In the absence of federal legislation, each state in the United States has its own policies regarding family leave, job protection for women and childcare. No wonder working mothers encounter such a significant disparity when it comes to childcare resources in America! Whereas conservative states like Nebraska offer affordable, readily available, and high quality childcare, progressive states that advocate for women's economic and political power, like California, have expensive childcare, shorter school days, and mothers who are more likely to work part-time or drop out of the labor market altogether to be available for their children. In Motherlands, Leah Ruppanner cogently argues that states should look to each other to fill their policy voids. She provides suggestions and solutions for policy makers interested in supporting working families. Whether a woman lives in a state with stronger childcare or gender empowerment regimes, at stake is mothers' financial dependence on their partners. Ruppanner advocates for reducing the institutional barriers mothers face when re-entering the workforce. As a result, women would have greater autonomy in making employment decisions following childbirth.

In a time of too many graduates for too few jobs, and in a context where applicants have similar levels of educational capital, what other factors influence graduate career trajectories? Based on the life history interviews of graduates and framed through a Bourdieusian sociological lens, Culture, Capitals and Graduate Futures explores the continuing role that social class as well as cultural and social capitals have on both the aspirations and expectations towards, and the trajectories within, the graduate labour market. Framed within the current context of increasing levels of university graduates and the falling numbers of graduate positions available in the UK labour market, this book provides a critical examination of the supposedly linear and meritocratic relationship between higher education and graduate employment proposed by official discourses from government at both local and national levels. Through a critical engagement with the empirical findings, Culture, Capitals and Graduate Futures asks important questions for the effective continuation of the widening participation agenda. This timely book will be of interest to higher education professionals working within widening participation policy and higher education policy.

Despite international and national guarantees of equal rights, there remains a great deal to be done to achieve global employment equality for individuals with disabilities. In OECD countries, the employment rate of persons with disabilities was just over 40%, compared to 75% for persons without a disability; in many low- and middle-income countries, the employment rates are even lower. There are numerous reasons why persons with disabilities fare poorly in the labor market; Disability and Equity at Work is the first book to document what can be done to improve this imbalance. Chapters in this volume address all relevant facets of this topic and include: * Extensive examination of the factors contributing to inequitable access to work among persons with disability * Analysis of the economic benefits of increasing employment equity * Successful employment strategies at every stage of a worker's career * Evidence-based recommendations and in-depth case studies of innovative policies and programs around the world Chapter contributors include leaders from international organizations, government, civil society, and academia, including experts from UN agencies, leaders in nongovernmental advocacy and research organizations, and senior academics in the field. Disability and Equity at Work fills a needed gap that will appeal to those interested in and engaged in public policy, global health, equal rights, business, labor, and other fields.

This is the first volume in a new, definitive, seven-volume edition of the works of Michal Kalecki, one of the twentieth century's most distinguished economists. Kalecki was one of the three contemporary economists to arrive at the conclusions publicized by Keynes, although Kalecki arguably presented these views even earlier than Keynes. Volume I contains Kalecki's writings on the theory of the business cycle and full employment. His seminal Essay on the Business Cycle Theory is preceded by his earlier theoretical studies and followed by publications which developed and defended its main concepts and ideas. This volume also contains the 1939 book Essays in the Theory of Economic Fluctuations, the work which established his reputation. Also included are papers documenting his confrontation with Keynes's General Theory, including Kalecki's review of that work, and his various studies on the theory and policies relating to full employment, both the well known `Political Aspects of Full Employment' and `Three Ways to Full Employment', and those which have unfairly received less attention. The editorial comments and annexes at the end of the volume, besides giving valuable information on the background to the main texts, include illuminating exchanges of correspondence between Kalecki and Keynes, Joan Robinson, and others.

Unemployment in Theory and Practice examines the effectiveness of current policies in the battle against unemployment. It uses a variety of country case studies to analyse the range of potential causes of and cures for unemployment and analyses the complex nature of labour markets. This volume surveys the policy options and prescribes a mix of both macro and microeconomic policies to combat unemployment effectively. The contributors address the issue of policy targeted groups, including self-employed and older workers, and offer a comprehensive survey of key empirical findings. Issues considered include the rising number of self-employed in Australia and the labour market prospects for the aged in Germany. Particular labour market policies are discussed including the role of training and concerted international action through social democratic and trade union collaboration. The nature of unemployment in countries characterized by economic and social transformation, such as Bulgaria and Poland, is also analysed in detail. The final section of the book is dedicated to wage policy and compensatory pay for the unemployed. It challenges the conventional neoclassical wisdom that wage constraints and limited trade union power will necessarily lead to labour market improvements and reduced unemployment. Evidence from Germany and South Africa is used to argue that collective action is a promising policy alternative. International in scope, the book will be essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of economics, political economy, industrial relations and international economics. It will also appeal to professional economists, sociologists, political scientists, trade unionists and policy advisors.

