On compensation schemes for data sharing within the European REACH legislation

There is an intense debate on the impact of labour regulation in India today. Labour regulation in India differ state-wise and apply differently across types of workers (both regular and contract workers). This paper examines the joint effects of Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) and variable enforcement intensity on the growth in a size of temporary contract workers in the organised manufacturing sector. It uses the state level amendments to Industrial Dispute Act of 1947, and the average size of total number of labour inspectors for each state, as independent variables to capture the variation in labour regulations and enforcement intensity across thirty-one Indian states for the period 2000–2007. This paper argues that, average Indian firms located in strict EPL states hire differentially more temporary contract workers as compare to regular workers in response to variable enforcement intensity. Among other findings, the empirical analysis shows that firms prefer to employ excessive number of contract workers to circumvent firing and overall compliance costs of regular workers as stipulated by the Indian labour laws. Our results are robust to alternative specifications.     

Unravelling the Embedded Liberal Bargain: Labour and Social Welfare Law in the Context of EU Market Integration

European economic integration with a minimalist social policy at EU level was in part made possible by strong domestic labour market and social welfare institutions. The main contention of this paper is that EU market liberalisation was embedded within institutions of social citizenship at domestic level, which served to counter the liberalisation of the internal market. But this settlement has been put under strain. In addition to the challenges posed to the sustainability of European welfare states by the global economic crisis, the internal market jurisprudence of the Court of Justice casts doubt on the sustainability of the ‘embedded liberal bargain’. This paper focuses on the role of the Court, in particular in its jurisprudence on the interaction between (EU) market freedoms and (national) labour law, which undermines the ability of states to retain their regulatory autonomy over labour or social welfare law and, arguably, speeds up the unravelling of the ‘embedded liberal bargain’.     

Servitude and Forced Labour in the 21st Century: The Human Rights of Domestic Workers

Organisations and scholars have recently drawn attention towhat they call a modern form of slavery, ‘domestic slavery’.Domestic workers in Europe and elsewhere live and work in appallingconditions and are vulnerable to abuse. This article describesthe problem, presents the relevant legal instruments and analysesa decision of the European Court of Human Rights, Siliadin vFrance, where France was found in breach of the prohibitionof slavery, servitude, forced and compulsory labour under theEuropean Convention on Human Rights. The paper examines thegrowing interaction between international labour law and internationalhuman rights law. It argues that the decision in Siliadin andits legal implications constitute a positive first step towardsaddressing the problem of the coercion and vulnerability ofmigrant domestic workers.     

Industrialists hand in hand with environmentalists: how eco-labeling schemes can help firms to raise rivals’ costs

Industrialists may promote eco-labeling schemes in order to gain the support of environmentalists and ultimately gain market protection. Beyond the environmental effects of such coalitions, these schemes can provide industrialists a legitimate way to disadvantage rivals, frequently foreign rivals, by raising their costs. We consider a Stackelberg model that determines the conditions under which a domestic firm has incentive to impose an eco-label in order to raise the costs of its foreign rivals. The effects of eco-labeling on domestic social welfare are ambiguous. Policy recommendations are drawn. Notably, factors that may help policy makers to identify situations more vulnerable to undesirable outcomes from a welfare viewpoint are developed.      

‘Am I Free Now?’ Overseas Domestic Workers in Slavery

This article examines United Kingdom overseas domestic worker and diplomatic domestic worker visas in place since 2012. These visas tie workers to an employer by making it unlawful for them to change employer, even when seriously exploited or abused. The article presents the findings of a qualitative study of overseas domestic workers, exploring how this vulnerable and difficult (for researchers) to reach group experience these visas in practice. Workers reported instances of exploitation and abuse by the employers with whom they arrived in the United Kingdom. Having escaped, they have become undocumented, and are trapped in ongoing cycles of exploitation. The article assesses what light this empirical exploration sheds on the question of whether the visa is contrary to the prohibition of slavery, servitude, forced and compulsory labour in article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015.     

