Managing low‐skill workers: a study of small UK food manufacturing firms

Low‐wage work is of growing significance in the UK. This article tests the model of the low‐skills equilibrium (LSE) through a study of 27 small firms in a sector, food manufacturing, widely identified as being in an LSE. Three hypotheses are tested. (1) There will be a single, fixed equilibrium. We find more variety, reflecting the specific circumstances of firms. (2) An equilibrium is sustained by weak support institutions and a product market dominated by low value‐added goods. The expectation about institutions is supported, but the product market permitted some, albeit weak, opportunities to escape the LSE. (3) Skills will be low, and workplace regimes will be characterised by work intensification. Some firms were developing employee skills. Work intensification was rare, reflecting the absence of Taylorisation and the importance of face‐to‐face relationships. Overall, some firms had the will to escape the LSE, but weak institutional support and a ready supply of labour substantially reduced the incentives to do so.     

Absence management of migrant agency workers in the food manufacturing sector

Temporary workers in low-skilled roles often experience ‘hard’ HRM practices, for example the use of the Bradford Factor to monitor absence, rather than using incentives to reward attendance. However, this peripheral workforce has become increasingly diverse in the UK since the A8 European Union expansion, which has seen over a million migrants from central and eastern Europe register to work in the UK. Importantly, there is also heterogeneity within this group of workers, for example between those who intend to migrate for a short period of time then return, and those who are more settled and wish to develop a career. By considering the particular case of absence management, this paper examines how these different groups of migrants respond to HRM practices. The key contribution of the paper is to examine how different groups of migrants experience these practices, rather than simply comparing migrant and native workers as two homogeneous groups. The paper presents data from the food manufacturing sector in the UK. In total, 88 semi-structured interviews were conducted with operations managers, HR managers, union convenors and workers on permanent, temporary and agency contracts. In addition, data from informal interviews and observation at five companies are presented.     

Reproducing low‐wage labour: capital accumulation,labour markets and young workers

Drawing on evidence from Greater Manchester, this article examines how structural changes in capital accumulation have created particular labour market outcomes, which have led to young people becoming a source of cheap labour for the growing low‐wage service economy. Greater Manchester has been selected as a case study because of the sectoral composition of its labour market and because levels of low pay for young workers are above the national low‐pay average of 40 per cent. The research reveals that it is necessary to move beyond sociological explanations that concentrate on the ‘essential youthfulness’ of young people and instead draw on analytical categories from political economy in order to understand the structural causes of young people's material circumstances.     

Explaining variations in absence rates: temporary and agency workers in the food manufacturing sector

This article responds to a recent call in a provocation article in the Human Resource Management Journal by Thompson to use workplace studies to investigate employees' experiences of HR practices. Examining the particular case of absence management, the article investigates the experiences of short‐term workers in the food manufacturing industry in the UK. Variations in absence rates between directly employed temporary workers and agency workers are shown to be the result of differing levels of managerial control over absence, which affects workers' ability to use absence as a form of industrial conflict to escape a low‐skilled and monotonous work process.     

Differences in principals' leadership behavior in high‐ and low‐performing schools

This study was based on data from the 2008 Take20: Alabama Teaching and Learning Conditions Survey and focused on a comparison of teachers' perceptions of how school principals exercise their role in both high‐ and low‐performing elementary and middle schools that serve high‐poverty student populations. Teachers in the high‐performing schools consistently viewed their principals' behavior more positively than did their counterparts in the lower‐performing schools. Teachers reported less difference in regard to engaging the community to create shared responsibility for student and school success. Very little difference existed in the principal's involvement of teachers in key school decisions; neither population of principals scored high in this area.     

A multilevel examination of skills‐oriented human resource management and perceived skill utilization during recession: Implications for the well‐being of all workers

This article examines whether organizations can enhance employee well‐being by adopting human resource management (HRM) practices strategically targeted to improve skill development and deployment in a recessionary context. Employee skill utilization is proposed as the mediating mechanism between HRM practice and well‐being. The role of workplace skill composition is also examined as a boundary condition within which HRM differentially impacts employee outcomes. Using a nationally representative survey of UK workplaces (Workplace Employment Relations Survey 2011) and matched management and employee data, the analysis focused on organizations that had implemented some recessionary action following the 2008–2009 global financial and economic crisis. The findings show that human capital enhancing HRM and enriched job design positively influenced both job satisfaction and work‐related affective well‐being through increased employee skill utilization. Organizations with predominantly high‐skilled workforces were more likely to adopt these skills‐oriented HRM practices. Nevertheless, the effects of HRM on employee outcomes via skill utilization applied across organizations, regardless of workforce skill composition. The findings demonstrate employee skill utilization as a driver of HRM outcomes and the sustainability of “best practice” HRM arguments across all skill levels, even in the face of recession.     

The interrelated dynamics of unemployment and low‐wage employment

This paper examines the extent of state dependence in unemployment and the role played in this by intervening low‐wage employment. A range of dynamic random and fixed‐effects estimators are compared. Low‐wage employment is found to have almost as large an adverse effect as unemployment on future prospects and the difference in their effects is found to be insignificant. Evidence is presented that low‐wage jobs act as the main conduit for repeat unemployment and considerably increases its probability. Obtaining a higher‐wage job reduces the increased risk of repeat unemployment to insignificance. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Incentives of low‐quality sellers to disclose negative information

The paper studies incentives of low‐quality sellers to disclose negative information about their products. We develop a model in which one's quality can be communicated via cheap‐talk messages only. This setting limits the ability of high‐quality sellers to separate, as any communication strategy they pursue can be costlessly imitated by low‐quality sellers. We study two factors that can incentivize low‐quality sellers to communicate their quality: buyers' loss aversion and competition. Quality disclosure reduces buyers' risk, thereby increasing their willingness to pay for the product. It also introduces product differentiation, softening the competition.     

