Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1177/10242589221149506
Ricardo M Buendia Esteban
This article discusses how recent European Commission and European Parliament initiatives have taken two paths to protect platform workers from the domination of platforms and norms: clarifying who should have access to labour rights and removing the applicability of EU competition law. It will become clear that all the initiatives of both kinds face significant challenges, hampering their effectiveness in ensuring freedom from domination for platform workers. This article concludes by arguing that the best way to tackle domination of platform workers in the EU would be to put the idea of inequality of bargaining power at the centre of the analysis, making policy initiatives less dependent on elusive definitions and expanding the reach of labour law.
{"title":"Examining recent initiatives to ensure labour rights for platform workers in the European Union to tackle the problem of domination","authors":"Ricardo M Buendia Esteban","doi":"10.1177/10242589221149506","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221149506","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses how recent European Commission and European Parliament initiatives have taken two paths to protect platform workers from the domination of platforms and norms: clarifying who should have access to labour rights and removing the applicability of EU competition law. It will become clear that all the initiatives of both kinds face significant challenges, hampering their effectiveness in ensuring freedom from domination for platform workers. This article concludes by arguing that the best way to tackle domination of platform workers in the EU would be to put the idea of inequality of bargaining power at the centre of the analysis, making policy initiatives less dependent on elusive definitions and expanding the reach of labour law.","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":"25 1","pages":"475 - 487"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76763449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1177/10242589221149513
Anke Hassel
The Directive on fair and adequate minimum wages represents a paradigm shift in EU economic governance. It marks a profound reorientation away from an economic growth strategy that priori-tises liberalisation of labour markets and decentralisation of collective bargaining, which has dom-inated the policy orientation of most EU Member States and the European Commission for at least 20 years. The Directive reinforces the governance and the level of statutory minimum wages in EU Member States. In a second step, the Directive requests that Member States support collective bargaining and find concrete measures to increase bargaining coverage for those countries where coverage is less than 80 per cent. This second aspect is just as relevant to the Directive and even more ambitious than the first. While statutory minimum wages are in the control of governments, collective bargaining is based on voluntary negotiations between trade unions and employers’ associations. The role of governments and public policy towards collective bargaining is limited and only indirect. In this comment I will focus on the latter aspect of increasing collective bargaining coverage, but will argue first that the wider picture of a changing EU growth strategy is important to understand the significance of the shift. I will, secondly, discuss ways of strengthening collective bargaining, with a focus on the German case.
{"title":"Round Table. Mission impossible? How to increase collective bargaining coverage in Germany and the EU","authors":"Anke Hassel","doi":"10.1177/10242589221149513","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221149513","url":null,"abstract":"The Directive on fair and adequate minimum wages represents a paradigm shift in EU economic governance. It marks a profound reorientation away from an economic growth strategy that priori-tises liberalisation of labour markets and decentralisation of collective bargaining, which has dom-inated the policy orientation of most EU Member States and the European Commission for at least 20 years. The Directive reinforces the governance and the level of statutory minimum wages in EU Member States. In a second step, the Directive requests that Member States support collective bargaining and find concrete measures to increase bargaining coverage for those countries where coverage is less than 80 per cent. This second aspect is just as relevant to the Directive and even more ambitious than the first. While statutory minimum wages are in the control of governments, collective bargaining is based on voluntary negotiations between trade unions and employers’ associations. The role of governments and public policy towards collective bargaining is limited and only indirect. In this comment I will focus on the latter aspect of increasing collective bargaining coverage, but will argue first that the wider picture of a changing EU growth strategy is important to understand the significance of the shift. I will, secondly, discuss ways of strengthening collective bargaining, with a focus on the German case.","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":"110 1","pages":"491 - 497"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76068717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1177/10242589221149512
Lucio Baccaro, M. Blyth, J. Pontusson
existential
存在主义
{"title":"How should we think about modern capitalism? A growth models approach","authors":"Lucio Baccaro, M. Blyth, J. Pontusson","doi":"10.1177/10242589221149512","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221149512","url":null,"abstract":"existential","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":"35 1","pages":"505 - 513"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85088850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-28DOI: 10.1177/10242589221130597
Yvonne Lott, C. Kelliher, Heejung Chung
In recent decades we have seen significant and varied changes in the world of work. Most prominent among these is the diminishing prevalence of the standard employment relationship. These changes challenge traditional notions of what constitute ‘employment’, ‘employers’, ‘employees’, the ‘workplace’ and the ‘working day’. Many current survey instruments are still based on the concept of the standard employment relationship, however. This article illustrates some limitations of existing conceptualisations and definitions of flexible work arrangements and of the instruments used to measure them in major surveys. It also suggests ways of tackling these limitations. The aim of highlighting potential limitations of existing survey instruments is to enable data users to be more reflective about what the results actually do and do not report, and to encourage survey designers to modify existing instruments and develop new instruments to better capture contemporary realities, including multiple jobholding and internet and platform work.
