Work Life Challenges - workforce management and worker involvement solutions

-During the reporting period, the project's participants have written two new papers: 1) Barth, E. J. C. Davis and R. Freeman (2015), Augmenting the Human Capital Earnings Equation With Measures of Where People Work, and the one we focus on here: 2) Bratsberg, B. and K. Røed (2015), The Nordic Welfare Model in an Open European Labor Markets. IZA Policy Paper 109. The latter asks the question: Is it possible to sustain an ambitious and redistributive Nordic welfare state in a Europe with open borders? Drawing on longitudinal administrative records spanning four decades, we first present discouraging historical evidence showing that labor migrants from low-income source countries tend to have unstable employment careers with marked overrepresentation in welfare programs. This pattern extends to post?accession labor migrants from Eastern Europe, who quickly experience high rates of unemployment. The article discusses possible avenues for making the welfare state "migration robust." We argue that there are alternatives to reclosing borders and/or cutting down welfare state ambitions, and recommend policies based on strengthening of activity requirements in social insurance programs, raising minimum job standards, and substitution of work-oriented services for cash-based family allowances. Project homepage: http://www.samfunnsforskning.no/Prosjekter/Paagaaende-prosjekter/Work-Life-Challenges-workforce-management-and-worker-involvement-solutions-WLC

Sub-project 1 analyses bargaining regime and worker involvement changes affecting employers' job creation and demand for labour, contributing to inclusion and exclusion of workers. Sub-project 2 analyses whether the superior performance of workplaces impl ementing incentive pay schemes may reflect sorting (e.g., more able and healthy workers), but also be associated with external effects by possibly acting as an exclusion mechanism. Sub-project 3 analyses how different employer strategies ensuring function al flexibility facilitates inclusion and exclusions of workers. Sub-project 4 analyses how employer strategies ensuring numerical flexibility such as outsourcing and sub-contracting may be a way of creating new divisions in the labour market, or if this a ctually provide valuable work opportunities for marginalised workers. Sub-project 5 analyses how and why employers' recruitment strategies for specific worker groups and strategies to retain these, such as elderly, disabled workers and other marginal work ers, vary for different employer groups. Sub-project 6 analyses organisational change, down- and upsizing, their frequency, how they are conducted, and finally how worker involvement influences the outcomes. Sub-project 7 provides a timely and needed desc ription of the Norwegian work life 2011, of the major trends and the major challenges, for policy makers, employers and trade unions, general audience and for the research community. The project bears evidence on institutional differences (UK vs. Norway) in how manpower strategies and worker involvement adapt to changing business cycles and legislations. As background for our analyses, we conducts a new detailed questionnaire survey; the Norwegian Workplace Employment Relations Survey 2011 (NWERS2011), wh ich when linked with the previous two employer surveys(1997,2003) and added register data on individuals and organisations will give us panel information on establishments and workers over 16 years.