Category: Useful

Upcoming Summer conferences

SASE 24th Annual Conference – Global Shifts: Implications for Business, Government and Labour. June 28-30, 2012 – Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. Program available
ILERA 16th World Congress – Beyond Borders: Governance in a Global Economy. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA in 2012. Draft papers
10th Annual ESPAnet conference .September 6-8 2012, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. List of streams

EU in crisis? Popular perceptions of the EU project in different Member States

A new study by the Pew Research Centre presents the results of a survey on attitudes towards the EU in different member states. While Germany remains most favourable to the EU project, this is also the case in Spain and Portugal whereas Britain, Greece and the Czech Republic have a less positive view. The ECB gets much less favourable ratings, with more than 50% being favourable only in Poland, with the most negative perceptions in Britain, Spain and Greece. Only the Germans see EU integration as conducive to economic growth. 
Two slightly surprising findings. First, Spain also (46%) retains a positive view of the effect of EU integration on the economy. Second, Greece has the highest share of the population seeing the Euro… as a good thing! This result is likely to have implications for the likelyhood of anti-Euro parties to win a majority in the next Greek legislative elections…

Flexwork newsletter – May

1. The labour markets in Finland, Germany, Latvia, Norway, and Sweden 2006-2010. Developments and challenges for the future.. (S. Klinger, E. Spitznagel, J. Alatalo, K. Berglind, H. Gustavsson, H. Kure, I. Nio, J. Salmins, V. Skuja, J. Sorbo).
Via the International Labour Market Forecasting Network, forecasters of the public employment services or comparable… read more.

2. Research Report on Non-Regular Employment: Focusing on Trends, Equal Treatment, and the Transition to Regular Employment. (Y. Asao, K. Takahashi, H. Maeura & S. Lee).
This summary is a compilation of the results of “Integrated Surveys and Research on Trends among Non-Regular… read more.

3. Berufliche Statusmobilität von Arbeitslosen nach beruflicher Weiterbildung. Ein empirischer Beitrag zur Evaluation der Förderung beruflicher Weiterbildung. (A. Deeke & M. Baas).
Für die mikroanalytische Evaluation der Förderung der beruflichen Weiterbildung (FbW) von Arbeitslosen wird… read more.

4. A Very Uneven Road: US Labor Markets in the Past 30 Years. (H. J. Holzer, M. Hlavac).
We will use data from the Current Population Surveys for over 30 years to answer these questions. The analysis will proceed… read more.

5. Resilience, Equity, and Opportunity. The World Bank’s Social Protection and Labor Strategy 2012-2022. (World Bank).
Risk and the quest for opportunity feature heavily in economic life in the 21st century. Sustained growth in many… read more.

6. Private and Public Provision of Counseling to Job-Seekers: Evidence from a Large Controlled Experiment. (L. Behaghel, B. Crépon & M. Gurgand).
Contracting out public services to private firms has ambiguous effects when quality is imperfectly observable. Using a… read more.

7. The impact of Greek labour market regulation on temporary and family employment: evidence from a new survey. (Anagnostopoulos, A. & Stanley Siebert, W.).
This paper uses an original dataset for 206 workplaces in Thessaly (Greece), to study consequences of Greece’s employment… read more.

The crisis and national labour law reforms

Check this really interesting ETUI working paper on national labour market reforms in the context of the crisis by Clauwaert and Schömann.This shows that there have been significant reforms to industrial relations and bargaining system, individual and collective dismissal rules, as well as changes to rules on atypical contracts…
Note: Stefan Clauwaert and Isabelle Schömann are senior researchers at the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) in Brussels. This Working Paper presents the main trends and tendencies based on a country by country analysis. The country studies are regularly updated and can be found at the ETUI website: http://www.etui.org/Topics/Social-dialogue-collective-bargaining/Social-legislation

Support the Basic Income Earth Network

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“About Basic Income
A basic income is an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement. It is a form of minimum income guarantee that differs from those that now exist in various European countries in three important ways:
it is being paid to individuals rather than households;
it is paid irrespective of any income from other sources;
it is paid without requiring the performance of any work or the willingness to accept a job if offered.
Liberty and equality, efficiency and community, common ownership of the Earth and equal sharing in the benefits of technical progress, the flexibility of the labour market and the dignity of the poor, the fight against inhumane working conditions, against the desertification of the countryside and against interregional inequalities, the viability of cooperatives and the promotion of adult education, autonomy from bosses, husbands and bureaucrats, have all been invoked in its favour.
But it is the inability to tackle unemployment with conventional means that has led in the last decade or so to the idea being taken seriously throughout Europe by a growing number of scholars and organizations. Social policy and economic policy can no longer be conceived separately, and basic income is increasingly viewed as the only viable way of reconciling two of their respective central objectives: poverty relief and full employment.
There is a wide variety of proposals around. They differ according to the amounts involved, the source of funding, the nature and size of the reductions in other transfers, and along many other dimensions. As far as short-term proposals are concerned, however, the current discussion is focusing increasingly on so-called partial basic income schemes which would not be full substitutes for present guaranteed income schemes but would provide a low – and slowly increasing – basis to which other incomes, including the remaining social security benefits and means-tested guaranteed income supplements, could be added.
Many prominent European social scientists have now come out in favour of basic income – among them two Nobel laureates in economics. In a few countries some major politicians, including from parties in government, are also beginning to stick their necks out in support of it. At the same time, the relevant literature – on the economic, ethical, political and legal aspects – is gradually expanding and those promoting the idea, or just interested in it, in various European countries and across the world have started organizing into an active network”