{"title":"Reflecting the changing world of work? A critique of existing survey measures and a proposal for capturing new ways of working","authors":"Yvonne Lott, C. Kelliher, Heejung Chung","doi":"10.1177/10242589221130597","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221130597","url":null,"abstract":"In recent decades we have seen significant and varied changes in the world of work. Most prominent among these is the diminishing prevalence of the standard employment relationship. These changes challenge traditional notions of what constitute ‘employment’, ‘employers’, ‘employees’, the ‘workplace’ and the ‘working day’. Many current survey instruments are still based on the concept of the standard employment relationship, however. This article illustrates some limitations of existing conceptualisations and definitions of flexible work arrangements and of the instruments used to measure them in major surveys. It also suggests ways of tackling these limitations. The aim of highlighting potential limitations of existing survey instruments is to enable data users to be more reflective about what the results actually do and do not report, and to encourage survey designers to modify existing instruments and develop new instruments to better capture contemporary realities, including multiple jobholding and internet and platform work.","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":"7 1","pages":"457 - 473"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89713752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-17DOI: 10.1177/10242589221129505
Sophie Rosenbohm, Jennifer Kuebart
Ways of strengthening workers’ voice within multinational companies, especially with regard to cross-border restructuring, have been much discussed in recent years. Research shows that European Works Councils (EWCs) are not always informed and consulted in a timely or comprehensive manner, limiting and sometimes entirely preventing employee representatives from exercising early and coordinated influence at transnational level. Against this backdrop, one might ask whether access to bodies such as supervisory and administrative boards, in which economic and strategic decisions are taken, can make a difference to transnational employee representation. Little is known, however, about how institutions for transnational information and consultation are linked to board-level employee representation. This article aims to fill this research gap by analysing the different modes of horizontal articulation between SE Works Councils and board-level employee representation within European Companies (Societas Europaea). Building on evidence from case studies, we identify a number of different modes of articulation and highlight how articulation rests mainly on and is sustained by the overlapping roles of the individuals involved and the holding of multiple mandates.
{"title":"Can access to company boards improve transnational employee representation? Insights from employee representation in European Companies","authors":"Sophie Rosenbohm, Jennifer Kuebart","doi":"10.1177/10242589221129505","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221129505","url":null,"abstract":"Ways of strengthening workers’ voice within multinational companies, especially with regard to cross-border restructuring, have been much discussed in recent years. Research shows that European Works Councils (EWCs) are not always informed and consulted in a timely or comprehensive manner, limiting and sometimes entirely preventing employee representatives from exercising early and coordinated influence at transnational level. Against this backdrop, one might ask whether access to bodies such as supervisory and administrative boards, in which economic and strategic decisions are taken, can make a difference to transnational employee representation. Little is known, however, about how institutions for transnational information and consultation are linked to board-level employee representation. This article aims to fill this research gap by analysing the different modes of horizontal articulation between SE Works Councils and board-level employee representation within European Companies (Societas Europaea). Building on evidence from case studies, we identify a number of different modes of articulation and highlight how articulation rests mainly on and is sustained by the overlapping roles of the individuals involved and the holding of multiple mandates.","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":"3 1","pages":"423 - 440"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87198847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-20DOI: 10.1177/10242589221123623
Élodie Béthoux
Is there such a thing as a European social space? If so, can we study it in terms of class analysis? What social inequalities would such a study reveal? French sociologists Cédric Hugrée, Étienne Penissat and Alexis Spire answer these questions in a synthetic and stimulating book based on three main assertions. Class distinctions matter; they play differently when considered on a European scale; and these differences are a key tool in understanding political conflict in and about Europe. Putting the European social space and its main divides at the heart of their project the authors take up a threefold methodological, sociological and political challenge. The book stands out first of all in terms of its innovative research design. Building on the vast international literature on class analysis – through works by Pierre Bourdieu, John H Goldthorpe, Mike Savage, David B Grusky or Daniel Oesch, to name but a few – the authors classify social classes and measure social inequalities in a multi-dimensional way that includes not only working but also living conditions. The book best illustrates the value of using the recent European SocioEconomic Groups (ESEG) classification to define social classes. Thanks to principal component analysis and clustering, the authors divide the European social space into three main classes – the working class, the middle class and the dominant class – whose characteristics and evolutions over the