Skip to main content

2005 | Buch

Job Quality and Employer Behaviour

herausgegeben von: Stephen Bazen, Claudio Lucifora, Wiemer Salverda

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK

insite
SUCHEN

Über dieses Buch

This book takes a fresh look at the issue of job quality, analyzing employer behaviour and discussing the agenda for policy intervention. Between 1997 and 2002, more than twelve million new jobs were created in the European Union and labour market participation increased by more than eight million. Whilst a good deal of these new jobs have been created in high-tech and/or knowledge-intensive sectors providing workers with decent pay, job security, training and career development prospects, a significant share of jobs, particularly in labour-intensive service sector industries fail to do so. This volume provides new perspectives on this highly debated and policy relevant issue.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Introduction

Introduction
Abstract
In many industrialized countries concern about the ‘quality’ of the jobs created in recent years has increased. Against the background of an extensive shift of employment from manufacturing to services and the rapidly rising qualifications of the workforce, growing earnings inequality, greater job flexibility, labour market deregulation and the decentralization of collective bargaining, coupled with lower unionization and greater competitive pressure, have contributed to a general perception that the overall quality of jobs has deteriorated (European Commission, 2003). This has generated a debate on whether the lower quality of work should be considered as a structural change in the overall quality of jobs – particularly in the service sector – that demands special attention from analysts and policy makers.
Stephen Bazen, Claudio Lucifora, Wiemer Salverda

Job Quality and Job Satisfaction

Frontmatter
1. What Makes a Good Job? Evidence from OECD Countries
Abstract
In labour economics, consideration of the worker’s lot has overwhelmingly concentrated on remuneration. A recent body of literature, driven in part by the observed disparity between North American and European hours of work, has introduced an additional emphasis on the length of the working week; a related strand has looked at involuntary part-time work. This chapter extends this limited taxonomy using 1997 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) data covering 14 000 workers across 19 OECD countries. The data contain 14 different measures, mostly rarely available, of job outcomes, which allows a broader view of job quality to be taken.
Andrew Clark
2. Job Quality in European Labour Markets
Abstract
Between 1997 and 2002 more than 12 million new jobs were created in the European Union (EU) and labour market participation increased by more than eight million.1 According to recent analyses (European Commission, 2001a, 2002, 2003a) the majority of the new jobs were highly skilled ones in high-tech and/or knowledge-intensive sectors, offering decent pay, job security, training and career development. At the same time, however, in some sectors employment growth was stronger for temporary or low-paid jobs than for permanent, highly paid ones. The employment share of people in temporary jobs reached almost 14 per cent in 2000, and that of people in low-paid jobs around 20 per cent.
Frank Siebern-Thomas
3. Job Satisfaction and Employer Behaviour
Abstract
Deregulation of the employment relationship has characterized the functioning of European labour markets over the last few decades, particularly in the UK (OECD, 1994). This has permitted employers to institute greater labour flexibility and allowed them more discretion in employment relations, which are often regarded as a strategic necessity for maintaining organizational efficiency and price competitiveness in the face of intensifying market competition. It has also prompted concern about individuals’ labour market prospects in terms of the availability of good jobs and the chance of prospering in those jobs through wage advancements and career development. Much of the literature focuses on wage levels, earnings progression and job insecurity. Research indicates that some groups of workers – notably women, youths and the less skilled – have borne much of the burden of increased labour market flexibility (ibid.; Gregory et al., 2000). There also appears to be a link between low-wage flexible employment and lower job satisfaction.
Alex Bryson, Lorenzo Cappellari, Claudio Lucifora

The Role of Employers

Frontmatter
4. Employers in the Low-Wage Labour Market: Is Their Role Important?
Abstract
According to the basic framework that economists almost universally use, employers constitute one half of the labour market; yet they have generally accounted for far less than one half of analyses, and especially the empirical work on labour markets. This is partly because the most popular and straightforward versions of economic theory suggest that, with full labour mobility and competitive markets, employers do not really matter very much in the long run (in terms of explaining the variance in wage and employment outcomes across workers); and partly because, until fairly recently, relatively little good data on employers has been available for testing hypotheses on them.
Harry J. Holzer
5. Using Qualitative Data to Understand Employer Behaviour in Low-Wage Labour Markets
Abstract
In the field of labour economics there is growing recognition that individual employers, operating in imperfect labour markets, play a strong role in shaping job quality – whether in crafting jobs, allocating workers to jobs, influencing the degree of job security, shaping patterns of horizontal and vertical job mobility or setting wages (Autor et al., 2003; Jones et al., 2003; Manning, 2003a; OECD, 1997). Taken to its limit, this represents a shift away from a model of anonymized labour market processes (in which price is the determining factor) to one where employers are viewed as the main architects of wage and employment structures. While many studies dispute the long-term impact of employer behaviour (recalling Hicks, 1932), it is nevertheless the case that models and studies that incorporate a role for the employer have contributed to many of the theoretical advances in recent years.1
Damian Grimshaw
6. Within- and Between-Firm Mobility in the Low-Wage Labour Market
Abstract
The issue of working poor – that is, workers with an income below a threshold that would ensure a certain standard of living – has been a concern in the United States for a number of decades (see for example Wachtel and Betsey, 1972; Gittleman and Joyce, 1999). The widening of the wage distribution in most OECD countries has also increased the number of working poor and low-wage workers in Europe (see Gottschalk and Smeeding, 1997, for a survey of selected OECD countries and Andersen, 2003, for a study of changes in Danish wages during the 1990s), and therefore the issue of low-wage workers has received increased interest during the last decade in European labour research as well. The number of low-paid workers is not, however, in itself necessarily a cause for concern. If low-paid jobs are merely transitory occupations in the move up the earnings ladder then the effect on lifetime earnings will be small and the disutility minimal. However if they are dead-end jobs that are consistently held by a group of low-wage workers, these workers will be marginalized in terms of income.
Iben Bolvig

