IER Newsletter - Current Issue

IER Newsletter - October 2024

Re-Thinking Europe’s Skill Needs: Reflections Following the European Year of Skills

IER's Professor Terence Hogarth co-edited a timely new book examining Europe's evolving skills landscape, published by Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini (FGB). The book, "Re-Thinking Europe's Skill Needs: Reflections Following the European Year of Skills," was launched at a major conference in Rome on October 29th. This publication and the conference were part of the SkillsPULSE project, a 3-year Horizon Europe initiative coordinated by FGB, which aims to advance our understanding of skills shortages and gaps across Europe. Read More

The Rome conference featured distinguished speakers, including OECD's Glenda Quintini, and addressed crucial topics such as labour shortages, green jobs, and AI's impact on workforce transformation. The event brought together experts, researchers, and policymakers to discuss how Europe can better anticipate and address its future skills needs. Professor Hogarth's contribution to this project continues IER's tradition of leading international research on skills and labour market dynamics.

Baltina, L. and Hogarth, T. (eds) (2024). Re-thinking Europe’s Skill Needs: Reflections following the European Year of Skills. Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini.

Workers with few hours - who secures their social rights - the role of social dialogue and collective bargaining

IER's Professor Trine Larsen has collaborated with Professor Anna Ilsøe from FAOS, University of Copenhagen, to edit a special issue of the European Journal of Industrial Relations. The collection brings together research from leading European scholars examining how social dialogue and collective bargaining influence the risks associated with precarious employment contracts, including marginal part-time work, temporary agency work, and zero-hour contracts. The special issue also explores how changes in welfare institutions affect the protection of workers in these employment arrangements. In their introductory paper, Professors Trine Larsen and Anna Ilsøe present key arguments about the vulnerabilities inherent in marginal part-time employment and analyse how collective bargaining and social protection mechanisms can impact these roles differently, particularly depending on workers' employment status. This publication contributes to our understanding of the evolving nature of employment contracts and their implications for worker protection in contemporary labour markets.

Permanently marginalised? Securing living hours among part-time workers in hotels and restaurants in Northern Europe

IER's Professor Trine Larsen and collaborators from Denmark, Ireland and Norway have published new research examining the wage and working conditions of marginal part-time workers in the hotel and restaurant sector across these three countries. Their comparative study, which focuses on workers employed for fewer than 15 hours per week, analyses how different industrial relations models and sectoral traditions have shaped worker protection over the past two decades.
The research reveals that whilst social partners have successfully implemented various initiatives to protect and increase hourly wages across all three countries, efforts to guarantee minimum weekly working hours have had limited success, with Denmark showing the most positive impact. The study highlights the varying effectiveness of bipartite, tripartite and unilateral measures in securing 'living hours' for marginal part-time workers, offering valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities in protecting vulnerable workers across different national contexts.

Ilsøe, A., Larsen, T. P., Trygstad, S., Ryan, L., Nergaard, K., & McMahon, J. (2024). Permanently marginalized? Securing living hours among part-time workers in hotels and restaurants in Northern Europe. European Journal of Industrial Relations, 0(0).

Negotiating about algorithms: social partner responses to AI in Denmark and Sweden

IER's Professor Trine Larsen has collaborated with researchers from leading Nordic universities on groundbreaking research exploring how social partners are responding to the rise of AI-based technologies in Denmark and Sweden. Together with Anna Ilsøe (University of Copenhagen), Chris Mathieu (University of Lund) and Bertil Rolandsson (University of Gothenburg), Trine's research reveals that both trade unions and employers strongly prefer addressing AI regulation through tripartite negotiations and collective bargaining rather than statutory law. Read More The study provides valuable insights into joint social partner initiatives and demonstrates how these stakeholders are actively engaging with both the challenges and opportunities presented by AI technologies in the workplace. This research offers important lessons for understanding collective approaches to managing technological change in different institutional contexts.

Ilsøe, A., Larsen, T. P., Mathieu, C., & Rolandsson, B. (2024). Negotiating about Algorithms: Social Partner Responses to AI in Denmark and Sweden. ILR Review, 77(5), 856-868.

The 42nd conference of the International Working Party on Labour Market Segmentation

IER recently co-organised the prestigious 42nd International Working Party on Labour Market Segmentation (IWPLMS) conference, held at Copenhagen Business School on 5-6 September, in collaboration with Copenhagen Business School and FAOS, University of Copenhagen. The well-attended event brought together international academics and practitioners for three engaging roundtable debates addressing critical European labour market challenges. Read More The debates covered timely topics including the EU's minimum wage and pay transparency directives, recent migration trends and mobile work and job quality in the platform economy. Each roundtable featured presentations from leading international scholars alongside Danish trade union and employer representatives, offering unique perspectives on how these issues are understood both in academic discourse and among social partners. This combination of theoretical and practical insights provided participants with a comprehensive understanding of current labour market developments and their implications.

New forms of work and young people's working lives

IER's Professor Trine Larsen recently presented to Study Choice Denmark (Studievalg Danmark), an organisation of 85 career advisors providing guidance to students across Danish educational institutions. Her presentation examined emerging labour market trends, with a particular focus on non-standard employment, digitalisation and their implications for young people entering the workforce. The insights shared will inform Study Choice Denmark's strategic approach to addressing labour market challenges facing young people in the coming years.

Public procurement as a policy tool

Building on extensive work on sustainable public procurement over the past years, IER's Dr Eva Katharina Sarter presented a paper entitled "Hidden Debates: Public Procurement as a Venue for Negotiation", which examined the political dimension of debates on the strategic use of public procurement to foster (social) policy goals. Read More The invited presentation examined debates surrounding the importance of economic and social considerations in public procurement regulations at different levels and tensions and conflicts arising in multi-level contexts. It was part of the workshop "The Regulatory Governance of Public Procurement: Assessment of the Research Field and the Ways Forward" held at Free University Berlin in Germany.

New IER projects

SkillsPULSE - HORIZON-CL2-2023-TRANSFORMATIONS-01Link opens in a new window

Review of research and innovation - English agricultural and horticultural workforceLink opens in a new window, Institute for Agriculture and Horticulture

Find more information on IER's current projects.

Other publications

Hogarth, T. and Baltina, L. (2024). What is a green job or a green skill? Reflections on measures to assess the impact of the green transition on human capital development. In: Baltina; L. and Hogarth, T. (eds) (2024) Re-thinking Europe’s Skill Needs: Reflections following the European Year of Skills.Link opens in a new window Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini, pp. 90-108.

Dickinson, P. and Hogarth, T. (2024). Apprenticeships and the varieties of capitalism: the liberal market economy case of England. In: Baltina; L. and Hogarth, T. (eds) (2024) Re-thinking Europe’s Skill Needs: Reflections following the European Year of Skills.Link opens in a new window Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini, pp 220 -234.

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