A Coordinated EU Minimum Wage Policy?

[Excerpt] Minimum wages exist in all EU member states, even if, as we shall see in this report, they are set up and established in very different ways. Minimum wages, in fact, can be considered as a cornerstone of the “European Social Model”. Yet, the on-going process of European integration has so far had very little to do with them. Wages are explicitly excluded from the competences of European institutions in the existing treaties, contrary to other areas of work and employment such as working time or health and safety. But in the context of increasing European integration, it seems at least plausible that sooner or later there would be some attempt of coordinating this important aspect of social policy across countries. As we will see in this report, the idea has been discussed at the European level several times since the EU was born, and it seems to be gaining momentum the context of the current economic crisis. Of course, the discussion is by no means settled, as many important European and national actors consider that this area should remain within the remit of national governments and according to national traditions and practices. It is certainly possible that wages, and minimum wages, would remain squarely at the level of national competence in the foreseeable future. Still, it seems like a worthwhile exercise (useful to the debate) to explore what kind of implications would be associated with such a coordination of European minimum wage policy. This is what we will try to do in this report. Without taking ourselves a position, we will try to provide arguments and facts that we hope can be useful in this debate. The report is organized in two big sections. In the first one, we will discuss the theoretical and policy considerations around a coordinated EU minimum wage policy. We will review the social sciences literature on the effects of minimum wages, present a broad picture of the current debates around the coordination of EU minimum wage policy and discuss the institutional difficulties that such a coordination would in our view have to face. In other words, that section will try to provide a balanced summary of the theoretical and policy arguments around this debate. The second big section will try to complement the arguments with some facts, by carrying out a “simple accounting exercise” to evaluate how many and what types of workers would be most affected by a hypothetical coordination of minimum wage policy in the different countries, using a baseline scenario of a single national wage floor of 60% of the median national wages and drawing from the two most recent EU-wide data sources on wages and income. Eurofound was established in 1975 with the mandate of contributing with knowledge to the planning and design of better living and working conditions in Europe. We hope that this report can at least contribute to the debate

Long-Term Unemployed Youth: Characteristics and Policy Responses

While the youth labour market has improved considerably since 2014, one legacy of the recent economic crisis is the large cohort of long-term unemployed young people, which represents nearly one-third of jobless young people. This report provides an updated profile of the youth labour market in 2016 and describes trends over the past decade. It explores the determinants of long-term unemployment, at both sociodemographic and macroeconomic levels. It also provides evidence on the serious consequences for young people of spending a protracted time in unemployment, such as scarring effects on income and occupation and on several dimensions of young people’s well-being. The report concludes with a discussion of selected policy measures recently implemented by 10 Member States in order to prevent young people from becoming long-term unemployed or, if they are in such circumstances, to integrate them into the labour market or education

Sexism in political discourse: a case study

It can be argued that language not only reflects gender inequalities but that it is also a key tool to perpetuate, shape and create these inequalities (Graddol & Swann, 1989, p. 9). However, in recent decades, the use of gender-neutral language has been viewed as an imposition by those who criticize political correctness and consider it to be “an excessive attention to the sensibilities of those who are seen as different to the norm (women, lesbians, gays, disabled people, black people)” (Mills, 2008, p. 100). As a consequence, it has been frequently perceived by some as an attack towards freedom of speech. During the 2016 United States electoral campaign, former Republican President Donald Trump openly criticized political correctness and, at the same time, defended himself from accusations of sexism: “Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Nobody” (Bloomberg Quicktake, 2016). To what extent is this claim true? The main aim of this paper is to analyze how Donald Trump uses sexist language to belittle women and reinforce gender stereotypes in his political discourse. The theoretical framework of the present investigation for detecting sexism in discourse draws on Mill’s model (2008, pp. 41-76) and the Ambivalent Sexist Theory put forward by Glick and Fiske (1997, pp. 119-135). The former model draws a distinction between overt and indirect sexism, whereas the latter shows that sexist discourse can be expressed in two different ways, benevolent and hostile sexism. The research data come from a wide range of audiovisual sources from 2015 to 2020, including fragments of rallies, TV shows and the 2016 presidential debates. Three areas of discussion are examined: the portrayal of the role of women in society, the categorization of women in terms of their appearance and lack of strength, and insult terms.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Tech

