Showing papers in "Labour in 2020"

Remapping the American LeftA History of Radical Discontinuity

Abstract: Is the American Left reemerging as a political force? Suddenly there are socialists in Congress, socialists on city councils, socialists in the Democratic Party, and much of the media has taken up the question of whether the Democratic Party is swinging to the left. If we are indeed seeing a new surge to the left and new phase of American radicalism, it would not be the first time. This is something that has happened repeatedly in the past century. The particulars are new, but the cycles of movement reinvention appear to be a feature of American politics, one that historians have not adequately explored. American radicalism has been a vexing subject for many years. It was not long ago that historians could do little more than grieve, framing the subject as a story of failures and asking whynot questions. Why was there no revolution? Why wasn’t the US Left more like the European Left or the Canadian Left? Why did the Socialist Party fall apart? Why did the New Left fade? No longer. Books by Paul Buhle, Richard Flacks, Michael Kazin, Doug Rossinow, Howard Brick, Christopher Phelps, Rhodri JeffreyJones, and Dawson Barrett have changed the tone, examining accomplishments as well as limitations, arguing that the Left has initiated significant transformations, especially involving the rights of previously excluded populations, while a century of radical action has also changed the dimensions of the civic sphere and democratic practice by fostering a culture of activism. The newer books do so in

Over-, Required, and Undereducation: Consequences on the Bottom Lines of Firms

Abstract: We provide first evidence regarding the direct effect of over‐, required, and undereducation on the bottom lines of firms across work environments. We use detailed Belgian linked employer–employee panel data, rely on the methodological approach pioneered by Hellerstein et al. (1999), and estimate dynamic panel data models at the firm level. Our findings show an ‘inverted L’ profitability profile: undereducation is associated with lower profits, whereas higher levels of required and overeducation are correlated with positive economic rents of roughly the same magnitude. The size of these effects is amplified in firms experiencing economic uncertainty or operating in high‐tech/knowledge sectors.

The Returns to Personality Traits Across the Wage Distribution

Abstract: This paper investigates heterogeneous wage effects of non-cognitive skills across the wage distribution. I develop a model of wage determination under uncertainty with respect to individual productivity based on three components (minimum wages, productivity premiums, bargaining premiums). Based on this model, I expect (i) a larger importance and (ii) larger effects of non-cognitive skills for high-wage employees compared to their low-wage counterparts. I test these hypotheses with unconditional quantile regressions using large-scale survey data from Germany, the UK, and Australia. To test the joint explanatory contribution of multiple variables within a quantile-regression framework, I propose a new statistic that quantifies the rise in explanatory power generated by additional explanatory variables. The findings indicate a rising importance as well as increasing effects of certain personality traits (agreeableness, neuroticism and risk taking) across the wage distribution for full-time employed males and females.

Employment Adjustments Following Rises and Reductions in Minimum Wages: New Insights From a Survey Experiment

Abstract: Die Auswirkungen von starken Anhebungen der Mindestlohne, wie sie in Grosbritannien und einigen US-Staaten geplant sind, sind noch uner-forscht. Wir fuhren ein Befragungsexperiment durch, das rund 6000 Betrieben in Deutschland zufallig Erhohungen oder Senkungen von Mindestlohnen zuweist und die Personalverantwortlichen nach den zu erwartenden Beschaftigungsanpassun-gen fragt. Es zeigt sich, dass die Beschaftigung asymmetrisch auf positive und negative Mindestlohnanderungen reagiert. Je starker der Mindestlohn steigt, desto groser ist der erwartete Beschaftigungsruckgang. Beschaftigungsanpassungen fallen in denjenigen Branchen und Betrieben groser aus, die starker vom derzeitigen Mindestlohn betroffen sind, sowie in denjenigen Betrieben, die weder Tarifvertrage noch Betriebsrate haben. Im Gegensatz dazu nimmt die Beschaftigung nicht zu, falls der Mindestlohn um ca. 10 Prozent gesenkt wird. Dies hangt vor allem damit zusammen, dass Betriebe mit Betriebsraten und Tarifvertragen die Lohne nicht kurzen wurden.

