scholarly journals Migrant Counterspaces: Challenging Labour Market Exclusion through Collective Action

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Mittmasser ◽  
Isabella Stingl
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Labour Market

scholarly journals Young Workers’ Perceptions of Trade Unions in Portugal

2017 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 574-595 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilona Kovács ◽  
João Dias ◽  
Maria da Conceição Cerdeira
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Young Workers ◽  
Family Status ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
High Concentration

This paper seeks to capture how unions are perceived by young workers in Portugal and to identify different types of perceptions. Our analysis considers both structural factors and subjective experiences and is based on semi-structured interviews with young people working in sectors with a high concentration of youth employment. The fact that young workers are increasingly exposed to the pressures of unemployment and precarious work might suggest that there is homogeneity in their perceptions about trade unions and collective action. However, our results show that young workers’ perceptions are not homogenous and that they interconnect with distinct segments, characterized by different socio-economic conditions, as defined by family status, education level and position in the labour market. Three types of perceptions were identified by content analysis of the interviews: positive, negative and critical perceptions. A final segment of younger and less-skilled workers, of families with low educational and economic resources and having left school prematurely, have neither information nor any understanding about unions. Our findings support the thesis that diversity of educational and early labour market experiences, which characterize transition processes to adulthood, shape the relation between young workers and unions, in particular the motivation to join unions. Capturing the diversity of young workers experiences and perceptions is a challenge to industrial relations research, as well as to trade unionism. It can provide unions with important insights into how to adapt their strategies to recruit new young members and to mobilize the latent interests of young workers in collective action.

Union renewal: what can we learn from three decades of research?

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregor Murray
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Union Renewal ◽  
Strategic Capabilities ◽  
Democratic Experimentalism

Drawing on three decades of research on union renewal, this article asks what we can learn from these studies. It covers successively the modernisation of union strategy, the re-engineering of union structures and organising techniques, the renewal of collective action repertoires, and the search to bridge the gap between labour market insiders and outsiders. While the research on these four themes yields few easy answers, it does highlight a continuing search for trade union renewal from which real understanding emerges. The overarching argument is that this long process of democratic experimentalism in union purpose and practice needs to be understood in exactly those terms. It also highlights the critical role of strategic capabilities and the need to develop these capabilities in order to experiment with innovations likely to reveal new sources of vigour for worker organisations.

Society and Politics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Himanshu ◽  
Peter Lanjouw ◽  
Nicholas Stern
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Economic Importance ◽  
The State ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
The Village

This chapter examines the village as a society and polity, showing how relations between different social groups in Palanpur have changed and how the interactions of institutions and politics with economic change can help explain the nature and evolution of society. It also looks at the state of public institutions in Palanpur, documenting a decay in the quality and provision of public services, as well as an absence of any significant collective action to change this. It would be overly simplistic to argue that, because caste relations were historically centred around agricultural production, they are weakening with the declining economic importance of agriculture. Rather, there has been an emergence of caste as a proxy for trust in an increasingly informal and anonymous labour market outside the village. Furthermore, exogenously imposed changes, such as the introduction of panchayat elections, have seen new alliances being built.

scholarly journals The rat race and working time regulation

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-314
Author(s):  
Malte Jauch
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Working Time ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Working Time Regulation ◽  
The Ideal

To what extent, if at all, should a just society adopt public policies that regulate and limit the amount of time people work? Attempts to answer this question face a dilemma: Either, we can adopt a laissez-faire view, according to which governments must refrain from imposing working time policies on the labour market. But this view generates a situation in which many citizens experience deep regret about the balance between work and leisure in their lives. Or, we can endorse an interventionist view that advocates government imposition of working time policies. However, such a view appears to be objectionably perfectionist insofar as it imposes on citizens a particular conception of the ideal balance between work and leisure. This article proposes a way out of this dilemma. It shows that the interventionist view can be defended on the anti-perfectionist grounds that this helps address a collective action problem in the labour market – the working time rat race. Employers often use working time as a proxy for their employees’ productivity and commitment. Those who work particularly long hours are often awarded benefits such as raises or promotions or are spared from dismissals. This makes it individually rational for each worker to work extra hours in an attempt to outcompete colleagues. However, if many workers pursue this strategy, it loses its effectiveness. Workers with preferences for more leisure have a claim to state intervention to remove the rat race when this doesn’t impose disproportionate harm on third parties.

