Nonstandard Employment and Indigenous Earnings Inequality in Canada

The study investigates the extent to which the type of employment, specifically nonstandard work, may contribute to a better understanding of Indigenous earnings disparities. We find that Indigenous workers are overrepresented in nonstandard jobs and that such forms of work are associated with sizable earnings penalties. Although Indigenous earnings disparities are smaller in nonstandard work than in standard employment, the relatively low earnings of many nonstandard jobs are an important factor contributing to the overall economic inequalities experienced by many Indigenous Canadians. Policy responses aimed at improved human capital accumulation are likely to have limited efficacy unless additional barriers that prevent many Indigenous workers from accessing better quality employment and internal labor markets are identified and removed.

The New Realities of Working-Class Jobs: Employer Practices, Worker Protections, and Employee Voice to Improve Job Quality

Over the last 40 years, changing employer practices have introduced instability and insecurity into working-class jobs, limiting the voice that employees have in their own employment and deteriorating overall job quality. In the decade after the Great Recession, slow but sustained economic growth benefitted workers in terms of generally higher employment and wages and reductions in involuntary part-time work. But we show that in that same period, other aspects of working-class jobs changed in ways that were less advantageous to workers. We examine recent, troubling trends in nonstandard employment, precarious scheduling practices, and employer labor violations, arguing that without the introduction of policies that rebalance terms of employment toward worker interests, an economic recovery alone is unlikely to reverse the overall trend toward reductions in job quality. We argue for federal-level policies that expand public insurance programs, establish minimum standards of job quality, and include avenues for collective employee voice in employment and public policy debates. Such strategies have potential to improve job quality.

Motivation for Night Work and Parents’ Work-to-Family Conflict and Life Satisfaction

Purpose - I test the hypothesis that the effects of evening and night employment on working parents’ work-to-family conflict and life satisfaction depend on the reasons that individuals name for their schedules. Methodology/approach - Regression models are fitted to data from an original sample of 589 employed U.S. parents.Findings –Partnered (married and cohabiting) fathers who work partially in the evening or night experience less work-to-family conflict if they report personal motives, but schedule motivation does not affect work-to-family conflict among partnered or single mothers. Partnered mothers who work primarily in the evening or at night report higher life satisfaction if they do so for personal reasons, but this effect is not found for single mothers or partnered fathers. Specifically seeing their schedules as facilitating family care matters for partnered mothers, but not fathers. Originality/value – Although nonstandard employment schedules have been linked to poor well-being among working parents, this is the first quantitative study to assess the role of worker motivation to the author’s knowledge. Research limitations/implications – The results are suggestive because they are based on a non-probability sample of modest size. However, they demonstrate the need for future studies of employment scheduling to collect information on worker motivations.Social implications – Most night workers in the U.S. do not select their shifts for personal reasons, putting them at risk for work-to-family conflict and reduced life satisfaction. They deserve extra support in exchange for laboring while others sleep or spend time with family.

Non-Standard Employment in the BRICS Countries

Non-standardization of employment has become the main trend of the labour markets in the globalized economy. Attempting to enhance the flexibility of employment relations the legislators in BRICS countries are also the part of this trend. The forms of the nonstandard employment are numerous, the present paper concentrates upon the following ones: temporary employment, part-time and multi-party employment relationship. The authors review the experience of four BRICS countries in regulating non-standard forms of employment and determine what were the specific reasons for adopting them in Russia, China, Brazil, and South Africa. The national parts are introduced by the consideration of the international standards of protection of employees working under non-standard contracts. It is argued that even though these four states did not ratify the ILO Convention No. 181 Private Employment Agencies Convention (1997) and only Russia ratified ILO Part-Time Work Convention (No. 175), the ILO approach has influenced the development of national regulations. Though the equal treatment of all workers is lacking in many aspects of employment relations. In the national parts the authors trace the changes in employment law which reflect the pursuit of flexibilization of the labour market and, as in Brazil, the need to formalize employment relations.

Employment, Skills, and Upgrading

Employment and skills are at the heart of economic development and the ‘middle-income trap’. Chapter 6 charts the evolution of ‘standard’ employment, and an expectation that the informal sector would disappear with industrialization. However, not only does the informal sector and informal employment now persist, but ‘nonstandard’ employment has been imported from developed countries, creating new forms of structural dualism. This diminishes the positive feedback loops between technological and economic upgrading on the one hand, and social upgrading or development on the other, intensifying ‘middle-income traps’. Such disjuncture is observed in global value chains, and in specific compressed-developer-country contexts, notably India and China.

Nonstandard Employment and Job Satisfaction across Time in China: Evidence from the Chinese General Social Survey (2006–2012)

This study examines the association of nonstandard employment with job satisfaction over time in China. An analysis is carried out using the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS), a large cross-sectional survey that collected data from over 3000 workers across different industries, ownership types and regions in China in 2006, 2008 and 2012. The empirical results show that in 2006, nonstandard employment workers, on average, were less satisfied with their jobs than their counterparts in standard employment, all else being equal. However, these differences in job satisfaction became very small and insignificant in 2008 and 2012. The results from the propensity score matching exercise provide a similar conclusion. These findings suggest that improvements in regulations and employment relations in China have increased job satisfaction for nonstandard employment workers.