Originally published in 1987, at a time of high unemployment, this book provides a critical analysis of the role played by education in solving unemployment. It examines the practical, social and psychological effects of unemployment on adults and argues that formal institutional responses are inadequate within any long term perspective, and that it is rather community, informal and often unofficial initiatives that will provide learning experiences for unemployed people.

Through a series of studies, the overarching aim of this book is to investigate if and how the digitalization/digital transformation process causes (or may cause) the autonomy of various labor functions, and its impact in creating (or stymieing) various job opportunities on the labor market. This book also seeks to illuminate what actors/groups are mostly benefited by the digitalization/digital transformation and which actors/groups that are put at risk by it. This book takes its point of departure from a 2016 OECD report that contends that the impact digitalization has on the future of labor is ambiguous, as on the one hand it is suggested that technological change is labor-saving, but on the other hand, it is suggested that digital technologies have not created new jobs on a scale that it replaces old jobs. Another 2018 OECD report indicated that digitalization and automation as such does not pose a real risk of destroying any significant number of jobs for the foreseeable future, although tasks would by and large change significantly. This would affects welfare, as most of its revenue stems from taxation, and particularly so from the taxation on labor (directly or indirectly). For this reason, this book will set out to explore how the future technological and societal advancements impact labor conditions. The book seeks to provide an innovative, enriching and controversial take on how various aspects of the labor market can be (and are) affected the ongoing digitalization trend in a way that is not covered by extant literature. As such, this book intends to cater to a wider readership, from a general audience and students, to specialized professionals and academics wanting to gain a deeper understanding of the possible future developments of the labor market in light of an accelerating digitalization/digital transformation of society at large.

This book upturns many established ideas regarding the economic and social history of Quebec, the Canadian province that is home to the majority of its French population. It places the case of Quebec into the wider question of convergence in economic history and whether proactive governments delay or halt convergence. The period from 1945 to 1960, infamously labelled the Great Gloom (Grande Noirceur), was in fact a breaking point where the previous decades of relative decline were overturned - Geloso argues that this era should be considered the Great Convergence (Grand Rattrapage). In opposition, the Quiet Revolution that followed after 1960 did not accelerate these trends. In fact, there are signs of slowing down and relative decline that appear after the 1970s. The author posits that the Quiet Revolution sowed the seeds for a growth slowdown by crowding-out social capital and inciting rent-seeking behaviour on the part of interest groups.

This volume in "The SAGE Reference Series on Disability "explores issues facing people with disabilities in employment and the work environment. It is one of eight volumes in the cross-disciplinary and issues-based series, which incorporates links from varied fields making up Disability Studies as volumes examine topics central to the lives of individuals with disabilities and their families. With a balance of history, theory, research, and application, specialists set out the findings and implications of research and practice for others whose current or future work involves the care and/or study of those with disabilities, as well as for the disabled themselves. The presentational style (concise and engaging) emphasizes accessibility. Taken individually, each volume sets out the fundamentals of the topic it addresses, accompanied by compiled data and statistics, recommended further readings, a guide to organizations and associations, and other annotated resources, thus providing the ideal introductory platform and gateway for further study. Taken together, the series represents both a survey of major disability issues and a guide to new directions and trends and contemporary resources in the field as a whole.

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.

The growth of China s internal migrant labor population is one of the most important issues emerging from the Hu Jintao regime. As China continues to undergo an urbanization process as profound as any in modern history, there is little doubt migrant workers are affecting economic and political decision making at the central and local levels. Relying on interviews with over 250 Chinese migrant workers peasant farmers who have moved to the cities in search of work as well as interviews with Chinese labor activists, this book explores the evolution of migrant labor protest in China over the past three decades. It examines how migrant workers engage in protest today, and how they choose from available protest strategies. While past studies of Chinese rural to urban migration have long acknowledged the importance of traditional rural ties between family members, this book demonstrates how new urban ties: .help migrant workers learn of new protest options, .navigate the legal system, .connect with others sharing similar disputes, .and identify additional resources. The book also examines the growth and importance of Chinese migrant labor rights organizations and the role of information communication technology in migrant labor protest activity. The findings presented here shed new light on Chinese state-society relations and economic development. Moreover, the findings from this book, which demonstrate how economic reforms create opportunities for protest, and how migrant workers take advantages of these opportunities, have implications for our understanding of contentious politics in other authoritarian states undergoing similar economic and demographic transition."

