Documents new work practices 214 results

"The Internet and the use of portable computers, mobile phones and tablets have increased the importance of ‘new ways of work'. This work, which is place- and time-independent, can lead to more autonomy and greater flexibility for workers, but it also carries serious physical as well as psychosocial risks according to this working paper.
The author of this report focuses on the hidden dangers of these new ways of working: techno-stress, techno-addiction, the blurring of boundaries between work and private life, burn-outs and overtiredness, safety risks and ergonomic problems.
The paper analyses the European legislation on safe and healthy working conditions and how it can be applied to this new way of working. Last, but not least, it underlines the importance of this new societal issue for workers' representatives."

"Die Anzahl organisationaler Veränderungen hat in den letzten Jahren erheblich zugenommen. Sie stellen die betriebliche Interessenvertretung vor neue Herausforderungen. An welchen organisationalen Veränderungen Interessenvertretungen beteiligt sind und wie sich dies auf die von Beschäftigten zugeschriebene Legitimität sowie Maßnahmen der Legitimitätssicherung auswirkt ist bislang jedoch unklar. Zur Reduzierung des Forschungsdefizits wurden 25 Interviews mit Betriebs- und Personalratsmitgliedern in verschiedenen organisationalen Veränderungen geführt und inhaltsanalytisch ausgewertet. Es zeigt sich, dass sich die Legitimitätswahrnehmung abhängig von der Phase der Veränderung und ihrer Reichweite unterscheidet. Insbesondere für die befragten Betriebsratsmitglieder spielt Legitimitätssicherung in Veränderungsprozessen bislang eine eher untergeordnete Rolle. Dennoch legen die vorliegenden Studienergebnisse den Befund nahe, dass Legitimität in Veränderungssituationen durch die Interessenvertretung beeinflussbar ist."

"Whilst only in the second decade of the 21st century, we have seen significant and fundamental change in the way we work, where we work, how we work and the conditions of work. The continued advancements of (smart) technology and artificial intelligence, globalisation and deregulation can provide a ‘sleek' view of the world of work. This paradigm can deliver the opportunity to both control work and provide new challenges in this emerging virtual and global workplace with 24/7 connectivity, as the boundaries of the traditional organisation ‘melt' away.

Throughout the developed world the notions of work and employment are becoming increasingly separated and for some this will provide new opportunities in entrepreneurial and self-managed work. However, the alternate or ‘bleak' perspectives is a world of work where globalisation and technology work together to eliminate or minimise employment, underpinning standardised employment with less and less stable or secure work, typified by the rise of the ‘gig' economy and creating more extreme work, in terms of working hours, conditions and rewards. These aspects of work are likely to have a significant negative impact on the workforce in these environments.

These transformations are creating renewed interest in how work and the workforce is organised and managed and its relationship to employment in a period when all predictions are that the pace of change will only accelerate."

"The pandemic triggered a large, lasting shift to work from home (WFH). To study this shift, we survey full-time workers who finished primary school in 27 countries as of mid 2021 and early 2022. Our cross-country comparisons control for age, gender, education, and industry and treat the U.S. mean as the baseline. We find, first, that WFH averages 1.5 days per week in our sample, ranging widely across countries. Second, employers plan an average of 0.7 WFH days per week after the pandemic, but workers want 1.7 days. Third, employees value the option to WFH 2-3 days per week at 5 percent of pay, on average, with higher valuations for women, people with children and those with longer commutes. Fourth, most employees were favorably surprised by their WFH productivity during the pandemic. Fifth, looking across individuals, employer plans for WFH levels after the pandemic rise strongly with WFH productivity surprises during the pandemic. Sixth, looking across countries, planned WFH levels rise with the cumulative stringency of government-mandated lockdowns during the pandemic. We draw on these results to explain the big shift to WFH and to consider some implications for workers, organization, cities, and the pace of innovation."

