Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research最新文献

{"title":"The Ghent system in transition: unions’ evolving role in Sweden’s multi-pillar unemployment benefit system","authors":"Jayeon Lindellee, T. Berglund","doi":"10.1177/10242589221080885","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221080885","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses the multi-faceted and changing role played by trade unions in providing unemployment benefits in Sweden, a country using the so-called Ghent system. As an important institutional feature explaining the high rate of unionisation in the Nordics, the system has been much debated. This article provides a comprehensive account of the retrenchment of the state unemployment benefit system (UBS) and the development of occupational and private UBS pillars providing complementary protection. It also introduces an ongoing reform discussion where the social partners are proposed to govern the unemployment insurance system via collective agreements, while retaining the union-linked insurance funds. The core institutional feature of the Ghent system – voluntary membership of a union-linked insurance fund – is turning out to be highly resilient despite frequent attempts to weaken the union power stemming from it. However, the system’s role in providing unemployment protection has changed due to its development into a multi-pillar structure, meaning that its future prospects are uncertain.","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":"6 1","pages":"211 - 227"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81943917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Unemployment benefit governance, trade unions and outsider protection in conservative welfare states","authors":"D. Clegg, E. Heins, Philip Rathgeb","doi":"10.1177/10242589221094240","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221094240","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the relationship between trade union governance roles in unemployment benefit systems, their power resources and their capacity to counteract liberalising and dualising trends in the labour market in conservative welfare states with compulsory unemployment insurance. Against received wisdom, this article argues that in the 21st century trade unions in continental Europe have generally sought to combat the dualism to which their welfare states and labour markets are institutionally susceptible. In this context, a role in the operation of unemployment benefit systems and related forms of institutional power could help unions to attain the enhanced outsider protection they seek. But different modes of union involvement in public policy produce different levels of institutional power, and help to condition its impact on policy development over time. This article illustrates these points with a comparison of the recent development of labour market policy and regulation in Austria, France and Germany.","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":"182 1","pages":"195 - 210"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80325834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Readjusting unemployment protection in Europe: how crises reshape varieties of labour market regimes","authors":"B. Ebbinghaus, J. Weishaupt","doi":"10.1177/10242589221086172","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221086172","url":null,"abstract":"The labour movement has long fought for the social protection of unemployed workers as a major social right in capitalist economies across Europe. Employers, on the other hand, have often been reluctant to accept such intervention in the labour market. Hence, scholars explaining differences in the evolution of unemployment benefit systems need to consider the power distribution of labour relations, the context of the welfare state and the variety of capitalism in which they are embedded. This article makes three contributions. First, it offers a heuristic that systematically identifies the analytical affinities between unemployment protection and its institutional context. Second, it offers a succinct overview with a focus on major crises and subsequent adaptations in labour market regimes, ranging from the oil shocks in the 1970s to the Great Recession and the current COVID-19 pandemic. And third, it discusses whether European economies have adjusted their unemployment protection to recent crises and assesses the effects on labour market regimes.","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":"29 1","pages":"181 - 194"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83606947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Editorial and Introduction","authors":"T. Berglund, Torsten Müller","doi":"10.1177/10242589221106007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221106007","url":null,"abstract":"One of the greatest risks affecting workers on today’s labour markets is unemployment. Losing one’s job usually entails not only the loss of one’s main source of income, but also psychological consequences resulting, for example, from the loss of colleagues and satisfying work tasks (Jahoda, 1982). While a short time in unemployment, with a swift return to new employment, is less disruptive to a worker’s life situation, the longer the unemployment persists the stronger the pressure to find new employment. As a consequence, the likelihood increases that workers will accept jobs that are worse in terms of wages, skill level and work environment than their previous job. From a trade union perspective, unemployment constitutes a challenge in several respects. On the one hand, a worker’s reservation wage – the lowest acceptable wage in a job offer – tends to decline with longer spells of unemployment as financial hardship tightens. Consequently, rising unemployment in combination with insufficient mitigating mechanisms (such as unemployment insurance) puts downward pressure on wages and weakens unions’ general bargaining power (Rothstein, 1990). Moreover, strikes become less efficient as a tool of collective action in situations of high unemployment, as a ‘reserve army’ of workers is willing to accept wages below union demands, and public support for industrial conflict is more difficult to organise. From this perspective, it is easy to understand Shapiro and Stiglitz’s (1984) rather cynical description of unemployment as ‘a worker discipline device’. As