1,721,057 research outputs found
Workplace Unionism, Collective Bargaining and Skill Formation: New Results from Mixed Methods
No full textAmong the steps to improve a country's competitiveness, several commentators and international institutions include a general emphasis on deregulation and decentralization of industrial relations. In this paper, we contribute to this debate by studying whether and how firm-level unionism and collective agreements affect workplace training, a key ingredient to competitiveness. Theory provides inconclusive predictions on the various channels and processes through which firm-level industrial relations may affect workplace training. Quantitative and qualitative analyses, when used in isolation, have also proved insufficient for an adequate account of the various factors at play. This is where our paper mostly contributes. In the spirit of opening the "black box" of firm-level unionism and collective bargaining, we mix together quantitative and qualitative strategies. Our results suggest that workplace unionism, and especially decentralized collective agreements, favor workplace training in subtler and often more dynamic ways than commonly understood
Industrial relations and skill formation at the workplace: new insights from mixed methods
No full textIn this paper, we study whether and how firm-level unionism and collective agreements
affect workplace training. Theory provides inconclusive predictions on the various
channels and processes through which firm-level industrial relations may affect workplace
training. Quantitative and qualitative analyses, when used in isolation, have also proved
insufficient for an adequate account of the various factors at play. In the spirit of opening
the ‘black box’ of firm-level unionism and collective bargaining, we combine quantitative
and qualitative strategies. Our results suggest that workplace unionism, and especially
decentralized collective agreements, favor workplace training in subtler and often more
dynamic ways than commonly understood
How Entry into Parenthood Shapes Gender Role Attitudes: New Evidence from Longitudinal UK Data
Full text linkAttitudes of women and men about how paid and unpaid work should be divided in the couple largely determine women's earnings and career prospects. Hence, it is important to understand how people's gender role attitudes are formed and evolve over the lifetime. In this paper, we concentrate on one of the most path-breaking events in life: becoming a parent. Using longitudinal panel data for the UK, we first show that, in general, entry into parenthood significantly shifts women's attitudes toward more conservative views, while leaving men unaffected. We also show that the impact on women emerges only after some time from the childbirth, suggesting that attitudes change relatively slowly over time and do not react immediately after becoming a parent. Finally, we show that the impact gets large and strongly significant for women and men whose prenatal attitudes were progressive. In particular, we find that the change in attitudes for such individuals increases as the postnatal arrangements are more likely to be traditional. Overall, these findings suggest that the change in attitudes is mainly driven by the emergence of a cognitive dissonance. Broad policy implications are drawn
Industrial relations and skill formation at the workplace: new insights from mixed methods
No full textWhy Do Firms (Dis)Like Part-Time Contracts?
Full text linkThis paper investigates the costs for firms of employing women full-time versus part-time, in terms of differential hourly wages. To this end, we use administrative matched employer-employee data on the universe of female workers in Italy over a period of 33 years and rely on regression models that control for worker, firm, and job match fixed effects, in addition to several worker-, job-, and firm-level time-varying factors. We find that, when a worker switches from a full-time to a part-time contract within the same firm, she benefits from an increase in the hourly wage. Over the last three decades, these wage premiums have significantly reduced, although they remained positive and significant up to 2015. We also find that the part-time premium is pervasive and stable across many different labor market segments and independent of the workers’ intrinsic productivity levels. These and other findings appear to be compatible with developments in wage bargaining institutions, whereby more generous conditions can be granted to part-time workers. Coupled with the detrimental effect of part-time work on firm productivity documented by Devicienti et al. (2018), our results contribute to explaining why firms are often unwilling to concede part-time positions to those employees who request such arrangements
Temporary Employment, Demand Volatility, and Unions: Firm-Level Evidence
Full text linkThis article investigates the effect of workplace unionization and product market volatility on firms’ propensity to use temporary employment. Using Italian firm-level data, the authors show that volatility has a positive impact on the share of temporary contracts. The baseline estimates for the impact of unions are inconclusive, but a clear pattern emerges when a specification including an interaction term with volatility is used. This approach allows a richer characterization of the impact of workplace unionization, which is positive for low levels of volatility and negative for high levels. The authors discuss various direct and indirect mechanisms to explain this novel finding. Furthermore, they find that these effects hold only for cases in which the employer does not provide training for temporary workers, whereas temporary contracts with training provisions are not affected by unions, volatility, and their interplay
What Are the Benefits of Having More Female Leaders? : evidence from the Use of Part-Time Work in Italy
Full text linkUsing three waves of a representative survey of Italian private firms, the authors explore the impact of female managers on a firm’s use of part-time work. Building on a literature that suggests female leaders display relatively more altruistic values compared to their male counterparts, the authors assess whether these differences manifest themselves in relation to working time arrangements offered by firms. Results, robust to controls for several time-varying firm-level characteristics and unobserved fixed firm heterogeneity, indicate that female managers are significantly more likely to limit the employment of involuntary part-time workers and correspondingly make greater use of full-time employees. Female managers also are more prone to grant part-time arrangements to employees who request them. Results also suggest that increasing the number of female business leaders may mitigate the problem of underemployment among involuntary part-time workers and contribute to the work–life balance of workers with child care or elder care activities
The collective voice of unions and workplace training in Italy: New insights from mixed methods
Full text linkUsing a three-phase approach that combines quantitative (pooled OLS, fixed effects and IV) with qualitative (semi-structured interviews) analyses, we find that in Italy,workplace unions are more likely to enhance training when they sign a firm-level agreement and when they can get access to external funds for financing. We also identify three channels: what we call a ‘maturation effect’, double-track communication and watch-dog function. We argue that these results are consistent with the idea that the impact of workplace unions on training depends on the empowerment of its collective voice within an institutional framework that does not fit either of the standard models provided by collective and liberal market economies
The impact of part-time work on firm productivity: evidence from Italy
Full text linkIn this article, we explore the impact of part-time work on firm productivity. Using a large panel data set of Italian corporations for the period 2000-2010, we first estimate firms' yearly productivity by removing the output contribution of the labor and capital inputs aggregates. We use different approaches aimed at solving input simultaneity, including a version of Ackerberg et al.'s ( 2015), control function approach, that also accounts for firm fixed effects. We then match the productivity estimates with rich information on the firms' use of part-time work obtained from survey data for the years 2005, 2007, and 2010 and estimate the impact of part-time work on productivity. We find that a 10% increase in the share of part-timers reduces productivity by 1.45%. The results suggest that this harmful effect stems from horizontal rather than vertical part-time arrangements. We also find that firms declaring to use part-time work to accommodate workers' requests suffer the most. Moreover, we show that the so-called "flexible" and "elastic"clauses are successful in cushioning the negative impact associated with part-time work
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