Falling Between the Cracks: Discrimination Laws and Older Women

Abstract: Theories and evidence suggest that older women may experience unique discrimination for being both old and female in the workplace. To provide a remedy for this type of discrimination — known as intersectional discrimination — legal scholars argue that age and sex discrimination laws must be used jointly and acknowledge intersectional discrimination (age‐plus‐sex or sex‐plus‐age discrimination) as a separate cause of action. Nonetheless, in general, courts have declined to do so even though older women are protected under both age and sex discrimination laws. This raises a concern that age discrimination laws may be ineffective, or less effective in protecting older women. I test this implication by estimating the differential effect of age discrimination laws on labor market outcomes between older women and older men. My findings show that age discrimination laws did far less to improve labor market outcomes for older women than for older men. These results may explain the persistent findings of discrimination against older women in the existing literature and support the legal scholars' argument that older women's intersectional discrimination must be recognized as a separate cause of action.

Starting from HomeFour New Spirits Engage Labor History

Abstract: These are powerful accounts of starting from home and coming to labor history Emma Amador, Max Fraser, Naomi R Williams, and Stacey L Smith underscore the living pasts of a field once pronounced as dead that increasingly has become as central to the historical project as the invisibilized working class that has emerged as essential during the COVID-19 pandemic In recounting the origins of their research, these new voices reinforce the link between scholarship and social commentary in ways that further extend the boundaries of the field Originally presented during the 2019 LAWCHA conference at a session organized by this journal, these personal narratives share major themes They show a continual expansion of the subject of labor history, providing fresh perspectives on who counts as working class and what constitutes work They belong to a larger trend of scrambling categories at

The Age Pay Gap and Labour Market Heterogeneity: A New Empirical Approach Using Data for Italy

Abstract: Using Italian microdata over the period 2005–2016, this paper studies the difference in pay between elderly (55–64) and adult (34–54) workers in Italy along the wage distribution. The estimation strategy consists in using a three‐way fixed effects wage model and adjusting the wage gap for (observed and unobserved) labour market heterogeneity. The estimation relies on OLS as well as on unconditional quantile regressions. The analysis beyond the mean shows substantial differences in the age pay gap along the wage distribution and finds particularly pronounced gaps at the top. The fixed effects of interest (individual, job, and industry) are estimated via a partitioned procedure. Adjusting the gap for labour market heterogeneity reduces the gap almost to zero. The results suggest that individual differences between the cohorts both observed and unobserved are the main driver of the gap.

Can Human Resource Management Improve Schools' Performance?

Abstract: Using data for British workplaces, we compare the associations between human resource management (HRM) practices and schools' performance, comparing those effects to the effects of HRM among private sector workplaces. We do so using measures of workplace performance that are common across all workplaces. We find intensive use of HRM practices is correlated with substantial improvement in workplace performance, both among schools and other workplaces. Results are robust to panel estimates of the correlation between changes in performance and changes in HRM.

Tattoos, Lifestyle, and the Labor Market

Abstract: In this study, we look at the factors determining the decision to get a tattoo and relate this to several outcome measures, such as income, employment status, and health. The analyses are based on unique panel data of a representative sample of Dutch individuals. The tattooed population differs significantly from the non‐tattooed population on a wide range of characteristics. We use fixed effects and instrumental variable analysis to explore the effects of tattoos. Our analyses suggest less favorable outcomes for people with (very visible) tattoos, though especially in the case of the labor market, the relationships are relatively weak.

