Inclusive unions in a dualised labour market? The challenge of organising labour market policy and social protection for labour market outsiders. LEQS Discussion Paper No. 99/2015 October 2015

Dynamics of labour market dualisation have affected most Western European countries over the last two decades and trade unions have been often seen as conservative institutions protecting the interests of their core constituencies and as such contributing to labour market dualisation. However, empirical evidence from Italy shows that unions’ stance towards atypical workers has been more inclusive than the literature expected, despite the conditions for pro-insider policies being firmly in place, and unions have emerged as important actors in the organisation of social protection for labour market outsiders. By analysing unions’ strategies towards temporary agency workers in Italy through a disaggregated approach (i.e. focussing separately on salary and job protection; active labour market policies; and income protection), I reconcile the empirical observations that conflict with the theoretical expectations. I argue that unions have indeed put in place inclusive, yet selective, policies towards atypical workers and that unions’ identity is a central explanatory variable to understand the puzzling coexistence of a dualised labour market and (selectively) inclusive unions. Through a disaggregated identity-bound analysis of unions’ strategies, I shed new light on the complex relationship between labour market dualisation and the dualisation of social protection. In particular, findings suggest that paradoxically unions’ strategies to counteract labour market dualisation may be furthering the insider-outsider divide in terms of social protection. I also suggest that a clearer analytical distinction between labour market dualisation and welfare dualisation is needed in future research and that the understanding of unions’ strategies towards marginal workers would greatly benefit from a systematic disaggregated analysis of unions’ agency

Comparison of targeted and shotgun animal gut metagenomics

The understanding of the composition and functions of the intestinal environment is particularly useful to evaluate and improve productivity and health of farmed animals, such as chickens. By sequencing the metagenome, that represents the genetic material recovered directly from enviromental samples such as gut sections, scientists attempt to retrieve the abundances of microorganisms that inhabit the gut of animals, in order to access information about the interaction with the host. Our purpose is to compare, with a statistical approach, the reliability of two sequencing techniques, called metataxonomics and metagenomics, that can both provide a solid approach to investigate the populations of bacteria in gut microbiome. Although metagenomics, based on shotgun sequencing of the full metagenome, is usually known as the best suited option to recover abundance profiles of bacteria, recent studies have highlighted remarkable results using amplicon sequencing, that targets and recognizes particular regions of 16S rRNA gene. In our study, we take advantage of a well-structured dataset of 78 samples collected from caeca and crops of 40 chickens, at different days of life(1,14,35) and fed (or not) with a probiotic supplemented to drinking water. The study of abundance profiles retrieved by metagenomics and metataxonomics separately, highlights several differences between the two techniques, in terms of detection of rare genera and connection to biological markers. Shotgun sequencing detects around five times more genera than those commonly detected by both techniques, even if several shotgun sets have low coverage. Furthermore, using silhouette scores to evaluate the space segmentation of abundance profiles in a 2-dimensional PCoA space according to biological metadata, we observe that low-abundance bacteria detected only by shotgun contain important biologic information, hidden to 16S sequencing

Matteo Renzi must work with Italian trade unions rather than against them if he is serious about reforming Italy’s labour market

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has made reforming the Italian labour market a priority for his government. Chiara Benassi and Niccolo Durazzi assess the argument that Italy’s trade unions are an obstacle to such reforms on the basis that they support only their core membership, rather than a broader agenda which includes ‘atypical’ workers such as agency staff. They argue that unions have taken on a much broader stance than they are typically credited with and that if Renzi is serious about reforming the country’s labour market it would be beneficial to work with unions rather than against them

Going up-skill: exploring the transformation of the German skill formation system

The German skill formation system has been undergoing significant changes over the last two decades and most recently we observed massive expansion of higher education vis-à-vis the ‘traditional’ dual vocational training, which stands in contrast with the notion of equilibrium that has accompanied the German skill formation system in the literature. Yet, while the institutional underpinnings of the traditional model have been subject to comprehensive scrutiny and theorisation – including analyses of recent patterns of change – it remains unclear what arrangements have become institutionalised as skill formation ‘moves up’ from the dual vocational training to the university system. The article suggests that a (dominant) pattern of state coordination co-exist with a segmentalist pattern: the state mobilized resources and coordinated the provision of high skill formation to the benefit of all companies and in particular of small and medium sized enterprises that have relatively fewer resources and capacity to train; in parallel, large firms, with more resources and a large internal labour market, met their high skill needs also without state-mediation, by establishing direct relationships with higher education institutions through dual study programmes

Europe’s ‘open’ university systems are far from equitable, but all European universities need to rethink their processes for access and success

One of the challenges in higher education policy is to ensure that universities are open to students from all backgrounds and that they don’t simply perpetuate social inequalities. Anne Corbett and Niccolo Durazzi write on the experiences with ‘open’ university systems in countries such as France and Italy. They note that the social inclusiveness of such systems appears to be less than in other European systems, and that admission processes alone are unlikely to be able to correct for this. However ultimately all European universities need to rethink their admission processes and their policies for ensuring students have a chance of success once they begin their studies