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In the harsh new world of global competition and in the face of new wave of technological innova­tion, the world of work seems to undertake continuous changes. Further, structural transformations of the economy induced and extended by economic crisis as well as demographic and labour market changes imply the emergence of new forms of employment. However, there are also risks involved, in particular an increase of more precarious jobs and of inequality within and across countries that jeopardise the individual well-being. Against this backdrop, this report is put forth to highlight the global changes of job quality and work-related vulnerabilities in European countries, developing methods to identify the most at-risk employees, and also providing improvement guides of job quali­ty. To this end, the first chapter presents a job-centred methodology aiming to combine the multiples dimensions of jobs into reduced number of job types. The output is a taxonomy of job types that opens room for job quality evaluation and improvement. The second chapter provides an employee-centred method to measure vulnerability to adverse working environment. The main outcome is a vulnerability measure comparable across European countries and a warning system of employees at risk. Finally, the third chapter provides an assessment of the possibility of an international standard for scale construction using ECWS 2010 nrpages: 109 status: published

ispartof: Wage bargaining under the new European Economic Governance pages:23-60 ispartof: pages:23-60 status: published

ispartof: Wage bargaining under the new European Economic Governance. Alternative strategies for inclusive growth pages:401-412 ispartof: pages:401-412 status: published

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Employees spend a significant part of their lives at their job. Consequently, work and the time at work will have an important impact on the well-being of large parts of the population and job quality becomes a key issue. However, this concept is not definable with one measure. Following the use of the construction of job types to capture the complex and multidimensional nature of job quality, this study presents a typology of seven job types for employees in the EU-28 Member States in the period of 2010-2015. Next, some consistency is identified with and across the typologies of Holman (2012), Vandenbrande et al. (2012), Lamberts et al. (2016) and Eurofound (2016). In the second part, the relation between job types and job quality outcomes - such as job satisfaction, health, job insecurity, e.g. - is examined and trade-offs between the job characteristics impacting job quality are discussed. nrpages: 55 status: published

The central question of this report is: “What are challenges that the European research community on inclusive growth needs to address to develop a European research infrastructure which will foster evidence-based policy making?” Aiming to get a broad view on this issue, a purposive, non-probability sample of European experts within different academic fields related to issues of inclusive growth was surveyed. The mainly qualitative analysis of the survey responses let to the identification of four main challenges (data, methods, the gap between policy and research and the research context) and four main recommendations linked to this: (1) Data should be the main priority: more and better data are necessary for high-quality comparative research in Europe. (2) The improvement of methods and researchers’ (methodological) skills must go hand in hand with more and better data. (3) Bridging the gap between policy and research is a challenge to be tackled both by policy makers and researchers. (4) A research context that encourages cooperation and innovation and provides the necessary resources should be stimulated. Progressing towards a European research infrastructure on inclusive growth starts with a strong focus on the data, but goes hand in hand with the development and improvement of methods, training and knowledge exchange on these data and methods and community building which includes not only the European researchers from different disciplines, but other relevant stakeholders as well and in addition to that investing (efforts and money) in building bridges and a collaborative climate between policy makers and researchers. nrpages: 102 status: published

ispartof: Travail Emploi Formation issue:13 pages:140-154 status: published

no isbn ispartof: pages:1-12 ispartof: Mutual Learning Programme pages:1-12 ispartof: Peer Review on 'Minimum Wage' location:London (UK) date:7 Apr - 8 Apr 2014 status: published

The economic and financial crisis is affecting working conditions across EU Member States and Norway in different ways and scope. Yet the pattern is of less work, reduced overall working time, less overtime, rising job insecurity, less choice for workers, wage freezes and wage cuts. There is also greater work intensity, deterioration of work–life balance, increasing stress at work, greater risk of harassment/bullying, less absenteeism, growth in the informal economy and changes to migration patterns. This report ranks countries by changes in working conditions since the crisis began based on country averages for defined indicators: job insecurity, involuntary temporary employment, involuntary part-time working, net migration, work–life balance, work intensity, absenteeism, work accidents and job satisfaction. Average trends can hide composition effects, while the crisis has not had the same effect on all groups of workers. nrpages: 70 status: published

nrpages: 29 status: published

The economic and financial crisis of 2008–2010 has impacted on pay in most EU Member States leading to wage deceleration, pay freezes and sometimes pay cuts. The crisis hit vulnerable groups (low-skilled, young, migrants) particularly hard. Data from five key sectors (manufacturing, construction, accommodation and food services, financial services, public administration) reveal more crisis effects on employment than on wages. Cuts in low-paid and temporary jobs, or reductions in their hours, tended to be the first measure adopted while the ‘wage cushion’ often seen in higher-ranking jobs allowed cost savings through cuts in bonuses and other rewards. Cutting wages is also seen as detrimental to worker motivation and retention. Most responses taken were temporary with few trade-offs at company level between wages and other elements of the employment relationship. nrpages: 49 status: published

