Documents Forth, John 36 results

"A recent article in this journal provided a critique of the design of the Survey of Employees Questionnaire within the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey. The principal criticisms concerned the use of vague response categories, double-barrelled questions, needless ordinal measurements and the use of multiple binary items in place of ordinal or scalar measures. The critique highlighted some areas worthy of attention but we argue that, in other areas, it took insufficient account of the survey's core objectives and of the practical and financial constraints guiding its design. We offer a broader assessment of sources of error within the WERS 2004 Survey of Employees. "

"The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) is based on an annual one per cent sample of employee jobs and provides many of the UK's official earnings statistics. These statistics are generated using official weights designed to make the achieved sample in each year representative of the population of employee jobs in Britain by gender, age, occupation, and region. However, we find that jobs in small, young, private-sector organisations remain under-represented after weighting. Additionally, there is evidence of systematic year-to-year longitudinal attrition among employees who remain in scope, for which no official weighting adjustment exists. We develop new weights to address these issues, demonstrating their importance through policy-relevant examples. Our new estimates suggest that the bite of the National Living Wage is greater, and that progress toward the target for eradicating low pay has been faster, than previously understood."

"This comprehensive study provides a perceptive portrait of workplace employment relations in Britain and France using comparable data from two large-scale surveys: the British Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS) and the French Enquete Relations Professionnelles et Negociations d'Entreprise (REPONSE). These extensive linked employer-employee surveys provide nationally-representative data on private sector employment relations in all but the smallest workplaces, and offer a unique opportunity to compare and contrast workplace employment relations under two very different employment regimes. An insightful read for all academics and students of employment, the findings also have implications for practitioners and policy-makers keen to identify and promote "best practice"."

"This paper looks at the financial resources of trades unions in the UK, both updating previous work and attempting to understand the management of first and second order collective action problems. First order problems refer to the problems of initiating collective action and second order problems refer to the management of collective action organisations. Unions are 'cost disease' organisations in which expenditure outstrips inflation but revenue may not. Their economic model cannot survive without some form of external subsidy. Both aggregate and case study data – from the largest UK union, Unite – are presented to illustrate the cost disease problem and to suggest options for its management."

"Across Europe, there are many differing opinions on whether workplace employee representation should be encouraged or discouraged. Yet there is very little evidence on the variations in workplace employee representation across Europe or the reasons for this. We use a workplace survey covering 27 EU countries to show that its incidence is strongly and independently correlated with the degree of centralization in a country's industrial relations regime and the extent of legislative support. Industry rents are also important in explaining trade union presence, but are unimportant in the case of works councils. Turning to the effects of workplace employee representation, we find support for the exit-voice model – traditionally associated with Anglo-Saxon regimes – whereby worker representation is associated with poorer perceptions of the employment relations climate and with lower voluntary quit rates."

"This paper uses linked employer-employee data to investigate the relationship between employees' subjective well-being and workplace performance in Britain. The analyses show a clear, positive and statistically-significant relationship between the average level of job satisfaction at the workplace and workplace performance. This finding is present in both cross-sectional and panel analyses and is robust to various estimation methods and model specifications. In contrast, we find no association between levels of job-related affect and workplace performance."

"Using nationally representative linked employer-employee data we find one-quarter of employees in Britain are paid for performance. The log hourly wage gap between performance pay and fixed pay employees is .36 points. This falls to .15 log points after controlling for observable demographic, job and workplace characteristics. It falls still further to .10 log points when comparing "like" employees in the same workplace, indicating that performance pay contracts are used in higher paying workplaces. The premium rises markedly as one moves up the wage distribution: it is seven times higher at the 90th percentile than it is at the 10th percentile in the wage distribution (.42 log points compared to .06 log points)."

"It has long been argued that equality of opportunity brings business benefits and that it is in employers' interest to implement policy to promote equality of opportunity. Our analysis of the Workplace Employment Relations Survey 2004 found neither large and widespread business benefits, nor large and widespread costs associated with Equal Opportunities policies amongst the establishments that implement these. Given the net benefits to society of equal opportunities policies, this suggests that public and private benefits are likely to differ substantially and points to the need for policy intervention."