This book explores student education transition and employability negotiation experiences in various contexts. It explores determinants of student transitions at three levels including macro, meso and micro but focuses on exploring affordances, constraints and strategies at the micro level. The framework underpinning the explorations at the micro level covers a range of different forms of capital including human, culture, social, identity, psychological and agentic. The book is unique in three ways. First, it consists of chapters about critical discussion, empirical research and practical guidance about student transition experiences. The critical discussion and empirical research chapters explore and obtain insights about the complexity of student transitions and develop conceptual frameworks that guide the development of applicable practices. The book is, therefore, a useful resource for policy makers, institutions, academics, professionals and students. Second, it provides insights about how student transitions are determined by a range of factors at different levels. These insights extend discussions about student transitions in the current literature which have mainly explored impacts of policies, institutional programmes and human capital. Finally, it is international in focus because it draws on research with different cohorts of students and graduates in different contexts. Insights provided in the book are, therefore, rich, diverse and comparative.

This book examines the linkages between exchange rates and India's merchandise trade since the 1990s. It looks at India's trade in the post-liberalisation period through its two main components: commodities and trading partners, and provides a bird's eye view through aggregate analyses accompanied by a historical narrative of the evolution of trade and exchange rate dynamics. Presenting a comprehensive analysis of bilateral and product-specific trade, the book explores the impact of exchange rate on labour intensive sectors and charts out major development. It also offers compelling evidence to suggest that if some commodities are identified as integral to India's export plans, then the impact of exchange rate must be weighed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) prior to a market intervention. This timely volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of economics, business and finance, development studies, trade, business, and industry as well as practitioners, think-tanks, and policy makers.

Exploring how formal and informal education initiatives and training systems in the US, UK and Australia seek to achieve a socially diverse workforce, this insightful book offers a series of detailed case studies to reveal the initiative and ingenuity shown by today's young people as they navigate entry into creative fields of work. Young People's Journeys into Creative Work acknowledges the new and diverse challenges faced by today's youth as they look to enter employment. Chapters trace the rise of indie work, aspirational labour, economic precarity, and the disruptive effects of digital technologies, to illustrate the oinventive ways in which youth from varied socio-economic and cultural backgrounds enter into work in film, games production, music, and the visual arts. From hip-hop to new media arts, the text explores how opportunities for creative work have multiplied in recent years as digital technologies open new markets, new scenes, and new opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovation. This book will be of great interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of youth studies, careers guidance, media studies, vocational education and sociology of education.

The United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals include a specific target for full and productive employment. However, what constitutes full employment in developing countries is not yet clearly understood. And likewise, there is no clear direction for developing strategies and policies to address this challenge. Drawing on the author's deep knowledge of employment and inclusive development, this book presents a broad framework which could enable us to pursue the challenging goal of full, productive employment in developing countries. It revisits the conceptual foundations of full employment and carefully examines the issue of suitable indicators for monitoring progress. It also examines the challenges created by globalized production chains and labour market fluctuations caused by economic crises. This book throws light on a major lacuna in development thinking on how the challenge of creating productive employment for all in developing countries needs to be addressed. It provides a solution by re-examining relevant theories and empirical evidence, and by bringing out their implications for development strategies and policies. Finally, the focus falls on the effective implementation of employment strategies and policies. This authoritative work will appeal to a diverse readership of academic researchers, think-tanks, international organizations, and development partners.

This book focuses on issues that are relevant for the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. The depth and the extension of the current political crisis in the area have changed the perspectives of conventional Euro-Mediterranean integration policies. The book provides the grounds for new patterns of analysis and addresses policy guidelines which are able to respond to the dramatic challenges that Mediterranean regions are facing. By implementing a multidisciplinary approach, the volume uncovers the structural determinants of migrations in the area: territorial and social imbalances, climate change, unemployment, weak institutions, poor governance, lack of efficient redistributive policies. Each chapter proposes innovative and rich analyses of the socio-economic conditions of all Mediterranean countries. The prevailing evidence suggests that while the North-South imbalances still persist inside the basin, the recent world economic and financial crises have deepened social, intergenerational and gender inequalities. These inequalities cross all territories both nationally and internationally and affect the living conditions of large segments of population in Southern and Eastern Mediterranean countries. To bridge these gaps it is necessary to strengthen territorial cohesion, reduce income differentials, and improve the access of marginal areas to basic infrastructure. These long term goals can be achieved through an inclusive development model for which young people and women can enjoy the same opportunities of education and work. Offering innovative and practical guidelines for future programs and policies, this book is essential reading for policy makers, researchers at policy think tanks as well as academics and post graduate students of Mediterranean studies and Economic Policy. The general policy recipes, provided to govern migration flows, make useful reading for national and international research centres and major governmental agencies interested in migration issues.

