scholarly journals Labour Market Policies in Denmark and Canada: Could Flexicurity be an Answer for Canadian Workers?

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie J Nichols

Abstract<br />The labour market in Canada is changing. Over the past decades there has been an increase in the number of precarious workers on short-term, part-time, contracts; jobs are created and lost, as employers deem necessary. As a result of these shifts in the organization of work, many workers are now forced to hold multiple jobs in order to make ends meet. This move away from long-term employment has created a situation where the majority of Canadian workers can no longer expect their employer to provide predictable support and security for them. At the same time, under the current Employment Insurance (EI) laws, they cannot expect support from the federal government either. How can workers gain some immediate protection through expanded social welfare programmes? With more and more workers, especially women, racialized workers and lower income people relegated to precarious employment, we must question current social policy. If, as it appears, EI does not work, we must strive to implement a viable alternative. Could an alternative system be modeled on the flexicurity system now in effect in Denmark? This paper draws on Nancy Fraser&rsquo;s criteria for social justice for the globalized worker, to assess the ways that flexicurity could improve the security of the Canadian worker by offering alternatives to participation in the market nexus.

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dr. Kamlesh Kumar Shukla

FIIs are companies registered outside India. In the past four years there has been more than $41 trillion worth of FII funds invested in India. This has been one of the major reasons on the bull market witnessing unprecedented growth with the BSE Sensex rising 221% in absolute terms in this span. The present downfall of the market too is influenced as these FIIs are taking out some of their invested money. Though there is a lot of value in this market and fundamentally there is a lot of upside in it. For long-term value investors, there’s little because for worry but short term traders are adversely getting affected by the role of FIIs are playing at the present. Investors should not panic and should remain invested in sectors where underlying earnings growth has little to do with financial markets or global economy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002218562110082
Author(s):  
Eugene Schofield-Georgeson

In 2020, the Federal Morrison Liberal Government scrambled to respond to the effects of the international coronavirus pandemic on the Australian labour market in two key ways. First, through largescale social welfare and economic stimulus (the ‘JobKeeper’ scheme) and second, through significant proposed reform to employment laws as part of a pandemic recovery package (the ‘Omnibus Bill’). Where the first measure was administered by employers, the second was largely designed to suspend and/or redefine labour protections in the interests of employers. In this respect, the message from the Federal Government was clear: that the costs of pandemic recovery should be borne by workers at the discretion of employers. State Labor Governments, by contrast, enacted a range of industrial protections. These included the first Australia ‘wage theft’ or underpayment frameworks on behalf of both employees and contractors in the construction industry. On-trend with state industrial legislation over the past 4 years, these state governments continued to introduce industrial manslaughter offences, increased access to workers’ compensation, labour hire licensing schemes and portable long service leave.


1971 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 687-696 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARTIN J. GANNON ◽  
JOSEPH C. NOTHERN
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
V. Kulakova

The article is devoted to the socio-economic policy pursued by Barak Obama who had won elections and entered the presidential office in the midst of the strongest economic crisis. The author considers in depth each of the new administration's strategy directions in taking simultaneously both short-term measures necessary for the fastest crisis recovery and actions aimed at laying the foundation for the future long-term prosperity of the country. The feature of the current stage is the elevation of social policy to the rank of national priorities, and the crisis does not abolish it.


2021 ◽  
pp. 244-248
Author(s):  
Michael J. Rosenfeld

Gay rights and marriage equality have advanced so far in the U.S. in the past decade that it would be all too easy to assume that the struggle is over. The opponents of gay rights, however, remain powerful. Readers can take inspiration from how dramatically attitudes toward gay rights have liberalized in the past two decades and how transformative the liberalization of attitudes has been. We live in a world where political lies often seem to have the upper hand. It is worth remembering that despite the many short term advantages that lies can yield in politics, the truth has some long term advantages as well. The way the marriage equality movement prevailed should be a lesson to anyone who wants to make progressive social change.


2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (8) ◽  
pp. 1341-1361
Author(s):  
Hoon Choi

PurposeThis paper examines whether and how labour market duality can be alleviated through legislation that prohibits discrimination based on employment type.Design/methodology/approachIn 2007, the Korean government undertook a labour reform banning discriminatory treatment against fixed-term, part-time and dispatched workers. By exploiting a gradual implementation of the anti-discrimination law by firm size targeting a subset of non-regular workers, the paper identifies the treatment effects of the anti-discrimination law, taking a difference-in-difference-in-differences approach.FindingsThe results suggest that the anti-discrimination law significantly increases hourly wages and the probabilities of being covered by national pension, health insurance, and employment insurance for targeted non-regular workers in small firms relative to other workers. Anticipatory behaviours of employers and selective transitions of employees in response to the implementation of the anti-discrimination law do not underlie the estimated effects. The presence of labour unions contributes to reducing gaps in labour conditions between regular workers and targeted non-regular workers.Originality/valueThe main contribution of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on causal impacts of equal pay legislation on the gaps in labour conditions between different categories of workers, using a difference-in-difference-in-differences estimation.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuria Sánchez-Sánchez ◽  
Adolfo Cosme Fernández Puente