Características ortográficas en Londres, Biblioteca Wellcome, MS 3731 (ff. 3r-43r, f. 125v)

Jorge Figueroa Dorrego, como editor de la revista Babel-AFIAL (Aspectos de Filología Inglesa y Alemana), concede permiso para que el artículo titulado "Características ortográficas en Londres, Biblioteca Wellcome, MS 3731(ff. 3r-43r, 125v)" de Carlos Soriano Jiménez, publicado en el número 32 de nuestra revista, en el año 2023, se pueda depositar en el Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Málaga. Debe archivarse el pdf original y hacer siempre referencia a su publicación en dicho número de Babel-ALFIAL o, preferiblemente, dar acceso al siguiente enlace: https://revistas.uvigo.es/index.php/AFIAL/article/view/4592 Vigo, 8 de febrero de 2024.https://revistas.uvigo.es/ (CC BY-NC-ND)A large and growing body of literature has investigated the standardization process of the English language in the Late Modern English period (Auer 939–948, Percy 55–79, Tieken-Boon van Ostade 37–51), with various factors contributing to it, such as the printing press, spelling reforms, normative grammars and dictionaries. In the process of standardization, which “involves the suppression of the optional variability” in a language (Milroy and Milroy 6, original emphasis), prescriptivism played a crucial role, and it has been argued that, by the early eighteenth century, English spelling had become standardized and stable (Scragg 80). However, Tieken-Boon van Ostade points out that in the eighteenth century two spelling systems coexisted, i.e., a public and a private one (11). The present study provides additional evidence to the existing knowledge of the topic through the analysis of the spelling and punctuation system of the text in London, Wellcome Library, MS 3731, an eighteenth-century collection of medical instructions and cookery recipes. By means of the study of contractions, superscript letters, capitalization and line breaks, this article unveils new insights into the variability and characteristics of the spelling and punctuation system in this period. The findings provide valuable evidence and enrich our understanding of the broader standardization process in English historical linguistics.Universidad de Málag

Essays on labour economics: Wage and income disparities in European labour markets amid the Great Recession