past decade are tracked down in the course of the book. Data on people in work (aged 25 to 65) are gathered and analysed from four combined Europe-wide surveys: the Labour Force Survey (LFS 2011 and 2014), the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC 2006 and 2014) and the Adult Education Survey (AES 2011) from Eurostat, as well as Eurofound’s European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS 2015). The pros and cons of these various tools and surveys are briefly but usefully discussed in the introduction and the appendixes. Therefore the book is first a welcome invitation to further develop and discuss quantitative analyses of class structure at the European level. Then, mapping social classes and social inequalities in Europe represents a sociological challenge. The book draws a detailed and comprehensive portrait of Europeans, which will undoubtedly provide food for thought for any European comparative study. On this empirical foundation, the authors combine their own statistical results with concrete and telling examples taken from a variety of case studies (on Denmark, France, Greece, Hungary, Portugal, Romania, etc.) thus bringing together works that rarely discuss each other. In Chapters 1 to 3, the reader meets first of all the ‘weakened working class’, whose members share both social and economic vulnerability and are in competition with each other at the European level. Then comes the disparate ‘middle class’, disparate because of its diverse employment statuses, the gendered structure of occupations and the 11236
{"title":"Book Review: Social Class in Europe. New Inequalities in the Old World","authors":"Élodie Béthoux","doi":"10.1177/10242589221123623","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221123623","url":null,"abstract":"Is there such a thing as a European social space? If so, can we study it in terms of class analysis? What social inequalities would such a study reveal? French sociologists Cédric Hugrée, Étienne Penissat and Alexis Spire answer these questions in a synthetic and stimulating book based on three main assertions. Class distinctions matter; they play differently when considered on a European scale; and these differences are a key tool in understanding political conflict in and about Europe. Putting the European social space and its main divides at the heart of their project the authors take up a threefold methodological, sociological and political challenge. The book stands out first of all in terms of its innovative research design. Building on the vast international literature on class analysis – through works by Pierre Bourdieu, John H Goldthorpe, Mike Savage, David B Grusky or Daniel Oesch, to name but a few – the authors classify social classes and measure social inequalities in a multi-dimensional way that includes not only working but also living conditions. The book best illustrates the value of using the recent European SocioEconomic Groups (ESEG) classification to define social classes. Thanks to principal component analysis and clustering, the authors divide the European social space into three main classes – the working class, the middle class and the dominant class – whose characteristics and evolutions over the past decade are tracked down in the course of the book. Data on people in work (aged 25 to 65) are gathered and analysed from four combined Europe-wide surveys: the Labour Force Survey (LFS 2011 and 2014), the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC 2006 and 2014) and the Adult Education Survey (AES 2011) from Eurostat, as well as Eurofound’s European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS 2015). The pros and cons of these various tools and surveys are briefly but usefully discussed in the introduction and the appendixes. Therefore the book is first a welcome invitation to further develop and discuss quantitative analyses of class structure at the European level. Then, mapping social classes and social inequalities in Europe represents a sociological challenge. The book draws a detailed and comprehensive portrait of Europeans, which will undoubtedly provide food for thought for any European comparative study. On this empirical foundation, the authors combine their own statistical results with concrete and telling examples taken from a variety of case studies (on Denmark, France, Greece, Hungary, Portugal, Romania, etc.) thus bringing together works that rarely discuss each other. In Chapters 1 to 3, the reader meets first of all the ‘weakened working class’, whose members share both social and economic vulnerability and are in competition with each other at the European level. Then comes the disparate ‘middle class’, disparate because of its diverse employment statuses, the gendered structure of occupations and the 11236","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":"15 1","pages":"515 - 516"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87834925","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1177/10242589221119022
Nina Pološki Vokić, Maja Klindžić
While research on managing labour relations in multinational companies (MNCs) has made great strides in recent years, large-scale quantitative comparisons of these companies’ behaviour and the extent to which this behaviour is shaped by country-of-origin and country-of-operations institutional effects are still in short supply. In this article we analyse organised labour activities in 18 countries via a sample of 1872 private organisations – 874 MNCs and 998 domestic organisations – using the Cranet survey database. Research results imply a weaker position of organised labour in MNCs than in domestic private organisations. MNCs from the Anglo-Saxon and Corporatist labour relations environment were found to adapt their labour relations practices to the local setting to a significant extent, while Mediterranean MNCs proved less adaptable. They all recognised organised labour endeavours to a greater extent when required, yet reduced their recognition of these when this was acceptable from a local labour relations environment perspective, implying opportunistic behaviour.
