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| Structural changes in employment | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The aim of this research area is to analyse the structural change taking place
in work and employment, with a particular focus on new employment relationships
and qualification needs. Structural change poses a challenge to the established
institutional arrangements on three levels: at the macro level, the systems of labour market regulation, vocational training and social security, at the meso
level, the industrial relations system and the negotiation of pay and working
conditions and, at the micro level, the gender division of labour in households,
patterns of economic activity over the life course and the forms of employee
involvement in the workplace. All three levels and their various interconnection
are to be taken into account in the analysis. These developments make it
necessary both to develop an ‘extended concept of work’ and to explicitly
incorporate normative aspects such as quality of life social justice, social
participation and environmental compatibility into the analysis. The central questions to be addressed are: How can individual employability be maintained as the structure and form of work undergo change? How can firms’ capacity to adapt (internal flexibility) be improved? How can income be safeguarded during training processes? What form of funding for further training guarantees efficient and fair risk management? What financial incentives are there for ‘investitive’ working-time reductions? How are job rotation and similar personnel development measures implemented?
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● The new self-employed in international perspective.
Structures, dynamic, promotion and social protection of the new self-employed.
Project management:
Karin Schulze Buschoff,
Günther Schmid Duration: May 2004 to December 2006 Expert interviews and survey data from five European countries are being used
to investigate the structure of self-employment, its dynamic and the labour
market policies used to promote it, as well as the question of social protection
for the self-employed. The notion of the ‘new self-employment’ is constructed on
the basis of each country’s specific understanding of the term.
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Planned projects The regulation of flexible working times Project managment (planned):
Eckart Hildebrandt,
Kristina Thurau The flexibilisation of working times is associated with a decline in the binding power of collectively agreed regulations. For both employers and employees, this creates new opportunities and demands with regard to bargaining processes and assertion of their respective interests. New forms of regulation for flexible working times are emerging at firm and state level and through collective bargaining. The specific concern of this research project is with the new short-term coordination and long-term planning requirements and the associated problems of social protection for employees. In methodological terms, the project will be based on case studies of the use of long-term and working-life time accounts in firms within the sphere of influence of the trade unions IG Metall and/or Ver.di. Employees’ time use and the time at their disposal for training or leave, for example, will be analysed, as will employers’ interests in the flexible distribution of working time over the long term. Joint Work in Local Agenda 21 Project managment (planned):
Eckart Hildebrandt Against the background of the debates on civil society and human capital, the question of civic commitment is attracting increasing attention within society. Voluntary work is no longer regarded as an individual ethical leisure activity but increasingly as a necessary and meaningful social activity that is closely correlated with paid work (corporate citizenship). The cooperation of public bodies, institutions and firms, NGOs and individual citizens in agenda processes is to be analysed as ‘collaboration’ between various forms of work. This collaboration has to be coordinated with regard to work organisation and working conditions and supported by putting in place the required infrastructure if the potential for civic commitment is to be developed on a sustainable basis. The network will compare various regional and national traditions and models and, on that basis, put forward policy recommendations. |
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