Documents labour economics 163 results

"Der vorliegende Report greift die laufenden Diskussionen um die Digitalisierung der Wirtschaft und Arbeitswelt auf. Aus Sicht der Beschäftigten und ihrer Interessensvertretungen stellen sich aktuell viele Fragen: Wo werden Veränderungen durch Digitalisierung in unserer Wirtschaft und Arbeitswelt tatsächlich relevant? Was bedeutet Digitalisierung aus Perspektive der Mitbestimmung, des Arbeitsschutzes und für die Gestaltung des Arbeits- und Sozialrechts?Der Report zeigt: Die Digitalisierung ist ein gesellschaftlicher Prozess, der an bestehende Institutionen, Prozesse, Verhältnisse sowie Normen und Werte anknüpft. Dieser Prozess kann und muss durch die Interessenvertretungen der Beschäftigten und Akteure der Mitbestimmung mitgestaltet werden."

"In the countries of the global North, workplace democracy may be thought of as a thing of the past. Increasingly, working relations are regulated primarily by contract; workforces are fissured and fragmented. What are the consequences of this? How should we respond?

Ruth Dukes and Wolfgang Streeck argue that the time is ripe to restate the principles of industrial democracy and citizenship for the post-industrial era. Considering developments within political economy, employment relations and labour law since the postwar decades, they trace the rise of globalization and the 'dualization' of labour markets - the emergence of a core and periphery of workers - and the progressive insulation of working relations from democratic governance. What these developments amount to, they argue, is an urgent need for political intervention to tame the new world of 'gigging' and other forms of highly precarious work. This, according to the authors, will require far-reaching institution-building designed to fill legal concepts such as 'employment' with political substance.

This eloquent call for a reimagining and renewal of the institutional and material conditions of freedom of association and the reinvention of industrial democracy will be crucial reading for anyone interested in work in the twenty-first century."

"Quand la moitié de nos contemporains disent s'épanouir dans leur travail, l'autre moitié du monde vit le sien, ou son absence, dans la souffrance. En réponse, la droite glorifie ceux qui " se lèvent tôt " et " ne mesurent pas leur peine ", invite à " travailler plus pour gagner plus " et dénonce une " épidémie de flemme ".
Face à ce discours, les hommes et femmes de gauche paraissent souvent désemparés. Au point que certains pensent utile d'emboîter le pas des libéraux et des conservateurs en opposant les travailleurs aux allocataires sociaux. Comment en sommes-nous arrivés là ? Comment la droite, qui ne cesse de mettre le travail sous pression et d'en dégrader les conditions, peut-elle s'en arroger les valeurs ? La gauche doit se les réapproprier de telle sorte que le travail réponde à nos aspirations individuelles et collectives. Cela est d'autant plus crucial que la transition énergétique et technologique en cours va le reconfigurer en profondeur.
Paul Magnette renoue dans cet ouvrage avec l'idéal d'émancipation personnelle et d'intégration sociale par le travail, et développe de véritables propositions pour lever les obstacles qui s'opposent aujourd'hui à son déploiement. Plutôt que de laisser les souffrances au travail entre les mains de consultants en risques psychosociaux et de chief happiness officers, il est temps de les repolitiser."

"This article argues that a global approach to labor studies that takes equal account of labor's Fordist-Keynesian as well as its colonial and anti-colonial histories in the Global North and South would make an important contribution to emerging discourses and debates on the future of work. It contrasts the evolution of workers and work in both developing and advanced industrial economies from the inter-war period onwards, highlighting ways in which political struggles and legal transformations produced distinct labor institutions: ‘good' union protected jobs for some in the Global North and pervasive informality for most in the Global South. Yet despite these different starting points, the article argues that the emergence of new technologies of production such as artificial intelligence and advanced automation amidst the broader context of neoliberalism is prompting convergence rather than divergence in the trajectories of workers in the developing and industrialized worlds, as mostly clearly seen in the rising casualization of work. The article thus suggests that a truly global approach to labor studies that takes account of the historical and institutional trajectories of work in different contexts would strengthen both the analytic foundations and normative commitments of the discipline as scholars address the anxieties and concerns associated with the future of work."

