Market conditions and worker training: How does it affect and whom?

This paper analyses the impact of labor market conditions on a firm's incentive to train its workers. In an equilibrium model of the labor market in which firms use both untrained and in-house-trained workers, we show that the incidence of training increases with the tightness of the labor market. In a multi-sector framework, the usual threat of hold-up by a trained worker is more severe for workers who change their sector of work; during downturns, this serves to bias firms' incentives in imparting training away from such workers and towards workers already in the firm and those new workers coming from the same sector. Evidence from the NLSY confirms both predictions—the incidence and duration of company-sponsored training is adversely affected by higher unemployment rates; furthermore, this negative effect is much stronger for workers who change industries as compared to those who do not.     

Foreign Direct Investment from Emerging Markets to Africa: The HRM Context

In this article, we explore what determines the decisions of emerging‐market multinational corporations (MNCs) to invest in Africa and whether this is any different from their counterparts in mature markets, focusing on the HRM context. More specifically, we explore the effect of potential host‐country wages, local capabilities, and the relative rights of owners versus workers on foreign direct investment (FDI) decisions, as well as other relevant factors such as mineral resources and corruption. We found that emerging‐market MNCs were not deterred by relatively weak property owner rights (as indeed, was also the case for their counterparts from mature markets); hence, any weakening of countervailing worker rights is unlikely to unlock significant new FDI. However, emerging‐market MNCs were more likely to invest in low‐wage economies and did not appear to be concerned by local skills gaps; the latter would reflect the relative de facto ease with which even partially skilled expatriate labor can be imported into many African countries. At the same time, a reliance on low‐wage, unskilled labor, coupled with the extensive usage of expatriates, brings with it a wide range of challenges for the HR manager, which a firm committed to cost‐cutting may lack the capabilities to resolve. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Performance Pay and Offshoring

In this paper, we construct a North–South general equilibrium model of offshoring, highlighting the nexus among endogenous effort‐based labor productivity and the structure of wages. Offshoring is modeled as international transfer of management practices and production techniques that allow Northern firms to design and implement performance compensation contracts. Performance–pay contracts address moral hazard issues stemming from production uncertainty and unobserved worker effort. We find that worker effort augments productivity and compensation of those workers assigned to more offshorable tasks. An increase in worker effort in the South, caused by a decline in offshoring costs, an increase in worker skill, or a decline in production uncertainty in the South, increases the range of offshored tasks and makes workers in the North and South better off. An increase in Southern labor force increases the range of offshored tasks, benefits workers in the North, and hurts workers in the South. International labor migration from low‐wage South to high‐wage North shrinks the range of offshored tasks, makes Northern workers worse off and Southern workers (emigrants and those left behind) better off. Higher worker effort in the North, caused by higher worker skills or lower degree of production uncertainty, decreases the range of offshored tasks and benefits workers in the North and South.     

Equal-treatment policy in a random search model with taste discrimination

We consider a search model of the labor market with two types of equally productive workers and two types of firms, discriminators and non-discriminators. Without policy intervention, there is wage dispersion between and within the two worker groups, but all wage differences become negligible when the taste for discrimination is small. We analyze the effect of an equal-pay policy, both in combination with affirmative action and without. When equal opportunity of hiring cannot be enforced, wage dispersion increases and wages for minority workers fall substantially relative to laissez faire. Sometimes also the wage gap between worker groups widens in response to the policy.     

Use of employees and alternative work arrangements in the United States: a law,economics, and organizations perspective

This paper considers the incidence of employees versus other forms of work in the United States, including temporary agency workers, contract company workers, independent contractors, and self-employment. It does so within a single, unifying framework. The approach takes an economics of organizations focus to consider when it is optimal for the firm to control the work routine instead of the worker. This is critical in defining and determining employment versus other forms of work. The cost of measuring output and monitoring effort and of worker versus firm expertise are important in determining the organization of work. This approach proves fruitful, but it also is important to account for the impact of certain legal restrictions in the U.S. labor market. The empirical findings show that independent contractors are in jobs that require worker expertise and training and for which monitoring of worker effort is difficult. Contract company workers' characteristics are a hybrid between independent contractors' and employees'. Temporary agency workers occur where the firm wishes to legally outsource its low-wage workers yet still maintain a degree of control over their work routine.     

