scholarly journals A Keynesian reformulation of the WS-PS model: Keynesian unemployment and Classical unemployment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Piluso ◽  
Gabriel Colletis
Keyword(s):  
Trade Union ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Nash Bargaining ◽  
Real Wages ◽  
Orthodox Theory ◽  
Keynesian Unemployment ◽  
Bargaining Mechanism

AbstractThe orthodox theory of wage negotiations considers that the trade union monopoly causes a rigidity of real wages which is, itself, the cause of unemployment. The model of this negotiation ("Nash bargaining") only considers situations where negotiations between union and firm succeed. In this article, we attempt to read the WS-PS model from a Keynesian point of view. Our model reflects the fact that successful negotiation is only one case among other situations, including failure where the union expresses a claim that is not necessarily satisfied. Although, in situations close to full employment, there is a bargaining mechanism by which unions and firms reach an agreement, this is not the case in times of massive unemployment. In the latter situation, employment is unilaterally determined by firms, on the basis of previous demand.

Activation and trade unions: confronting the dilemma

2004 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 588-605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Valkenburg
Keyword(s):  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Union Power ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Relevant Role ◽  
Current Activation ◽  
Oriented Approach

Active employment strategies raise complex questions and considerations for trade unions. This is especially true for activation. If unions oppose activation it will be hard for them to play a relevant role in the contemporary debate. If they agree with current activation policies they will share responsibility for the risks attached to them. This article tries to find a way out of this dilemma. It explores the central issue of what constitutes an adequate stance for trade unions with regard to activation, in a situation where full employment is not a realistic aim. A possible way out of the dilemma is formulated from two perspectives. The first is a reciprocal, client-oriented approach to benefit claimants elaborated in terms of rights and duties that are defendable from a trade union point of view. The second is a broader concept of social participation, in which participation is not limited to paid employment on the regular labour market. Formulating these ideas only makes sense if the unions are also prepared and able to back them up with union power. The final section of the article addresses the question of how unions can back up their position on activation with union power.

Front commun syndical et nouveau pacte social

Res Publica ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-268
Author(s):  
Léon-Eli Troclet
Keyword(s):  
Present State ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
Social Pact ◽  
The Government ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Common Trade

I . Confronted with the acuteness of the socio-economic problems the two major labour organizations (i.e. : the socialist and the christiandemocratic trade union confederation) have in 1976 strengthened their «Common Trade Unions' Front» (with about two million members on a total of 2,300,000 wage- and salary earners in Belgium) in view of their negotiations with employers and with the government, to which the trade unions have submitted a common platform.The common front, that has its antecedents on the local, regional and professional level has never been and never will be of a permanent nature, some sort of organic unit. Each confederation maintains its own identity and the front is meant to be re-animated according to the circumstances.II. From the employers' side (and to some extent completely independent from the trade unions' common front) representatives of employers' organizations have «as a personal point of view» and, no doubt, as a preliminary approach, launched the idea that a new and very comprehensive «social pact» should be negotiated.  The socialist trade unions clearly tend to reject this idea, since it maywell lead to a further integration in the capitalist system, whereas the christiandemocratic union seems to be rather in favour of such a pact.In the present state of affairs (end of June, 1977) the probability that it be realized is rather low indeed.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Frank Stricker
Keyword(s):  
Labor Force ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
Real Wages ◽  
Discouraged Workers ◽  
Key Concepts

Main arguments are discussed and key concepts are defined to help readers later on and to preview the book’s effort to evaluate mainstream paradigms, one of which is that 4 percent unemployment is full employment. Flaws in the idea of frictional unemployment are sketched. This chapter stresses the importance of discouraged workers and other jobless people outside the labor force. Truly full employment requires more jobs than people needing jobs, short periods for finding work, and real wages rising 2 percent per year. These conditions have been rare. The final argument is that neoliberalism and unregulated markets cannot bring full employment. Government job programs are essential.

scholarly journals Digitalization, Multinationals and Employment: An Empirical Analysis of Their Causal Relationships

2019 ◽  
Vol 239 (3) ◽  
pp. 399-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio G. Gómez-Plana ◽  
María C. Latorre
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Computable General Equilibrium ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Real Wages ◽  
Computable General Equilibrium Models ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
High Unemployment Rate ◽  
Information And Communication