Job loss is one of the most important issues in the capitalist world today: endless reports document the increasing scale of unemployment. This title, first published in 1982, adopted a new approach to the geography of job loss, to assess why redundancy happens and where. Massey and Meegan argue that an increase in dismissal does not necessarily mean that an industry is in decline; rather, it can be the result of a variety of issues, including production for profit and the relationship between industry and location. Throughout the book, discussions about theory and methodology are complemented by industry-based case studies. This title addresses issues of particular relevance to today's economic climate, and will be particularly valuable to students with an interest in employment and job loss, and industrial labour and profitability.

First published in 1896, this seminal work considers the Question of the Unemployed at the height of imperialist capitalism. Hobson proposes a controversial theory of social progress, which argues that unemployment is a natural and necessary result of the mal-distribution of consumption power. In a comprehensive assessment of the practicalities of capitalism, The Problem of the Unemployed considers the root causes and meaning of unemployment and possible solutions to the issue.

Unemployment is one of the most politically explosive issues in China and has gained further prominence as a result of the present global financial crisis. The novelty, urgency, and complexity of Chinese unemployment have compelled the government to experiment with policy initiatives that originate in the West. This book argues that although China is not a liberal democracy, it has turned to neo-liberal forms of governance to deal with unemployment, which now function alongside pre-existing Chinese modes of governance. This book examines the initiatives which represent China's attempt to institutionalize and humanize its approach to governance: these initiatives include training programmes; counselling; a web-based national labour-market information network; insurance; and using community (shequ) organizations as the base for new mechanisms of governance and informal job generation. Based on extensive original research including semi-structured interviews, the book discusses the ways in which the government combines the new techniques with old campaign-style policy techniques. The author argues that these multiple modes of governance make the state's power visible in the new Chinese labour market, and at the same time run the risk of policy incoherence or even failure.

The assumptions made in the media regarding graduate skills and occupations are no longer valid within the changing educational context. This book traces seven key trends that shape the graduate labour market and reveals that their effects contradict the conceptualisation of the graduate labour market which dominates media and policy discourses.

Does flexible working really provide a better work-life balance? Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, flexible working has become the norm for many workers. This volume offers an original examination of flexible working using data from 30 European countries and drawing on studies conducted in Australia, the US and India. Rather than providing a better work-life balance, the book reveals how flexible working can lead to exploitation, which manifests differently for women and men, such as more care responsibilities or increased working hours. Taking a critical stance, this book investigates the potential risks and benefits of flexible working and provides crucial policy recommendations for overcoming the negative consequences.

The third edition of Employee Relations is a practical guide to the principles and practice of fostering positive relationships with employees to develop their engagement and achieve business success. It features updated material on recent legislation changes including employment status in the gig economy and deregulation as a result of new international relations. Covering key areas such as conflict and dispute resolution, redundancies, rights and ethics, this book equips you with the skills and knowledge to plan, build and assess employee relations in any type of organization. Practical diagnostic tools and real-life examples from organizations including HSBC show how these strategies can be applied in practice. With updated guidance and examples covering employee voice and the virtual workplace, Employee Relations is a vital resource for HR practitioners and students alike. Online resources include questionnaires and templates to support the development of an effective employee relations strategy. HR Fundamentals is a series of succinct, practical guides featuring exercises, examples and case studies. They are ideal for students and those in the early stages of their HR careers.

Part One of this book deals with the theory of how money is created and destroyed. Essential principles are illustrated by considering various models of banking systems. Part Two provides an account of the modern theory of income and employment. * Theory backed up with examples of the simplest to the most complicated models, for example: * The model of "a closed economy without a government" to one in which government expenditure and revenue affect the level of national income * The model in which the rate of interest and quantity of money have no effect and the model in which they are variables relevant to the determination of income

This book helps explain one of the most intriguing and politically salient puzzles in comparative political economy: why some countries have much higher unemployment rates than others. Contrary to new classical economics the focus is on explaining distribution and equilibrium unemployment, and contrary to neo-corporatist theory the role of monetary policy and rational expectation is integral to the analysis. The book makes two central arguments. The first is that monetary policies affect equilibrium employment whenever wages are set above the firm level. The second argument focuses on the distributive effects of different institutions, and models institutional design as a strategic game between partisan governments and cross-class alliances of unions and employers.