Individual working lives and collective action. An introduction to capability for work and capability for voice

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Michel Bonvin
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Capability Approach ◽  
Gdp Growth ◽  
Employment Rate ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Capability Approach

This article presents the capability approach as an alternative conceptual and normative framework to assess the impact and relevance of existing labour market regulations. In this perspective, what matters is not GDP growth or the overall employment rate, but the development of people’s real freedom to choose a job or an activity they have reason to value. The two key notions of ‘capability for work’ and ‘capability for voice’ are presented in detail, as well as the way to use them as a framework for scientific analysis and empirical research. The article strongly emphasizes the significant difference that the use of such tools makes when it comes to assessing the impact and relevance of collective regulations in the field of work. Cet article présente l’approche par les capacités comme un cadre conceptuel et normatif alternatif pour évaluer l’impact et la pertinence des réglementations existantes du marché du travail. Dans cette perspective, ce qui importe, ce n’est pas la croissance du PIB ou le taux global d’emploi, mais le développement de la liberté effective des individus de choisir un emploi ou une activité qu’ils ont des raisons d’apprécier. Les deux notions essentielles de « capacité à exercer un travail » et de « capacité à faire entendre sa voix » sont présentées en détail, de même que la manière d’utiliser ces notions comme cadre d’analyse scientifique et de recherche empirique. L’article souligne fortement la différence considérable qu’entraîne l’utilisation de tels outils quand il s’agit d’évaluer l’impact et la pertinence des réglementations collectives dans le domaine du travail. In diesem Beitrag wird der Ansatz der Verwirklichungschancen als alternativer konzeptueller und normativer Rahmen vorgeschlagen, um die Auswirkungen und die Relevanz der bestehenden Arbeitsmarktvorschriften zu bewerten. Unter diesem Gesichtspunkt ist nicht das BIP-Wachstum oder die Gesamtbeschäftigungsrate von Bedeutung, sondern die Entwicklung der realen Freiheit der Menschen, eine Arbeit oder Tätigkeit zu wählen, die sie wertschätzen. Die beiden zentralen Konzepte der “capability for work” (Verwirklichungschance im Arbeitsleben) und der “capability for voice” (Chance, für Arbeitnehmerbelange einzutreten) werden ausführlich beschrieben, und es wird erklärt, wie diese als Rahmen für die wissenschaftliche Analyse und empirische Forschungsarbeiten dienen. Der Beitrag unterstreicht den bedeutenden Vorteil, der sich aus der Verwendung derartiger Konzepte bei der Bewertung der Auswirkungen und der Relevanz kollektiver Regelungen im Arbeitsbereich ergibt.

Zur Politischen Ökonomie der Arbeitslosigkeit: Mancur Olson versus Insider-Outsider-Theorie

1997 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ansgar Belke
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Market Reforms ◽  
High Unemployment ◽  
Pressure Groups ◽  
Labour Market Reforms ◽  
Incentive Structures ◽  
Mancur Olson

AbstractIn explaining persistently high unemployment, Mancur Olson’s logic of collective action and the insider-outsider approach both focus on simular incentive structures of pressure groups. This contribution examines the astonishingly rarely tested hypothesis that both approaches are compatible to be integrated in a broader and widely acceptable basis for overdue labour market reforms. Moreover, a straightforward political economy of reforms is derived from this synthesis. However, a deeper comparison reveals that both models also share a great weakness. They clearly do not incorporate interests common to insiders and outsiders and self-correcting mechanisms in the wake of steadily growing costs of unemployment.

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