The Cost of Juridification: Lineages of Cheap Labor in Twentieth-Century Romania

Abstract: Abstract:This article explores the relationship between the development of labor law and the cost of labor in Romania between the end of World War I and the 1960s. Drawing on a variety of archival and printed sources, the author argues that the historical trajectory of this peripheral East European country shows in exemplary fashion how the increasing juridification of labor relations was first enabled by policy makers' concern to neutralize class conflict during the 1920s and then propelled by the collapse of industrial wages and the turn to import substitution in the aftermath of the Great Depression. The state socialist regime after 1945, the author further contends, inherited not merely the cheap labor of the interwar epoch but also the institutional mechanisms for controlling prices and wages set up to manage the economy during World War II, all of which facilitated the expansion of socialist labor law during the first two postwar decades. By the second half of the twentieth century, rapidly industrializing socialist Romania could thus integrate an expanding workforce into a type of employment relationship normally deemed standard: full-time, stable, dependent, and socially protected work. The author concludes by pointing out some of the implications of this Eastern European case study for how we might rethink the twin issues of the cost of labor and the transformation of labor law in our age of precarity.

The Relationship between Active Labor Market Programs and Employability of the Long‐Term Unemployed

Abstract: It can be difficult to document whether active labor market programs are effective for the long‐term unemployed because their transitions to employment are rare. This study examines whether eight measures of employability are useful intermediate outcome measures for the long‐term unemployed. We use a repeated survey linked to administrative register data and estimate three‐way fixed‐effect models. The results show that self‐reported health is a useful outcome measure for the given population of long‐term unemployed in the following sense: Only this measure both predicts subsequent employment and is positively associated with prior participation in an active labor market program compared with non‐participation.

New Perspectives on East European Labor History : An Introduction

Abstract: In the last three decades, the analytical categories of class and labor often appeared as having lost their luster for many social scientists and historians. This is especially true for scholars working on Eastern Europe, where after the fall of state socialist regimes the language of class was frequently presented as exhausted and burdened by political misuse. The instrumentalization of class was a protracted one, practiced first and foremost by the state socialist elites and subsequently by the postsocialist authorities. The communist partystates conceived of workers almost exclusively as a politically united and combative historical actor endowed with pregiven purpose. The communists ruled in the name of the working classes, and it was of the utmost importance for the official historiographies to follow the teleological assumptions of steady growth of the labor movement and the relentless march toward socialism. On the other hand, postsocialist political elites were keen to portray workers as victims of totalitarian states or, alternatively, as accomplices in the preservation of the communist rule. The dominant historiographical framings after 1989 were willing to recognize workers’ struggles only if they could offer credence to the master narratives of national resistance to communism. Otherwise, the working class was deemed an outdated concept, a subject of the partystate, holding little analytical value at the dawn of unbridled consumerism, individualization, and politics based on national identity. Such perspectives rarely attributed agency to workers, while fetishizing a yet to be constituted middle class that David Ost terms “a vague concept signaling the prosperity and stability promised, but far from realized, by the postcommunist project.” The intellectual climate started to change at the turn of the twentyfirst century. The first highly visible traces of historians reconsidering the role of labor in

Working for 200 Euro? The Unintended Effects of Traineeship Reform on Youth Labor Market Outcomes

Abstract: This paper evaluates the effects of an active labor market policy (ALMP) reform, the so‐called SOR measure (vocational training for work without commencing employment), on youth labor market outcomes in the newest EU member state—Croatia. In 2012, SOR was redesigned to ease the first labor market entry and promote on‐the‐job training, enabling a young person without relevant work experience to get a one‐year contract and a net monthly remuneration of 210 euro, while after 2014, the measure also became a part of the European Youth Guarantee. Pooling Croatian Labor Force Surveys from 2007 to 2016 and using the difference‐in‐difference strategy, we estimate the causal intent‐to‐treat effect of the program reform on labor market outcomes. The main results indicate that the reform has had, at best, neutral effects on employment and unemployment, while there is evidence that a portion of young individuals was propelled into inactivity. Though expected, adverse effect on wages—both at the mean and at higher percentiles of the wage distribution—is driven mostly by wages received by women and university graduates.

