The politics of science funding: we need to think about science and knowledge production in a more practical light

Government funding of science has become an increasingly prominent issue in the United States. Examining the current debate and its consequences, Arne L. Kalleberg interviews Gordon Gauchat about his recent article, “The Political Context of Science in the United States: Public Acceptance of Evidence-Based Policy and Science Funding.

The Role of Temporary Help Employment in Tight Labor Markets

This paper examines the reasons why employers used and even increased their use of temporary help agencies during the tight labor markets of the 1990s. Based on case study evidence from the hospital and auto supply industries, we evaluate various hypotheses for this phenomenon. In high-skilled occupations, our results are consistent with the view that employers paid substantially more to agency help to avoid raising wages for their regular workers and to fill vacancies while they recruited workers for permanent positions. In low-skilled occupations, our evidence suggests that temporary help agencies facilitated the use of more "risky" workers by lowering their wages and benefits and the costs of firing them. The use of agency temporaries in both high- and low-skilled occupations reduced the pressure on companies to raise wages for existing employees, and thereby may have contributed to the stagnant wage growth and low unemployment observed in the 1990s.temporary, labor, markets, part-time, contingent, Houseman, Kalleberg, Erickcek

The Effects of Temporary Services and Contracting Out on Low-Skilled Workers: Evidence from Auto Suppliers, Hospitals, and Public Schools

We examine why employers use temporary agency and contract company workers and the implications of these practices for the wages, benefits, and working conditions of workers in low-skilled labor markets. Through intensive case studies in manufacturing (automotive supply), services (hospitals), and public sector (primary and secondary schools) industries, we define the circumstances under which these workers are likely to be adversely affected, minimally affected, or even benefited by such outsourcing. Adverse effects on compensation are clearest when companies substitute agency temporaries or contract company workers for regular employees on a long-term basis because low-skilled workers within the organization receive relatively high compensation and employment and labor law or workers and their unions do not block companies from such substitution. Often, however, organizations only contract out management functions or utilize agency temporaries for brief periods of time, with little direct effect on in-house, low-skilled workers. Moreover, employers often use temporary agencies to screen workers for permanent positions. Because temporary agencies lower the cost to employers of using workers with poor work histories or other risky characteristics, agencies may benefit these workers by giving them opportunities to try out for positions they otherwise might not have had

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

The Effects of Temporary Services and Contracting Out on Low-Skilled Workers: Evidence from Auto Suppliers, Hospitals, and Public Schools

We examine why employers use temporary agency and contract company workers and the implications of these practices for the wages, benefits, and working conditions of workers in low-skilled labor markets. Through intensive case studies in manufacturing (automotive supply), services (hospitals), and public sector (primary and secondary schools) industries, we define the circumstances under which these workers are likely to be adversely affected, minimally affected, or even benefited by such outsourcing. Adverse effects on compensation are clearest when companies substitute agency temporaries or contract company workers for regular employees on a long-term basis because low-skilled workers within the organization receive relatively high compensation and employment and labor law or workers and their unions do not block companies from such substitution. Often, however, organizations only contract out management functions or utilize agency temporaries for brief periods of time, with little direct effect on in-house, low-skilled workers. Moreover, employers often use temporary agencies to screen workers for permanent positions. Because temporary agencies lower the cost to employers of using workers with poor work histories or other risky characteristics, agencies may benefit these workers by giving them opportunities to try out for positions they otherwise might not have had