Work orientations and work attitudes have to do with the productive capacities in society. Insofar as individuals are positively oriented towards contributing their labour, we can expect a great amount of work to be done and to be carried out efficiently, carefully and responsibly. These subjective factors are thus very vital in modern working life. Work Orientations: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Findings offers up-to-date research on people's commitment to work and employment and job satisfaction in economically advanced countries. It will also analyse changes that have taken place in these respects over the last decades. Among the key issues in Work Orientations are questions about whether patterns of work centrality and employment commitment tend to remain stable or have changed across time in various countries. Moreover, we assume that the circumstances under which people participate in the social division of labour colour their subjective relationships to their jobs and to employment in general. A major aim of the book is to explore the impact of factors such as occupation, education, age and gender on work orientations and work attitudes. Work Orientations will be invaluable for researchers and scholars in the fields or organizational studies, the sociology of work, employee engagement and related disciplines.

The literature on gender and professions shows that professional careers continue to be impacted by gender - albeit with important differences among professions and countries. Much less researched is the issue of the significance of gender and age-cohort or generation to professional work. Gender, Age and Inequality in the Professions explores men's and women's experiences of professional work and careers through an intersectional lens by focusing on the intersection of gender and age. The chapters explore different professions - including Medicine, Nursing, Law, Academia, Information Technology and Engineering - in different Western countries, in the present and over time. Through original research, and critical re-analysis of existing research, each of the chapters explores the significance of gender and age-cohort or generation to professional work, with particular attention to professionals just entering professional careers, those building professional careers, and comparisons of men and women in professions across generational cohorts. The book contributes to literature on inequalities in the professions by demonstrating the ways in which gender and age converge to confer privilege and produce disadvantage, and the ways in which gender inequality is reproduced, and disrupted, through the activities of professionals on the job. The book constitutes a departure point for future research in terms of theoretical perspectives and empirical findings on how gendered and age-related processes are produced and reproduced in particular organisational, professional and socio-cultural contexts. To enhance generational understanding, relationships and collaboration in educational institutions, organisations and professions, the book ends with a section on policy recommendations for educators, professionals, professional organisations as well as policy- and decision-makers. This book will also appeal to students and researchers in the fields of Sociology, Gender Studies, Organisational and Management Studies, Law, Medicine, Engineering and Information Technology as well as related disciplines.

Due to the sharp declines in trade union density and collective bargaining coverage post-1979, the shift by trade unions towards political action has had significant implications for employment relations regulation in contemporary Britain. Yet, there remains insufficient discussion of the factors of influence affecting changes in the political action process from a historical and contemporary perspective. Unions and Employment in a Market Economy will evidence how trade unions were able to offset environmental constraints through a progressive focus on political action, despite diminished power in the Labour Party's structures and the wider economy. The book presents four legislative events categorised as functional equivalents enacted in two different periods of Labour governance (1974-79 and 1997-2010). The selected events are the Social Contract (1974-79), National Minimum Wage (1998), Employment Relations Act (1999) and the Warwick Agreement (2004). The book's findings lend credence to the proposition that in a liberal market economy there is a valuable dividend associated with trade union political exchange through the Labour Party.

From the perspective of trade unions, European integration makes it more necessary than ever before to establish common political positions. At the same time, increasing heterogeneity between the member states makes the crafting of such positions more and more difficult. Can, under these circumstances, a joint political line among European trade unions emerge? To answer this question, the book sheds light on transnational trade union cooperation in the three most important policy fields: the debate around the Freedom of services, the discussion over a European minimum wage, and the efforts of international wage coordination. Drawing on the results of extensive field research based on a qualitative study among trade unions from Hungary, Poland, Sweden, and Germany, as well as representatives from the European level, this book points to a significant gap in European trade union politics between pretensions and reality. The findings provide a solid theoretical framework, suitable not only to explain current dynamics in the field of European trade unionism, but also promising for further research on the topic. With its focus on a contested political field, Trade Unions in the Course of European Integration contributes to practical and theoretical debates within European trade unionism. As an adequate understanding of European trade unionism in general and collective bargaining requires a twofold perspective on European integration and the role of trade unions in European labor relations, two fields of scholarly interest are being addressed. Moreover, with its focus on European trade unionism as an internationalist project of labor politics, the book will also appeal to those interested in the field of Global Labor Studies.