Intergenerational Earnings and Income Mobility in Vietnam

Abstract: This paper empirically examines the intergenerational mobility of earnings and income in Vietnam using the two‐sample two‐stage least squares estimation. The baseline intergenerational elasticity estimates show that Vietnam occupies the intermediate degrees of intergenerational mobility of earnings and income for both sons and daughters. In particular, a rise of 10 per cent in fathers’ earnings is on average associated with an increase of 3.61 per cent and 3.94 per cent for sons’ earnings and income, respectively. The corresponding figures for daughters’ earnings and income are 2.84 per cent and 3.33 per cent, respectively.

Paid Sick Leave and Employee Absences

Abstract: This paper studies the response of sickness absences to changes in the replacement rate for sick leave. In June 2008, a national law modified both the strength of monitoring and the monetary cost of sick leaves for public sector employees in Italy. Focusing on the National Health Service, which accounts for 21 per cent of the Italian public administration, first, I show that absences largely decreased following the reform. Second, using a difference‐in‐differences strategy that exploits variation in changes to the replacement rate for sick leave, I estimate that a 1 per cent point decrease in the replacement rate reduces absences by 1 per cent.

The Precarious Work of CareOSHA, AIDS, and Women Health-Care Workers, 1983–2000

Abstract: This article examines a series of Service Employees’ International Union (SEIU) campaigns for protection from needlestick injuries, led by women health-care workers, from the dawn of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s through battles over the 1992 OSHA standard on blood-borne pathogens and the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act of 2000. We argue that these campaigns developed in response to the growing physical precarity of women health-care workers in the era of “managed care,” caused by the intensification and flexibilization of health-care labor and the deregulation and underfunding of OSHA and the CDC. We show how women workers challenged employers, OSHA, and elected federal officials to address workplace health hazards, through unions like SEIU and women’s, gay rights, and public health organizations. More broadly, we argue that the occupational hazards of health-care workers are a crucial but underexplored facet of workplace studies and the history of women workers in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Heterogeneous Layoff Effects of the US Short‐Time Compensation Program

Abstract: The Short‐Time Compensation (STC) program enables US firms to reduce work hours via pro‐rated Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits, rather than relying on layoffs as a cost‐cutting tool. Despite the program's potential to preclude skill loss and rehiring/retraining costs, firms' participation rates are still very low in response to economic downturns. Using firm‐level UI administrative data and semi‐parametric methods, we show why by illustrating which type of firms benefit from the program and which do not. A key finding is that cyclically sensitive firms have about 14% lower layoff rates when they use STC, but we find no difference for more cyclically stable firms.

Making Labor Visible in Historic Charleston

Abstract: Charleston, South Carolina, is a city that markets itself as a center of heritage tourism. With millions of tourists visiting each year to see its historic architecture and landscaped gardens, how can public historians and public history professionals in Charleston and the Lowcountry accurately share the stories of workers, both enslaved and free, who built and fundamentally shaped the regional cultural landscape? The authors of this collaborative essay explore different avenues for ensuring that labor history and heritage—past and present—becomes integrated in the public history of the city and region. Through her work in historical interpretation at the McLeod Plantation Historic Site and the Lowcountry Digital History Initiative, Leah Worthington explores ways of publicly interpreting how enslaved people shaped the natural and structural landscapes of the Lowcountry—landscapes that are at the heart of the historical tourism industry. Rachel Donaldson examines the significance of the places of labor history and the importance of recognizing and preserving these sites as integral features of the region’s built environment. With the assistance of oral histories conducted with Leonard Riley Jr., a longshoreman and member of the International Longshoremen’s Association, her focus on the historical and contemporary significance of International Longshoremen’s halls in downtown Charleston sheds light on how sites like these have facilitated, and can continue to facilitate, labor and social activism. As Kieran Taylor argues, Charleston has a rich history of protest that fuses traditional labor demands for better wages and working conditions with demands for racial equality and black power. His project examines the efforts of African American workers in recent years to harness those traditions to build worker power at fast food restaurants, in hospitals, and in public services throughout the region.