{"title":"The country-of-origin and country-of-operations effect on organised labour in multinational companies – exploring the role of labour relations models","authors":"Nina Pološki Vokić, Maja Klindžić","doi":"10.1177/10242589221119022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221119022","url":null,"abstract":"While research on managing labour relations in multinational companies (MNCs) has made great strides in recent years, large-scale quantitative comparisons of these companies’ behaviour and the extent to which this behaviour is shaped by country-of-origin and country-of-operations institutional effects are still in short supply. In this article we analyse organised labour activities in 18 countries via a sample of 1872 private organisations – 874 MNCs and 998 domestic organisations – using the Cranet survey database. Research results imply a weaker position of organised labour in MNCs than in domestic private organisations. MNCs from the Anglo-Saxon and Corporatist labour relations environment were found to adapt their labour relations practices to the local setting to a significant extent, while Mediterranean MNCs proved less adaptable. They all recognised organised labour endeavours to a greater extent when required, yet reduced their recognition of these when this was acceptable from a local labour relations environment perspective, implying opportunistic behaviour.","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":"77 ","pages":"409 - 422"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72496074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-01DOI: 10.1177/10242589221123774
Holm-Detlev Köhler
Reading a book on the ‘gig economy’ in which Karl Marx is the most frequent reference may seem strange, but Callum Cant’s programmatic approach precisely analyses in Marxist terms the new platform business model in the context of capitalist development since the 19th century and the history of class struggle. The labour movement’s multiple attempts during the past two centuries to safeguard the dignity of work against exploitation and abuse on the part of capital have entered a new period, exemplified by the struggles of so-called ‘riders’ against the often invisible platform managements. The platform economy has emerged as a growing business model in the context of the digitalisation of our economies. In a recent ETUI survey study in 14 EU countries in 2021 almost 50 million Europeans reported using the Internet as a source of income. The level of such income tends to be low, however, which means that platform work can function only as a side job, providing supplementary income (Piasna et al., 2022). Around 12 million people (4.3 per cent of working-age adults) have worked through a digital labour platform in the past year, while 3 million (1.1 per cent) are more intense users for whom platform work represents a significant part of their working lives. The real impact of platform work is still fairly marginal, but its potential in the future and the spillover of its working practices to other sectors are considered to be very significant. The innovation and growth potential of this emerging digital business model have spawned a substantial literature on its legal and political aspects, and the European Commission is currently preparing a Directive on platform work. The generally unexpected mobilisations and collective actions of food delivery platform workers have provoked growing interest among labour lawyers and industrial relations scholars. There is still a gap in the literature when it comes to detailed insider perspectives, however, and the present study is aimed at closing it. Former Deliveroo worker and PhD candidate at the University of West London Callum Cant provides us with very interesting insights and reflections on the working conditions, workforce composition, collective organisation and social context of food delivery workers in the United Kingdom. Cant worked for Deliveroo in Brighton for eight months, participating in a union branch and several strikes and protests for better pay and working conditions. He describes in detail the working of the app, payment conditions, relationships among the couriers, the restaurants involved and bike maintenance, among other things. Deliveroo work is high-stress and high-risk, with riders competing for orders by riding in unsafe ways to shave a few seconds under pressure from the per-drop piece-wage system. Deliveroo workers are not unorganised, but have a WhatsApp 1123774 TRS0010.1177/10242589221123774TransferBook Reviews research-article2022
