Documents Williams, Mark 9 results

"Despite widely-reported ethnicity disparities in pay and occupational attainment, little is known about how different ethnic groups fare in job control—a crucial component of job quality with significant implications for well-being and health. Drawing on two large-scale representative datasets in the United Kingdom (1992–2022), we find that workers from all Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups conditionally report significantly lower job control than their White British counterparts, although heterogeneity exists depending on the BAME group in question. Ethnicity penalties are also most pronounced for foreign-born workers. Despite a slow trend towards convergence, ethnicity disparities have remained significant over the last three decades. We further show that disparities are largely unexplained by compositional factors such as pay and occupation, demonstrating ethnicity penalties in job control. By linking ethnicity to job control, this study contributes to the growing research on BAME workers in the labour market, as well as the literatures on job quality and multisegmented labour markets."

"This article explores the relationship between the job characteristics underlying the Goldthorpe model of social class (work monitoring difficulty and human asset specificity) and those underlying theories of technological change (routine and analytical tasks) highlighted as key drivers for growing inequality. Analysis of the 2012 British Skills and Employment Survey demonstrates monitoring difficulty and asset specificity predict National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC) membership and employment relations in ways expected by the Goldthorpe model, but the role of asset specificity is partially confounded by analytical tasks. It concludes that while the Goldthorpe model continues to provide a useful descriptive tool of inequality-producing processes and employment relations in the labour market, examining underlying job characteristics directly is a promising avenue for future research in understanding over time dynamics in the evolution of occupational inequalities."

"Using U.S. panel data from 2001–2011, the authors examine general differences in charitable giving between union members, free-riders, and the nonunionized. Results indicate that union members are more likely to give and to give more to charity relative to the nonunionized, whereas free-riders are the least generous. Similar effects are found when examining the question of who joins a union or who becomes a free-rider: joining a union positively affects charitable giving, while becoming a free-rider makes individuals' behavior less charitable. Evidence also suggests that the positive effect of union membership on giving does not diminish over time. Taken together, these results provide new evidence that union membership generates civic engagement in the form of charitable behavior; results also suggest the need to further investigate the civic behavior of free-riders."

" Most of the literature on strikes has addressed one of four issues: causation, variation between sectors and countries, trends over time and the relationship between strikes and other forms of collective and individual protest. Very little research has addressed the equally important questions of strike outcomes and trade union membership despite the substantial body of research on the causes of trade union membership decline and strategies for membership growth. In this paper we reverse the usual sequence of trade union membership as a causal factor in the genesis of strikes and examine the impact of strikes on trade union membership levels. After setting out the relevant theory and hypotheses, we use a unique seven‐year dataset of trade union membership joiners and leavers from a major British trade union with a substantial record of strike activity. Controlling for other possible determinants of trade union membership, we find that months in which there is strike action, whether national or local, are associated with a significantly higher rate of membership growth, measured both by the number of joiners and by the ratio of joiners to leavers. Data from new union members suggest that perceived injustice and perceived union effectiveness both motivate the decision to join."

"Little is known about variation in the efficacy of financial participation across countries. This article examines the relationship between two types of financial participation (profit-sharing and employee share-ownership) and labour productivity across 29 European countries using a representative workplace survey. Consistent with theoretical expectations, profit-sharing is associated with superior labour productivity when it is open to all employees, whilst the evidence for employee share-ownership is more mixed. Analysis reveals considerable variation in the efficacy of both schemes across Europe. Country-level collective bargaining coverage has the greatest explanatory power in accounting for cross-country variation in efficacy. In countries with higher levels of collective bargaining coverage, profit-sharing performs less well, whereas employee share-ownership performs better, relative to countries with lower collective bargaining coverage. These findings shed light on the comparative dimension of the financial participation–labour productivity link. "

"We present the first attempt to locate zero‐hour contract (ZHC) jobs—jobs that lack a guaranteed minimum number of hours—within theoretical frameworks of the employment relationship and occupational class and empirically explore their characteristics using successive UK Labour Force Survey. In line with these theories, we find this contentious form of employment to be strongly differentiated by the nature of occupational tasks and to overlap with nonstandard employment features (e.g. part‐time and temporary). They are also highly concentrated in a small number of occupations and sectors, with over half of ZHC jobs found in just 10 occupations. We further show that ZHCs are associated with indicators of inferior job quality such as low pay and underemployment. Although we find no evidence that ZHCs are a particularly pervasive feature of the UK labour market, further growth cannot be ruled out in certain occupations."

"Higher managerial and professional occupations are now the most incentivized occupational class in Britain. It is not yet known whether the rise in pay for performance (PFP) signifies an erosion or enhancement in the ‘service relationship' that purportedly characterizes these occupations. Taking an occupational class perspective, this article investigates the implications of the rise in PFP for the employment relationship and conditions of work across the occupational structure using two nationally representative datasets. In fixed-effects estimates, PFP is found to heavily substitute base earnings in non-service class occupations, but not in service class occupations. PFP jobs generally have no worse conditions relative to non-PFP jobs within occupational classes. The article concludes the rise in PFP should be conceptualized more as a form of ‘rent sharing' for service class occupations, enhancing the service relationship, and as a form of ‘risk sharing' for non-service class occupations."

"Humans rank with the powerful forces of nature transforming Earth. Since the mid-20th century, population growth, industrialization, and globalization have had such deep and wide-ranging impacts that our planet no longer functions as it did during the previous eleven millennia. So distinctive is this collective human intervention that a new geological interval has been proposed; it is called the Anthropocene.

The Anthropocene is intriguing scientifically, fascinating intellectually, and deeply disturbing politically, socially, economically, and ethically. We must learn how to co-exist sustainably with the rest of nature in what is emerging as a new planetary state. To do so, we must first understand what Anthropocene means in all its dimensions. This book adopts a multidisciplinary approach, starting with an exploration of the Anthropocene as a geological concept: ranging across the physical changes to the landscape, to the rapidly heating climate, to a biosphere undergoing transformation. And what of the anthropos in the Anthropocene? While geoscience does not normally address political and ethical issues of justice and equity, or economics and culture, Anthropocene studies in the humanities and social sciences investigate the complexities of the human activity driving global change. Here the book looks at human history, both in the deep past and more recently, the politics and economics of growth spurring the Anthropocene, and potential ways of mitigating its cruel effects. Our fragile, still beautiful, planet is finite. The new realities of the Anthropocene will need our best efforts, across disciplinary divides, at effective hope and action."