Worker poaching in a supply chain: Enemy from within?

Worker poaching represents the primary mode by which workers change employers. We examine worker poaching between firms linked in a value chain. We find that, in a value chain, the less productive firm may offer its workers higher wages and poach workers from the more productive firm. We also find that worker flows accomplished via poaching impact supply chain management: (a) the identity of the bottleneck firm may depend on whether poaching is available; (b) poaching between linked firms may benefit both, and (c) the value chain cannot be fully coordinated without controlling wages in the labor market.     

Employee rights and capital mobility

In this article I analyze the impact that capital mobility has on employee rights in the workplace by studying the effects of the relocation of General Motor’s Corvette plant from St. Louis to Bowling Green, Kentucky. This relocation not only afforded GM an opportunity to increase its control over its hourly work force, but it also set in motion a process in which the rights’ claims of management and workers were redefined. Through a number of planned and unplanned mechanisms, management invaded spaces created by workers, and, as a result, workers’ ability to pursue their interests was diminished. In the concluding section, I discuss the implications of this for research on employee rights and for combining the concern for rights with labor process theory.     

Worker visibility and firms' retention policies

In the last two decades, the widespread use of web‐based social networks has led to a higher visibility of workers to the labor market. We theoretically and experimentally analyze the consequences of such increased labor market transparency for the efficiency of job assignments, the wages of workers, and firm profits. Our theoretical results show that higher visibility of workers increases the efficiency of job assignments, leads to a redistribution of income between workers of different ability, and increases overall surplus. Our experimental findings generally support the theoretical results with the exception that increased visibility leads to higher worker turnover such that surplus does not increase.     

平台企业网约工心理契约的潜在类别与群体差异

为探讨平台企业与网约工之间的关系属性,基于心理契约理论及相关研究,开发了互联网平台企业网约工心理契约的结构化问卷。以网约车司机和网约配送员为调研对象,在15个城市获取367个样本数据,采用潜在类别分析技术(LCA)对平台企业网约工心理契约的潜在类型进行细分,分析平台企业网约工的心理契约差异。结果发现,网约工心理契约分为3种类型:低期望型、高期望型和随机期望型。3种心理契约类型在文化程度、工作类型、工作平台和工作感受4个指标上存在统计学上的显著差异。研究建议:平台企业要关注网约工的心理诉求,根据网约工的心理契约类型采取多元化雇佣模式;网约工要认识到网约工作的风险,做好经济契约和心理契约管理;政府部门要督促平台企业履行雇主责任与社会责任,保障网约工的基本劳动权益。     

Unionism and the public sector

It is incorrect and misleading to speak of unionization as a ‘human right’. The only human right is ‘self-ownership’, i.e. to pursue goals with one's own abilities but with no force or fraud against others. Government cannot dispense rights, only privileges and protections to some at the expense of others. A minimal degree of coercion exercised by government is unavoidable. But labor unions are not governments. Government has granted significant privileges to unions in the private sector, but such are not appropriate for public sector unions.     

《劳动合同法》实施过程中问题与对策的研究

《劳动合同法》是2007年6月29日第十届全国人民代表大会常务委员会第二十八次会议通过,是为了完善劳动合同制度,明确劳动合同双方当事人的权利和义务,保护劳动者的合法权益,构建和发展和谐稳定的劳动关系的法规。本文作者就劳动合同实施过程中发现的一些问题进行了分析,并对对策做了研究。     

Beyond informality: effectiveness of a new actor for representing call centre workers in Turkey

This article explores the organisational dynamics of the ‘Association of Call Centre Workers’ and aims to discover the effectiveness and sustainability of it as a new actor for representing the interests of call centre workers in Turkey. While traditional trade unions have fundamental problems such as efficacy and representation of various worker groups in changing workplaces, in the Turkish context, they have additional difficulties based on structural and legal constraints. Call centre workers seldom utilise the formal representation channels because of these and some other individual reasons such as a lack of information about their rights and labour movements. Moving from the importance of analysing the informal worker organisational dynamics in the case of a new trade union for call centre workers, the emphasis of the research is on the ability of the Association to develop a form of resistance and representation for the previously unrepresented.     