Business strategies and the transition to low‐carbon cities

Cities are key drivers of global climate change, with the majority of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions being tied to urban life. Local actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change are essential for stabilization of the global climate and can also help to address other urban ecological problems such as pollution, decreasing biodiversity, etc. Companies are important urban actors in the development of low‐carbon cities because they provide a multitude of goods and services to city populations and directly influence urban carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. This is a new area of research. While studies on corporate sustainability are numerous, there is little, if any, existing research that examines the role of companies in climate change adaptation and mitigation within specific urban areas. Urban ecologists also have not examined how corporate activity affects urban systems. Taking a multi‐disciplinary systems approach, we present a conceptual model of the role of companies in managing urban interactions with the climate system. We also present empirical findings illustrating how one company ‘partners’ with the city of Rotterdam to test electric vehicles as a pilot project for urban climate adaptation and mitigation. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

A note on the low‐quality advantage in vertical product differentiation

In this paper, we modify the analysis of Schubert (2017), who found low‐quality advantage arising from vertical differentiation. Here, we relax the assumption of a sufficiently high reservation utility (so that consumers will always buy the good) to include the case in which they can refrain from buying the good. We find an explicit solution to profit functions, with the result that low‐quality advantage disappears.     

Informal employment and the earnings of home-based home care workers in the United States

Informal employment continues to exist in parallel with formal employment among the US home-based home care workers and undermines the workers' economic security. This study examines the extent to which the earnings of the US home-based home care workers are affected by informal employment arrangements and state labour policies designed to benefit low-wage home care workers. Using a sample of 1,318 home-based home care workers from the 2017 and 2018 Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey, this study found that (i) informally employed home-based home care workers had a 9% reduction in annual earnings and that (ii) their earnings were not improved by generous state minimum wages and Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights while the earnings of agency employees were. The findings highlight the importance of strong enforcement of labour standards for informally employed home care workers in the United States.     

On‐the‐job training: a skill match approach to the determinants of lifelong learning

A recurrent finding in on‐the‐job training research is the ‘training gap’ in formal training: the positive correlation between initial education and continuing training. This finding is here examined from the perspective of two important distinctions: (i) between employee skill supply and job skill demand and (ii) between formal and informal training. Less‐educated workers may hold jobs with low skill requirements demanding little further formal training because the use of high skills is irrelevant, jobs that moreover provide little informal training. Exploring these issues on representative Swedish survey data using the educational mismatch (overqualified, the rightly qualified and the underqualified) model, we find that job requirements are strongly correlated with the incidence of both formal and informal training. Rather than, as has previously been argued, employee training decisions being the cause of the gap, this suggests that employer decisions regarding how to structure jobs and whom to hire are the primary factors behind the training gap.     

The interests of white‐collar workers and their representation in the German manufacturing sector: new initiatives,opportunity structures,framing and resources

In the German manufacturing sector, white‐collar workers have outpaced blue‐collar workers in numbers. Therefore, unions and works councils have launched initiatives to attract, mobilise and organise white‐collar workers. The analysis is drawing on a conceptual framework that looks at the opportunity structures, framing processes and resources of the initiatives.     

Masculine identities and low‐paid work: young men in urban labour markets

This article brings together debates about labour market change, work‐based identities, growing concerns about the problem of working‐class, low‐achieving boys and the identification of a contemporary crisis of masculinity. It draws on a longitudinal study of young men in Sheffield and Cambridge — contrasting local labour markets in England — examining the initial workplace experiences of white working‐class male school‐leavers. Two individual cases are explored in depth, looking at initial working pathways in order to assess the attitudes and actions of young school leavers and their responses to the structural changes in the labour market that have transformed their opportunities compared with both their fathers' generation and their female peers. The implications for theoretical debates about working lives and the trasformation of gender divisions are assessed.     

The Slum Multiple: A Cyborg Micro‐history of an Informal Settlement in Lisbon

This article proposes a cyborg reading of the process of informal settlement by internal and postcolonial immigrants in Lisbon's periphery from the 1970s to the present. Cyborg does not stand for a neo‐organicist or cybernetic understanding of the informal city but rather for the conjunction of the multiple enactments of city life under conditions of urban informality—in this case the fourfold combination of history/migration; architecture/low‐fi technologies; inhabitation/body/memory; and governmentality/urban capital. The 40‐year event of settlement and inhabitation is presented through an ethnographic micro‐history of one neighbourhood in particular, with a strong focus on slum dwellers' life stories, on the details of the artefact‐machines they have built, their informal dwellings, and on their social and mental experience of place. Responding to recent calls for multidisciplinary ethnographies of informality, the article brings the specificity of Lisbon's informal settlements—their growth based in postcolonial rather than rural migrations—into current debates on informal urbanisms and geographies of sociotechnical urban assemblages.     

Intra‐European labour migration and low‐wage competition—comparing the Danish and Swedish experiences across three sectors

The article compares how low‐wage competition and labour migration from EU11 Member States affect industrial relations and working conditions for natives and migrants in three sectors (transport, cleaning and agriculture) in Denmark and Sweden. The analysis shows how already vulnerable sectors with below‐average union density and collective agreements—especially geographical dispersed sectors—are strongly affected.