The Living Wage – Policy And Practice

A recent development in addressing the longstanding problem of low pay in the United Kingdom has been the emergence of a social campaign for a ‘living wage’. Using a case study approach this article explores an employer's decision to pay the living wage that, in turn, provided both challenges and opportunities for the unions in their dealings with contractors.     

The policy environment and relative price efficiency of Egyptian private sector manufacturing: 1987/88–1995/96

We study the impact of policy and institutional constraints, and reforms undertaken to remedy them, on relative price efficiency and cost of the private manufacturing sector of Egypt. We undertake this study using a generalized cost function, which subsumes the standard neoclassical cost function as a special case. This approach allows us to assess the impact of such constraints, which include labor market, energy and financial sector ones, on relative prices and the structure of production, including factor demands, shares and cost. Our findings indicate the presence of substantial distortions in relative prices, and hence on cost, due to the policy environment. We also find improvements in relative price efficiency and cost performance as a result of policy reforms initiated to remove the constraints. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mergers in British trade unions 1949–79

Robert Buchanan examines the numbers, membership and main characteristics of the unions involved in mergers between 1949 and 1979, considers the main reasons for this trend in mergers, and compares it with the earlier merger movement occurring between 1911 and 1922.     

The trend of strikes in coal mining 1949–1979

Explanations for the pattern of strike activity in British coal mining have focused upon the industry's changing economic fortunes or developments in its collective bargaining structure. The author examines these explanations and suggests four additional factors that account for the trend of coal mining strikes.     

The legislative reform of union government 1979–94

This article outlines Conservative legislation on union government, documenting extensive regulation in place by 1994. It looks at the major objectives of government policy, including the twin themes of encouraging individualism and reducing union power. The degree of success achieved is examined and a framework in terms of competing rationalities outlined.     

Posing larger questions: the British miners’ strike of 1984–85

The miners’ strike was the longest and most significant dispute in modern British industrial history. The conflict provided a vivid case study of the rationales and processes of capitalism and liberal democracy in the closing decades of this century. This article is an assessment of the important issues raised by the dispute.     

British Telecom – Has Privatisation Delivered Competition?

What are the lessons for the privatisation of British Gas from previous flotations? Peter Curwen, Senior Lecturer in Economics at the Sheffield Polytechnic, charts the regulatory tangle in the telecommunications market and argues that privatisation on its own may not be enough to reduce the extent of regulation.     

Bayesian estimation of log odds ratios from R × C and 2 × 2 × K contingency tables

In this paper, Bayesian estimation of log odds ratios over R × C and 2 × 2 × K contingency tables is considered, which is practically reasonable in the presence of prior information. Likelihood functions for log odds ratios are derived for each table structure. A prior specification strategy is proposed. Posterior inferences are drawn using Gibbs sampling and Metropolis–Hastings algorithm. Two numerical examples are given to illustrate the matters argued.     

The practice of collective bargaining in the private sector in Quebec (Canada): the changing ‘rules of the game’

Drawing on 45 semi‐structured interviews with union negotiators active in the Quebec private sector, this article shows that local bargaining practices, despite their plurality, have tended to change following major trends. It also reveals, more fundamentally, a redefinition of the ‘rules of the game’. The transformation and stability of these social rules, which are much more focused on the needs of employers, have tended to weaken collective bargaining as a tool for industrial democracy.     

The transition from school to work in 1979–1987 in the Netherlands*

We analyze the early labour market experiences of the cohort born in the Netherlands around 1965. Some of them, who left school early, entered the labour market just before the economic crisis of the eighties; the others entered the labour market during the period of high unemployment. We concentrate on the time-period between school-leaving and entering the first job. The individual differences in these initial durations of non-employment are analyzed by estimating hazard functions.     

Training in the new private sector in Russia

The growth of the new private sector in Russia has been associated with the expansion of trade and services, requiring a labour force with different occupational and skill characteristics from those of the Soviet economy. This paper reports on the first research ever undertaken on training practices in the new private sector in Russia. The analysis is based on forty case studies of new private enterprises and a large-scale household survey in four relatively prosperous Russian cities carried out in the first half of 1998. The paper shows that the old system of vocational retraining has largely collapsed, but very little has arisen to take its place. The majority of new private employers make little provision for the training of their employees, relying heavily on training provided by previous state employers or on the motivation of their own employees or prospective employees to undertake training on their own initiative, at their own expense and in their own time. At the same time, the availability of appropriate training is limited and it is extremely expensive in relation to the resources available to new private employers. Nevertheless, those who undertake training experience significant increases in earnings.     

A quantitative and qualitative analysis of sexual harassment claims 1995–2005

This article explores the organisational and legal context in which parties involved in claims relating to sexual harassment operate, and presents an analysis of the population of sexual harassment cases heard by Employment Tribunals between 1995 and 2005.     

Vertical and Horizontal Segregation: Spatial Class Divisions in Oslo, 1970–2003

A direct focus on social class has largely disappeared from questions concerning spatial divisions. Instead, studies on residential segregation usually focus on ethnicity, education or income; seemingly the common perception is that people are now divided by such factors and that class divisions belong to the past. Although the structures of inequality have changed in recent times, little is known about how they affect spatial divisions. Here, we investigate these issues by analysing the developments of class segregation in Norway's capital, Oslo, during a period of great societal change and welfare state expansion. We analyse both vertical segregation, between the upper class and the working class, and horizontal segregation, between class factions possessing a high level of mainly cultural or economic capital. We apply a Bourdieu‐inspired classification scheme to capture data on the parents of full cohorts of children aged 13–15 years in 1970, 1980 and 2003. The results support the idea of a changed class structure, with segregation levels between the upper and working classes having increased during this period. Moreover, there are also moderate and slightly increasing levels of horizontal segregation between top class factions based on cultural and economic capital.     

商业地产:民营资本的避难所?

近来,商业地产成为众多社会游资竞相追逐的对象.大量从住宅地产,乃至能源业、制造业等行业游离出来的资金纷纷涌入商业地产开发中.资本大量融入商业地产的开发,缘于深层次的宏现经济背景,这些资本虽然在一定程度上促进了商业地产的发展,但其蕴藏的风险也要倍加警惕.……     

Conceptualising Union Responses to Contracting Out Municipal Services, 1979–97

Competitive tendering between 1979–97 has forced municipal trade unions to reconsider their roles, organisation, and the constituencies they address. Union responses to these dilemmas are categorised into three central themes. Results contribute to refining debates both on intra-union relations and models of union development.     

Public sector purchasing of health services: A comparison with private sector purchasing

Recent research has highlighted the existence of important differences between public and private sector procurement practices. Drawing on established transactional and relational conceptual frameworks, this paper examines whether the differing environments confronting public and private sector organisations affects procurement practices. By focusing solely on occupational health services as an example of a complex business service, the research allows the influence of environmental factors, notably policy drivers, to be considered across both public and private sector settings while service specific factors remain largely constant. Utilising a combination of questionnaires and in-depth interviews the research suggests that policy drivers had a major bearing on procurement practices adopted in the public sector, resulting in a very different pattern of engagement with service providers from that prevailing in the private sector. Specifically whereas private sector organisations utilised a range of approaches, which can broadly be classified as relational in nature, public sector organisations almost exclusively relied on transactional-based approaches. The nature of these services suggests that relational based procurement constitutes the optimal approach to the acquisition of such services. However, for public sector organisations the perceived restrictions imposed by public policy on procurement practices resulted in the adoption of an approach which can be viewed as resulting in sub-optimal outcomes.