Temporary Agency Workers—Precarious Workers? Perceived Job Security and Employability for Temporary Agency Workers and Client Organization Employees at a Swedish Manufacturing Plant

The vulnerable situation of temporary agency workers is manifested in previous research that evidences the job insecurity of this group. However, research shows that this insecurity is due to the temporary nature of employment contracts for this group of workers. In Sweden, where temporary agency workers have the same type of employment contracts (i.e., temporary or permanent contracts) and are entitled to the same employment protection as other groups of employees, one might expect a different picture. This article examines the situation of temporary agency workers who have the same working conditions as client organization employees. These workers have permanent contracts and are treated like client organization employees. We have chosen to examine this case because we anticipate it to be very likely to contradict statements regarding temporary agency workers’ affiliation with the precariat. This article aims to empirically elucidate the precariousness of temporary agency workers who are highly integrated with client organization employees and who share the same work tasks. Our analysis shows that competence development is crucial to perceptions of job security. However, temporary agency workers lack competence development, both on the part of the employer (the temporary work agency) and on the part of the client organization. The client organization has no incentive to invest more than the required competencies, since temporary agency workers only constitute a buffer in case of a downturn. We argue that it is the agency workers’ connection with a buffer that results in a lack of job security. Our results also show that temporary agency workers’ job security could be increased if temporary agencies were to invest in competence development for the agency workers, thus overcoming these workers’ vulnerability in constituting a buffer

Comprehension and production of relative clauses: a comparison between Swedish impaired and unimpaired children

The aim of the present study is to investigate the relationship between language comprehension and language production in Swedish children. This was done longitudinally with 10 children with specific language impairment (SLI), aged 4;0 to 6;3 at Time I, and 10 children with unimpaired language development, aged 3;1 to 3;7 at Time I. The target structure was subordination, more precisely relative clauses. The children's comprehension was tested with picture pointing, act-out and oral response tests. Their production was tested with elicited imitation and sentence completion tests. Data were collected twice, with an interval of six months. The results from the unimpaired children at Time I showed a difference between comprehension and production. At Time II these children scored higher on production than on comprehension. The children with SLI scored significantly higher on comprehension than on production at Time I. In half of the SLI group there was a clear development between the two data collection sessions, diminishing the dissociation. On neither testing did the children with SLI differ significantly from the unimpaired children in comprehension. At both testings, however, the children with SLI had significantly more responses where they did not insert the complementizer in relative clauses. The results indicate that the relationship between comprehension and production is different at different stages in development. They also show that structures involving dependency relations are particularly difficult to produce for children with SLI

Relationships Between Commuting and Social Capital Among Men and Women in Southern Sweden.

The societal need for a mobile workforce increases time spent commuting and thus also the total workday. How this affects individual well-being and social life is, however, surprisingly little known. We investigated the relation between commuting time and mode, and social participation and general trust in other people as measures of social capital, using data from public health surveys conducted in 2004 and 2008 in Scania, Sweden: in all, 21,088 persons ages 18 to 65 and working at least 30 hr per week. Commuting by car was significantly associated with a higher prevalence of low social participation and low general trust compared with active commuting, and the association increased with the duration of commuting time. In contrast, public commuting was not significantly associated with decreased social capital measures except among long-duration commuters, who reported lower social participation. The overall pattern was similar for men and for women

Chemoenzymatic Synthesis of Cryptophycin Anticancer Agents by an Ester Bond-Forming Non-ribosomal Peptide Synthetase Module

Cryptophycins (Crp) are a group of cyanobacterial depsipeptides with activity against drug-resistant tumors. Although they have been shown to be promising, further efforts are required to return these highly potent compounds to the clinic through a new generation of analogues with improved medicinal properties. Herein, we report a chemosynthetic route relying on themultifunctional enzyme CrpD-M2 that incorporates a 2-hydroxy acid moiety (unit D) into Crp analogues. CrpD-M2 is a unique nonribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) module comprised of condensation-adenylation-ketoreduction-thiolation (C-A-KR-T) domains. We interrogated A-domain 2-keto and 2-hydroxy acid activation and loading, and KR domain activity in the presence of NADPH and NADH. The resulting 2-hydroxy acid was elongated with three synthetic Crp chain elongation intermediate analogues through ester bond formation catalyzed by CrpD-M2 C domain. Finally, the enzyme-bound seco-Crp products were macrolactonized by the Crp thioesterase. Analysis of these sequential steps was enabled through LC-FTICR-MS of enzyme-bound intermediates and products. This novel chemoenzymatic synthesis of Crp involves four sequential catalytic steps leading to the incorporation of a 2-hydroxy acid moiety in the final chain elongation intermediate. The presented work constitutes the first example where a NRPS-embedded KR domain is employed for assembly of a fully elaborated natural product, and serves as a proof-of-principle for chemoenzymatic synthesis of new Crp analogues

Temporary Agency Work as a Means of Achieving Flexicurity?

