International Labour Review最新文献

Whereas the literature on gender disparities in cases of large-scale corporate restructuring focuses on discrimination in top-down processes, this article analyses why employee self-selection continues to yield gender inequalities. Based on the case study of an airline company and using mixed methods, the results indicate that men are more likely to accept voluntary redundancy and less likely to switch to subsidized part-time work. While women work part-time mostly to improve their work–life balance, men appear to be more sensitive to financial incentives and more prepared to retrain in a secondary activity. These findings suggest that restructuring amplifies women's existing labour market vulnerabilities, even under voluntary redundancy plans.

Despite recent increases in educational attainment among Arab Palestinian women in Israel, their labour force participation rates continue to be below those of Jewish women. This study draws on data from the Israeli Labour Force Survey and Social Survey covering the period 1995–2016 to investigate whether this pattern can be explained by socio-economic and demographic factors, level of religiosity, human capital assets, family structure and related public policies, and early retirement. All these factors are found to affect the probability of Arab Palestinian women participating in the labour market, raising implications for labour market policies.

Considering the COVID-19 pandemic as an exogenous shock, this article attempts to determine whether unions adjusted wages and working hours to protect their members during the economic crisis that it triggered. Based on 2018–20 Korean panel data, the author finds that, during the pandemic, union members were 1.9 times more likely to keep their jobs than non-union members. However, no significant difference is found between the wage growth in the two sectors, although union members decreased their working hours more than nonunion members. The results therefore suggest that unions provided employment protection during this period by reducing working hours, not wages.

This article examines legal segmentation in five Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay) by drawing on the employment regulation typology developed by Dingeldey et al. (2022), based on three functions – standard-setting, privileging and equalizing. The author distinguishes between three factors of inequality and precarity: lack of coverage (namely of self-employed workers), discrimination and the circumvention of standards. Lack of enforcement, together with an unfavourable economic environment, results in informality. The analysis identifies different forms and levels of protection under standard and non-standard employment, as well as compensatory rules and other regulations seeking to eliminate inequality.

Since the first minimum wage legislation was introduced in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States in the early 1900s, minimum wage regulation has attracted controversy. Opponents of minimum wages use market theory to defend their position, while supporters justify state intervention based on principles of equity and social good. This article examines how these two ideological positions have influenced the fixing of wages, and the ensuing results. As little comparative research exists on the origins, evolution and current systems of minimum wage regulation in the three countries, this article aims to address the gap in the literature.

Despite the striking presence in many developing economies of the two distinctive features of high levels of income inequality and significant informal employment, the literature addressing the relationship between these features is scarce, especially for Latin America. In this paper, we highlight the ambiguous relationship between inequality and informality by identifying the various factors that may affect it. We then empirically test this relationship using panel data pertaining to Latin America between 1990–2018. In these context-specific conditions, our findings reveal a positive association between formalization in the labour market and labour income equality.