The vulnerability of the low-skilled

The low-skilled are a critical category for analyses of labour market marginalization. Class analysis has tended to depict low-skilled employees as sharing a broadly similar position with respect to both employment and labour market conditions. Their employment relationship is defined by a specific type of contract – the labour contract – characterized by precarious pay, low asset specificity and high job insecurity. This contrasts with employees who benefit from a service relationship which is designed to bind employees to the organization on a longer term basis. Recent neo-institutional theories however have emphasized the diversity of employment conditions between advanced capitalist societies, depending in particular on the nature of their production, employment and welfare regimes. An important issue is whether such divergences apply only to more skilled categories of the workforce (and hence lead to accentuated polarization) or also affect the employment conditions of the low-skilled. Are the low-skilled significantly more integrated into the labour market in some countries than in others and hence less vulnerable in times of economic restructuring? The paper will examine this by comparing a number of EU-15 countries that have been regarded as reflecting contrasting institutional regimes. It will focus in particular on the position of the low-skilled with respect to pay, training and job security

Gender, family and academic careers in Turkey

Turkey has a remarkably high proportion of female full professors in its universities and in scientific fields (STEM) that are traditionally dominated by men in other countries. This could reflect a great deal of occupational gender equality but there has been a debate whether this equality came at the expense of family life. With the expansion of academia in the late 1990s and the erosion of childcare availability, whether institutional or familial, more recent cohorts of female academics may be paying a greater family penalty than their predecessors. We investigate these conjectures using the Turkish Academic Career Survey (TAC) – an original retrospective life-history study conducted in 2007 with a representative sample of around 4500 academics. We focus on the relationship between career progression and the family transitions of academics and analyze whether this relationship varies by scientific field and if professors advanced in rank during different stages of higher education's expansion in Turkey. We find a considerable gender gap in family formation outcomes of Turkish academics in all fields. Furthermore, we find that female academics that completed their PhDs after 1999 were considerably at a higher risk of postponing parenthood compared to those who obtained their PhD's before the higher education expansion occurred

Institutions, Labor Market Insecurity, and Well-Being in Europe

We examined the differences among seventeen European countries regarding the extent to which several key institutional and labor market characteristics affect the degrees of insecurity that people feel about their jobs and employment prospects, as well as their well-being (economic security and subjective well-being). We estimate how macrostructural factors affect well-being by fitting random-intercept multi-level models and decomposing the variance across national and individual levels, using data from the 2004 and 2010 European Social Surveys. We find that there is substantial country-level variation in labor market insecurity, economic security and subjective well-being. Active labor market policies, the generosity of unemployment benefits, and collective bargaining coverage explain a considerable portion of the identified differences among countries in labor market insecurity and well-being. The effects of employment protection legislation vary depending on whether the worker has a permanent or temporary contract. We did not find substantial differences between 2004 and 2010, suggesting that the effects of institutions and worker power on labor market insecurity and well-being reflect longer-term structural changes associated with the transformation of employment relations

Job-related well-being through the Great Recession

We study how job-related well-being (measured by Warr’s ‘Enthusiasm’ and ‘Contentment’ scales) altered through the Great Recession, and how this is related to changing job quality. Using nationally representative data for Britain, we find that job-related well-being was stable between 2001 and 2006, but then declined between 2006 and 2012. We report relevant changes in job quality. In modelling the determinants of job-related well-being, we confirm several previously-studied hypotheses and present some new findings: downsizing, work re-organisation, decreased choice, and linking pay to organisational performance each reduce well-being; indicators of skills challenge in jobs have more of a positive association with Enthusiasm than with Contentment, while effort has a more negative association with Contentment than with Enthusiasm. Our estimates are largely orthogonal to the effects of personality traits and demographic controls on well-being. Using a standard decomposition, we find that the 2006–2012 fall in job-related well-being is partly accounted for by accelerations in the pace of workplace change, rising job insecurity, increased effort and changing participation

Job control in Britain: First findings from the Skills and Employment Survey 2012