Abstract This study measures the effects of digitalization related to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) investment on employment and other economic variables according to firms‘ ownership. We present two computable general equilibrium models (with full employment and with unemployment) which differentiate two types of firms: National and foreign multinationals (MNEs). Both types of firms allow for the substitution between labour and ICT capital. We conclude that ICT investments significantly create jobs and raise real wages, GDP and welfare. The aggregate positive effects are stronger for ICT investment in national firms than in foreign MNEs although the sign of some sectoral effects can be negative. We also analyze the role of wage flexibility in this context, with the most favorable results related to scenarios where wages are more rigid for both cases, when investors are national firms or foreign MNEs. The model is applied to the case of Spain, a country with a high unemployment rate where ICT investment has been large since the mid 1990s.

A Half Century of Trade Union Membership. The Cyclical Macro-Determinants of Postwar Union Growth in Belgium

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt Vandaele
Keyword(s):  
Trade Union ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Real Wages ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Explanatory Variables ◽  
Union Growth ◽  
Seminal Contribution ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Leftist Parties

Based on the seminal contribution of Bain and Elsheikh, this article explains the ebb and flow in trade union membership in Belgium from 1948 to 1995. With only four explanatory variables, the model clarifies more than 75 per cent of the fluctuations in Belgian trade union membership. The results show that rises in inflation, real wages and, due to the Ghent system, unemployment have a positive impact on unionization. Although there is an enforcement effect, a saturation effect takes over, indicating that further union growth is hampered by the union's own size. Mainly due to the 'Allgemeinkoalitionsfähighkeit' of the Belgian government system, the impact of leftist parties on unionization is not significant in a quantitative framework.

scholarly journals An artificial Wicksell–Keynes economy integrating short-run business cycle and long-term cumulative trend

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 953-998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ichiro Takahashi ◽  
Isamu Okada
Keyword(s):  
Banking Sector ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
Aggregate Demand ◽  
Real Wages ◽  
Fractional Reserve Banking ◽  
Investment Funds ◽  
Wage Stickiness ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Short Run ◽  
Reserve Banking

Abstract Economists have investigated how price–wage rigidity influences macroeconomic stability. A widely accepted view asserts that increased rigidity destabilizes an economy by requiring a larger quantity adjustment. In contrast, the Old Keynesian view regards nominal rigidity as a stabilizing factor, because it reduces fluctuations in income and thus aggregate demand. To examine whether price–wage stickiness is stabilizing or destabilizing, we build an agent-based Wicksell–Keynes macroeconomic model, which is completely closed and absolutely free from any external shocks, including policy interventions. In the model, firms setting prices and wages make both employment and investment decisions under demand constraints, while a fractional-reserve banking sector sets the interest rate and provides the firms with investment funds. As investment involves a gestation period, it is conducive to overproduction, thereby causing alternate seller’s and buyer’s markets. In the baseline simulation, a stable economy emerges with short-run business cycles and long-run fluctuations. One unique feature of the economy is its remarkable resilience: When afflicted by persistent deflation, it often manages to reverse the deflationary spiral and get back on a growth track, ultimately achieving full or nearly full employment. The virtual experiments demonstrate that prices and wages must both be moderately rigid to ensure long-run stability. The key stabilizing mechanism is a recurring demand-sufficient economy, in which firms are allowed to increase employment while simultaneously cutting real wages.

Contextualising Organised Labour in Expansion and Crisis: The Case of the US

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Moody
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Final Analysis ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Strategic Choices ◽  
Real Wages ◽  
Union Leadership ◽  
The Us ◽  
Labour Power