"The need to rapidly decarbonise economies raises questions about whether countries' workforces possess the requisite skills to achieve the net zero transition as well as the capacity to redeploy workers from “brown” to “green” jobs. This paper applies a task-based framework to granular data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) and country-specific employment sources to generate new indicators of the green skills structure of labour markets for a large number of OECD countries and non-OECD EU countries. Significant cross-country differences emerge in the underlying supply of green skill and the potential of economies to reallocate brown job workers to green jobs within their broad occupation categories. In a majority of detailed brown occupations, workers have in principle the necessary skills to transition to green jobs, with the exception of those in production occupations, who may require more extensive re-skilling. In contrast, workers from most highly automatable occupations are generally not found to have the sufficient skills to transition to green jobs, suggesting more limited scope for the net-zero transition to reinstate labour displaced by automation."

"The advent of artificial intelligence is changing the task allocation of workers and machines in firms' production processes with potentially wide ranging effects on workers and firms. We develop an agent-based simulation framework to investigate the consequences of different types of automation for industry output, the wage distribution, the labor share, and industry dynamics. It is shown how the competitiveness of markets, in particular barriers to entry, changes the effects that automation has on various outcome variables, and to which extent heterogeneous workers with distinct general skill endowments and heterogeneous firms featuring distinct wage offer rules affect the channels via which automation changes market outcomes."

"Today's economics offers us a far too narrow perspective on the role that paid work plays in our lives, as individuals and as a society. This book examines the urgent workplace challenges we're facing today, from automation to AI and climate change, with an interdisciplinary and historical analysis that challenges and broadens the scope of existing economic literature. Exploring the current economic proposals to address these issues, it advocates for a more egalitarian and sustainable future that builds workers' protections into the very fabric of our economic systems. This is a resounding call for greater economic social justice and equality at work and a valuable resource for social scientists from fields like heterodox economics, business and sociology."

"Richard B. Freeman and James L. Medoff's now classic 1984 book What do unions do? stimulated an enormous theoretical and empirical literature on the economic impact of trade unions. Trade unions continue to be a significant feature of many labour markets, particularly in developing countries, and issues of labour market regulations and labour institutions remain critically important to researchers and policy makers.

The relations between unions and management can range between cooperation and conflict; unions have powerful offsetting wage and non-wage effects that economists and other social scientists have long debated. Do the benefits of unionism exceed the costs to the economy and society writ large, or do the costs exceed the benefits? The Economics of Trade Unions offers the first comprehensive review, analysis and evaluation of the empirical literature on the microeconomic effects of trade unions. The book applies the tools of meta-regression analysis to identify and quantify the economic impact of trade unions, as well as to correct research design faults, the effects of sample selection and model misspecification.

This volume makes use of a unique dataset of hundreds of empirical studies and their reported estimates of the microeconomic impact of trade unions. Written by three authors who have been at the forefront of this research field (including the co-author of the original volume, What do unions do?), this book offers an overview of a subject that is of huge importance to scholars of labour economics, industrial and employee relations, and human resource management, as well as those with an interest in meta-analysis."

"Digitalisierung, Industrie 4.0 – warum sollen sich Linke für solche Themen interessieren? Was ist an Vernetzung, Smart Factories, Home-Office, Crowdwork, Big Data von Bedeutung? Die Antwort hängt wesentlich davon ab, welche sozialen Veränderungen sich hinter diesen technischen Begriffen überhaupt verbergen. Und damit beginnt schon das Problem. Denn unter dem Schlagwort «Digitalisierung» wird alles Mögliche verhandelt: technische Neuerungen, die es bereits gibt, Neuerungen, die kommen werden, Neuerungen, die technisch bloß denkbar sind, Neuerungen, die zwar technisch denkbar, aber ökonomisch – also im kapitalistischen Sinne – fragwürdig sind, sowie Neuerungen, die technisch und ökonomisch denkbar sind, deren soziale Folgen aber im Dunkeln liegen. Industrie 4.0 ist Realität, Versprechen und Drohung zugleich, eine Ankündigung, von der niemand weiß, ob sie eintritt, und wenn ja, in welcher Form. Sie wirkt massiv und diffus zugleich. ..."