Documents van Klaveren, Maarten 18 results

"What drives low pay in Europe? Who and what sectors are affected? Which workers work very long or very short hours and miss out on training opportunities?
In this study, produced by the University of Amsterdam/AIAS, these are some of the questions posed for thirteen industries in nine EU member states. The study ranks the industries according to problems on working time, pay, training, bargaining coverage, and stress and discusses how these problems affect different groups of workers including men and women, younger and older workers and workers with higher and lower levels of education."

"Minimum Wages, Collective Bargaining and Economic Development in Asia and Europe offers a labour perspective on wage-setting institutions, collective bargaining and economic development. Sixteen country chapters, eight on Asia and eight on Europe, focus in particular on the role and effectiveness of minimum wages in the context of national trends in income inequality, economic development, and social security. Two chapters on Asia and Europe compare and contrast national experiences and discuss the relevance of a redistributive wages policy for worldwide as well as national economic recovery. Demand or wage-led economic recovery is explored as an alternative to the export-led strategies currently pursued by leading Asian and European countries. In light of the slow pace of recovery from recession in Europe, the renewed recession in Japan and the weakening growth rates of major Asian countries, this book provides a timely reconsideration of the macroeconomic policy options. As such, it contributes to the wider debate over sustainable economic growth and income inequality."

"After the Second World War in the Netherlands, one of the most open economies in the world, wage moderation has be a leading theme in macroeconomic policy and industrial rela-tions. When wage restraint met with an overheated labour market and strike movements, social partners accepted the re-placement of a voluntary ?social minimum wage? by a statutory minimum wage, introduced in 1969. Due to governmental freezes in the 1990s and 2000s the statutory minimum wage fell relative to the average wage, which left room for the in-crease of low-wage employment. In the 2000s the Dutch econ-omy generated large trade surpluses. However, in 2008-13 domestic private consumption fell substantially and this has, in combination with a housing bubble, seriously frustrated the recovery of the Dutch economy from the crisis. Continuing the Dutch wage moderation tradition in current conditions would cause negative effects, not only on domestic demand but also on the country?s labour productivity and growth potential. Thus, there are good reasons to defend a wage-led strategy as a recovery option in the case of the Netherlands."

"This study uses data from a continuous employee web-survey to investigate the trade-off between wage and workforce adjustments and the role of industrial relations in firm-level responses to the economic crisis in Germany and the Netherlands. Workforce adjustments seemed to be a continuous organizational strategy, but wage adjustments were less often reported. We found no large-scale evidence of wage concessions being traded-off for job protection in the two countries. Collective bargaining ensured that wage-setting was more robust than employment protection: employees covered by collective agreements reported workforce adjustments more often than wage adjustments. Low-educated and low-wage employees reported basic wage reductions more often: the economic crisis increased wage inequality. Labour hoarding was reported predominantly by young, male employees with a permanent, full-time contract."

"Globalisation is one of the most heavily debated present-day phenomena and has been widely covered by books, papers and journal articles. Nevertheless, the reader is frequently left with nearly as many definitions of the subject as there are authors writing about it. Most analysts now agree that a common denominator is the increasing inter-connectedness of nations, people, and economies. After the Second World War, a number of major forces underpinned the spread of globalisation. These included the rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT), boosted relatively recently by the development of the Internet and the massive growth of trade and foreign direct investment (FDI). These factors cannot of course be separated from the increasing numbers and influence of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and the tide of economic liberalization that has swept through both developed and developing economies. Neither should we ignore changes in transport technologies. For many commentators though, FDI has been regarded as the main –albeit not the sole—mechanism for the international expansion of MNEs.
The Social Effects of Foreign Domestic Investment on Multinational Companies and Domestic Firms compares and contrasts wages, working conditions and industrial relations processes in multinational and domestic companies. Very little academic study has hitherto been devoted to the differences that may or may not exist between the wages and conditions that MNEs routinely offer compared to those of domestic companies with whom they compete. The analysis covers five sectors of the economy and 13 EU countries. This book is an effort to map the social effects of FDI in a number of EU member states, in relation to the prevailing patterns of internationalization. The need to examine critically the labour market and industrial relations aspects of recent waves of FDI is both timely and compelling."

" The three authors of this policy brief investigated whether multinational enterprises (MNEs) offer better terms and conditions for employment than domestic (non-MNE) firms. Using data from the WageIndicator web survey (www.wageindicator.org), the researchers compared wages, working conditions and job quality, working hours, training possibilities, and industrial relations at the workplace in MNEs and domestic companies.
Their conclusions show that, for some EU member states and sectors, working for an MNE provides a more positive environment in the form of higher wages, better promotion and training opportunities, and more unionized industrial relations. The negative aspects of working for MNEs, on the other hand, include long and partly unpaid working hours, high stress levels and pressure of continuous re-organisation.
Last but not least, the policy brief formulates a few relevant policy recommendations for trade unions and European Works Councils. "

"This study focuses on the issue of substitution or segregation in the demand for female labour. Based on an extensive overview of detailed studies, the authors examine fluctuations in the gender composition of the workforce in four major sectors of Dutch manufacturing industry over the past century. Women's share in employment has been stable in the clothing industry, fluctuated in textiles, increased in food production and decreased in Philips Electronics. Changes in the proportion of women in these industries are primarily explained by segregation, that is by fluctuations in employment in the male and female domains. Only a few examples of substitution can be traced. These are primarily driven by labour shortages, and the numbers of workers involved are small. Overwhelmingly, employers prefer to act within gender boundaries."