Promoting the innovative potential of employees is a main challenge for HR professionals. Previous studies already stressed the role of job design for employee innovativeness. Building on the work of Karasek & Theorell (1990), we focus on the relation between job design, work engagement and innovative work behaviour (IWB). The results show that job control is positively related to both IWB and work engagement, job demands are negatively related to work engagement, yet their relation to IWB is more ambiguous. Significant interaction effects between job demands and job control variables in both the relation with work engagement and IWB are found, yet their nature differs significantly. We find that active jobs (high control and high demands) are related to lower levels of IWB in comparison to low-strain jobs (high control, low demands), which has major managerial consequences. nrpages: 20 status: published

This chapter focuses on the social dialogue module in the survey. Social dialogue is in this regard defined as industrial relations processes where recognised employee representatives are involved in decisions concerning the employment relationship at the workplace. Such involvement may be limited to being informed by management, or may extend to consultation, negotiation or joint participation in decision making. Among quantitative, cross-country studies of industrial relations, this kind of company-level employee representation and social dialogue has received little attention. Comparative studies on workplace industrial relations are often limited to a study of the institutional arrangements and not the actual practices. The ECS provides unique comparative information on the nature and quality of workplace social dialogue in Europe, albeit with some methodological limitations. ispartof: European Company Survey 2009. Overview pages:45-70 ispartof: pages:45-70 status: published

The SME policy is a central element of the renewed Lisbon strategy for growth and employment. The SME are in the focus of European policy. The SME are often excluded from collective representation. The number of employees organized in trade unions goes down with decreasing sizes of enterprises and a functioning works council system is rarer in small enterprises than in bigger ones. This publication focuses on presenting co-determination structures in the small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Italy and Slovenia. Special emphasis was given to three sectors which are traditionally characterized by a high concentration of SME: the textiles industry, the retail trade and the construction industry. nrpages: 112 status: published

The PIQUE project (Privatisation of Public Services and the Impact on Quality, Employment and Productivity) investigated the impact of liberalisation and privatisation of public services on the quality or work and employment, productivity as well as the quality of public service provision. The summary report brings together the key findings of the project, including the results of an investigation of the processes of liberalisation and privatisation and the forms of regulation in the four sectors and six countries investigated; an analysis of company reactions based on a series of case studies; the impact of privatisation and liberalisation processes on labour relations, employment and productivity; the results of a representative survey on users’ perceptions, as well as overall conclusions and policy recommendations. status: published

The brochure summarises an innovation policy study carried out for the European Commission's Directorate-General Enterprise. The study has been conducted by the Higher Institute of Labour Studies (HIVA), at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. Its remit was to look at the potential impact of industrial relations on innovation, and accordingly to establish the role of industrial relations as part of a comprehensive and coherent innovation strategy. It drew on secondary literature and the framework of the European Action Plan for Innovation, to investigate different levels and fields of the European industrial relations systems and identify positive links with a business innovation strategy. Using the resulting case study research, it has illustrated these links with original practices throughout Europe. The study project has been supported by the « Innovation and participation of SMEs » programme, which forms a part of the EU 5th Framework research programme. HIVA had support for the case study research from three partners (CASA, Denmark; FORBA, Austria and IRES, Italy). nrpages: 28 status: published

Within the framework of the new European economic governance, neoliberal views on wages have further increased in prominence and have steered various reforms of collective bargaining rules and practices. As the crisis in Europe came to be largely interpreted as a crisis of competitiveness, wages were seen as the core adjustment variable for ‘internal devaluation’, the claim being that competitiveness could be restored through a reduction of labour costs. This book proposes an alternative view according to which wage developments need to be strengthened through a Europe-wide coordinated reconstruction of collective bargaining as a precondition for more sustainable and more inclusive growth in Europe. It contains major research findings from the CAWIE2 – Collectively Agreed Wages in Europe – project, conducted in 2014–2015 for the purpose of discussing and debating the currently dominant policy perspectives on collectively-bargained wage systems under the new European economic governance. nrpages: 417 status: published