Industrial Relations最新文献

Consumers play an integral role in the labor process of app-based food delivery services through their consumption behaviors and performance ratings of workers. Some therefore see them as a potential ally of workers, whereas others view them as beholden by capital. This quantitative study uses power resource theory and a Rasch model to appraise consumers' understandings and attitudes toward working conditions in this segment of the “gig” economy. Drawing on two surveys of 1820 Australian consumers, we find that consumers are a potential yet heterogenous coalitional power resource who may align with workers on certain entitlements like minimum wages.

We use a survey of privately-owned enterprises spanning the years 2006–2014 and estimate effects of Worker Congresses on worker welfare outcomes. We find that Congresses by themselves had positive effects on all outcomes except for wages. Firms with both a Congress and a union had large and positive effects on all outcomes reflecting the sum of their separate individual effects, suggesting that they were not substitute institutions but rather were complementary in an additive fashion.

How do gig platforms prevent workers from defecting to a competitor? Drawing on 40 original interviews and survey data from 210 ride-hail drivers, the author finds that platform companies calibrate workers' exposure to market risk using gamified reward systems. These rewards protect compliant workers from changes in market conditions, raising the costs of accepting work from a competitor. Yet those who do not comply are “pushed” to the periphery, increasing their market risk. This article illustrates how platform companies can use their “visible hands” to harness and control market forces, shaping worker behavior within and across platforms.

We analyze the impact of outsourcing on the well-being of internal call center employees in the U.S. telecommunications industry. Our findings draw on mixed-methods data. The qualitative findings suggest that internal employees experienced escalating job demands connected to errors by third-party call center vendors and their employees due to additional work and intensified customer frustrations. SEM results show sequential mediation between the time internal employees spent correcting vendor errors, customer mistreatment of employees, emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction, and absenteeism. Employee autonomy over customer-related decisions appeared to help workers manage these job demands and their effects on well-being.

I examine the move from phone to online Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) reporting at the United States Postal Service (USPS) to identify the causal impact of grievance procedure use. This shift led to a large increase in sex–based complaints at the USPS in areas with greater access to broadband. However, I observe no commensurate change in sex gaps related to turnover, hiring, and promotions. My results suggest that a 10% increase in sex–based complaints changes the female share in separations or hires by less than 1%. Increased investment in grievance procedures appears unlikely to significantly influence discrimination outcomes.

Much of the literature on performance-related pay (PRP) and poor health relies on self-reported data, and the relationship is difficult to examine due to confounding variables. We examine the relationship between PRP and three groups of health measures using data from the UKHLS: blood pressure, inflammation markers in blood, and self-reported health. Regressions correcting for self-selection bias and socio-demographic covariates find that PRP contracts are associated with poorer mental health, higher systolic blood pressure, and higher levels of fibrinogen. These findings suggest that firms that use PRP may need to implement policies to mitigate against PRP-related stress.

This article offers the first systematic review of empirical research addressing the question of why employers underpay their employees, from the perspective of employers themselves – a perspective largely missing from scholarly examination of wage law non-compliance. We conducted a comprehensive search of the vast peer-reviewed literature on the topic, identifying studies which collected and analyzed primary data from employers regarding why they breached wage laws. A review of these studies identified four broad types of explanation offered by employers relating to financial viability, perceived consequences of non-compliance, ethical and normative rationalization, and the role of external actors. We propose a research agenda and theoretical framework based on the key empirical, methodological and theoretical gaps which remain in understanding why employers underpay their employees, and discuss how this agenda can inform policy interventions designed to ameliorate the problem.

We analyze the relationship between social gender norms and adolescents' occupational choices by combining regional votes on constitutional amendments on gender equality with job application data from a large job board for apprenticeships. The results show that adolescent males in regions with stronger traditional social gender norms are more likely to apply for typically male occupations. This finding does not hold for females, suggesting that incentivizing men to break the norms and choose gender-atypical occupations (e.g., in healthcare) can be even more effective in accelerating advancement toward gender equality in the labor market than incentivizing women to choose STEM occupations.

We estimate that, between 2000 and 2020, the average initial monthly retirement benefit for teachers retiring with 30 years of service has been reduced by 11.2%, though the decline in benefits varies substantially across the states (the median reduction in the initial benefit was 1.9%). We also find that plans covering only teachers, and plans in which teachers are not in Social Security, have made smaller reductions in the generosity of their pension benefits.

Do employers form higher-quality matches at a lower cost when they hire via websites such as corporate websites, specialized sites, generalist sites, or the site of the public employment service (PES)? Based on a survey of French establishments, we find that employers who rely on the Internet to look for candidates employ more search channels and selection methods. Of Internet users, the employers who recruit via the PES website consider their match to be less satisfying, whereas those who hire via the company website obtain better matches. There is no relationship between the vacancy duration and the recruitment channel.