Part-time Employment, Gender and Employee Participation in the Workplace: An Illawarra Reconnaissance

The growth in non-standard forms of employment has major implications for the effectiveness of employee participation mechanisms in the workplace, whether direct or indirect (representative). This seems to be especially the case with representative forms, such as consultative committees, because they effectively assume permanent or long-term employment and are not as easily accessible to part-time employees. However, the literature on participation rarely addresses this major contextual aspect. The issue is of further significance since the majority of part-time and casual employees are female. Consequently, to the extent that non-standard employees do not have the same access to participatory mechanisms in the workplace that their full- time permanent colleagues enjoy, then women also are disproportionately excluded from participation. This paper begins to redress the insularity in the literature by analysing survey data from the Illawarra Regional Industrial Relations Survey (IRWIRS). It tests the hypothesis that the growth of non-standard forms of employment diminishes the access to participation in the workplace enjoyed by part-time workers in comparison with their full-time colleagues.Illawarra Regional Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, workplace employee relations, Australia

Gender, Part-time Employment and Employee Participation in the Workplace: Comparing Australia and the European Union

The international trend in the growth and incidence of 'no n-standard employment', and its highly gendered nature, is well documented. For ease of definition, and because of the nature of the available data, we focus upon part-time employment in this paper. Employee participation may be defined as any workplace process which 'allows employees to exert some influence over their work and the conditions under which they work' (Strauss 1998). It may be divided into two main approaches, direct participation and indirect or representative participation. Direct participation involves the employee in job or task-oriented decision-making in the production process at the shop or office floor level. Indirect or representative forms of participation include joint consultative committees, works councils, and employee members of boards of directors or management. In the EU context statutory works councils are the most common expression of representative participation, but in Australia, consultative committees resulting from union/employer agreement or unilateral management initiative are the more common form. All of these forms of employee participation raise important issues concerning part time employees. Effective participation has two further major requirements which also may disadvantage part timers. First, there is a ge neral consensus in the participation literature that training is required for effective direct or representative participation. Secondly, effective communication between management and employees is required for participation, preferably involving a two-way information flow. The issue is of further significance since it has decided gender implications. This paper seeks to redress this relative insularity in the literature by examining some broad trends in this area in Australia and the EU. It analyses survey data at a national level in Australia and compares with some survey data generated in the EU by the EPOC project and analysed by Juliet Webster along the lines which we suggest here. It tests the hypothesis that the growth of one non-standard form of employment, part-time employment, diminishes the access to participation in the workplace enjoyed by female workers in comparison with their male colleagues, and finds that the hypothesis is strongly confirmed. This has major implications for workplace equity, and for organisational efficiency.gender, part-time employment, employee participation, Australia, European Union

Liver and Intestine Transplantation in the United States, 1996–2005

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72937/1/j.1600-6143.2007.01782.x.pd

The Art and Science of Immunosuppression: The Fifth Annual American Society of Transplant Surgeon's State-of-the-Art Winter Symposium

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72057/1/j.1600-6143.2005.01187.x.pd

Modelling Effects of Tariff Liberalisation on India’s Key Export Sectors: Analysis of the EU–India Free Trade Agreement

Trade agreements are increasingly being negotiated between developed and emerging economy partners. An example is the EU–India Free Trade Agreement (FTA) for which negotiations began in 2007. There has been a debate on the potential effects of the proposed FTA and how this can impact on India’s key export sectors. Our study addresses this aspect from a global computable general equilibrium (CGE) modelling perspective. Using the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) framework, we analyse trade and welfare impacts of the proposed FTA between the EU and India. Two scenarios are modelled: first, complete and immediate elimination of tariff on all goods traded and second, selective tariff elimination on textiles, wearing apparel and leather goods—products in which India has a comparative advantage. Results under both scenarios show that India enjoys positive welfare effects though there is a possibility of trade diversion. Under scenario 1, India loses due to a negative terms of trade (ToT) effect. Under scenario 2, with selective sectoral liberalisation, gains are mainly concentrated in the textiles, wearing apparel and leather sectors. There is a positive output effect from change in demand for factors of production, suggesting that the proposed FTA could lead to relocation of labour-intensive production to India

Government size, composition of public expenditure, and economic development

This paper analyzes the effects of government size and of the composition of public expenditure on economic development. Using the system-GMM estimator for linear dynamic panel data models, on a sample covering up to 156 countries and 5-year periods from 1980 to 2010, we find that government size as a percentage of GDP has a quadratic (inverted U-shaped) effect on the growth rate of the Human Development Index (HDI). This effect is especially pronounced in developed and high income countries. We also find that the composition of public expenditure affects development, with the share of five subcomponents exhibiting non-linear relationships with HDI growth.COMPETE, QREN, FEDER, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT