Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment of People With Disabilities: Report of a European Conference

[From Overview] The European Conference on Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment of Persons with Disabilities was held in Warsaw, Poland, on 23-25 October 2003. The Conference was organized jointly by the Ministry of Economy, Labour and Social Policy of the Republic of Poland and the International Labour Organization’s Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia in Geneva and Subregional Office in Budapest, in cooperation with the Central European Initiative. The overall purpose of the European Conference was to review the progress of legislation and practice over the past ten years in the field of vocational rehabilitation of persons with disabilities and the improvement of their labour market situation, particularly in countries in the process of transition; to discuss issues connected with the adjustment to European Union standards of legislation on the vocational rehabilitation and employment of persons with disabilities; and to develop recommendations that would provide guidelines for activities and instruments aimed at promoting the vocational activity of persons with disabilities and supporting their employment

Wages: A working conditions and industrial relations perspective

[Excerpt] This paper looks at wages from two different angles: from the perspective of individual employees, discussed in conjunction with their working conditions, and from the perspective of the industrial relations system. After a brief overview of EU-level policy developments with a potential impact on national level pay determination, this report gives a comparative overview of the levels of collective wage setting and how they are set throughout Europe and goes on to report on reforms, changes or debates linked to these processes between the different actors at both the Member State and the European level in 2011 and 2012. This includes, for instance, debates on potential changes of indexation mechanisms in Belgium, Luxembourg and Cyprus, as a result of the Commission’s recommendations within the Euro Plus Pact. While in some countries (Estonia, Bulgaria) social partners resumed collective bargaining (either on wages or on minimum wages) and came to agreements, in other countries (Lithuania, Romania), no agreements could be reached. Some changes in the way collective bargaining is organised were recently introduced in Spain, Romania, Greece, Ireland and Portugal. Information on these issues stems from the European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO). Furthermore, this paper also summarises the current changes and debates among the social partners and governments in relation to the setting and the level of minimum wages across Europe. It then looks into the area of ‘working poor’, that is people who are in employment but still at risk of poverty. To what extent do governments and social partners put forth policy responses to address the issue of in-work-poverty? And to what extent did the crisis have an impact? In order to answer these questions, the paper draws on Eurofound research on the situation of the ‘Working poor’. Finally the paper presents a collection of recent ‘information updates’ from the European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO) on various issues in relation to pay from Member States

Inequalities' Impacts: State of the Art Review

By way of introduction This report provides the fi rm foundation for anchoring the research that will be performed by the GINI project. It subsequently considers the fi elds covered by each of the main work packages: ● inequalities of income, wealth and education, ● social impacts, ● political and cultural impacts, and ● policy effects on and of inequality. Though extensive this review does not pretend to be exhaustive. The review may be “light” in some respects and can be expanded when the analysis evolves. In each of the four fi elds a signifi cant number of discussion papers will be produced, in total well over 100. These will add to the state of the art while also covering new round and generating results that will be incorporated in the Analysis Reports to be prepared for the work packages. In that sense, the current review provides the starting point. At the same time, the existing body of knowledge is broader or deeper depending on the particular fi eld and its tradition of research. The very motivation of GINI’s focused study of the impacts of inequalities is that a systematic study is lacking and relatively little is known about those impacts. This also holds for the complex collection of, the effects that inequality can have on policy making and the contributions that policies can make to mitigating inequalities but also to enhancing them. By contrast, analyses of inequality itself are many, not least because there is a wide array of inequalities; inequalities have become more easily studied comparatively and much of that analysis has a signifi cant descriptive fl avour that includes an extensive discussion of measurement issues. @GINI hopes to go beyond that and cover the impacts of inequalities at the same time

Concepts and Measurement of Labour Market Institutions

Institutionelle Infrastruktur, Arbeitsmarkt, Messung, Arbeitsmarktpolitik, Beschäftigungspolitik, Lohnbildung, Lohnverhandlungen, OECD-Staaten, Institutional infrastructure, Labour market, Measurement, Labour market policy, Employment policy, Wage determination, Wage bargaining, OECD countries

Full cost recovery on operation and maintenance of irrigation systems in the pilot river basins

Project report prepared under the European Union Programme on Sustainable Management of Water Resources in Rural Areas of Uzbekistan. Component 1: National policy framework for water governance and Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and supply par