AbstractWhile, as Marx argued, periods of expanded accumulation present the best conditions for increasing working-class living standards, the expansion that began in 1982 was based in large part on the rapidfallin the value of labour-power in the US. This recovery and rapid rise in the rate of surplus-value in the US was enabled by the collapse of union-resistance beginning in 1979 and the strategic choices made by union-leaders across the economy from that time on. The expansion was sustained in the 1980s by dramatic work-reorganisation, enabled by the embrace of labour-management cooperation-schemes by much of the trade-union leadership, and the restructuring of several major industries that undermined the industry-wide bargaining on which rising postwar incomes had been based. Productivity, boosted by lean production-methods, would continue to outstrip real wages up until the ‘Great Recession’ of 2008 and resume again in the wake of a weak recovery in the US. The rapid geographic expansion of capital after 1990 provided new investment-possibilities, as did the explosion of financial instruments. What stands out, however, is that rising productivity, far from providing the basis for increases in working-class income, had become coupled with flat or declining real wages and a fall in the value of labour-power as the necessary condition to sustain almost any level of growth in the real economy. The link between productivity and wage-increases, central to Keynesian and institutional collective-bargaining theory, had been broken and Marx’s idea of the most favourable conditions stood on its head. The breaking of this link had, in the final analysis, been an outcome of class-struggle in which capital had the upper hand. All of this underlines the failed strategies and practices of most of the trade-union leadership in the US since 1979. New approaches to the workplace and broader forms of mobilisation will be needed. Signs of worker-resistance to the latest neoliberal clampdowns in Latin America, Europe, China, and even the US, however, may point to a renewed era of intensified class-struggle.

scholarly journals Powers of Trade Union Activists Engaged in Self-Employment – Assessment of Polish Legislation

2021 ◽  
Vol 95 ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Tomasz Duraj
Keyword(s):  
Trade Union ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Employee Rights ◽  
Legal Basis ◽  
Union Activists ◽  
The Right

The objective of the foregoing article is an analysis of the rights which the Polish legislature granted to self-employed trade union activists after the extension of coalition rights to these persons. In this regard, the trade union law extended to self-employed persons working as sole traders protection, which until 2019 was reserved exclusively for employees. Pursuant to the amendment of July 5, 2018, self-employed trade union activists were granted – based on international standards – the right to non-discrimination on the basis of performing a trade union function, the right to paid leaves from work, both permanent and ad hoc in order to carry out ongoing activities resulting from the exercise of a trade union function, and the protection of the sustainability of civil law contracts which form the legal basis for the services provided. the exercise of a trade union function, and the protection of the sustainability of civil law contracts which form the legal basis for the services provided. The author positively assesses the very tendency to extend employee rights to self-employed persons acting as union activists. However, serious doubts are raised by the scope of privileges guaranteed to non-employee trade union activists and the lack of any criteria differentiating this protection. Following the amendment of the trade union law, the legislator practically equates the scope of rights of self-employed trade union activists with the situation of trade union activists with employee status. This is not the right direction. This regulation does not take into account the specificity of self-employed persons, who most often do not have such strong legal relationship with the employing entity as employees. The legislature does not sufficiently notice the distinctness resulting from civil law contracts, which form the basis for the provision of work by the selfemployed the separateness resulting from civil law contracts, which constitute the basis for the performance of work by the self-employed. According to the author, the scope of rights guaranteed de lege lata to self-employed union activists constitutes an excessive and unjustified interference with the fundamental principle of freedom of contract on the basis of civil law employment relations (Art. 3531 of the Civil Code). From the point of view of international standards, it would be enough to ensure the right of these persons to non-discrimination on the basis of performing a trade union function; the right to unpaid temporary leaves from work in order to perform current activities resulting from the performed trade union function; the right to high compensation in the event of termination of a civil law contract with a self-employed trade union activist in connection with the performance of his functions in trade union bodies and full jurisdiction of labour courts in cases arising from the application of trade union law provisions. The disadvantage of the regulation at issue is also that Polish collective labour law does not in any way differentiate the scope of the rights and privileges guaranteed to self-employed trade union activists, ensuring the same level of protection for all. In that area, it appears that the legislature de lege ferenda should differentiate the scope of that protection by referring to the criterion of economic dependence on the hiring entity for which the services are provided.

scholarly journals Productivity, Wages, Profits, and Exchange Rates in an Era of Globalization

2002 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-81
Author(s):  
HARTMUT ELSENHANS
Keyword(s):  
Full Employment ◽  
Specific Pattern ◽  
Marginal Product ◽  
Real Wages ◽  
Structural Unemployment ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Development Policies ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Welfare State

ABSTRACT Worldwide devaluation races lead to the globalization of rent instead of profit and autonomy of civil society. This specific pattern of today’s globalization goes with serious underconsumptionist tendencies as self-sufficiency in wage goods production is achieved in economies with a very low marginal product of labour in agriculture and structural unemployment which disempowers all labour. The 19th century likewise intensive globalization was characterized by full employment tendencies, rising real wages and an expansion of the welfare state. A return to such a convoy model of globalization is possible through marginality reducing development policies for uplifting the poor in the South.

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