"In this edited volume, scholars from Mumbai, Bengaluru, Jakarta, Cape Town, Sao Paulo and other cities of the global South explore the complex relationship between platformization and informality through a different lens. Drawing on extensive theoretical, quantitative and qualitative scholarship, they provide both a useful overview and insights into the lived realities of gig work for platforms covering a range of skills, working conditions, and forms of algorithmic management. Platform work has attracted considerable attention from scholars in the global North, who have tended to view it as a form of casualisation of work that was previously regulated. But what about the global South, where most employment, especially that of women and migrant workers was historically already informal?
Beyond a focus on livelihoods, employment, and work, the authors show how labour platforms take on powers that bring about broader impacts, including those affecting identity and personal wellbeing. They also illustrate the impact of platformization on the governance of affected sectors by public agencies, thus affecting political power, and how public data infrastructures contribute to further platformization. The purpose of this pioneering work is to lay bare these interactions to then rebuild our understanding of platformization and its social, political, cultural and economic impacts. Its insights are attentive to gender and ethnic differences, as well as geographical ones."

"The article investigates the emergence of ‘new' forms of working such as ‘lean production' and ‘learning organisations' in Western Europe, 1995–2015. First, the article identifies the dominant forms of work organisation (‘workplace regimes') across Western Europe, including new ‘pressure' and ‘extreme' varieties of previously identified regimes. Second, the article analyses the implications of these workplace regimes for various important worker outcomes – insecurity, income, intensity of work and intrusion of work into non-working life – and assesses the ‘trade-offs' of different outcomes across regimes. Third, the article assesses the changing distribution of these regimes, whether certain forms such as Lean Production are coming to dominate the division of labour, and where and for whom. The shape of the ‘new world of work' is increasingly Lean, but remains open to political contestation – both in how regimes themselves are organised and in the mix of regimes in particular societies and for particular workers."

"The platform economy has been developing and evolving rapidly in the last decade, not only in terms of creating new business models that operate outside traditional ones, but also when it comes to impacting the organisation of work and working conditions of millions of people. Extrapolations of current trends in employment suggest that 42.7 million people in the EU-27 will opt to work in the platform economy by 2030. In 2021, the FES Competence Centre on the Future of Work initiated the Mapping Platform Economy project. This project sheds some lights on the complexity of platform ecosystem by providing insights into different aspects of platform work at the national level in over 30 countries. The data was collected with the help of national experts in the partnership with FES country office between 2021 and 2023. Our analysis shows that while there are major differences across European countries, in terms of regulatory aspects, it is still uncertain how many active platforms are in a country, how many people are working on them and with what employment status they work. This type of information is particularly important in addressing the legal responsibility of platform companies, not only in terms of the quality of services provided, but also with a view toward fair working conditions for workers employed by these platforms (Sabanova & Badoi, 2022)1 . This publication represents a collection of 26 factsheets that look at (1) regulatory aspects, (2) recent legal developments, (3) characteristics of platform workers, (4) characteristics of popular platform companies, (5) the general perception of platform work and (6) collective actions and court cases."

"Der Beitrag analysiert die Auswirkungen der Digitalisierung auf die Arbeitsqualität von Berufskraftfahrer*innen in Deutschland. In der Transportlogistik ist der Einsatz digitaler Technik weit fortgeschritten. Das hat Auswirkungen auf die Arbeitsprozesse, die zunehmend standardisiert, rationalisiert und verdichtet werden. Dort, wo die Technik die Arbeitsprozesse deutlich vereinfacht, sind Transportunternehmen zudem in der Lage, vermehrt Arbeitskräfte mit geringerer Qualifikation, oft aus dem Ausland, einzusetzen. Für die ortsungebundenen Beschäftigten geht mit verstärkter technischer Steuerung und Dequalifizierung ein Verlust an Machtressourcen einher, der einer erfolgreichen Interessenvertretung entgegensteht. Der Aufsatz zeigt die Strategie hinter der Rationalisierung anhand eigener empirischer Ergebnisse auf und überprüft Ansatzpunkte für kollektive und gewerkschaftliche Interventionen."