IER News & blogs

It is nearly fifty years ago that the EU passed its first directive on equal pay for equal work or work of equal value. While mobilising the female workforce has been successful in most European countries, a persistent gender pay gap remains across Europe. To address these structurally embedded gender inequalities, the EU and its Members States have recently adopted the EU’s Pay Transparency Directive (2023). Although the UK is no longer an EU Member State and is not obliged to implement this directive, it remains to be seen whether the newly appointed Labour government will follow suit and adopt similar measures as part of its intention to address the pay inequalities in its election manifesto.

Pivoting away from economists’ traditional concerns with pay, an international group of economic historians now want to explore the wider aspects of job quality. In August the group organised a conference in Oslo at the Norwegian Academy of Science & Letters focused on ‘Job Quality from the Past to the Future’. IER's Director Chris Warhurst was invited to give the keynote talk, titled ‘Improving Job Quality: Practical, Policy and Research Challenges’.

Digital labour platforms, including their management practices and extensive reliance on the self-employed, have attracted much attention, though usually from a worker rather than an employer perspective. This book chapter contributes to the platform literature by exploring how platforms utilise algorithmic and traditional management practices, and for which purposes. It features in the new Research Handbook on Self-Employment and Public Policy 

This book chapter examines self-employment among people aged 50 and over in the liberal market economies of Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the USA against the backdrop of the economic shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and in the context of long-standing efforts aimed at increasing levels of older workers’ labour force participation. It features in the new Research Handbook on Self-Employment and Public Policy 

Warwick Institute for Employment Research is a research partner on a new project led by the University of the West of Scotland (UWS) that has secured a grant of £1.2 million aimed at tackling dementia in the workplace. Other research partners are Lancaster University, Northumbria University, Edinburgh Napier University, and Wilfrid Laurier University.