Motivations for Labour Provision on Digital Platforms in Europe

Research on the gig economy has rarely addressed the study on the motivations for the provision of labour services on digital platforms. Through a sample of 3,619 gigers in Europe, obtained from the COLLEM research, results have been obtained for labour providers (only gigers) and for labour and capital use providers (gigers and renters). The valuation of labour, being an internal resource of the gigers, has a great set of economic foundations, working conditions, and labour relations. On the other hand, the valuation of labour and capital uses is more focused on their economic and labour relations fundamentals, notably reducing the role of working conditions. These motivations suggest different platform strategies and public employment policies for both groups. While the promotion of the general job quality would also encourage the gig-job quality, the promotion of the labour and capital uses valuation requires specific actions on the platform operations.

Skutki ideologizacji preambuły kodeksu pracy

The post-totalitarian authoritarianism of the Polish People’s Republic of 1956–1989 was based on, among others, indoctrination. It was carried out not only through the media and the education system. The law also served this purpose. The adoption of the Labour Code provided the basis for using the educational function of the preamble to shape and consolidate politically desirable patterns of behaviour in socialist labour relations. The content of the Preamble to the Labour Code not only reflected the goals set by the legislator of the adopted legal regulation, but, being saturated with ideological issues, it set the directions for adopting and applying labour law provisions and defined the desired behaviour patterns. Due to the content of individual editorial units, the Preamble to the Labour Code was not only of legal importance, but also some parts of it were normative.

Attitude of Individuals First Entering Labour Market to the Implementation of Equality of Treatment Principle in Labour Relations

By invoking scientific doctrine, legal regulations and official statistics, the paper aims at assessing the actual position of females and males in labour relations in Lithuania as well as identifying the problems of the legal regulation of gender equality. The survey conducted among MRU Public Security Academy students was dedicated to disclosing the perceptions of individuals first entering the labour market about (in)equality in labour relations and experiences in the course of professional practice. To attain these objectives, certain goals were set: analysis of multiple layers of the concept of equality, legal regulation of the principle of gender equality and its inclusion in labour relations and statutory service. Furthermore, the present paper considered various trends and patterns in the implementation of the gender equality principle in labour relations, based on the analysis of the data of the Office of the Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson. Empirical research was carried out to assess the experience of students who had their professional practice in police headquarters in terms of gender inequality. Based on the performed survey that involved the students of MRU Public Security Academy, it should be concluded that the majority of students did not understand the different behaviours that could violate an individual’s rights in terms of the equality of men and women. When responding to certain questions, the majority of respondents indicated that gender inequality in Lithuania existed only to the extent it occurred naturally; however, when responding to other questions, the majority stated that there were numerous situations during their practice when they experienced discrimination (i.e. preferential treatment of one of the genders, abuse due to gender etc.). This can lead to the conclusion that violations of gender equality committed on certain grounds are perceived as a natural phenomenon resulting from natural differences between the sexes and because of this, certain flawed behaviour is justified. This results in fewer opportunities for individuals to report violations to responsible institutions and thus ensure the protection of their rights as well as to share their experiences with other individuals and, as a result, educate them.

Analysis of Affective Discourse in the Change Process of the Employment Relationship Model: Environment Management through Collective Bargaining

This paper covers research whose goal was to analyse affective changes in the process of change in the labour relations model that was consolidated throughout the 1990s. Based on a case study, the focus was on the emotional content expressed by the protagonists inrelation to this collective bargaining framework. In conducting the analysis, we used the wide range of procedures provided by Discourse Analysis (DA). Part of this analysis focused on the protagonists’ emotional management of the early stages of the negotiation. The results let us delve deeper into the affective nature of this process, thereby expanding the light shed by other theoretical and methodological perspectives on this change in the labour relations model.

Staging Work in the Corporatist State. Visual Propaganda in Fascist Italy and Peronist Argentina (1922-1955)

Starting in 1922, Benito Mussolini (1922-1943) reformed Italian labour relations by adopting corporatism. As such, he served as a model for many other heads of state in search of ways out of economic crisis. When the corporatist model spread throughout Latin America in the 1930s and 1940s, the Argentine president Juan Domingo Perón (1946-1955) drew significantly on the Italian precedent. Adhering to an aestheticised concept of politics and making use of modern mass media, both regimes advertised corporatism in their respective visual propaganda, in which the worker came to play a prominent role. The article analyses parallels and differences in the formation of political identities in fascist and Peronist visual media that under both corporatist regimes centred around work. Comparing different role models as they were designed for different members of society, I argue that – apart from gender roles where Peronism resorted to similarly traditional images – Peronist propaganda messages were more future-oriented and inclusive. Racist exclusions of parts of the population from the central worker identity that increasingly characterised fascist propaganda over the course of the 1930s were not adopted in Argentina after 1945. Instead, in state visual media the category of work in its inclusionary dimension served as a promise of belonging to the Peronist community.

Bottling the Colonial Unconscious: Ethical value networks and the commodification of fairness in the South African wine industry

<p>The rise of ethical certifications was greeted with optimism by scholars, activists and development practitioners, who predicted they would help to redistribute power and profit more equitably in South-North commodity trade, which has long been an engine of wealth extraction and underdevelopment in the resource periphery. The explicit attachment of value to the social and territorial origin of agro-food products would allow marginalised producers to resist corporate governance, race-to-the-bottom processes, and commodity fetishism. This would result in the retention of higher value at the production end of the chain, thereby fostering sustainable development in rural areas in the Global South. I investigate the extent to which power and profit is indeed redistributed more equitably in these new ‘ethical value networks’, through a case study of the South African wine industry. Complex apparatus of standards-setting, verification and auditing have formed the basis of strategies for post-apartheid transformation, redistribution and development in the South African wine industry, with progress conceptualised as taking place at the level of business. In this context, ethical certification constitutes a contemporary labour relations paradigm which in key ways reproduces ‘colonial unconscious’ discourses derived from the legacies of slavery, apartheid and farm paternalism. These embedded discursive power formations restrict the transformative potential of ethical certification. For ethical development to occur as a result of ethical value network formation, I argue that workers must gain greater agency and regulatory capability in the governance of these networks. I find also that ethical certification has not been an effective economic upgrading strategy for the South African wine industry. Instead, due to their deployment within oligopolistic networks, ethics have become commodified, and subject to neoliberal governance. Northern retailers have used their existing power to accumulate the value created by alignment with ethical conventions, and to avoid the costs. Ethical certifications compound the severe ‘cost-price squeeze’ faced by wine producers. This case study has broader implications for the theory of ethical value networks: showing that they are relational, geographically contingent, and remain susceptible to asymmetric governance and accumulation patterns.</p>