Uncertainty And The Politics Of Employment Protection

In The Politics of Uncertainty Peter Marris examines one of the most crucial and least studied aspects of social relationships: how we manage uncertainty, from the child's struggle for secure attachment to the competitive strategies of multinational corporations. Using a powerful synthesis of social and psychological theory, he shows how strategies of competition interact with the individual's sense of personal agency to place the heaviest burden of uncertainty on those with the fewest social and economic resources. He argues that these strategies maximize uncertainty for everyone by undermining the reciprocity essential to successful economic and social relationships. At a time when global economic reorganisation is undermining security of employment, The Politics of Uncertainty makes a convincing case for strategies of co-operation at both personal and political levels to ensure our economic and social survival in the twenty-first century.

Government intervention in capitalist labor markets has been a controversial issue throughout the history of the U.S. Political debates surrounding the appropriate reach of the Federal government culminated with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and subsequent Affirmative Action mandates. The effectiveness of equal opportunity legislation and mandates, however, remains contested. Changes in the institutional bases that maintained inequality in the United States undoubtedly led to cultural shifts in the actions, behaviors and practices of work organizations, but race and sex employment equality, a central goal of the legislation, remains unachieved. Contemporary stratification research continues to illuminate the individual level correlates of race and sex economic inequalities and the extent to which inequality exists across the U.S. economy; however, it typically ignores the institutional bases that maintain and reinforce boundaries around status group distinctions. It continues to show that discrimination remains ubiquitous, but fails to explain the contemporary or historical circumstances leading to change. This study addresses several weaknesses of previous research by applying new institutional theory, a theory of organizations rather than individuals, and using unique longitudinal data collected at the establishment level from 1966 to 2002. The theory suggests that organizations change their routines and structure in response to uncertainty in their institutional environments. I explore a specific component of the institutional environment -- uncertainty stemming from the political environment -- on changes in race and sex workplace inequality in the post-civil rights era. It is my position that the passage of laws and mandates, by itself, is unlikely to bring about employment opportunities for women and racialized minorities. It is the degree of uncertainty generated by the passage of ambiguous state and Federal laws and regulatory complia.

We examine the impact of uncertainty on employment dynamics. Alternative measures of uncertainty are constructed based on the survey of professional forecasters, and regressionbased forecasting models for GDP growth, inflation, S&P500 stock price index, and fuel prices. Our results indicate that greater uncertainty has a negative impact on growth of employment, and the effects are primarily felt by the relatively smaller businesses; the impact on large businesses are generally non-existent or weaker. Our results suggest that to truly understand the effects of uncertainty on employment dynamics, we need to focus on the relatively smaller and entrepreneurial businesses. We discuss implications for the framing of economic policy.

This book argues the case for strategies of co-operation at both personal and political levels. The author challenges conventional assumptions about economic development and proposes a new way of looking at power relationships.

Why do some European welfare states protect unemployed and inadequately employed workers ("outsiders") from economic uncertainty better than others? Philip Rathgeb’s study of labor market policy change in three somewhat-similar small states—Austria, Denmark, and Sweden—explores this fundamental question. He does so by examining the distribution of power between trade unions and political parties, attempting to bridge these two lines of research—trade unions and party politics—that, with few exceptions, have advanced without a mutual exchange. Inclusive trade unions have high political stakes in the protection of outsiders, because they incorporate workers at risk of unemployment into their representational outlook. Yet, the impact of union preferences has declined over time, with a shift in the balance of class power from labor to capital across the Western world. National governments have accordingly prioritized flexibility for employers over the social protection of outsiders. As a result, organized labor can only protect outsiders when governments are reliant on union consent for successful consensus mobilization. When governments have a united majority of seats, on the other hand, they are strong enough to exclude unions. Strong Governments, Precarious Workers calls into question the electoral responsiveness of national governments—and thus political parties—to the social needs of an increasingly numerous group of precarious workers. In the end, Rathgeb concludes that the weaker the government, the stronger the capacity of organized labor to enhance the social protection of precarious workers.

In this paper we explore the effect of protection lobbying by solving a firm's dynamic optimisation problem where there is uncertainty about future demand, the success of lobbying and non-zero entry/exit costs. We find out that the firms in declining industries tend to lobbying in economic downturn to prevent shutting down factories. On the contrary, the firms in growing industries tend to lobby for preventing other firms from entering the market. The degree of this effect depends on the ratio of exit costs to entry costs. It is shown that the higher the ratio, the stronger the effect is.

Table of Contents List of illustrations List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction 1 1 More pressure, less protection 8 2 Flexibility and the reorganisation of work 39 3 The prevalence and redistribution of job insecurity and work intensification 61 4 Disappearing pathways and the struggle for a fair day's pay 77 5 Job insecurity and work intensification: the effects on health and well-being 92 6 The intensification of everyday life 112 7 The organisational costs of job insecurity and work intensification 137 8 Stress intervention: what can managers do? 154 9 What can governments do? 172 Appendices 185 Notes 189 References 206 Index 222.