PurposeThe phenomenon of overeducation and the magnitude and persistence of the imbalance impact are analysed for the Spanish labour market from 2006 to 2013.Design/methodology/approachThe authors present random-effects probit estimations comparing individuals and their short-term and long-term labour mismatches.FindingsThe results support the existence of long-term persistence (status in the previous year) and short-term persistence (status at the beginning of the observed period) in overeducation. Precariousness in the labour market, measured by temporality or by the strong destruction of employment, could force individuals to choose a job below their qualification. Additionally, the phenomenon of overeducation is shown to have increased in the period 2010–2013 in relation to the period 2006–2009 independently of the region considered, though those regions with higher unemployment rates display greater imbalances.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough the results come from two different samples, it is possible to conclude that overeducation is a phenomenon that tends to perpetuate over time in Spain.Practical implicationsOne of the issues of greatest interest that is crucial to assess the relevance of the spreading of overeducation is whether overeducation can be considered as a temporal mismatch, in which case the seriousness of the problem would not be so important, or, on the contrary, as a persistent one, in which case, governments should take it into account in their education reform programmes.Originality/valueOvereducation persistence has been studied in countries such as the United States, Canada, Switzerland or Germany; however, in Spain, there are hardly any studies. Spanish labour market has certain specificities that make the analyses relevant: the high unemployment rates and high elasticity of employment with respect to the economic cycles. Under these circumstances, workers could opt for more stable positions that require a lower qualification than the one they have. This option could be even more convenient during crisis. Additionally, the article includes a disaggregated analysis by Spanish regions. The differences in the unemployment rates within and between regions are significant (some of them had at the beginning of the crisis an unemployment rate close to 7%, while in others it exceeded 12%) which allows the authors to study the phenomenon in different contexts.


2010 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steffen J. Roth

AbstractThe interdependence between labour market policy and social policy can be interpreted in different ways. The dualistic approach sees social policy as a counterpart to labour market policy, especially if the latter is exclusively interpreted as the means for achieving an efficient design of factor markets. By contrast, constitutional economics introduces the concept of a “social policy for the market” by emphasizing the mutual gains that can be reaped if the interdependence between social and labour market policies is properly taken into account. Achieving an efficient design of markets thus requires a corresponding social policy framework. This article reminds of a third perspective: The efficient design of markets is never an end in itself. Overcoming social hardship, however, is a respectable goal. The author first develops a concept of social policy that draws on market-based processes to achieve its goals before applying this concept to the problem of structural long-term unemployment.


2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana P. Goldman ◽  
Darius N. Lakdawalla ◽  
James R. Baumgardner ◽  
Mark T. Linthicum

AbstractMedical innovation has generated significant gains in health over the past decades, but these advances have been accompanied by rapid growth in healthcare spending. Faced with a growing number of high-cost but high-impact innovations, some have argued to constrain prices for new therapies – especially through global caps on pharmaceutical spending and limits on prices for individual drugs. We show that applying this threshold to past innovations would have limited access to many highly valuable drugs such as statins and anti-retrovirals. We also argue that budget caps violate several important principles of health policy. First, budget caps treat healthcare spending as a consumption good, like going to a movie or buying a meal. However, healthcare spending should be viewed as an investment, whose benefits accrue over many years – much like spending on education. Second, budgetary cost is a poor indicator of value, thereby distorting coverage decisions. Third, affordability arguments often use a short-term horizon, thereby missing that long-term health is society’s ultimate goal. Fourth, assessments of benefit should incorporate not just the immediate clinical benefit to patients, but also long-term health improvements, cost savings, and increased productivity. Fifth, global budget caps arbitrarily anchor spending on the status quo, thereby setting too stringent a threshold for socially-desirable innovation. In sum, a solitary focus on short-term costs can be detrimental to population health in the long-run. When medical treatment decisions are properly viewed as investments, budget caps are not the answer; rather, we need to find mechanisms to encourage spending decisions based on long-term value. Only then can we generate health returns to societal investments, while also encouraging the new research and development necessary to extend the gains of recent decades.


2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 519-533
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Duguet ◽  
Rémi Le Gall ◽  
Yannick L’Horty ◽  
Pascale Petit

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence of the effect of labour market status on the current probability to be invited to a hiring interview. The authors compare the effect of periods of unemployment, part-time job and short-term contracts (STCs). Design/methodology/approach Correspondence tests were conducted for accountants and sales assistants. The authors estimate the discrimination components from the response rate of each candidate by the asymptotic least squares method. Findings The authors find that men with a part-time profile suffer discrimination in both professions. Other differences of treatment are specific: for accountants, the authors find that the probability of success decreases with the time spent in unemployment, while for sales assistants the probability of success is smaller with a history of STCs. Originality/value This study compares the effect of different dimensions of career history (part-time versus full-time, permanent versus short-term, unemployment versus employment) for experienced job candidates. It also proposes an alternative way to exploit the design of a correspondence experiment.


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