Collective agreements provide all workers with identical break schedules, irrespective of their individual differences in susceptibility to fatigue and recovery speed. In addition, companies tend to ...limit breaks which is also detrimental to productivity. We consider workers performing a repetitive task, each endowed with an individual fatigue and recovery function. Fatigue slows down the unit processing time which can be restored by appropriate breaks, therefore allowing for the daily production amount to be optimised. The optimised production of each worker can actually be reached for a multitude of break schedules. We therefore develop an algorithm that lists all possible break schedules (enumeration), and selects those leading to the maximum daily output, and the maximum welfare. Welfare is defined by the break duration and their timing flexibility, since we allow breaks to be also taken at the beginning or end of the workday, enabling workers to spend less time in the workplace. Having a variety of schedules would help in meeting at best the workers’ preferences and facilitate a consensus on a specific schedule between managers and workers. The resulting optimised break schedules are compared with common break practices in collective agreements so as to assess their impact on productivity and on worker’s welfare. None of the break scheduling models in the literature considers the option of leaving the workplace earlier, which is nevertheless highly appreciated by workers, nor do these models provide a variety of optimised break schedules to best accommodate workers’ preferences.
•We develop a solution approach to get optimised break schedules under fatigue and non preemption.•The objective is to maximise the daily output and workers’ welfare.•Welfare is defined by break number, duration, and possible timing at day’s start or end.•The approach can be applied to any fatigue and recovery functions monotonic over time.•Break policies in collective agreements are compared to the optimised schedules.
This article reports the findings of a field study on the emergence of collective agreements led by global brands enacting compliance measures to improve safety and working conditions in the ...Bangladesh garment industry. We explore how key actors in the Bangladesh garment sector who constitute the local production system of the global supply chain experienced the implementation of global agreements on factory safety. We argue that global safety compliance measures through multi-stakeholder initiatives provide legitimacy to multinational corporations and their global brands but do little to address the structural problems arising from exploitative pricing and procurement practices, which are the key reasons for deplorable working conditions in garment factories. Our findings indicate that neoliberal development policies of the state, where local economies are incorporated into global production networks, resulted in differential treatment and regulation of specific populations that comprise garment factory workers. The reconfiguration of state power to meet the demands of global supply chains also involved use of state violence to suppress dissent while undermining labour rights and working conditions. Our article contributes to the politicization of multinational corporations in global production chains by showing how contestations between workers, factory owners, the state, trade unions and multinational corporations create new private forms of governance and new regimes of compliance in the industry.
Through the analysis of the concept of emerging professionalism from collective agreements applied to the greatest number of workers (15 collective agreements, selected on the basis of the number of ...workers to which they apply and other criteria indicated), in this paper the Author points out that technological innovations are not producing a conceptual revolution comparable to that which was the unique framework of the 70s on the personnel framing systems, a fortiori because often the renewals of collective agreements take place after a considerable time; the problem, from the point of view of industrial relations, however, is that the increasing differentiation of the organizational models of enterprises could have the effect that the revision of the discipline of professionalism corporate, shifting the centre of gravity of collective bargaining towards a greater degree of decentralisation and hence the potential (and dangerous) extension of the employer’s powers. Finally, the effect of the interweaving between the protection of professionalism in national collective agreements and ius variandi of the employer is discussed
This article uses the European Structure of Earnings Survey to describe the evolution of collective bargaining coverage in European countries during 2002–2018 and how this affected the pay premium ...associated with being covered. Pay premia are an outcome of negotiations, reflecting the bargaining power on behalf of employees as well as the system of coverage, separately for the public and private sector. Descriptively, we show a decline in collective bargaining coverage linked to a general reduction in the pay differences. This hides much variation though. In a multivariate analysis of changes over time, we show that centrally bargained agreements are associated with larger pay premia if more people are covered and in countries and sectors with stronger trade unions. As this power declines over time, so do wage premia. At higher rates of coverage, there can be a spillover effect where wages for all workers increase, thereby reducing the premia.
Summary
Health promoters recognize the social determinants of health (SDOH) shape health outcomes yet generally neglect how unionization and collective agreements (CAs) shape these SDOH. This is ...surprising since extensive evidence indicates unions and CAs influence wages and benefits, job security, working conditions and income inequality, which go on to affect additional SDOH of food and housing security, child development and social exclusion. We argue unions and CAs should be a health promotion focus by examining how they influence the SDOH and health outcomes in wealthy developed nations in four ways. First, we consider how union density (UD) and CA coverage (CAC) are associated with differences between wealthy western nations in percentage of low-waged workers, extent of income inequality, and low birthweight and infant mortality rates. Second, we bring together literature that shows greater UD and CAC within national sub-jurisdictions are associated over time with more equitable distribution of the SDOH and better health outcomes. Third, we document—also using available literature—how within nations, union membership and working under a CA shape the SDOH one experiences. Fourth, we carry out a Canadian case study—applying a political economy lens—to examine how power relations, working through economic and political systems, determine extent of unionization and CAC and the inclination of health promoters to consider these issues. Implications for health promoters are considered.
In the article, the regulatory trajectories of variable hours contracts (VHCs, denoting on-call contracts, and zero-hours contracts) are analysed in two countries, the Netherlands and Finland. The ...unity or disunity in social partners’ readiness for bringing the issue of VHCs to the agenda of collective bargaining has implications for the labour market regimes. From the institutional change perspective, the shared agenda in regulating the VHCs implies conversion of the labour market regime in the Netherlands. In Finland, layering was seen in the development of labour legislation, whereas the disregard of VHCs in collective bargaining implies drift. In Finland, the ‘legislative route’ of regulating conditions of labour may strengthen, undermining the negotiatory autonomy of social partners, earlier embedded in the structure of the Nordic labour market regime.
