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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of key labor institutions on the occurrence and extent of temporary employment.

In a new departure, this study uses a zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) model given that most establishments are non-users of either fixed-term contracts (FTCs) or temporary agency workers.

This study examines the potential impact of works councils and unions on the use and intensity of use of FTCs and temporary agency work. There is a little indication that these variables are correlated with the use/non-use of either type of temporary work, especially in the case of FTCs. Collective bargaining displays different relationships with their intensity of use: a negative association for sectoral bargaining and FTCs and the converse for firm-level bargaining and agency temps. Of more interest, however, is the covariation between the number of temporary employees and the interaction between works councils and product market volatility. The intensity of use of agency temps (FTCs) is predicted to rise (fall) as volatility increases whenever a works council is present. These disparities require further investigation but most likely reflect differences in function, with agency work being more directed toward the protection of an arguably shrinking core and fixed-term contacts encountering resistance to their increased use as a buffer stock. The two types of temporary employment are seemingly non-complementary, an interpretation that receives support from the study’s further analysis of FTC flow data.

The non-complementarity of the two types of contract is the hallmark of this paper.

The first study to deploy a ZINB model to examine both the occurrence and incidence of temporary work.

Using data from the 2013 European Company Survey, this chapter operationalizes the representation gap as the desire for greater employee involvement in decision-making expressed by the representative of the leading employee representative body at the workplace. According to this measure, there is evidence of a substantial shortfall in employee involvement in the European Union, not dissimilar to that reported for the United States. The chapter proceeds to investigate how the size of this representation gap varies by type of representative structure, information provided by management, the resource base available to the representatives, and the status of trust between the parties. Perceived deficits are found to be smaller where workplace representation is via works councils rather than union bodies. Furthermore, the desire for greater involvement is reduced where information provided the employee representative on a range of establishment issues is judged satisfactory. A higher frequency of meetings with management also appears to mitigate the expressed desire for greater involvement. Each of these results is robust to estimation over different country clusters. However, unlike the other arguments, the conclusion that shortfalls in employee involvement representation are smaller under works councils than union bodies is nullified where trust in management is lacking.

“A genuine productivity agreement offers solutions to many of the typical problems of industrial relations. It raises standards of supervision and of managerial planning and control. It closes the gap between rates of pay and actual earnings. It enables demarcation difficulties to be eliminated or reduced. It concentrates decisions at the level of the company or factory. It formalises and regulates the position of the shop steward” (Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers' Associations, 1968, para. 325, p. 84). “At the negative end of the range, a general restoration of productivity bargaining should be resisted like the plague. Indeed, it was this contagion which destroyed the pay and prices policy of the late '60's; and subsequent research confirms that it is a loophole so wide that even the most superannuated team of cart‐horses can draw even the most rickety coach through it” (The Times, 10 May 1973).

Competitive labour market theory predicts that within a local labour market there will be a tendency for labour of the same quality to obtain parity of earnings irrespective of the employment location. More strictly, the theory posits the equalisation of net advantages through time for homogeneous labour inputs. No plant may, according to the theory, set wages and other conditions of employment independent of the behaviour of its competitors. Wage levels within the market are, then, subject to the equalising forces of competition. Consequently, any differentials enjoyed by one plant over another for a well defined homogeneous labour input must either be transient or reflect efficiency unit (labour supply) differences. In the absence of labour quality differences, then, wage differentials would be a short run phenomenon to be explained by differences in final product demand and productivity variations against a background of short run inelasticity of labour supply. Such disequilibrating forces should, in the long run, tend to be counterbalanced by actual or potential mobility within the labour market which would restore wage equality.

This paper examines the effects of union change in Britain on changes in earnings dispersion 1983–1995. We investigate not only the decline in union density but also the greater wage compression among unionised workers, as well as changes in union density across skill groups. For the private sector, we find that deunionisation accounts for little of the increase in earnings dispersion. What unions have lost on the swings (lower density), they have gained on the roundabouts (greater wage compression). But for the public sector we find strong effects, because unions are increasingly organising the more skilled. This change in the character of public sector unions means that they no longer reduce earnings variation nearly as much as they once did.

This paper proposes that the development of a layoff policy gives an organization a competitive advantage over organizations without such a policy. How an organization communicates concern to employees is often through procedures and policies developed by the human resource department. Survey questionnaires were mailed to 1,400 vice presidents of human resources that held membership and whose names were provided through the Society of Human Resource Management. Over half of the organizations surveyed (57%) did not have layoff policies. By type of organization, healthcare had the greatest number of policies in their organizations with 70% affirming their existence. The study concludes with the following five proposed reasons why layoff policies do not exist: (1) “It can't happen here” syndrome (2) The cover‐up syndrome (3) If you plan for it, people will panic, (4) Managers are trained to focus on growth and to avoid decline, (5) There would be loss of control, and accompanying organizational sabotage, and (6) More policies equal less humane treatment.

Understanding how worker well-being is distributed across the population is of paramount importance. With such knowledge policy makers can devise efficient strategies to improve social welfare. This volume contains 13 chapters on topics enhancing our comprehension of inequality across workers. The issues addressed deal directly with the economic institutions that affect individual and family earnings distributions. The themes explored include job training, worker and firm mobility, minimum wages, wage arrears, unions, collective bargaining, unemployment insurance, and schooling. Among the questions answered are: To what extent do greater work hours of women mitigate the widening family earnings distribution? To what extent does deunionization widen the distribution of earnings? Do computers really cause a widening of the earnings distribution? How would the Russian wage distribution change if one accounted for wage arrears? How much of job creation and job destruction comes about because of business relocation? To what extent does maternal education increase children's education? Why do increases in the minimum wage fail to substantially decrease employment as economic theory would predict? And, to what extent do job skills matter for low-income workers?

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.