What is life like for workers in the gig economy? Is it a paradise of flexibility and individual freedom? Or is it a world of exploitation and conflict? Callum Cant took a job with one of the most prominent platforms, Deliveroo, to find out. His vivid account of the reality is grim. Workers are being tyrannised by algorithms and exploited for the profit of the few - but they are not taking it lying down. Cant reveals a transnational network of encrypted chats and informal groups which have given birth to a wave of strikes and protests. Far from being atomised individuals helpless in the face of massive tech companies, workers are tearing up the rulebook and taking back control. New developments in the workplace are combining to produce an explosive subterranean class struggle - where the stakes are high, and the risks are higher. Riding for Deliveroo is the first portrait of a new generation of working class militants. Its mixture of compelling first-hand testimony and engaging analysis is essential for anyone wishing to understand class struggle in platform capitalism.

"Stop slacking off!" Your parents may have said this to you when you were deep into a video-gaming marathon. Or maybe your roommate said it to you when you were lounging on the couch scrolling through Instagram. You may have even said it to yourself on days you did nothing. But what is so bad about slacking? Could it be that there's nothing bad about not making yourself useful? Against our hyper-productivity culture, Alison Suen critically interrogates our disapproval of slackers-individuals who do the bare minimum just to get by. She offers a taxonomy of slackers, analyzes common objections to slacking, and argues that each of these objections either fails or carries problematic assumptions. But while this book defends slacking, it does not promote the slacker lifestyle as the key to something better (such as cultural advancement and self-actualization), as some pro-leisure scholars have argued. In fact, Suen argues that slacking is unique precisely because it serves no noble cause. Slacking is neither a deliberate protest to social ills nor is it a path to autonomy. Slackers just slack. By examining the culture of hyper-productivity, Suen argues that it is in fact OK to be a slacker. Key Features Demonstrates the uniqueness of slacking, via a critical examination of six distinct "pro-leisure" philosophical accounts. Articulates a taxonomy of slackers, as well as in-depth examinations of Hollywood slackers and slackers in academia. Examines common objections to slacking (like the freeloading problem), and offers a rebuttal to each of them. Offers an understanding of our productivity culture from an existential perspective.

The Oxford Handbook of Offshoring and Global Employment deals with a key issue of our time - How do globalization, economic growth and technological developments interact to impact employment? The book brings together eminent authors from a wide range of countries around the world, drawing on their diverse academic and policymaking backgrounds, and specific national or regional settings to assess how global economic changes have affected employment opportunities. The book is unique in a number of ways - It has a global reach, presenting analyses and viewpoints from both developed and developing countries, from all continents; its timing and context is particularly instructive, since most papers are located in the aftermath of the global financial crisis; and it addresses a wide range of questions-How do different types of offshoring and global linkages impact employment? How is the skill mix of the labor force impacted by globalization? How do institutional structures and regulations influence the outcome of globalization in developed and developing countries? Individual chapters analyze how the impact of global linkages on national economies is mediated through a number of structural aspects of the economy - its institutional and industrial structure, its resource base, its predominant firm type, its comparative advantage, and its regulatory practices. The chapters in the book cover both manufacturing and services sectors, and many chapters also address policy issues regarding innovation and job creation.

This is the third and final volume written in honour of Bernard Corry and Maurice Peston by an internationally renowned group of experts, and focuses on the application of economics to policy advice.The contributors to this volume consider practical policy issues including labour market policy and the problem of unemployment, methodology and econometric analysis, taxation policy, industrial regulation, practical applications of transaction cost theory in the European Union, policy issues such as foreign direct investment and pension reform affecting transition economies and training policies in developing countries.