Beyond the Gaze and Well Beyond Wolfenden: The Practices and Rationalities of Regulating and Policing Sex Work in the Digital Age

Drawing on the largest study of the United Kingdom online market in sexual labour to date, this article examines the legal and regulatory consequences as aspects of sex work increasingly take place within an online environment. Our research shows that while governmental policy has not kept abreast of these changes, the application of current laws (which have, since the 1950s, focused on public nuisance and, more recently, trafficking and modern slavery) are pernicious to sex workers and unsuited to recognizing and responding to the abuses and exploitation in online markets in sexual labour. These injustices are likely to be exacerbated if policies and policing do not better align with the realities of these markets in the twenty‐first century. This demands a more nuanced regulatory approach which recognizes that people may engage in sex work of their own volition, but which also addresses conditions of labour and criminal exploitation.     

EMU and the Shift in the European Labour Law Agenda: From ‘Social Policy’ to ‘Employment Policy’

This article examines the interaction between EMU and the European Union (EU) employment strategy and its implications for law. It focuses on the importance of EMU as a catalyst in the development of the EU's social and employment policy in the years following the Treaty on European Union in 1992, up to the inauguration of a new employment policy in the Treaty of Amsterdam. In analysing the EU's discourse on labour market regulation, it is arguable that a shift has occurred in the EU's position on the ‘labour market flexibility’ debate: that the EU institutions are more readily accepting of the orthodoxy that labour market regulation and labour market institutions are a major cause of unemployment within EU countries and that a deregulatory approach, which emphasises greater ‘flexibility’ in labour markets, is the key to solving Europe's unemployment ills, along with macroeconomic stability, restrictive fiscal policy and wage restraint. As the EU's employment strategy has matured, this increased emphasis on employment policy has come to displace discourses around social policy. This change in emphasis has important implications for EMU since it signals a re‐orientation from an approach to labour market regulation which had as its core a strong concept of employment protection and high labour standards, to an approach which prioritises employment creation, and minimises the role of social policy, since social policy is seen as potentially increasing the regulatory burden.     

Corporate governance of Chinese state-controlled listed companies: Evidence from the exit of Chinese domestic venture capital

The existing literature on the corporate governance of Chinese state-controlled listed companies (SCLCs) focuses more on agency costs. There is inadequate attention being paid to its adaptive efficiency through the standard of venture capital (VC). This paper tries to fill this gap on the basis of the evidence from the exit of Chinese domestic VCs. The existing research has proved that the availability of stock market as an exit is essential for the vitality of a country’s VC industry. Unfortunately, with the institutional barriers imposed by the control-based model of the SCLCs, the exit ways of Chinese domestic VCs via stock market are still uneven. The implication from this study is that adaptive efficiency and agency costs are equally important factors which ought to be considered when any reform proposals for the corporate governance of the SCLCs are put forward. While either of the two factors is neglected in this process, the overall efficiency is to be jeopardized.     

Reversed Solidarity in Pension Plans

There is a unexpected phenomenon in the majority of complementary pension plans in the Netherlands. Unlike other arrangements that are the result of collective bargaining and decision making, these pension plans increase the inequality in the distribution of (lifetime) income. In those plans, persons without a career contribute to the payment of pension provisions of those with a career. Generally speaking, this implies that blue-collar workers and women pay for the pensions of white-collar workers, who are mostly men. For some of the contracting parties, the terms of the pension contract seem to be disadvantageous and suboptimal. The question arises as to why these contracts are being concluded and how they can survive in a competitive environment. Moreover, since the pension plans are the result of collective bargaining between the organisation of employers and the labour unions, the question arises as to how reversed solidarity fits the alleged redistributive goal of the labour unions. The analysis leads to the following conclusions. Firstly, that information and transaction cost, collective agreements, legal barriers and market failures on substitute arrangements prevent the conclusion of optimal contracts. Secondly, employers would find the pension plan attractive because it discourages shirking, enhances productivity and the process of job matching and reduces labour turnover. Thirdly, a pension plan based on final salary is in the interest of the median voter in the labour union, who is older and earns a higher seniority wage than junior workers. Furthermore, in the given circumstances the pension plan enlarges union membership and the dues income of the union and endows the union leadership with more prestige and influence. Individual union members would not oppose such a pension plan for reasons of informational asymmetry, transaction cost and the inability to capture the full benefits of their actions.A comparison of the pension schemes of Belgium, Germany, France and the UK shows that there are large differences in the structure and content of retirement provisions. Reversed solidarity may also be part of the pension plans in Belgium and the UK.     