Worldwide, people are being forced out of their respective job markets. New college graduates are entering a global job market that has dramatically changed its rules of engagement, and entrepreneurs are challenged to develop new mindsets. Yet, in all situations there is either a total lack of or inconsistency in communications regarding the call for new competencies and skills that frame these new rules of employment engagement.Via a detailed interpersonal and intra-personal change model, Preparing for Today's Global Job Market identifies and delineates a methodology for effectively positioning and/or repositioning oneself in today's global job market that moves significantly beyond strategies associated with simply developing a resume, cover letter or business plan. Robinson-Easley also engages business executives, human resource professionals and training and development personnel in a conversation that suggests a different dialogue ensue between employers and their employees when organizations need to upgrade their workforce competencies and skills--a conversation that serves as a roadmap for better aligning organizational effectiveness and change to today's requisite core competencies and skills.

Most developing countries face significant and sometimes dramatic challenges in generating stable jobs that provide reasonable incomes and decent working conditions. For developing countries that have undergone lengthy periods of economic stagnation, these challenges are especially acute, and popular dissatisfaction correspondingly marked.

Paraguay is a case in point. It is unlikely that any "employment policy" could lead to a major improvement in the quality of labor market outcomes unless designed and implemented in a sophisticated and coherent way. Such an approach has been infrequent in developing countries in general, and especially so in those that, like Paraguay, also suffer severe institutional weaknesses of governance. Paraguay's past failure in employment creation is mainly the result of a number of structural weaknesses described in this volume. Its current crisis is also the accumulated legacy of over a quarter century of economic stagnation and political failure fl owing from those weaknesses. The new reformist administration of President Fernando Lugo has raised hopes that the future might be better than the past.

This study aims to contribute to improved policy making by analyzing the source of the problems and providing policy recommendations. The chapters describe the potential contribution of various policy areas in the face of a dauntingly negative track record and identify a number of steps that have to be taken if success is to be achieved. They put into perspective the reforms that have been undertaken to date by the country's previous administration.

Paraguay's experience offers insight into the problems faced by other developing countries in today's global economy. The central message is that policy improvements must be made in a number of areas and implemented in a coordinated fashion for there to be any reasonable hope of success.

Much of the literature that addresses youth unemployment has been framed within an economic paradigm and much less attention has been focused on the role played by country-specific value orientations in structuring economic activity. Drawing on extensive fieldwork research and the work of experts in Europe and the United States, this book provides a culturally nuanced analysis of key issues relating to youth unemployment. Examining the causes and consequences of youth unemployment, it explores ways forward to promote economic self-sufficiency. This pioneering work offers invaluable tailored policy solutions to tackle one of today's most important socioeconomic issues.

An in-depth look at urban youth in the Republic of Georgia offering new perspectives on how time and marginality are interlinked 

After the financial crisis of 2008 youth unemployment soared across Europe, leaving a generation of highly qualified young people frustrated in their search for secure, meaningful work. With contributions from over 90 authors and more than 60 individual contributions this collection summarises the findings of a large-scale EU funding project on Strategic Transitions for Youth Labour in Europe (STYLE). Including the often overlooked and unheard voices of young people themselves, this eclectic range of contributions discuss the distinctive characteristics of the current phase of youth employment. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the causes of European youth unemployment and assesses the effectiveness of labour market policies across the region.

This book confronts readers with questions emerging from the 'gap' between EU aspirations to reduce youth unemployment without increasing social exclusion - and what is actually happening in practice. Aimed at a diverse readership, it is based on a three year European Union (EU) project into education, training, guidance and employment (ETG) programmes for young adults across six countries. Insights are grounded in the lives and stories of disadvantaged young adults, and of those who work with them, bringing to life unintended impacts of well intended interventions. The authors consider the influence of shifting political and pedagogical ideologies in the EU on local practices and young peoples' lives and choices. They also consider the impact of policy and performance management discourses 'on the ground'. This work uses rigorous yet innovative narrative forms to invite readers into a 'whole system' inquiry into these complexities. Unemployed Youth and Social Exclusion in Europe will make an important contribution to reflecting critically on current policy and practice, as well as to academic understandings of unemployed youth, and restrictive and reflexive approaches to learning for inclusion across Europe.

With unemployment at historically high rates that show signs of becoming structural, there is a pressing need for an in-depth exploration of this economic injustice. Unemployment is one of the problems most likely to put critical pressure on our political institutions, disrupt the social fabric of our way of life, and even threaten the continuation of liberalism itself. Despite the obvious importance of the problem of unemployment, however, there has been a curious lack of attention paid to this issue by contemporary non-Marxist political philosophers. On Unemployment explores the moral implications of the problem of unemployment despite the continuing uncertainty involving both its causes and its cures. Reiff takes up a series of questions about the nature of unemployment and what justice has to tell us about what we should do, if anything, to alleviate it. The book comprehensively discusses the related theory and suggests how we might implement these more general observations in the real world. It addresses the politics of unemployment and the extent to which opposition to some or all of the book's various proposals stem not from empirical disagreements about the best solutions, but from more basic moral disagreements about whether the reduction of unemployment is indeed an appropriate moral goal. This exciting new text will be essential for scholars and readers across business, economics, and finance, as well as politics, philosophy, and sociology.