After decades of debate about flexibility, flexicurity has become a new buzzword in working life. Flexicurity refers to both the employer’s demand for flexibility and the employee’s demand for security. Thus, the idea is to solve the flexibility–security trade-off. There is also a discussion that mentions temporary agency work as one way of creating a flexicurity system. The flexibility potential is not called into question—numerical flexibility is a quite common motive for using temporary agency workers. However, the security dimension has to be scrutinized. The aim of this article is to analyze the temporary work agency industry’s potential for providing the security dimensions of the flexicurity model in a Swedish context. The study is based on a survey of whitecollar temporary agency workers in Sweden (n = 533). Overall, the vast majority do not perceive security. Our most important result is that both the work agency and the user firm have a dual impact on the agency workers’ perception of security

Temporary Employment and the Future Labor Market Status

The aim of this article is to describe and explain the development of temporary employment in Sweden between 1992 and 2010, and to investigate the effect of temporary employment for individuals’ future career on the labor market. The article analyzes temporary employees’ status transitions on the labor market using Swedish Labour Force Survey (LFS) data for the period 1992–2010. Each cohort consists of 2-year panels and focuses on changes between the first and last measuring points. The findings indicate that the specific type of temporary employment is crucial as regards whether or not it constitutes a stepping-stone toward permanent employment. The chances are greater in the case of, for example, substitutes, but are considerably less in the case of on-call employment. Certain types of temporary employment thus seem to be used by the employer to screen the employability of the employee, while others are used for achieving flexibilit

ALM-modellen

Den svenska landsbygden är rik på möjligheter inom trädgårdsnäringen, men företagandet behöver professionaliseras för att outnyttjade landskaps- och trädgårdskvaliteter ska bli synliga och utvecklingsbara. Inom projektet Tre Modellträdgårdar har SLU i samarbete med tre landsbygdsföretag testat och utvärderat olika modeller från analys- till implementeringsstadiet. Resultaten visar att det med relativt enkla medel går att systematiskt analysera miljökvaliteter och utifrån strikt företagsekonomiska utgångspunkter, i dialog mellan universitet, myndigheter och företag, finna kreativa och företagsekonomiskt hållbara lösningar ur ett trädgårds- och landskapsperspektiv. Ett konkret resultat är introduktionen av ett årligt återkommande konvent inom området. Här presenteras en ny modell för att främja företagsutveckling av Attraktiva Landsbygdsplatser baserade på Miljökvalitéer (ALM). ALM-modellen ska ge företagaren möjlighet att utveckla aktiviteter, som i sin tur kan öka attraktionskraften på ett markant, varaktigt och inkomstbringande sätt

Oral Administration of Lactobacillus plantarum

Objective. To clarify the effect of Lactobacillus plantarum 299v on the salivary cortisol and salivary IgA levels in young adults under examination stress. Design. Forty-one students with an upcoming academic exam were included in a randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled study. The probiotic bacteria or the placebo product was administered in capsules once a day during 14 days. Saliva was collected and a perceived stress test was filled out at each sampling occasion. Saliva was collected for cortisol analysis by Electrochemiluminescence Immunoassay (ECLI) and salivary IgA was analysed by Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA). Abundance of lactobacilli was evaluated by cultivation of saliva on selective medium and identification of L. plantarum 299v was done on randomly selected colonies by a random amplification of polymorphic DNA (RAPD) typing. Results. A significant difference in cortisol levels was found between the treatment group and the placebo group (P < 0.05), together with a significant increase in levels of lactobacilli in the treatment group compared with the placebo group (P < 0.001). No significant changes were found for salivary IgA. Conclusion. A probiotic bacterium with ability to reduce symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) prohibited increased levels of the stress marker cortisol during the examination period. The registration number of the study is NCT02974894, and the study is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov

Tillgänglighet, närhet och synlighet – gemensamma utmaningar för LUB-nätverket för att möta forskares behov av stöd vid Lunds universitet

This report presents a project at Lund University Libraries (LUB) during the fall of 2012, with the object to identify areas where the present research support services ought to be developed and strengthened. The project is three folded and contains a) a literature review focusing on definitions and examples of research support services as well as researchers’ needs and experiences of support services, b) a survey to get an overview of the support services offered today at LUB, the decentralized library network at Lund University, and c) focus group interviews with researchers, one group from each partaking faculty, to investigate key obstacles in their research processes. In all three parts a model of the research process schematically divided into four phases was applied; to start a project, to collect material, to process/analyze/write and to communicate the results. The first two stages of the project, the literature overview and the survey, form a background and both show that many support services are concentrated around the phases to collect material and to communicate results. The findings from the focus group interviews point to common needs and issues as well as special needs and issues related to different ways of doing and communicating research. Common for most researchers is limited time, a need for funding and an everyday fragmentation. They talk about the importance of networks, their efforts to navigate in an abundance of material and ways to find it and a need for overviews and help to understand new ways and demands to communicate. Most concern is expressed in the phases to start a project, to collect material and to communicate results. A major conclusion is that the research support services need to be available, visible and in close proximity to the researchers. Further, the development of support services needs to take into consideration both common traits as well as local variations in research practices. Therefore, discussions concerning LUB as a whole, need to be related to discussions at the single faculty libraries. Apart from knowledge about how to address the research support services at LUB, the project generates a model for how librarians can understand the research community that they are working with and with whom to create networks and partnerships for the future

Analysis of spatial variability in hyperspectral imagery of the uterine cervix in vivo

The use of fluorescence and reflectance spectroscopy in the analysis of cervical histopathology is a growing field of research. The majority of this research is performed with point-like probes. Typically, clinicians select probe sites visually, collecting a handful of spectral samples. An exception to this methodology is the Hyperspectral Diagnostic Imaging (HSDI®) instrument developed by Science and Technology International. This non-invasive device collects contiguous hyperspectral images across the entire cervical portio. The high spatial and spectral resolution of the HSDI instruments make them uniquely well suited for addressing the issues of coupled spatial and spectral variability of tissues in vivo. Analysis of HSDI data indicates that tissue spectra vary from point to point, even within histopathologically homogeneous regions. This spectral variability exhibits both random and patterned components, implying that point monitoring may be susceptible to significant sources of noise and clutter inherent in the tissue. We have analyzed HSDI images from clinical CIN (cervical intraepithelial neoplasia) patients to quantify the spatial variability of fluorescence and reflectance spectra. This analysis shows the spatial structure of images to be fractal in nature, in both intensity and spectrum. These fractal tissue textures will limit the performance of any point-monitoring technology