unemployment has been a living experience and threat for workers since wage labour became the dominant form in industrial societies, however, unions and their members have tried – in an act of solidarity – to mitigate its perils. As early as the 19th century, unions started unemployment funds based on members’ contributions as a sort of self-help to mitigate unemployment (Alber, 1981). These benefits also became an important tool for recruiting new members. Union unemployment funds spread over large parts of Europe, thereby creating the prerequisite for more generous unemployment insurance to come. The employer side was sceptical of and even hostile to unemployment benefits for a long time. From the employers’ perspective, such benefits potentially decrease workers’ dependence on paid work, foster idleness and strengthen the unions’ capacity for collective action. Compared with other forms of insurance that were regarded as essential for the welfare state, such as pensions, sickness and work-injury insurance, unemployment insurance was a late comer in welfare development (Alber, 1981). The first more general schemes in Europe were introduced at the beginning of the 20th century, building on the infrastructure of the union unemployment funds. The best-known example, which gave its name to a whole genre of unemployment insurance, originated in the city of Ghent in Belgium, which started to subsidise the","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":"26 1","pages":"157 - 179"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83535713","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Job retention schemes in Europe during the COVID-19 pandemic – different shapes and sizes and the role of collective bargaining","authors":"Torsten Müller, T. Schulten, J. Drahokoupil","doi":"10.1177/10242589221089808","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221089808","url":null,"abstract":"During the COVID-19 pandemic all the EU Member States established some kind of job retention scheme to cushion the employment effects of the economic crisis. While all job retention schemes share this general objective, they differ considerably as regards their institutional design and underlying functional logic. The aim of this article is to analyse the relevant institutional diversity across Europe, with a particular focus on the role of collective bargaining and employee representation structures in the design and implementation of job retention schemes. Based on an analysis of key institutional features of such schemes implemented during the pandemic, the second aim of the article is to identify a set of minimum standards for ‘good job retention schemes’ that ensure efficient and socially adequate use. These criteria include the following elements: ensuring inclusiveness; ensuring a minimum allowance to prevent workers from ending up below the subsistence level when on such a scheme; measures preventing misuse and deadweight losses; and making job retention schemes support conditional on the involvement of trade unions and employee representation structures.","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":"112 1","pages":"247 - 265"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80821616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Invisible but not unlimited – migrant workers and their working and living conditions","authors":"J. Cremers","doi":"10.1177/10242589221089819","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221089819","url":null,"abstract":"the The","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":"70 1","pages":"285 - 289"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81794315","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"European unemployment insurance. From undercurrent to paradigm shift","authors":"L. Andor","doi":"10.1177/10242589221099810","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221099810","url":null,"abstract":"The need for the European Union to get involved in unemployment insurance has frequently been debated in the past decade, starting from exploratory discussions and eventually becoming a political commitment by the European Commission President. This article looks back at the origins of the idea of an EU-level unemployment benefit scheme and explains the political dynamics of the concept’s evolution. Following the 2009 Great Recession and the subsequent eurozone debt crisis, a new movement for a reinforced social dimension has been pushing the EU beyond its previous red lines. The case for counter-cyclical social stabilisation at EU level is now a touchstone for a materially meaningful EU social dimension. The COVID-19 crisis triggered a giant leap to a greater EU budgetary capacity, including financial support for job-saving schemes. This article argues that these new instruments will not suffice without also creating an EU safety net for those whose jobs cannot be saved in a period of economic downturn.","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":"10 1","pages":"267 - 283"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91208194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Book Review: Who Cares? Attracting and Retaining Care Workers for the Elderly","authors":"S. Bach","doi":"10.1177/10242589221099980","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221099980","url":null,"abstract":"This study was prepared and published at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and its themes have become all too familiar over the past 18 months. Elderly care and its workforce have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. Workers in the sector have faced terrible circumstances and many elderly people and their carers have lost their lives prematurely. The pandemic has confirmed the fragility and structural problems in the provision of long-term care around the world and exacerbated the recruitment and retention challenges that are the focus of this study. At the same time, the pandemic has focused more public attention on those who provide care, bringing a previously invisible low status workforce into the limelight. This has generated an EU commitment to a new European Care Strategy and prompted many reports looking at the employment and working conditions in long-term care. Nevertheless, the challenges facing the sector remain acute (European Commission, 2021; Kessler et al., 2020). The study looks at the evidence base and