Are we living in an age of permanent austerity? In this insightful book, Bent Greve provides a comprehensive empirical analysis of welfare states since 2000, exploring the ways by which austerity can be measured and quantified. Through detailed comparative analysis between states, this book dissects the implementation of economic retrenchment, its extent and impact in Europe.
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Telework in the 21st Century
An Evolutionary Perspective
Edited by Jon C. Messenger
Technological developments have enabled a dramatic expansion and also an evolution of telework, broadly defined as using ICTs to perform work from outside of an employer’s premises. This volume offers a new conceptual framework explaining the evolution of telework over four decades. It reviews national experiences from Argentina, Brazil, India, Japan, the United States, and ten EU countries regarding the development of telework, its various forms and effects. It also analyses large-scale surveys and company case studies regarding the incidence of telework and its effects on working time, work-life balance, occupational health and well-being, and individual and organizational performance.
Edited by Gregor Gall
Providing a thorough overview of the political nature and dynamics of the world of work, labour and employment, this timely Handbook draws together an interdisciplinary range of top contributors to explore the interdependent relationship between politics and labour, work and employment. The Handbook explores the purpose, roles, rights and powers of employers and management, workers and unions, states and governments in the age of globalised neo-liberalism.
Edited by Keith Townsend, Kenneth Cafferkey, Aoife M. McDermott and Tony Dundon
This Elgar Introduction provides an overview of some of the key theories that inform human resource management and employment relations as a field of study.
Dependent Self-Employment
Theory, Practice and Policy
Colin C. Williams and Ioana A. Horodnic
Dependent self-employment is widely perceived as a rapidly growing form of precarious work conducted by marginalised lower-skilled workers subcontracted by large corporations. Unpacking a comprehensive survey of 35 European countries, Colin C. Williams and Ioana Alexandra Horodnic map the lived realities of the distribution and characteristics of dependent self-employment to challenge this broad and erroneous perception.
Precarious Work
The Challenge for Labour Law in Europe
Edited by Jeff Kenner, Izabela Florczak and Marta Otto
This discerning book provides a wide-ranging comparative analysis of the legal and social policy challenges posed by the spread of different forms of precarious work in Europe, with various social models in force and a growing ‘gig economy’ workforce. It not only considers the theoretical foundations of the concept of precarious work, but also offers invaluable insight into the potential methods of addressing this phenomenon through labour regulation and case law at EU and national level.
Self-Employment as Precarious Work
A European Perspective
Wieteke Conen and Joop Schippers
Since the 1970s the long term decline in self-employment has slowed – and even reversed in some countries – and the prospect of ‘being your own boss’ is increasingly topical in the discourse of both the general public and within academia. Traditionally, self-employment has been associated with independent entrepreneurship, but increasingly it has become a form of precarious work. This book utilises evidence-based information to address both the current and future challenges of this trend as the nature of self-employment changes, as well as to demonstrate where, when and why self-employment has emerged as precarious work in Europe.
The Challenges of Self-Employment in Europe
Status, Social Protection and Collective Representation
Edited by Renata Semenza and François Pichault
This book aims at explaining the variance in legal status, working conditions, social protection and collective representation of self-employed professionals across Europe. Despite considerable diversity, the authors observe three strategic models of mobilisation: the provision of services; advocacy, lobbying and the political role; and the extension of collective bargaining. They highlight the new urgent challenges that have emerged including the implementation of universal social protection schemes, active labour market policies likely to support sustainable self-employment, and the renewal of social dialogue through bottom-up organisations to extend the collective representation of project-based professionals.
New Parents in Europe
Work-Care Practices, Gender Norms and Family Policies
Edited by Daniela Grunow and Marie Evertsson
This innovative book explores the different ways in which dual-earner couples in contemporary welfare states plan for, realize and justify their divisions of work and care during the transition to parenthood. Providing a unique comparative, longitudinal and qualitative analysis of new parents in eight European countries, this timely book explicitly locates couples’ beliefs and negotiations in the wider context of national institutional structures.
Social Security Outside the Realm of the Employment Contract
Informal Work and Employee-like Workers
Edited by Mies Westerveld and Marius Olivier
All over the world countries face the challenge of inadequate social security coverage for workers without an employment contact. In countries of the global south, this phenomenon is a natural consequence of large informal economies. Countries in the global north increasingly witness the same issue, due to growing labour market flexibility (flex contracts, dependent self-employment, digitization of labour). In this book authors from both hemispheres exchange insights, experiments and practices with the intention of finding better ways to deal with the social security challenges facing workers.