Counterfeiting as corporate externality: intellectual property crime and global insecurity

Corporate negative externalities occur when corporations place some of the costs of their profit-seeking activity onto society. This paper suggests that the current global problem of intellectual property crime is such an externality, and that it has not been recognised as such because corporations present product counterfeiting and piracy as crimes which reduce their revenue, rather than as predictable side effects of corporate production and merchandising, including branding activity, which have considerable socially deleterious consequences. It is argued that corporate actors are responsible for the socially harmful effects of the global counterfeiting problem in the following respects. Branding, advertising, and other corporate activities drive the market for goods which have a fashion value over and above their use value. While corporations ‘create’ this desire, they cannot prevent it being applied to the desire for fake or replica goods. Outsourcing of corporate production activities to developing countries to take advantage of cheap manufacturing and labour costs presents considerable opportunities to producers in those countries to copy and distribute the goods in an unauthorised way. Serious measures are not taken against product counterfeiters by rights-holding corporations, since market expediency dictates that the costs of counterfeiting are not so adverse to corporations to incentivise them to change their business methods. Counterfeit and pirated goods cause a range of social harms above and beyond the spuriously-costed financial damage corporate rights-holders suggest they suffer - these include the health and safety issues created by some fake goods, and the creation and maintenance of highly profitable organised crime activity in international markets for fake goods.     

Modelling wages in centrally planned economies: The case of Poland

The main idea developed in this paper is that rising excess demand for the labour force results in higher growth of wages over the ‘notional’ rate of growth. The rationale is that employees change their jobs searching for higher wages, and employers are willing to offer higher pay in order to get additional workers. This relationship is highly nonlinear, and can be regarded as an extension of the idea known as the Phillips curve to the area of ‘negative’ rate of unemployment. Additionally, one can observe that if the disequilibrium intensity in the labour market is small, its changes cause stronger reactions of wages in strategic branches than in the remaining sectors of the economy. It is similar to the situation of excess demand for labour. If there is a high rate of unemployment, reductions of wages affect more branches of secondary importance for the economy. The empirical investigation is based on Polish data covering the time period from 1964 through 1984. As excess demand for labour is unobservable, a proxy is used as an indicator of disequilibrium. It is introduced to the equation explaining the rate of growth of average wages, in addition to the rate of productivity growth of labour and the rate of inflation. Estimates are derived for 10 industry branches and sectors of the economy. The results confirm the initial hypothesis.     

Adjustment, Stabilisation and the Analysis of the Employment Structure in Turkey: An Input- Output Approach

The aim of the paper is to examine the effects on employment of the large-scale structural adjustment programme undertaken by Turkey from the early 1980s onwards. In this respect, we particularly analyse how appropriate the choices of factor intensity after structural adjustment programme have been in the domestic production in comparison with the availability of domestic factor endowment. Our findings show that foreign trade in intermediate goods creates extra use of domestic labour, which can be considered as the labour cost of importing intermediate goods. This is the case in the majority of industries in the pre- and post-liberalisation period in Turkey. However, the capacity of using extra labour as a result of importing intermediate goods appeared to have decreased in the post-liberalisation period.     

Child-related leave and women’s labour market outcomes: towards a new paradigm in the European Union?

The current European Union (EU) legislative framework on child-related leave is facilitating an imbalance in the take-up of leave by women over men. There is a consolidated EU right to maternity leave for mothers but there is no parallel EU right to paternity leave for fathers. The EU right to parental leave is for both working mothers and fathers, but its design does not encourage an equal take-up by women and men. The aim of this article is to gain insight into the effects of child-related leave on women’s labour market outcomes. On the one hand, it reviews and analyses economic literature which points to the adverse consequences of leave on women’s earnings, and even on women’s labour market participation when the absences from work are very prolonged. On the other hand, it underlines the new direction followed by the European Commission towards greater equality between men and women at home and at work.     

