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"Generally speaking, women's issues are absent from health and safety policies: the hazards involved are either unknown or underestimated; and priorities are defined in male-dominated sectors and occupations, and so on. This failure to take account of women's health issues in the workplace constitutes a barrier to effective policies on occupational health and equal opportunities. For several years now, the TUTB and the ETUC have been trying to incorporate gender into their workplace health and safety policy. In 2001, the TUTB and ETUC decided to carry out a survey in the 15 EU countries aiming at assessing the situation in two areas:
- The inclusion of gender issues in health and safety policies. The aim was to ascertain the extent to which issues to do with women's health are taken into account when defining priorities, research activities and statistical data, and also the extent to which they are taken on board by the respective players and institutions.
- Practical experiences involving health and safety actions at the workplace that take account of gender issues.
This book reviews the key issues addressed by the research (developments, policies and prospects) and case studies from different EU countries illustrating research action in various sectors on different categories of risks."

"Social protection in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands share Bismarckian roots. Over time, these welfare states were however in constant flux and incorporated to a greater or lesser extend elements of both the Anglo‐Saxon and Nordic models. While the Netherlands has from the beginning deviated from the Bismarckian model, in recent years this welfare state has undergone important reforms that have made it increasingly evolve into a “Bismarck cum Beveridge” model. Germany and Belgium also witnessed a dual transformation, with retrenched earnings‐related benefits for long‐term unemployed and an increasing number of atypically employed people on the one hand and expanded social security to the so‐called “new social risks” on the other. It is against this changing institutional background that we can understand the similarities and differences in the extent to which these three continental welfare states used traditional social insurance systems to buffer the social and economic consequences of confinement. First, all three countries strengthened to varying degrees social protection systems for the active age population. So conceived, the policy responses were a response to the dual transformation of social protection that took place in recent decades without, however, changing its course. Second, the extent to which continental welfare states made use of existing social insurance schemes seems to be related to the extent to which these welfare states have moved in the Anglo‐Saxon direction."

"Menopause, or the final menstrual period, occurs on average at age 51. In the years before and after the menopause, women may experience symptoms such as hot flushes, night sweats, heavy menstrual bleeding, mood swings, difficulty concentrating, muscle and joint pain, and urogenital symptoms. Some women experience few symptoms, but a proportion of women have severe symptoms that affect their quality of life. Women may also experience problems in the workplace, sometimes preventing them from performing their tasks at the same level. The aims of this thesis were to find out whether there is an association between menopausal symptoms and work outcomes. To investigate whether healthcare providers are aware of a possible relationship between menopausal symptoms and work outcomes. Finally, to assess the effect of education about the climacteric on self-efficacy to work through the climacteric, experience of menopausal symptoms and work outcomes. The general introduction of this thesis forms Chapter 1. Chapter 2 analysed whether there was an association between menopausal symptoms and reduced work ability. A negative association was found between menopausal symptoms and work ability. Menopausal symptoms could predict a third of the variance in work ability in this group of women. Menopausal symptoms in the psychological and somatic domains were found to be particularly responsible for this. However, because of the cross-sectional design of the study, it is not possible to establish causality. Chapter 3 compared the work ability of the group of women in Chapter 2 with that of a group of women with severe menopausal symptoms. Women with severe menopausal symptoms were 8.4 times more likely to report low work ability than women with mild symptoms. More than three-quarters of the women with severe menopausal symptoms had low work ability, putting them at risk of long-term sickness absence. Chapter 4 describes a retrospective cohort study in which women with severe menopausal symptoms were followed over time from their first visit to a menopause clinic to a follow-up 3 to 9 months later. This chapter shows that treatment for menopausal symptoms is associated with an improvement in symptoms and is associated with an improvement in work ability. Improvement in depressive symptoms seems to be particularly important for this association. A survey was conducted among Dutch occupational health physicians, the results of which are described in Chapter 5. This survey investigated beliefs, social norms and self-efficacy (belief in one's own abilities) regarding the recognition of menopausal symptoms and the relationship between menopausal symptoms and work among occupational health practitioners. Most occupational health physicians believe there is a link between menopausal symptoms and reduced work productivity or absenteeism. More than half of those surveyed find it difficult to assess the relationship between menopausal symptoms and work. Moreover, more than a third say they do not have enough knowledge to ask about menopausal symptoms, let alone discuss treatment recommendations. More than three-quarters of occupational health professionals say there is a need for a national guideline on menopause and work. In addition, 56% of occupational health professionals acknowledge that there is a taboo about discussing menopausal symptoms at work. Chapter 6 describes the results of a workplace educational intervention on menopause on self-efficacy (belief in one's own abilities) for working during the climacteric. This quasi-experimental study shows that female employees who received the educational intervention reported higher self-efficacy about working during the climacteric, were more knowledgeable about the menopausal transition and experienced less productivity loss due to menopausal symptoms than a control group of employees who did not receive the intervention. The general discussion forms Chapter 7, where the implications for practice are outlined."