considers best practices for stemming the crisis in long-term care. It draws on survey responses and interviews with country delegates, supplemented by national data, EU Labour Force Survey data and additional literature. It considers the situation of long-term carers for the elderly who provide their services to recipients at home or in institutions. These carers comprise two main occupations, nurses and personal care workers. In OECD countries over 70 per cent of long-term care workers are personal carers. In a context of rising demand for care and the shift of care from hospital to community settings, care demand is outstripping the supply of long-term care workers, and workforce shortages will worsen without urgent action. In the aggregate, OECD countries need to more than double the current number of longterm care workers to maintain existing ratios of caregivers to the elderly. These structural challenges stem from insufficient recruitment and retention, connected to low status, poor pay and working conditions, inadequate training and limited attention to skill acquisition and deployment. Staff shortages have a severe impact on quality of care, including unmet care needs and unnecessary hospital admissions. The study details the main characteristics of the workforce, which comprises predominantly middle-aged women, with a high share of foreign-born workers. Foreign-born workers make a vital contribution and represent over 20 per cent of the OECD countries’ long-term care workforce. They are overrepresented in the care sector and are susceptible to exploitation, for many reasons. These include their employment and immigration status, for example, as undeclared workers hired privately by households and because compliance with employment regulations, such as minimum wage provisions, is uneven. Part-time working, often on an involuntary basis, is also significant. 109998010999801099980 TRS0010.1177/1024258922109998","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":"20 1","pages":"147 - 149"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83148657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"COVID-19: a prelude to a revaluation of the public sector?","authors":"Paul T. de Beer, M. Keune","doi":"10.1177/10242589221078710","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221078710","url":null,"abstract":"One of the striking features of the COVID crisis is the enormous expenditure that various EU governments have been pumping into their economies to keep troubled companies and the selfemployed afloat, to safeguard jobs and to invest in recovery programmes. This massive public spending stands in stark contrast to the years of austerity preceding the pandemic. There are some parallels with the previous economic crisis – the financial crisis – which started in 2008. At that time, governments saved the financial sector with unprecedented monetary injections, contradicting the austerity approach prevailing in the years running up to the crisis. There were widespread expectations that the financial crisis would lead to the demise of the neoliberal-monetarist paradigm in which austerity played a core part. But these expectations were not realised. The financial crisis was soon redefined as a ‘public debt crisis’ and to a considerable extent the public sector was called upon to foot the bill, in the form of further rounds of severe austerity. Will this time be different? Will the public sector pay the price again in the coming years for the debts governments are currently incurring? It is generally acknowledged that the public sector plays an essential role in combating and getting us through the COVID crisis, although assessments of the extent to which public sectors have managed this vary across countries. This applies first of all to public health care, but other public services, too – ranging from education to rubbish collection – that are considered vital or essential for getting through or overcoming the COVID crisis. Will this crisis usher in a new era in which the public sector will be valued just as much as the private sector or even assume priority? Or will the old mantra that the public sector is a ‘burden’ on the economy take precedence again when the health crisis is over, ushering in a new period of harsh austerity measures aimed at the public sector and its workers? In this contribution we first briefly look back at the consequences of the previous crisis for the public sector and then we put forward three arguments why this time it might – or should – indeed be different.","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":"13 1","pages":"135 - 140"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80933420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Book review: The Politics of Social Inclusion and Labor Representation: Immigrants and Trade Unions in the European Context","authors":"D. Adam","doi":"10.1177/10242589221099980a","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221099980a","url":null,"abstract":"tightening. The example is cited of a pay equity claim in New Zealand that resulted in a new pay structure, raising hourly wages by 15–50 per cent. The state’s failure to fund implementation, however, led to reduced hours, increased workloads and jeopardised care quality. The study also has little to say about the restructuring of care and concentration of ownership in the industry, with the rise of large private-equity for-profit operators. These structural changes not only point to the need for transnational action and campaigns to improve working conditions, but also signal that different strategies may be required to improve pay and working conditions: the balance between political lobbying, legislation and achieving collective agreements should be varied in accordance with the ownership and regulatory structures of elder care. This report provides a very welcome and wide-ranging systematic review of the deep-seated challenges facing long-term care. The urgent task facing policy-makers and providers is to move from analysis to policy implementation, framing solutions that will reboot elder care to provide dignity for ageing populations and fair care work for those providing this essential public service.","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":"8 1","pages":"149 - 151"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78528147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}