Work sharing' is a labor market instrument devised to distribute a reduced volume of work to the same (or similar) number of workers over a diminished period of working time in order to avoid redundancies. This fascinating and timely study presents the concept and history of work sharing and explores the complexities and trade-offs involved in its use as both a strategy for preserving jobs and a policy for increasing employment.The expert contributors examine the resurgence in the use of work sharing as a job preservation strategy via country case studies of work-sharing programmes implemented across the globe during the Great Recession of 2008-2009. These studies clearly illustrate that work sharing has been successful as a crisis-response measure in a number of countries. Lessons learned and their implications are presented alongside prescriptions on how to design permanent work-sharing policies that would provide appropriate incentives to generate positive effects for employment and promote a sustainable and job-rich economic recovery. This enlightening book will prove invaluable to academics, researchers, students and policymakers in the fields of labor economics, public sector economics and social policy. Contributors: L. Bellmann, A. Crimmann, J. Flecker, H.-D. Gerner, N. Ghosheh, S. Glosser, L. Golden, M.J. Gonzalez Fernandez, J.C. Messenger, K. Ogura, A. Schoenauer, F. Wiessner, E. Yeldan

1) This is one of the first books to document the impact of Covid-19 on Migrant workers in India. 2) It discusses crucial issues of the impact of Covid-19 on mobility and migration, citizenship, rights and justice, and labour markets and labour policies in India. 3) This book will be of interest to departments of South Asian studies, labour studies and migration studies across UK.

Mass youth unemployment is now endemic and almost ubiquitous in the global north and south alike. This book offers an original and challenging interpretation of the ways in which young people's unemployment and general non-participation is becoming marginalised and criminalised. It re-examines the causes and consequences of non-participation from an unusually wide range of disciplines, using an innovative theorisation of the fast-changing relationships between extended studentship, welfare provision, labour market restructuring and crime. This approach offers an important contribution for understanding what it means for young people to be socially re-positioned and economically excluded in increasingly unequal societies, in and beyond the UK.

Uzbekistan is the world's fifth largest producer and second largest exporter of cotton in the world, and unlike other countries where child labor is common, it is the totalitarian state of Uzbekistan's official policy to employ children. This book discusses the use of child labor in cotton cultivation in Uzbekistan following the fall of the Soviet Union, drawing on an extensive field investigation and in-depth interviews with human rights activists, government officials, and social workers.

Free market capitalism has created a divided American society. Conservative economic and social policy thinking drove the Right's Project from 1980 to its collapse in 2008, leaving the world in ruins and fascism on the march. The Vision of a Real Free Market Society challenges the Left to create new forms of the market economy that promote efficiency and equality while permanently thwarting concentrated power. Many recent commentators have offered policy recommendations based on existing economic institutions. By contrast, this book calls for root-and-branch changes to the inherent structure of American capitalism. The Vision of a Real Free Market Society: Re-Imagining American Freedom presents a Left-egalitarian case for limited government that overcomes the failures of conservatism while rescuing economic justice from the weaknesses of tax and transfer liberalism. The book explains why the system fails so many Americans in so many different ways, and outlines how we can build a better economy that simultaneously promotes freedom and social justice while crippling the powers of America's oligarchs. Exploring the idea of a left-wing case for strong but small government, the book makes the case for fundamental reforms that will lead to a truly free and fair society. This provocative book will be of great relevance to anyone with an interest in politics, philosophy or economics, and will challenge readers to rethink their assumptions concerning the prospects for combining justice with fairness in the modern world.

Solidarity Road tells the story of Jan Theron’s involvement in the Food and Canning Workers Union (FCWU) during apartheid South Africa. Part memoir, part history this fascinating tale will reveal what working conditions were like in the 1970’s. It outlines the very beginnings of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).

Theron states, ‘Solidarity in a trade union does not simply mean standing by your members, or by organised workers. It means solidarity with your class. At the time, in 1976, the working class was fragmented. Working for a trade union was part of a project to unite a fragmented class, and to give it a voice. This was the historical project to which a number of people from a certain intellectual background were drawn. This would be our contribution to the struggle: what we did to end apartheid. It was a struggle for democracy, but democracy did not just mean everyone getting to vote every so often in national elections. People also had to eat.

The most obvious way in which the working class was then fragmented was in terms of race. The Union put its commitment to solidarity into practice by uniting workers of different races in factories manufacturing food. To do so it had to overcome divisions among workers created by the ways in which government had structured employment, in terms of the law, which the bosses were able to exploit. Nowadays ‘bosses’ seems like a dated term, yet this is the term workers used to refer to the people for whom they actually worked. It is also no less important today than it was then to differentiate between those who control the factories and mines and those who operate at their behest.