[ES]Esta tesis consta de una introducción, cinco productos de investigación académica independientes sobre disparidades salariales y de ingresos en los mercados de trabajo europeos y un capítulo final discutiendo las principales conclusiones. Si bien cada una de estas piezas de investigación es independiente, todas ellas están interrelacionadas y proporcionan conjuntamente una imagen consistente, desde diferentes ángulos, sobre la evolución reciente de las disparidades salariales y de ingresos en la Unión Europea (UE) en su conjunto y en los mercados de trabajo nacionales Europeos, tanto antes como después de la Gran Recesión, incluyendo una propuesta política también. El primer producto es un artículo que describe la evolución del empleo de bajos salarios durante el período 2005-2013 y explora las causas subyacentes. El análisis utiliza un umbral para identificar los bajos salarios anclado al 60% de los salarios medianos en 2007 y ajustado por la inflación para evaluar el impacto de la Gran Recesión, mostrando que la proporción de empleados con salarios bajos aumentó para la UE en su conjunto y en dos tercios de sus países. Esto se explica por una disminución general de los salarios reales, especialmente intensa en los países periféricos europeos y en la parte inferior de la distribución salarial, así como entre los empleados con menos antigüedad en sus puestos. El crecimiento del empleo a tiempo parcial también emerge como una causa significativa de la expansión del trabajo de bajos salarios desde el inicio de la crisis. Además, el análisis identifica la existencia de efectos de composición que pueden haber impedido una mayor expansión del trabajo de bajos salarios y enmascarado el alcance real de la corrección salarial. El segundo producto es artículo que presenta una panorámica de las tendencias de las desigualdades salariales desde una perspectiva global de la UE durante el período 2005-2015 y analiza la contribución de la convergencia en los niveles salariales y en las distribuciones salariales entre los países europeos. El análisis muestra que la desigualdad salarial en el agregado de la UE se redujo fuertemente antes de la crisis como resultado de la convergencia ascendente en los niveles salariales, que fue impulsada principalmente por el mayor crecimiento salarial en los países de Europa del Este. La desigualdad salarial en el agregado de la UE se ha mantenido estancada desde el inicio de la crisis debido a la interrupción de este proceso de convergencia en los niveles salariales entre países, aunque este último parece reactivarse nuevamente en los últimos años debido a la continuación del crecimiento salarial más acelerado en ciertos países de Europa del Este. Simultáneamente, hubo un proceso de convergencia entre los países europeos hacia niveles de desigualdad salarial intermedia, también parcialmente interrumpido por la crisis. Las tendencias de las desigualdades salariales en los países europeos desde el inicio de la crisis son variadas debido en parte a la existencia de efectos de composición en el empleo derivados de la mayor probabilidad de que los asalariados peor remunerados pierdan su trabajo. Los datos capturan una notable caída en la desigualdad salarial en Alemania en 2015 como resultado de la introducción del nuevo salario mínimo estatutario. El tercer producto es un artículo que presenta una panorámica de las tendencias de la desigualdad de la renta disponible de los hogares desde una perspectiva global de la UE durante el período 2005-2015, proporcionando así un contexto más amplio para interpretar mejor la evolución de las desigualdades salariales que incorpora también al análisis el impacto de los efectos de composición y las turbulencias en el empleo. Al igual que ocurre con los salarios, el análisis muestra que las desigualdades de renta en el agregado de la UE se redujeron notablemente antes de la crisis, debido principalmente al mayor crecimiento de las rentas en los países de Europa del Este, y este proceso de convergencia en las rentas entre países también se interrumpió a causa de la crisis. La desigualdad de rentas en el agregado de la UE ha aumentado desde 2008, en gran parte debido a la interrupción del citado proceso de convergencia, aunque este parece estar reactivándose en los años más recientes. Por otra parte, aunque el incremento de la desigualdad de rentas para el agregado de la UE ha sido muy modesto, la Gran Recesión ha empujado las desigualdades de rentas al alza de forma significativa en muchos países europeos, principalmente debido a los mayores niveles de desempleo, aunque este impacto ha sido amortiguado por los sistemas de impuestos y prestaciones de los estados de bienestar europeos. El cuarto producto es un informe muy extenso en el que se basa el tercer artículo mencionado anteriormente. Presenta una panorámica de las tendencias de desigualdades de rentas desde una perspectiva global de la UE durante el período 2005-2013. Es un estudio mucho más amplio sobre desigualdades, ya que muchas fuentes de ingresos son analizadas conjuntamente. Aparte de lo que se muestra en el tercer artículo, el análisis muestra que el impacto de la Gran Recesión se refleja más claramente al observar la evolución de los niveles de renta: los niveles de renta reales han sufrido un claro impacto negativo en prácticamente todos los países europeos y el tamaño de las clases medias europeas se ha contraído de una forma general. El quinto y último producto de esta tesis es un artículo que discute una política que tendría un efecto en la lucha contra las disparidades salariales (y de rentas) y el trabajo de baja remuneración en los mercados de trabajo europeos. Contribuye al creciente debate sobre la coordinación de los salarios mínimos a nivel de la UE al considerar la introducción de una hipotética política a nivel de la UE que fijaría los salarios mínimos en un nivel del 60 por ciento del salario mediano en los países europeos. El impacto institucional de esta política sería mayor en aquellos países donde los salarios mínimos son establecidos mediante negociación colectiva por los agentes sociales que en los países donde se establecen por ley (salario mínimo estatutario), pero el análisis muestra que esta política afectaría a una mayor proporción de los asalariados en el segundo grupo de países, porque estos tienden a tener una mayor proporción de trabajos de salarios bajos.