Drawing on the emerging field of narrative theory in sociology and psychology, this book argues that an individual's response to job loss is a product of the shape of the story a person tells about their experience. This, in turn, is a product of both individual creativity and the structuring effects of their social location. Based on a qualitative study of the experience of unemployment in Australia, three main types of job loss narratives are identified. First, romantic narratives describe job loss as a positive experience of liberation from an oppressive job, leading to a gradually improving future. Second, tragic narratives describe job loss as undermining a person's life plan, leading to a phase of depression, anxiety and self-deprecation. Finally, job loss narratives may be complicated by marital breakdown or serious illness. The book breaks new ground in its use of narrative theory to account for the variations in responses to unemployment.

Why do Americans work so hard? Are the long hours spent at work really necessary to increase organizational productivity? Leslie A. Perlow documents the worklife of employees who assume that for their own success and the success of their organization they must put in extended hours on the job. Perlow doesn't buy it. She challenges the basic assumption that the more employees work, the better the corporation will do.For nine months, Perlow studied the work practices of a product development team of software engineers at a Fortune 500 corporation. She reports her findings in detailed stories about individual employees and in more analytic chapters. Perlow first describes the individual heroics necessary to succeed in the existing work culture. She then explains how the system of rewards perpetuates crises and continuous interruptions, while discouraging cooperation. Finally, she shows how the resulting work practices damage both organizational productivity and the quality of individuals' lives outside of work. Perlow initiated a collaborative effort to restructure the way team members worked. Managers who were involved credit the project for the rare and important on-time launch of the product the engineers were developing. In the end, Finding Time shows that it is possible to create new work practices that enable individuals to have more personal and family time while also improving the corporation's productivity.

Until recently it has been assumed that people who experience severe and enduring mental health problems are unable to work, unless or until they recover. That assumption is now being challenged by international research demonstrating that, with the right support, people can succeed in finding and keeping a job even when they continue to need support from mental health services. New Thinking about Mental Health and Employment draws together the research undertaken to date and combines it with mental health service users' perspectives on the workplace to validate key points. Vital reading at both policy and practitioner levels, this book will be of great value to mental health nurses, social workers, general practitioners, psychiatrists and occupational therapists. It will also be of interest to employment advisors, government departments, commissioners, and policy makers and shapers.

Gender is a defining feature of informal/precarious work in the 21st century, yet studies rarely adopt a gendered lens when examining collective efforts to challenge informality and precarity. This volume foregrounds the gendered dimensions of informal/precarious workers' struggles as a crucial starting point for re-theorizing the future of global labor movements. This volume includes six empirical chapters spanning five countries - the United States, Canada, South Korea, Mexico, and India - to explore exactly how gender is intertwined into informal/precarious workers organizing efforts, why gender is addressed, and to what end. The chapters focus on two gender-typed sectors - domestic work and construction - to identify the varying experiences of and struggles against gender and informality/precarity, as well as the conditions of movement success and failure. Across countries and sectors, the volume shows how informal/precarious worker organizations are on the front lines of challenging the multiple forms of gendered inequalities that shape contemporary practices of accumulation and labor regulation. Their struggles are making major transformations in terms of increasing women's leadership and membership in labor movements and exposing how gender interacts with other ascriptive identities to shape work. They are also re-shaping hegemonic scripts of capitalist accumulation, development, and gender to attain recognition for female-dominated occupations and reproductive needs for the first time ever. These outcomes are crucial as sources of emancipatory transformations at a time when state and public support for labor and social protection is facing the deep assault of transnational production and globalizing markets.

Traditional approaches in the wide field of employment relations focused on a small and clearly delineated set of actors, such as trade unions and employers' organizations, operating within the constraints given by formal, nationally confined institutions. It is becoming increasingly clear that traditional approaches are insufficiently able to account for employment relations processes and outcomes in a world wherein formal institutions are being rapidly transformed and partially dissolved, national boundaries become porous, and the sheer number of actors involved is increasing substantially. A shift in perspective is necessary, past the nationally bounded actor-institution dichotomy, towards an understanding of employment relations as fundamentally mediated by complex and emergent networks that connect a multitude of actors within and between countries. This volume provides a seminal starting point for such a paradigm shift by applying theories and methodologies from social network analysis to the study of employment relations. It develops a theoretical toolkit of mechanisms that operate within networks and shape employment relations processes and outcomes, such as wages, labour market policies and labour conflicts. It brings together insights from various projects that investigate the structure, functioning and impact of networks in employment relations through quantitative and qualitative methods. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars of employment relations across business and management, economics, political science, and sociology disciplines, as well as those interested in social networks. Managers, trade unions, employers' organizations and state authorities at national and international levels will find it helpful in understanding how networks shape their world.