"Researchers still struggle with unravelling the internal interaction processes between management and employees (and their representatives). In empirical studies explaining the effects of works councils, the multidimensional nature of the works council–management team relationship is therefore largely ignored. By utilising a unique questionnaire among works councillors, this article examines the (potential) inner workings of this black box, by developing a construct aimed to capture the essence of these forms of social interaction. The authors find that behavioural aspects of cooperation, power, communication, goal sharing and trust significantly affect the relationship between works council and management. The authors also test their construct via a model that seeks to explain the influence of works councils on company decision-making. Their results indicate that despite a few noticeable cross-country differences, their black box construct is the most important factor in explaining this influence both in Germany and the Netherlands, revealing that a good relationship with management is imperative."

"The authors estimate the effects of an increase in the youth minimum wage in the Netherlands on low-paid workers' employment and earnings, using a difference-in-differences approach with detailed administrative data. Findings show that the increase does not have a negative effect on the number of jobs or hours worked, hence raising overall earnings for affected workers. Further, the minimum wage increase has substantial spillover effects, accounting for close to 70% of the average wage increase experienced by workers. While employment grows in fixed-term and temporary help agency contracts, the authors do not find evidence of declines in employment in other types of work arrangements, nor of labor-labor substitution. Labor market outcomes evolve most favorably for full-time incumbent workers who are not enrolled in education and are thus less likely to be transient occupants of minimum wage jobs."

"Since the 1980s, trade unions have increasingly adopted conservative stances, defending traditional workers and their entitlements. The literature on dualisation shows how unions have contributed to creating a divide between entrenched ‘insiders' in core industries and an expanding periphery of ‘outsiders', concerning both employment and welfare protections. In this thesis, I challenge the notion of dualisation as a stable institutional equilibrium and reject the characterization of unions as rent-seekers or defenders of the status quo. I show that there is significant variation in how labour markets and welfare states have been regulated over the past two decades, partly due to the evolving preferences and roles of unions in the politics of socio-economic reform. The central point of the thesis is that, although unions consented to dualisation in the 1990s, they soon became disillusioned with it. Various factors, including pressures from the labour market periphery and dwindling organisational resources, have prompted these actors to move away from narrow strategies and work towards bridging divides in the workforce. At the same time, strategies to reverse dualisation differ considerably across contexts. Some unions focus on filling gaps in previously segmented welfare systems (thus attempting to reverse welfare dualisation), while others prioritise re-regulating labour markets at the periphery (aiming to reverse labour market dualisation). By combining a time-series cross-sectional analysis of 20 OECD countries with in-depth case studies of Italy and the Netherlands, the thesis shows that trade unions are now turning (back) to solidarity, but their strategies vary according to the institutional contexts in which they operate."

"Crystalline silica is abundant in nature and used in a variety of industries, e.g., mining, farming, construction, foundry processes and production of glass, artificial stone, ceramics and cement. When cut or crushed, dust containing respirable crystalline silica (RCS) particles is released in the air and cause severe diseases including silicosis and lung cancer. Recent epidemiological studies have shown excess lung cancer risks among workers exposed to RCS even in the absence of silicosis although silicosis increases the risk of developing lung cancer. The Dutch Expert Committee on Occupational Safety (DECOS) and the Nordic Expert Group for Criteria Documentation of Health Risks from Chemicals (NEG) evaluated the health hazards and calculated cancer risk of occupational exposure to RCS and decided to use lung cancer as the critical effect (the adverse health effect that occurs first at increasing exposure). As a direct genotoxic mechanism cannot be excluded, a non-threshold (risk-based) approach was used to calculate the risk for lung cancer. Two cancer risk levels were calculated: - A target risk level (low level), the level below which no extra protective measures have to be taken: 4 additional deaths of lung cancer per 100 000 workers for 40 years of occupational exposure, equal to 0.0004 mg/m3. - A prohibition risk level (high level) that should not be exceeded: 4 additional deaths of lung cancer per 1 000 workers for 40 years of occupational exposure, equal to 0.04 mg/m3. These recommended risk levels are considerably lower than the current legal occupational exposure limits in the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden."

"Wage inequality between workers with different levels of educational attainment has been shown to increase over the life course. In this study, we investigate to what extent this growth is explained by temporary employment. Using linked employer-employee register data from the Netherlands, we follow the labour market careers of workers born in 1979. We decompose the impact of temporary employment on the change in the wage gap over the life course into two distinct components: (i) changes in group-specific temporary employment rates (risk) and (ii) changes in group-specific effects of temporary employment on wages (vulnerability). In line with previous research, we find a marked growth of the educational wage gap over the life course in the Netherlands. While group differences in temporary employment risk changed throughout the observation period to the detriment of less-educated workers, group differences in vulnerability to temporary employment diverged specifically during the early life course. Overall, temporary employment explains around 9 per cent of the change in the wage gap between workers with different levels of educational attainment by the age of 38 relative to age 28."