the process is still very much in its infancy. We use a web and postal survey of a large number of European trade unions to illuminate their current practices and their preferences for the future. The most common activity is exchange of information on collective agreements, followed by collaboration in training programmes for union representatives, and such cross-border cooperation primarily involves unions in manufacturing. Support for European collective bargaining is far from overwhelming, and unions are clearly divided on the idea of statutory minimum wages: this has rather strong support in Spain and Germany, but very little in Scandinavia. "

"Collectivist attitudes among workers are often said to have become replaced by individualistic leanings. Some argue that individualism is also spreading within the traditional manual working class and in particular among the young. On the basis of a survey carried out in Sweden in 1997, aspects of the collectivism-individualism issue are studied empirically: whether employees think that trade unions are necessary for successful negotiation with their employers, and whether they prefer to take care of negotiations individually. Data are cross-sectional and thus cannot tell us much about change among respondents, but the connections between attitudinal patterns and age and social class are analysed. The main conclusions are that the perceived need for the union is clearly more widespread among manual workers than among white-collar employees, especially higher-level white-collar workers Accordingly, it matters which union people belong to, but the non-unionized are the most negative. There are no significant age differences. Second, the view that negotiations are best taken care of by the individual him-/herself is mainly endorsed by white-collar workers, in particular those in higher positions, and by non-unionized employees. Moreover, the young tend to be more individualistically oriented than older employees, but this difference is statistically significant only insofar as union membership is not taken into account. It should be noted that youth have a lower rate of unionization. This may be due to negative attitudes towards collectivism, or that they have found little reason to join the union because they have unstable job situations - which would then in turn explain their individualistic orientation."

"Advocates of flexicurity claim that flexibility and security in the labour market can be achieved by a combination of certain institutions: liberal Employment Protection Legislation (EPL), generous income protection, extensive Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs), and good opportunities for Lifelong Learning (LLL). Such a mix of measures is assumed to lead to an efficiently functioning labour market, implying a win-win situation for both employers and employees. This article examines the relationship between flexicurity institutions and some forms of labour market mobility between employment and unemployment and between employment and inactivity in four Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, in the period 2000-2006. With the most liberal EPL and generous measures for people without jobs, Denmark is closest to the flexicurity ideal. Controlling for various other factors, it turns out that the Danish labour market generally - but not in every respect - has the highest levels of mobility. Perhaps the most interesting exception is that the highly significant transition rate from unemployment to employment is higher in Norway. The explanatory value of flexicurity is, thus, limited and the assumptions regarding the effects of mutually reinforcing flexicurity institutions are called into question."