Uses of the workplace industrial relations surveys by British labour economists

The huge growth of nationally representative survey datasets based upon individuals and households has not been matched in most industrialised countries by a similar development of establishment or enterprise-based surveys. In Britain the imbalance has been partially redressed by the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey series, started in 1980. A few other countries have initiated similar developments. The British series is now a core resource for institutional labour economists and has generated a substantial literature. This paper discusses some of the specifically economic data gathered in the surveys and some of their uses

Uses of the Workplace Industrial Relations Surveys by British Labour Economists

The huge growth of nationally representative survey datasets based upon individuals and households has not been matched in most industrialised countries by a similar development of establishment or enterprise-based surveys. In Britain the imbalance has been partially redressed by the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey series, started in 1980. A few other countries have initiated similar developments. The British series is now a core resource for institutional labour economists and has generated a substantial literature. This paper discusses some of the specifically economic data gathered in the surveys and some of their uses.

Equal Opportunities Policies and Practice at the Workplace: Secondary Analysis of WERS98

The European Union Employment and Race Directives have required amendments to be made to existing equality legislation in the UK and have required new legislation to tackle discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, religion and age in employment. This paper provides evidence on the scope of workplaces’ equal opportunities policies and practices prior to the introduction of such legislative amendments, and aims to shed further light on linkages between such policies/practices and patterns of job satisfaction and workplace well-being. The evidence presented here clearly suggests that there is scope for the extension of equal opportunities among workplaces in Britain, particularly in the areas covered by the Directives

Who calls the Tune at Work? The Impact of Trade Unions on Jobs and Pay

This report uses large-scale survey evidence to examine the effects of unions upon the employment levels of workplaces and upon the pay of their employees. Although some of the findings show that trade unions are associated with adverse outcomes, these effects are absent when employers jointly determine pay and employment matters with the unions

Accelerating Low Carbon Development in the World’s Cities

Cities are engines of economic growth and social change. About 85% of global GDP in 2015 was generated in cities. By 2050, two-thirds of the global population will live in urban areas. Compact, connected and efficient cities can generate stronger growth and job creation, alleviate poverty and reduce investment costs, as well as improve quality of life through lower air pollution and traffic congestion. Better, more resilient models of urban development are particularly critical for rapidly urbanizing cities in the developing world. International city networks, such as the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) and United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), are scaling up the sharing of best practices and developing initiatives to facilitate new flows of finance, enabling more ambitious action on climate change. Altogether, low-carbon urban actions available today could generate a stream of savings in the period to 2050 with a current value of US$16.6 trillion

On the shopfloor: exploring the impact of teacher trade unions on school-based industrial relations

Teachers are highly unionised workers and their trade unions exert an important influence on the shaping and implementation of educational policy. Despite this importance there is relatively little analysis of the impact of teacher trade unions in educational management literature. Very little empirical research has sought to establish the impact of teacher unions at school level. In an era of devolved management and quasi-markets this omission is significant. New personnel issues continue to emerge at school level and this may well generate increased trade union activity at the workplace. This article explores the extent to which devolved management is drawing school-based union representation into a more prominent role. It argues that whilst there can be significant differences between individual schools, increased school autonomy is raising the profile of trade union activity in the workplace, and this needs to be better reflected in educational management research

The Millstone Grit Group (Pennsylvanian) of the Northumberland-Solway Basin and Alston Block of northern England

In the Northumberland–Solway Basin and Alston Block of northern England, some aspects of the stratigraphical and sedimentological relationships between the Millstone Grit Group, the Stainmore Formation (Namurian part of the Yoredale Group) and the Westphalian Pennine Coal Measures Group are uncertain. Also, confusion has resulted from discontinuation of Millstone Grit as a formal lithostratigraphical term north of the Stainmore Basin. This paper presents the evidence for, and describes the nature of, a Kinderscoutian (early Pennsylvanian) abrupt transition from typical ‘Yoredale cyclicity’, characterized by marine limestones in a dominantly siliciclastic succession but including marked fluvial channels, to a sandstone-dominated fluvial succession recognizable as the Millstone Grit Group. Sandbodies present in this region are probably the fluvial feeder systems to many of the fluvio-deltaic successions recorded farther south in the Central Pennine Basin. However, onset of the Millstone Grit Group occurs much earlier to the south, during the Pendleian (late Mississippian), despite the entry of fluvial systems into the Central Pennines Basin from the north. In addition to explaining this counter-intuitive relationship, the paper also recognizes continuation of the fluvial regime into the lowermost part of the Pennine Coal Measures Group

Leeway for the loyal: a model of employee discretion

This article examines the factors underlying task discretion from an economist's perspective. It argues that the key axis for understanding discretion is the trade-off between the positive effects of discretion on potential output per employee and the negative effects of greater leeway on work effort. In empirical analysis using matched employer-employee data, it is shown that discretion is strongly affected by the level of employee commitment. In addition, discretion is generally greater in high-skilled jobs, although not without exceptions, and lower where employees are under-skilled. Homeworking and flexitime policies raise employee discretion. The impact of teamworking is mixed. In about half of cases team members do not jointly decide about work matters, and the net effect of teams on task discretion in these cases is negative. In other cases, where team members do decide matters jointly, the impact is found to be neutral according to employees' perceptions, or positive according to managers' perceptions. There are also significant and substantial unobserved establishment-level factors which affect task discretion

Response of the Jovian thermosphere to a transient ‘pulse’ in solar wind pressure

The importance of the Jovian thermosphere with regard to magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling is often neglected in magnetospheric physics. We present the first study to investigate the response of the Jovian thermosphere to transient variations in solar wind dynamic pressure, using an azimuthally symmetric global circulation model coupled to a simple magnetosphere and fixed auroral conductivity model. In our simulations, the Jovian magnetosphere encounters a solar wind shock or rarefaction region and is subsequently compressed or expanded. We present the ensuing response of the coupling currents, thermospheric flows, heating and cooling terms, and the aurora to these transient events. Transient compressions cause the reversal, with respect to steady state, of magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling currents and momentum transfer between the thermosphere and magnetosphere. They also cause at least a factor of two increase in the Joule heating rate. Ion drag significantly changes the kinetic energy of the thermospheric neutrals depending on whether the magnetosphere is compressed or expanded. Local temperature variations appear between View the MathML source for the compression scenario and View the MathML source for the expansion case. Extended regions of equatorward flow develop in the wake of compression events - we discuss the implications of this behaviour for global energy transport. Both compressions and expansions lead to a View the MathML source increase in the total power dissipated or deposited in the thermosphere. In terms of auroral processes, transient compressions increase main oval UV emission by a factor of ∼4.5 whilst transient expansions increase this main emission by a more modest 37%. Both types of transient event cause shifts in the position of the main oval, of up to 1° latitude