[EN]This thesis consists of an introduction, five self-contained research outputs on wage and income disparities across European labour markets and a final chapter discussing the main conclusions. Although each one of these pieces of research stands by itself, they are all interrelated and jointly provide a consistent picture from different angles about the recent evolution of wage and income disparities for the European Union (EU) as a whole and within European national labour markets, both before and after the Great Recession, including a policy proposal. The first output is a paper mapping the evolution of low-paid work over the period 2005– 2013 and exploring its underlying causes. The analysis uses an inflation-adjusted low-pay threshold anchored at 60 percent of median wages in 2007 to assess the impact of the Great Recession, showing that the share of low-paid employees increased for the EU as a whole and in two-thirds of European countries. This is explained by a general decline in real wage levels, particularly intense in the European periphery countries and at the bottom of the wage distribution as well as among employees with shorter tenures. Growing part-time employment also emerges as a significant driver of expanding low-paid work from the onset of the crisis. Moreover, the analysis identifies the existence of compositional effects that may have prevented a larger expansion of low-pay shares and masked the real extent of the wage correction. The second output is a paper presenting an overview of wage inequality trends from an EUwide perspective over the period 2005-2015 and discussing the contribution of convergence in wage levels and wage distributions between countries. The analysis shows that EU-wide wage inequality fell strongly prior to the crisis as a result of upwards convergence in wage levels, which was mainly driven by catch-up growth in Eastern European countries. EU-wide wage inequality has remained stagnant from the onset of the crisis due to the interruption of this process of convergence, which nevertheless is reactivating again in the most recent years due to a continuation of catch-up growth in Eastern Europe. Simultaneously, there was a process of convergence towards intermediate wage inequality levels, also partially interrupted by the crisis. Trends in wage inequalities across European countries are mixed from the onset of the crisis, partially due to the existence of compositional effects resulting from lower-paid employees being more likely to exit employment. Our results capture as well the strong reduction in wage inequality levels observed in Germany in 2015 as a result of the introduction of the new German statutory minimum wage. The third output is a paper presenting an overview of household disposable income inequality trends from an EU-wide perspective over the period 2005-2015, therefore providing a wider context from which to interpret the evolution of wage inequalities, by incorporating the impact of compositional effects and employment turbulences into the picture. As it occurred with wages, the analysis shows that EU-wide income inequalities were notably reduced prior to the crisis mainly due to catch-up growth in eastern European countries, a process of convergence that was also largely interrupted by the crisis. EU-wide income inequality levels have increased slightly from 2008, largely as a result of a halt in this process of income convergence between European countries, which nevertheless is re-emerging in most recent years. On the other hand, even if the increase in EU-wide income inequality was very modest, the Great Recession pushed income inequalities significantly upwards among many European countries largely as a result of rising unemployment levels, although this impact has been significantly cushioned by the public benefits and transfers systems in place across European countries. The fourth output is an extensive report on which the third paper is based. It presents an overview of income inequality trends from an EU-wide perspective over the period 2005- 2013. It is a much wider study on inequalities, since many different income sources are covered jointly. Apart from what is presented in the third paper, this analysis shows that the impact of the Great Recession is better reflected by trends in income trends: real income levels suffered a downwards impact across most countries and the size of European middle classes has been generally squeezed. The fifth output is a paper discussing a policy tool that would have an effect in tackling wage (and income) disparities and low-pay work across European labour markets. It contributes to the growing debate on EU-level minimum wage coordination by considering the introduction of an hypothetical EU-wide policy that would set minimum wages at 60 percent of the median wage across European countries. The institutional impact of this policy would be larger in those countries where minimum wages are collectively agreed by social partners than in those countries where they are set by statutory regulation, but the analysis shows that this policy would affect a larger proportion of the workforce in the latter group of countries because they are typically characterised by a larger low-paid segment