读一本关于“零工经济”的书，其中卡尔·马克思是最经常引用的，这可能看起来很奇怪，但卡勒姆·坎特的程序化方法精确地分析了马克思主义术语中自19世纪以来资本主义发展和阶级斗争历史背景下的新平台商业模式。在过去的两个世纪里，工人运动多次尝试保护工作的尊严，反对资本的剥削和虐待，现在已经进入了一个新的时期，所谓的“骑手”反对经常看不见的平台管理的斗争就是一个例子。在经济数字化的背景下，平台经济已经成为一种不断发展的商业模式。在欧洲互联网协会最近对14个欧盟国家进行的一项调查研究中，近5000万欧洲人报告称，他们将互联网作为一种收入来源。然而，这种收入水平往往较低，这意味着平台工作只能作为一种副业，提供补充收入(Piasna et al.， 2022)。在过去的一年里，大约有1200万人(占工作年龄成年人的4.3%)通过数字劳动平台工作，而300万人(1.1%)是更密集的用户，平台工作是他们工作生活的重要组成部分。平台工作的实际影响仍然相当小，但其未来的潜力及其工作实践对其他部门的溢出效应被认为是非常重要的。这种新兴数字商业模式的创新和增长潜力已经催生了大量关于其法律和政治方面的文献，欧盟委员会目前正在准备一项关于平台工作的指令。外卖平台工人普遍出人意料的动员和集体行动，引起了劳工律师和劳资关系学者越来越大的兴趣。然而，当涉及到详细的内幕观点时，文献中仍然存在空白，而本研究旨在弥补这一空白。前外卖工人和西伦敦大学的博士候选人卡勒姆·坎特为我们提供了关于英国外卖工人的工作条件、劳动力构成、集体组织和社会背景的非常有趣的见解和思考。坎特在布莱顿为Deliveroo工作了8个月，参加了一个工会分支机构和几次罢工和抗议，要求提高工资和工作条件。他详细描述了应用程序的运作、支付条件、快递员之间的关系、涉及的餐馆和自行车维护等。快递工作压力大、风险高，在按件计酬制度的压力下，骑手们为了争抢订单，不惜以不安全的方式骑行，以节省几秒钟的时间。Deliveroo员工并非无组织，但有WhatsApp 1123774 TRS0010.1177/10242589221123774TransferBook Reviews研究文章2022
{"title":"Book Review: Riding for Deliveroo: Resistance in the New Economy","authors":"Holm-Detlev Köhler","doi":"10.1177/10242589221123774","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221123774","url":null,"abstract":"Reading a book on the ‘gig economy’ in which Karl Marx is the most frequent reference may seem strange, but Callum Cant’s programmatic approach precisely analyses in Marxist terms the new platform business model in the context of capitalist development since the 19th century and the history of class struggle. The labour movement’s multiple attempts during the past two centuries to safeguard the dignity of work against exploitation and abuse on the part of capital have entered a new period, exemplified by the struggles of so-called ‘riders’ against the often invisible platform managements. The platform economy has emerged as a growing business model in the context of the digitalisation of our economies. In a recent ETUI survey study in 14 EU countries in 2021 almost 50 million Europeans reported using the Internet as a source of income. The level of such income tends to be low, however, which means that platform work can function only as a side job, providing supplementary income (Piasna et al., 2022). Around 12 million people (4.3 per cent of working-age adults) have worked through a digital labour platform in the past year, while 3 million (1.1 per cent) are more intense users for whom platform work represents a significant part of their working lives. The real impact of platform work is still fairly marginal, but its potential in the future and the spillover of its working practices to other sectors are considered to be very significant. The innovation and growth potential of this emerging digital business model have spawned a substantial literature on its legal and political aspects, and the European Commission is currently preparing a Directive on platform work. The generally unexpected mobilisations and collective actions of food delivery platform workers have provoked growing interest among labour lawyers and industrial relations scholars. There is still a gap in the literature when it comes to detailed insider perspectives, however, and the present study is aimed at closing it. Former Deliveroo worker and PhD candidate at the University of West London Callum Cant provides us with very interesting insights and reflections on the working conditions, workforce composition, collective organisation and social context of food delivery workers in the United Kingdom. Cant worked for Deliveroo in Brighton for eight months, participating in a union branch and several strikes and protests for better pay and working conditions. He describes in detail the working of the app, payment conditions, relationships among the couriers, the restaurants involved and bike maintenance, among other things. Deliveroo work is high-stress and high-risk, with riders competing for orders by riding in unsafe ways to shave a few seconds under pressure from the per-drop piece-wage system. Deliveroo workers are not unorganised, but have a WhatsApp 1123774 TRS0010.1177/10242589221123774TransferBook Reviews research-article2022","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":"24 1","pages":"389 - 391"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85919674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-01DOI: 10.1177/10242589221127838
Dunja Krause, Dimitris Stevis, K. Hujo, Edouard Morena
By combining environmental and social objectives in order to address climate change and other environmental challenges, ‘just transitions’ have the potential to accelerate low-carbon transitions in an inclusive and equitable manner. More broadly, by strengthening an egalitarian and ecological public sphere that protects workers’ rights and the rights of nature, just transitions can contribute to a new eco-social contract for both people and planet, guaranteeing full access to social rights and a viable future for all. But like other strategies, just transitions vary in their ambition and thus their eco-social visions. This article builds on the analytical framework developed by the Just Transition Research Collaborative to comparatively assess different just transition pathways in Germany, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United States in the context of different types of welfare state and economic structure. The comparison may help stakeholders to evaluate different just transition policies according to contextual factors and transformative potential.