论我国劳动争议处理的制度重构

我国现行劳动争议处理体制存在着诸多弊端,劳动争议调解委员会名存实亡,劳动者维权的第一道防线难堪重任;一裁两审的单轨劳动争议体制不仅造成公共资源的浪费,其高昂的经济成本和时间成本也使劳动者望法兴叹。因此, 我国劳动争议处理体制必需重构,建立适合我国国情的调解机制,选择“两裁终局”作为解决劳动争议的体制模式。     

Workers’ risk underestimation and occupational health and safety regulation

The standard treatment of occupational risk in the labour market is conducted in terms of the theory of compensating wage differentials, the basic characteristic of which is that workers can fully estimate actual occupational risks. However, research in cognitive psychology, and recent advances in economic psychology, suggest that individuals consistently underestimate risks associated with accidents. In this paper, we discuss the case when the workers systematically underestimate job risks. After presenting the standard treatment of occupational risks, and of health and safety at work regulation, we then proceed to incorporate the idea of job risk underestimation. The paper discusses the types and impact of regulation on health and safety effort in a simple framework in which workers’ beliefs concerning accident risks also play a role. The paper shows that a particular type of regulatory intervention is necessary for the risk underestimating workers not to suffer a welfare loss.     

Regulating for Fair Dealing in Work Contracts: A New South Wales Approach

From 1959 till 2006, all workers in New South Wales had recourseto review of contracts ‘and arrangements’ underwhich work is performed on the grounds of ‘unfairness’.This jurisdiction—initially instigated to capture schemesand subterfuges by which employers escaped industrial awardsby contracting out to dependent contractors—has been expandedover the years to allow review of all sorts of arrangementsunder which work is performed. This article will review thatjurisdiction to demonstrate the potential of statutory unfaircontracts review to meet some of the challenges that changesin labour market structures have presented for the protectiveagenda of labour law.     

Occupational licensing and minorities

The costs of occupational licensing fall disproportionately on minorities and the poor. Licensing seeks to eliminate the lower-quality, lower-price services that low-income consumers would be more likely to select. Perhaps more important, however, is the impact on workers who are denied entry into the occupation. Recent evidence confirms that licensing regulations esclude less-educated and minority workers more than proportionally. The consequences for these excluded workers include unemployment or lower earnings—either by moving to a less-favored occupation or practicing without a license. The outcomes ofnonprofessional trades regulated by licensing are similar to those predicted by segmented labor market theory. Those who fail to obtain the credential (license) are denied access to the trade even if they are no less productive.     

Effects of the criminalizing policy of sex work in Spain

The aim of this study is to analyse the effects on sex workers of new regulations that ban the practice of street prostitution in Spain. This country has not traditionally maintained a clear policy regarding prostitution. However, in recent years there has been a clear turn towards the criminalization of behaviours related to voluntary prostitution. The city councils of several Spanish cities have banned the practice of street prostitution and sanctioned it with fines issued to both prostitutes and clients. Even if few studies on prostitution have been carried out in Spain, none of them had yet analysed the effects of the adoption of civic ordinances on sex workers.In this paper we present the results of an empirical research carried out with a sample of 79 sex workers – in 20 cases with in-depth interviews – to explore the effects of the new regulation on their labour conditions.     

The Contract for Intermittent Employment

This article further develops the concept of the ‘contractfor intermittent employment’ set out by Freedland in ThePersonal Employment Contract, and explores its potential toalleviate the plight of casual workers in today's labour market.     

Opportunistic termination of employment contracts and legal protection against dismissal in Germany and the USA

When analysing labour law most lawyers tend to focus on the protection of existing employment relations and neglect the feedback on ex ante incentives, whereas most economists focus on the incentives to create new jobs without knowing the regulations and relevant court decisions in detail. This paper starts with a simple model that discusses some potential ex post and ex ante effects of protection against dismissal and reconsiders the question of rigidity and flexibility with respect to German and US labour law. Special attention is paid to investments in specific human capital. It is shown that the legal protection against dismissal in Germany is in general characterised by relatively high expected dismissal costs with a low variance, although some court decisions have increased uncertainty for the parties to the employment contract. In the USA legal protection against dismissal is in general characterised by relatively low expected dismissal costs with a high variance, i.e. a high degree of uncertainty. This corresponds to the typical differences in employment relations between Germany and the USA with respect to external mobility, internal flexibility, capital intensity, labour productivity and long-term unemployment.