Documents Flynn, Matthew 8 results

"Owing to the ageing of their respective populations, policy-makers in Japan and Germany are challenged to extend the working life of individual employees. However, conditions of physical and mental ill health tend to increase with old age, leading to disabilities that affect whether and how individuals can remain active in the labour market. Workplace accommodation is a means to enable disabled individuals to remain productively employed. Drawing on qualitative interview data, this discussion explores how institutions such as School Authorities in Japan and Germany use workplace accommodation to support teachers with physical and mental disabilities. Teachers are a white-collar profession strongly affected by ill health, especially burnout. The discussion furthermore explores how such workplace accommodation measures influence older teachers´ career expectations and career outcomes, including thoughts about (early) retirement. It finds that even though the institutional contexts in Japan and Germany are rather similar, career options and expectations vary, though with similar (negative) outcomes for national strategies towards the extension of working lives."

"Ageing workforces are placing conflicting pressures on European trade unions in order to, on the one hand, protect pensions and early retirement routes, and, on the other, promote human resource management (HRM) policies geared towards enabling their older members to extend working life. Using interviews from German and United Kingdom (UK) trade unions, we discuss how unions are both constrained and enabled by pre-existing institutional structures in advocating approaches to age management. In Germany, some unions use their strong institutional role to affect public policy and industrial change at national and sectoral levels. UK unions have taken a more defensive approach, focused on protecting pension rights. The contrasting varieties of capitalism, welfare systems and trade unions' own orientations are creating different pressures and mechanisms to which unions need to respond. While the German inclusive system is providing unions with mechanisms for negotiating collectively at the national level, UK unions' activism remains localized."

"The concept of political congruence is introduced as predictor or explanatory factor of trade union renewal. Strategic change is more likely to succeed when political congruence exists between the values, expectations and intended outcomes of the three sub-sets of leaders, activists and members in a union. Political congruence (P/c) is defined as convergence of shared political values and vision. For P/c to occur a particular chemistry of independent factors needs to coalesce. The authors note, in particular, that there have been exceptional periods of individual union growth, measured in terms of membership, density and effectiveness. These episodes of exceptional growth need to be studied and understood, if one is to make sense of debates on union ‘renewal'."

"In the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006, the United Kingdom government set a ‘default' retirement age of 65 years after which an employer can compulsorily retire workers, and made it obligatory for employers to consider the ‘business case' for any employees' requests to continue in work after the default age. This is a ‘light touch' approach to reducing age discrimination at the workplace and to changing the established ‘culture of retirement'. While encouraging productive staff to remain in post beyond 65 years of age, it leaves implementation of the policies and achievement of their goals to the discretion of employers. This article explores how British employers are adapting to the law, by drawing from interviews with 70 managers from a wide range of organisations. Overall the collected evidence shows the limits of a business case approach as a means of changing employers' practices. It was found that line managers, rather than senior managers or human resources specialists, generally decide which employees can stay employed after age 65 years. Consequently, the research suggests that opportunities for workers aged 65 or more years to stay employed are more the result of individual arrangements with their immediate managers than changes in an organisation's policies and practices. Altogether, the evidence suggests that consolidation rather than eradication of the established retirement culture has occurred."

"This report responds to the TUC's calls for a strengthened health and safety agenda, improved safety guidance and tougher regulatory activity in the light of Covid-19. Until now little was known about the form workplace risk assessment has taken during Covid-19, its impact on prevention and work. This report identifies the role that Health and Safety (H&S) representatives have played during Covid-19, lessons learned and best practice for continuing and future waves. There is a particular focus on food manufacturing, distribution and food retail (referred to throughout the report as the food sector). The report examines organisational and sectoral mechanisms and processes for worker representation and for effective social dialogue and joint regulation on health and safety. It identifies the role of H&S representatives in risk assessment and the provision of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), but also in the (re)organisation of work and workplace ergonomics. The report also explores the role of unions in the protection of mental health, in ensuring that health and safety measures cover all groups of workers, and in maintaining the confidence of workers in their organisation's capacity to keep them safe. It recognises the specific issues for the protection of key workers, the disproportionate outcomes for Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) workers, but also for those on contractual arrangements with no direct relationship with employers."

"This article explores whether comparative institutionalism can be used to identify path-dependent approaches to the management of ageing workforces in the United Kingdom (UK) and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), and considers whether and how the global phenomenon of population ageing is leading to a convergence of approaches between Western and Eastern economies. Using semi-structured expert interviews, the article discusses these countries' approaches to employment regulation, welfare provision and public sector employment. The findings show that the two economies exhibit a converging trend: namely shifting responsibilities for extended longevity from the state and employer towards the individual worker. However, stakeholder pressure (especially from trade unions) has tempered this trend in the UK more than in HKSAR. This indicates that stakeholders' relative ability to use their agency in setting and pursuing agendas that diverge from public policy paths influences not only national-level policy-making but also organisational-level HRM."