非公有制企业工会维护农民工权益的困境与出路——基于法视角的分析

在现有农民工权益保护体制下,工会维权责无旁贷。但目前非公有制企业的工会陷于监督缺失、维权乏力甚至"不在场"的困境之中。非公有制企业工会维护农民工权益的出路在于:进一步完善工会法制,确立非公有制企业工会"农民工权益代表者和维护者"的角色,将农民工组织起来,构建切实维权的体制。     

浅论新时期企业女职工工作重点

本文着重探讨和阐述了如何做好新时期企业女职工的工作及女职工工作发展方向。同时,指出了企业女职工面临的各种挑战、困境及解决应对的办法与对策。深刻地剖析并指出:企业要发展,女职工是一支不可忽视的主力军。同时,本文对新时期企业女职工工作从夯基础、维权益,做好娘家人、提素质、强学习、创品牌等方面展开论述。号召企业女职工在推动企业发展和维护自身权益中做出不懈努力,为企业的快速发展和经济效益的提升、为实现中华民族的伟大梦想而贡献出女性的智慧与力量!     

社会关系网络与农民工外出务工满意度的关系研究

本文利用对于福建农村地区的调查数据,通过建立多元Logistic回归方程识别影响农民工工作满意度的影响因素。结果表明,农民工是否能在务工地点建立新的社会关系网络以及社会关系网络的性质将显著影响农民工的工作满意度。同时,务工收入和劳动权益保障等因素对这一群体的工作满意度也产生显著影响。     

An empirical assessment of assortative matching in the labor market

In labor markets with worker and firm heterogeneity, the matching between firms and workers may be assortative, meaning that the most productive workers and firms team up. We investigate this with longitudinal population-wide matched employer–employee data from Portugal. Using panel data methods, we quantify a firm-specific productivity term for each firm, and we relate this to the skill distribution of workers in the firm. We find that there is positive assortative matching, in particular among long-lived firms. Using skill-specific estimates of an index of search frictions, we find that the results can only to a small extent be explained by heterogeneity of search frictions across worker skill groups.     

浅析劳动合同与劳务合同

现实生活中,一些用人单位或劳动者往往混淆劳动合同与劳务合同的区别,以致其应有的权利得不到保障。本文简单介绍劳动合同与劳务合同。     

The deployment of temporary production workers in assembly operations: a case study of the hidden costs of learning and forgetting

The dynamics of workforce skill levels has a considerable impact on plant-level performance that is commonly overlooked by managers of manufacturing operations. In this study, we present a discrete event simulation model inspired by and validated in an actual manufacturing setting that includes short product life cycles, mid-volume production quantities, and a production environment consisting of assembly, inspection and testing.The effect of worker skill dynamics is analyzed using a factorial experimental design that contrasts the use of temporary versus permanent workers on manufacturing cost performance. The manufacturing costs assessed include labor, inspection and testing. The cost of reworking a defect is captured as an increase in the labor consumption. Materials costs are not assessed. At the core of the analysis, it is assumed that temporary workers have relatively less skill and therefore have higher average production times, higher average defect rates associated with their assembly activity, and lower rates of learning. In addition, the variance of the production time is higher for the temporary workers. Despite these indicators of performance problems, temporary workers may be used because of the considerably lower wage rate compared to permanent employees.Our in-depth case analyses shows that assigning skilled permanent workers to upstream build operations was superior to other policies deploying temporary workers, regardless of lot size or product complexity. Attesting to the importance of the labor mix component of manufacturing strategy, workforce deployment policies tended to dominate product switching frequency (a proxy variable for lot size and product mix) in impacting costs.     

关于企业内部规章制度的法律思考

涉及劳动者切身利益的企业内部规章制度(劳动制度)是劳动关系的基本要素之一,直接关系到劳动关系乃至整个社会的和谐稳定,《劳动法》、《劳动合同法》都已对其内容、程序合法性做出了原则规定。其相关各方,包括用人单位、劳动者、行政主管部门及国家立法机关均应从法律的角度对其作认真的思考和审视。用人单位应切实按照三个合法性标准策划企业规章制度;劳动者在以规章制度作为行为规范的同时应懂得用其合法性标准维护自身权益;行政主管部门应切实履行职责,加强对企业规章制度合法性的专项监查;国家应实行劳动关系法治化,立法机关应进一步就企业劳动制度做出专项立法。