Moving beyond the Legacies of the Celtic Tiger

The Celtic Tiger boom, and now its collapse, has been largely analysed through the lens of neo-classical economics and modernisation theory with much attention being paid to economic issues such as the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) and the need for cost competitiveness, or social issues such as the liberalisation of values and practices, upward social mobility, increased living standards and debates about social polarisation. While these lens offer many valuable and valid insights, they tend to neglect the particular and distinctive structural characteristics of the way the Irish economy and Irish society have developed, and the reasons for these. This paper takes a more structuralist approach, identifying the ‘Irish model’ that emerged during the boom years, a particular form of structured power. The paper places this ‘model’ in the wider context of the emergence of financialisation as a driver of a particular kind of global economy. Focusing attention on the role of the financial sector in structuring and driving this so-called ‘new economy’, allows the Irish boom to be more clearly and accurately identified as one example of national development that was profoundly shaped by the flows, the power and the values of financialisation, though with a particular Irish hue reflecting long-standing features of Irish society such as the role of property speculation and so-called ‘developers’. The paper then interrogates the legacies of the boom derived from the multiple restructurings that have transformed Ireland. In the light of these legacies, the paper concludes by offering a reading of possible future scenarios as they can now be identified amid the debates and politics of the post-boom crisis.

Job Creation Since the Foundation of the State. ESRI Memorandum Series No. 119 1975

The population of the Republic of Ireland is now 3.2 million, just about the same as it was in 1921 when the new State was about to be formed. From the perspective of other European countries, the remark able thing about this is the absence of growth, since every other European country has experienced a significant rise in population in this period: even in Northern Ireland, which I shall consider later in the paper, the population is now more than one-fifth greater than in 1921. But on the other hand, from the perspective of Ireland in the 1950s, when population was declining rapidly - reaching a low point of 2.8 million in 1961 - few people would have confidently envisaged restoration of the population to its 1921 level within such a comparatively short number of years. The major determinant of Ireland's unusual population experience has been emigration, which in turn has been chiefly influenced by the search for jobs abroad that were not available at home. In this paper, I shall first outline the past record of employment creation in the Republic of Ireland. Part II considers the varying policy approaches that were adopted. In Part III, the employment experience in Northern Ireland is discussed. In the concluding part, I try to draw some lessons from the past which I hope will prove relevant to your work in the rest of the Course when you turn your minds to the present and prospective situation

Do Europe's Minimum Income Schemes Provide Adequate Shelter against the Economic Crisis and How, If at All, Have Governments Responded?

The present economic crisis comes against the background of decades of policy changes that have generally weakened the capacity of social safety nets to offer citizens with adequate resources for financial survival when labour markets fail to do so. Building on data for 24 European Union countries, this paper asks whether EU governments implemented additional measures during the first phase of the crisis to improve safety nets. Our data, drawn from a large network of national experts, show that many countries introduced supportive measures, in particular in the form of additional increases in gross minimum income benefits. More generous child benefits have also helped to increase net disposable incomes of families on minimum income. Behavioral requirements imposed on minimum income recipients have been neither tightened nor relaxed. In a limited number of countries, activation efforts aimed at minimum income recipients have been intensified. Despite some improvements, social safety nets in Europe remain far below widely accepted poverty thresholds, including the EU's own official measure.crisis measures, poverty, minimum incomes, social policy, Europe

Labour Market Flexibility: the Case of Visegrad Countries

The presented article deals with labour market institutions and labour market flexibility in the Visegrád countries. We can find out in theoretical literature a traditional set of institutional aspects such as employment protection legislation, structure of wage bargaining, taxation of labour, active labour market policies, the system of unemployment and social benefits. All these aspects determine the institutional framework of the labour market. Theoretical literature also has defined labour market flexibility as an instrument for adjustment process in case of asymmetric shock. The article is composed of the comparative analysis of selected criteria and corresponding economic indicators of the EU member states (EU-15 and V-4). The evidence shows that the values of labour market flexibility in the Visegrád group countries were higher than average of old EU-15 member states.labour market; institutional aspects; employment protection legislation; tax wedge; labour market flexibility; unemployment benefits; active labour market policies; Visegrád countries; European Union