Modals and Quasi-modals of Obligation and Necessity in Indian and Canadian English.

This study contributes to the existing research regarding the frequency and distribution of modals and quasi-modals in varieties of English. The majority of the authors agree that, during the second half of the 20th century, there has been a general decline in the frequency of core modal auxiliaries of English (Leech, 2013). As a consequence, this has meant an increase in use of semi-modals (Collins, 2009). It has been hypothesized that some of the possible reasons which may explain this new trend have been a great acceptance among speakers of processes of grammaticalization, colloquialization (Leech, 2012) and democratization (Smith, 2012). This interpretation, although widely accepted, has also been questioned by dissenting voices (Millar, 2009). Most of the literature has discussed extensively the differences in relation to this topic between Standard English (SE) and American English (AmE), but there is not such a comprehensive literature concerning other cross- varietal differences of the Outer Circle (Loureiro-Porto, 2019). Modality encompasses a wide range of different semantic notions. This paper explores the differences of the distribution and use of the modals and semi-modals which convey both deontic and epistemic obligation and necessity in Canadian and Indian English. More precisely, must and need are compared to its counterparts and its semantically related quasi-modals have got to and need to. Following Kachru’s model of World Englishes (1992), Canadian English (CanE) has been selected as the representative of an Inner Circle variety, whereas Indian English (IE) has been chosen as representative of an Outer Circle variety. The aim of this paper is to provide new insight into the patterns of distribution between these pairs of modals and semi-modals and to outline some possible reasons for the existing differences. For this purpose, the online Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE) has been employed

The reproducibility crisis in science from the perspective of thin film deposition: an unexpected approach

The publication of scientific results in all disciplines, and in particular in Material Science, has geometrically increased in the last decades. Although the quality of the published results seems to follow the same trend, the feeling that we could be facing a reproducibility crisis has become extended within the scientific community. We discuss this issue in relation to thin film deposition techniques such as atomic layer deposition, which should not present deviations on the reported results due to its self-limiting nature. In particular, we put the focus on the necessity of a multipolar approach that takes into account also the global environment in which researchers perform their wor

Presa de Enciso: ensayo de resistencia al corte "in situ" del cimiento

En el Proyecto de Construcción de la presa de Enciso se indica justificadamente que el modo crítico de rotura es el deslizamiento a favor del plano de contacto presa-cimiento, no resultando plausible una rotura del cimiento a favor de los planos de estratificación del macizo rocoso. Durante las excavaciones se observaron ciertos condicionantes (milonito entre juntas de estratificación, pendiente hacia aguas abajo del plano de apoyo de algún bloque) que motivaron la realización de nuevos estudios de seguridad frente al deslizamiento del cuerpo de presa. Estos nuevos estudios pusieron de manifiesto que, adoptando la resistencia del cimiento establecida en el Proyecto de Construcción y suponiendo la existencia de las superficies de debilidad observadas en las excavaciones, la rotura de la presa a través del cimento podría resultar crítica. Además se concluía que las resistencias consideradas resultan suficientes pero no holgadas para garantizar que se obtienen los coeficientes de seguridad habitualmente utilizados en el proyecto de presas en España. Para obtener datos objetivos de las resistencias (terreno y contacto hormigón-roca) se propuso la realización de ensayos de laboratorio adicionales así como la ejecución de un ensayo "in situ" a mayor escala. Estos ensayos son los descritos en el presente artículo

Labour market trends in the euro area in the last decade

Artículo de revist

Capacity utilisation and its relationship to inflation in the euro area

Artículo de revist