Industrija videoigara jedna je od najbrže rastućih industrija s velikim ekonomskim potencijalom koja zapošljava sve veći broj radnika diljem svijeta. No, njezina „tamna strana“, na koju upozoravaju ...različita istraživanja, su nepovoljni uvjeti rada osoba zaposlenih u ovom području: predugo radno vrijeme, niske plaće, diskriminacija i uznemiravanje radnika, neadekvatna zaštita na radu, neravnoteža posla i obiteljskog života i drugo. Sindikalno organiziranje, kolektivno pregovaranje te različite formalne i neformalne kolektivne akcije i predstavništva radnika predstavljaju instrumente kojima se uvjeti rada mogu poboljšati, ali se još uvijek nedovoljno koriste. Riječ je o temi koja zaslužuje pozornost, a u Hrvatskoj još nije dovoljno istražena. U radu se najprije analiziraju uvjeti rada zaposlenih u industriji videoigara, posebno kroz prikaz rezultata različitih istraživanja provedenih među radnicima. Zatim se daje prikaz individualnih akcija te neformalnih i formalnih kolektivnih akcija koje poduzimaju radnici zaposleni u industriji videoigara u različitim dijelovima svijeta. Analizirane su odredbe Kolektivnog ugovora za radnike Gamechuck d.o.o. iz Zagreba. Na temelju dobivenih spoznaja izveden je zaključak o važnosti koju sindikalno organiziranje ove skupine radnika te kolektivno pregovaranje, ali i različite neformalne akcije imaju za poboljšanje njihova položaja i uvjeta rada. Kada je riječ o analiziranom Kolektivnom ugovoru, može se zaključiti da se njime jamči zavidna razina prava radnika, a dodatnu pozornost trebalo bi posvetiti jasnijem uređenju radnog vremena.
The video game industry is one of the fastest growing industries with a huge potential to employ more and more people all over the world. However, there is a dark side that different studies call attention to, all related to the poor working conditions: too long hours, low pay, discrimination and mobbing, inadequate occupational safety, imbalance between work and family life, etc. Organizing in unions, collective negotiations, various formal and informal collective actions and representations are instruments that may bring about better working conditions, but they are not sufficiently practiced. This is an issue that requires more attention in Croatia.
The paper initially analyzes the working conditions of individuals employed in the video game industry, particularly focusing on the results of different studies carried out among the workers. Next, the paper presents individual actions, as well as informal and formal collective actions undertaken by the workers in this industry in different parts of the world. Provisions in the Collective Agreement of the Gamechuck d.o.o. based in Zagreb are analyzed. Findings indicate the importance of organizing in unions and collective negotiations, but also a variety of informal actions for the improvement of the workers’ position and working conditions. The analyzed Collective Agreement shows that a high level of workers’ rights is guaranteed, with more attention needed to arrive at a clearer definition of the working hours.
This paper introduces a model of collective creativity that explains how the locus of creative problem solving shifts, at times, from the individual to the interactions of a collective. The model is ...grounded in observations, interviews, informal conversations, and archival data gathered in intensive field studies of work in professional service firms. The evidence suggests that although some creative solutions can be seen as the products of individual insight, others should be regarded as the products of a momentary collective process. Such collective creativity reflects a qualitative shift in the nature of the creative process, as the comprehension of a problematic situation and the generation of creative solutions draw from-and reframe-the past experiences of participants in ways that lead to new and valuable insights. This research investigates the origins of such moments, and builds a model of collective creativity that identifies the precipitating roles played by four types of social interaction: help seeking, help giving, reflective reframing, and reinforcing. Implications of this research include shifting the emphasis in research and management of creativity from identifying and managing creative individuals to understanding the social context and developing interactive approaches to creativity, and from a focus on relatively constant contextual variables to the alignment of fluctuating variables and their precipitation of momentary phenomena.
L’articolo tratta il sistema della contrattazione collettiva di Italia, Germania, Francia e Spagna: analizza la storia della contrattazione, la distribuzione funzionale e settoriale del reddito, e il ...rapporto tra salario e valore aggiunto settoriale, concentrando l’attenzione sul numero dei lavoratori coinvolti nei contratti collettivi e le rispettive quote salariali sul valore aggiunto. L’articolo termina con la proposta di due criteri per riscrivere la matrice dei contratti nazionali: in termini di numero di lavoratori per contratto, e di un minimo valore aggiunto settoriale. Lo scopo è costruire un benchmark quali-quantitativo per ridurre il numero dei contratti collettivi nazionali di lavoro settoriale in Italia, con l’intenzione di restituire la necessaria forza contrattuale ai sindacati per adempiere al ruolo di autorità salariale.
The gradual shift in power relations between organized employers and employees since the 1970s has increasingly affected the functioning of national industrial relations systems. According to a broad ...literature, the most important of these consequences is an increase in employer discretion. This article tests this claim by performing a longitudinal content analysis on three Dutch collective contracts. It develops an analytical framework based on four dimensions of employer discretion. Results show that although employer discretion did increase on all four dimensions between the mid-1970s and the 2020s, significant temporal and sectoral variation has occurred. In addition, the article argues that a loss of democratic influence by employees intensified the increase of the one-sided decision-making powers of employers, and that the collective contract is being transformed from a joint labor–capital effort to solve workplace problems to a management instrument.
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