Job Quality in the Service Sector

Frontmatter
7. Job Stability and Earnings Mobility in the Low-Skill Service Sector in France
Abstract
Deindustrialization and shifts in consumer demand have led to the tertiary sector playing an increasingly important role in employment. The United States and the United Kingdom are often used as a basis for comparison with European countries due to their divergence in employment performance (see for example Piketty, 1998; Gadrey and Jany-Catrice, 1998; OECD, 2000) and the fact that their employment growth is essentially due to the growth of the service sector. For example Freeman and Schettkat (2000, p. 175) compare low-wage service employment in Germany and the United States and conclude that there are fewer low-skill service jobs in Germany compared with the United States and that ‘this difference is closely linked to Germany’s overall lower employment to population rate compared to the USA’.
Stephen Bazen
8. Employment Systems in Labour-Intensive Activities: The Case of Retailing in France
Abstract
The retail trade is one of the largest and most labour-intensive sectors of the economy. In the European Union it employs around 14 million people, or more than 9 per cent of the gainfully employed population (Jany-Catrice and Lehndorff, 2004). In France this sector accounts for 8.8 per cent of total employment.1
Florence Jany-Catrice, Nicole Gadrey, Martine Pernod
9. Gender Wages and Careers in the Retail Trade and IT Services: The Case of Finland
Abstract
The retail and information technology (IT) sectors are interesting extremes when it comes to men and women in the labour market. The retail trade is traditionally a female-dominated sector at the lower end of the pay scale. On average they have lower education levels and their career opportunities are rather limited. The IT sector, in contrast, is male-dominated, rapidly expanding, well-paid and offers good career prospects, especially for young, highly educated, well-trained people. The technological level is high and rapidly progressing.
Rita Asplund, Reija Lilja
10. Heterogeneous Returns to Training in Personal Services
Abstract
This chapter addresses the earnings impact of continuing training in the personal services sector in Germany. On the one hand the personal services sector is among the sectors with the highest employment growth; on the other hand the share of low-paid workers is higher than in other sectors. While our knowledge of the specific situation of low-paid workers in this sector is limited (Asplund and Salverda, 2004), an obvious way of increasing both productivity and earnings is for firms to increase their investment in employee training (Hughes etal., 2004). The provision of training constitutes a major part of human capital investment (Heckman, 1999). An important proviso, however, is that training increases the earnings of this group of employees. Therefore we not only calculate the average training effect on earnings in the personal services sector, but also differentiate between the wage effects for employees with different qualifications and professional status.
Thomas Zwick, Anja Kuckulenz

Policy Issues

Frontmatter
11. Making Bad Jobs Good: Strategies for the Service Sector
Abstract
The question of services and service employment and what to do about it, is a fundamental issue. For example, in the United States 78% of all low wage women in America work in services. So services are clearly important as far as the issues of low earnings and poverty are concerned. I will begin by presenting some basic facts about service employment in America and what the trends have been and I will describe what I think are the essential features or characteristics of structural change in the US labour market. I will illustrate this by giving two examples from banking and hotels about how restructuring in services is taking place. I will then turn to the question of policy and describe the US policy environment, the role of some traditional policies which I think often get overlooked in the discussion and finally discuss what I regard as a kind of the frontier or the direction of some of the more innovative policy initiatives.
Paul Osterman
Backmatter
Metadaten
Titel
Job Quality and Employer Behaviour
herausgegeben von
Stephen Bazen
Claudio Lucifora
Wiemer Salverda
Copyright-Jahr
2005
Verlag
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Electronic ISBN
978-0-230-37864-3
Print ISBN
978-1-349-52488-4
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230378643