Promotions and Race: An Analysis of Wage Returns and Job Satisfaction

Abstract: Using a nationally representative sample of workers in the United States, we find evidence to suggest the wage returns to promotions for black males are about 48 per cent of the wage returns that white males earn. As black males earn, on average, significantly less than white males, the gap in the wage returns to promotions creates a larger impact on the absolute returns. Despite the racial gap in the monetary reward to a promotion, we do not find evidence to suggest that black males are less satisfied with their job following a job promotion compared with white males.

Who Buffers Income Losses after Job Displacement? The Role of Alternative Income Sources, the Family, and the State

Abstract: Using survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) this paper analyses to what extent alternative income sources, reactions within the household context, and redistribution by the state attenuate earnings losses after job displacement. Applying propensity score matching and fixed effects estimations, we find high individual earnings losses after job displacement and only limited convergence. Income from self-employment slightly reduces the earnings gap and severance payments buffer losses in the short run. On the household level, we find substantial and rather persistent losses in per capita labour income. We do not find that increased labour supply by other household members contributes to the compensation of the income losses. Most importantly, our results show that redistribution within the tax and transfer system substantially mitigates income losses of displaced workers both in the short and the long run whereas other channels contribute only little.

“Bread and Roses”The Evolution of a Song, Labor Songbooks, and Union Culture

Abstract: This paper traces the history of the song “Bread and Roses” to examine labor culture and the role of song in the labor movement. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, “Bread and Roses” was included in several of the first generation song books produced by unions that reflected an expansive and inclusive labor culture closely connected with the Left. With the ascendance of business unionism and the blacklisting of the Left after the war, labor culture took a heavy blow, and labor songbooks became skeletons of the full-bodied versions they had once been. Unions began to see singing not as part of the process of social change but as a vehicle to bring people together, and songs such as “Bread and Roses” and other more class-based songs were jettisoned in favor of a few labor standards and American sing-along songs. “Bread and Roses” was born anew to embody a central concept in the women’s movement and rode the wave of new music, art, and film that were part of new social movements and new constituencies that challenged business unionism and reshaped union culture in the 1980s.

Skills, Employment, and Labor Market Institutions: Evidence from PIAAC

Abstract: Hanushek et al (2015, ‘Returns to Skills Around the World: Evidence from PIAAC’, European Economic Review 73: 103) find a weak wage–skill relationship in countries with limited skill reward possibilities due to high union density, strict employment protection, and large public sector. If these factors also restrict employment possibilities and the incentives to join the labor market, a possible mirror image of the weak wage–skill relationship is a steeper employment–skill gradient. We use PIAAC data to estimate the employment–skill association, and the results for the whole sample of individuals give some indication that the employment–skill gradient is steeper in countries with strict employment rules and centralized bargaining. Our results for subgroups show imprecisely estimated employment–skill gradients for immigrants. For individuals with poor health conditions and low formal education, the estimated gradient is somewhat higher than in the whole sample in countries with high bargaining coverage, a large public sector, and centralized collective bargaining systems.

Long‐run Asymmetries in Labor Demand: Estimating Wage Elasticities of Labor Demand Using a Fractional Panel Probit Model

Abstract: Models of labor demand usually use cost or production functions to derive profit‐maximizing firm performance. These models often rely on the assumption of symmetrical behavior, i.e., the response to a positive or negative wage shock of the same relative size is identical to the shock, and the estimated labor demand elasticities are the same for increasing and decreasing employment. However, behavioral economics models like loss aversion and endowment effects question the assumption of symmetry in labor demand. In addition, the influence of a labor shortage should be reflected in the investigations. Estimations of Fractional Panel Probit models for three different skill levels are applied to evaluate these findings with a large panel of German establishments. The results indicate asymmetrical structures for long‐run own‐wage elasticities and for some cross‐wage elasticities, putting some doubt on the assumption of strict rationality in labor demand and indicating the influence of labor shortages.