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Pub Date : 2022-08-01DOI: 10.1177/10242589221132781
Béla Galgóczi, P. Pochet
By the time of the COP21 Paris Accord in 2015, climate emergency was being recognised as a top policy priority by more and more policy-makers and the restructuring process it entails was seen as the main challenge of the coming decades. The welfare state that emerged in the context of a fossil fuel-based extractive economic model, based on a belief in sustained growth, cannot remain unaffected by the ongoing transition to a net-zero economy (Gough et al., 2008). Nevertheless, the different possible linkages between the welfare state and climate and environmental issues largely remain unexplored. This is what motivated this special issue. This contrasts, for example, with the issue of employment and jobs in respect of both quantity (OECD, 2021) and quality (Piasna et al., 2019), on which many global macroeconomic (Nguyen et al., 2022) and sectoral studies (Valero et al., 2021) exist. The main approach is to try to define what green jobs are and what employment creation or destruction is to be expected during the green transition (Bowen et al., 2018). Nothing similar has yet been done for the welfare state and its different dimensions (social insurance, social assistance, health and safety and so on) (Koch et al., 2016), or certainly not involving sophisticated quantitative measurements. But although for the moment there is still relatively little literature on the topic – ‘sustainable welfare’ being one important narrative (Büchs and Koch, 2017), there is a growing academic community among welfare state specialists who are interested in environmental issues. A crude indicator could be the growing number of ‘green’ thematic streams at the annual ESPAnet conferences. At the same time, the socio-ecological nexus is even more overlooked by environmental scholars. Different groups of academics composed of economists, sociologists and political scientists have showed interest, but they are not really engaging in a transversal dialogue between disciplines or countries, not to mention a trans-European dialogue. From a welfare state perspective, a first approach was to analyse the possible concordance or lack of it between the welfare state regimes and the environmental clusters. In other words, could 1132781 TRS0010.1177/10242589221132781TransferGalgóczi and Pochet research-article2022
{"title":"Introduction. Welfare states confronted by the challenges of climate change: a short review of the issues and possible impacts","authors":"Béla Galgóczi, P. Pochet","doi":"10.1177/10242589221132781","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221132781","url":null,"abstract":"By the time of the COP21 Paris Accord in 2015, climate emergency was being recognised as a top policy priority by more and more policy-makers and the restructuring process it entails was seen as the main challenge of the coming decades. The welfare state that emerged in the context of a fossil fuel-based extractive economic model, based on a belief in sustained growth, cannot remain unaffected by the ongoing transition to a net-zero economy (Gough et al., 2008). Nevertheless, the different possible linkages between the welfare state and climate and environmental issues largely remain unexplored. This is what motivated this special issue. This contrasts, for example, with the issue of employment and jobs in respect of both quantity (OECD, 2021) and quality (Piasna et al., 2019), on which many global macroeconomic (Nguyen et al., 2022) and sectoral studies (Valero et al., 2021) exist. The main approach is to try to define what green jobs are and what employment creation or destruction is to be expected during the green transition (Bowen et al., 2018). Nothing similar has yet been done for the welfare state and its different dimensions (social insurance, social assistance, health and safety and so on) (Koch et al., 2016), or certainly not involving sophisticated quantitative measurements. But although for the moment there is still relatively little literature on the topic – ‘sustainable welfare’ being one important narrative (Büchs and Koch, 2017), there is a growing academic community among welfare state specialists who are interested in environmental issues. A crude indicator could be the growing number of ‘green’ thematic streams at the annual ESPAnet conferences. At the same time, the socio-ecological nexus is even more overlooked by environmental scholars. Different groups of academics composed of economists, sociologists and political scientists have showed interest, but they are not really engaging in a transversal dialogue between disciplines or countries, not to mention a trans-European dialogue. From a welfare state perspective, a first approach was to analyse the possible concordance or lack of it between the welfare state regimes and the environmental clusters. In other words, could 1132781 TRS0010.1177/10242589221132781TransferGalgóczi and Pochet research-article2022","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":"76 1","pages":"307 - 316"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78046543","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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