Employees’ ability to influence decisions at work is one of the most important factors affecting their motivation and psychological well-being, and is also associated with good physical health. This report examines the trends in different types of employee control in British workplaces, and presents a mixed picture. Overall, the level of task discretion (employees’ immediate control over their work tasks) has been stable since 2001, following a sharp decline in the 1990s. But the trends since 2006 have been different for men and women, with women seeing a small rise, and men a further fall in task discretion. There was a rise in the proportion of employees working in semi-autonomous teams (those with significant control over their work activities) from 14% in 2006 to 18% in 2012. This rise reverses a previous long-term decline. Between 2006 and 2012 there was also a rise in the proportion of jobs using self-managed teams, from 4% to 7%. Halting a previous upward trend, there has been little change between 2006 and 2012 in formal provisions for participation in wider organisational decisions. Yet, the proportion of employees who report that they have a great deal or quite a lot of say over work organisation declined from 36% to 27% between 2001 and 2012

Skills at work in Britain: First findings from the Skills and Employment Survey 2012

Large investments of time and money are made by government, employers and workers in education and training. For the economy to thrive, the best use needs to be made of the skills produced. This report provides new evidence on whether employers in Britain are doing so and whether jobs are being upskilled. Qualification requirements of jobs have risen over the last quarter of a century. By 2012 jobs requiring degrees on entry reached an all time high, while jobs requiring no qualifications fell to historically low levels. Yet, overall the evidence for continued upskilling is mixed, because there has also been a shortening of training and learning times for jobs – a reversal of trends previously recorded. The importance of computing skills at work continued to grow, albeit less rapidly than in the past, but the rise in most other generic skills came to a halt. For the two decades from 1986 to 2006 the prevalence of over-qualification had been rising, but it fell between 2006 and 2012. Although mismatches remain quite high, this turnaround may signal more effective use of qualifications at work by employers

Work intensification in Britain: first findings from the Skills and Employment Survey 2012

Working hard can be challenging, stressful and costly, but it can also be stimulating, rewarding and financially beneficial. Work intensification was a feature of the early 1990s, after which work effort levelled off. This report tracks what has been happening in recent years. Work intensification has resumed in Britain since 2006. Both the speed of work has quickened and the pressures of working to tight deadlines have also risen to record highs. Work has intensified more sharply for women, and especially for women working full-time who have experienced some of the largest rises in work intensity since 2006. Work intensification is associated with technological change, which is therefore effort-biased. Although the resumption of work intensification may also be due to the recession, contrary to some predictions high work intensity is not associated on average with downsizing

Job-related well-being in Britain: first findings from the Skills and Employment Survey 2012

Happiness at work is an important ingredient of national well-being. It can be measured in two core dimensions – ‘enthusiasm’ for, and ‘contentment’ with, the job. In both these dimensions, job-related well-being in British workplaces fell between 2006 and 2012. There was a small drop in the average population-wide score on the Enthusiasm scale, and a sharp fall in the score on the Contentment scale. The fall in the Enthusiasm scale was only for men, and greatest among those with low education achievements. The falls can partly be accounted for by rising insecurity, work intensification, and increased downsizing. There was also a notable rise in Job Stress, and a fall in Job Satisfaction

The hidden face of job insecurity

Drawing on nationally representative data for British employees, the article argues for a more comprehensive concept of job insecurity, including not only job tenure insecurity but also job status insecurity, relating to anxiety about changes to valued features of the job. It shows that job status insecurity is highly prevalent in the workforce and is associated with different individual, employment and labour market characteristics than those that affect insecurity about job loss. It is also related to different organizational contexts. However, the article also shows that the existence of effective mechanisms of employee participation can reduce both types of job insecurity

The hidden face of job insecurity

Drawing on nationally representative data for British employees, the article argues for a more comprehensive concept of job insecurity, including not only job tenure insecurity but also job status insecurity, relating to anxiety about changes to valued features of the job. It shows that job status insecurity is highly prevalent in the workforce and is associated with different individual, employment and labour market characteristics than those that affect insecurity about job loss. It is also related to different organizational contexts. However, the article also shows that the existence of effective mechanisms of employee participation can reduce both types of job insecurity