Crowdwork conducted via digital platforms is a young form of work, but a growing part of the gig economy. Typical for crowdwork is low pay, volatile income streams and no social security benefits. Also, crowdworkers have few possibilities for social comparison or negotiation because they work outside of company organisations. This article examines the question of whether these conditions mean that crowdworkers’ expectations about justice in crowdwork arrangements differ in comparison to their expectations regarding justice in conventional employment relationships. This question is addressed empirically on the basis of 36 qualitative interviews and a survey of 230 crowdworkers. The justice expectations of crowdworkers involved in different types of crowdworking platforms in German-speaking countries were examined. In our sample, crowd work typically serves to supplement – not replace – conventional employment. This explorative research shows that crowdworkers use similar standards of justice regarding work performance in their evaluations of work mediated via crowdwork platforms and conventional employment. It shows that crowdworkers perceive injustices in four specific areas: planning insecurity, lack of transparency in performance evaluation, lack of clarity in task briefings and low remuneration. These areas correspond to the theoretical dimensions of distributive and procedural justice on Colquitt’s (2001) organisational justice scale. These findings have implications for future efforts to regulate crowdwork.

This article has three objectives. First, we examine what is meant by minimum labour standards, including the array of different standards and their procedural and substantive elements, in differing or even diverging regulatory jurisdictions. Examination of different areas of labour standards provides instruction in the dynamics of these protections and we give illustrative examples, from several countries. The second objective is to highlight the importance of enforcement of standards. We do this through a brief historical overview of the emergence of labour standards as well as of how the recent rise of neo-liberalism has shaped current debates over their development and application. The third element of the analysis is an examination of some contemporary debates, pointing to areas requiring further study as well as to positive examples both in research and in policy/regulation.

Contributing to the broader topic of minimum wage determination in developing countries, this article discusses the shaping and implementation of minimum wage policy in Papua New Guinea (PNG). It begins by outlining the institutional arrangements under which minimum wage rates are determined in PNG. It then critically examines the argument that wage levels in the country are unsustainably high – a claim that has perennially characterised Papua New Guinea (PNG) minimum wage fixing. The article argues that, on the contrary, wage levels are indeed low and not adequate to reasonably support a single worker, let alone a family in an urban setting. This counter-argument is discussed in the context of debates over minimum wage levels and their relationship to economic growth, employment creation, international competitiveness, and capacity to pay. Whilst focusing on the PNG wage fixing system, the article thus sheds light on the dilemmas and challenges facing wages policy generally in a developing country setting.

Rewards for Australian executives continue to stir debate. A recent Australian government response to pay concerns was to call on the Productivity Commission (PC) to investigate the oversight, accountability and transparency of remuneration practices. At least two PC-related outcomes were controversial: the ‘two strikes’ and ‘clawback’ proposals. This article considers the reactions of two key stakeholders, namely the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Business Council of Australia. The views of these two organisations reflect an ongoing evaluation of rules- and principles-based governance structures. Asserting the need to consider alternate analytical models when studying executive pay, the present article concludes with several questions about the intent(s) driving remuneration reforms and their possible consequences.

The article sheds light on the proposition that labour is a commodity by considering from a fundamental theoretical perspective whether labour is subject to the same market forces which apply to commodities in general in capitalist economies. It suggests that no spontaneous competitive force exists within capitalism that would adjust labour demand to its supply, in contrast to the adaptation of supply to the demand for commodities in general. This result is argued without reference to assumptions about inflexibilities or impediments in labour or other markets, or institutional features peculiar to ‘the labour market’. Its explanation of why labour markets do not clear is at odds with a core tenet underlying orthodox economic theory of the last century, which has acted as a fundamental benchmark for most theorising about labour to the present day. Rejection of this tenet is at the heart of a heterodox explanation of unemployment, the real wage and income distribution in capitalist economies.

Pesticide handling is a critical component of many food supply chains yet labor markets for pesticide handlers are little studied. This study uses data from the U.S. national survey to show that relative to other farmworkers, pesticide handlers get paid 15% more. To understand this premium, matching techniques are used to identify workers who are observationally equivalent in every way except pesticide handling. Using these methods, approximately half of the wage premium can be related back to observable characteristics, including crop type, geographic location, legal work authorization, education, experience, and other personal characteristics.

This article takes a short personal ‘helicopter ride’ over the main policy issues in the UK labour market, putting them into the context of the developments which have taken place in applied econometrics. We overview NIESR's role in the study of labour economics in postwar Britain and review some recent advances of importance in the current Institute research agenda.

We explore the economic welfare effects of direct and indirect government-induced changes in employment under varying market conditions. We begin with a discussion of those policy-induced employment changes that seamlessly reshuffle workers among jobs in an efficient (i.e., full-employment, full-information) economy; generally such changes create few, if any, net changes in economic welfare not captured in changes in wage bills. We then turn to the effects of policy-induced employment changes in economies with two market distortions: (1) inflexible wages set by law or custom that result in involuntary unemployment during periods of deficient aggregate demand, and (2) illiquidity resulting from imperfect capital markets that prevent people from borrowing against future earnings. Induced employment changes in these circumstances impose real net social costs or generate real net social benefits beyond changes in the wage bill. We also assess the likely magnitude of the social opportunity cost of labor in the case of involuntary unemployment and imperfect liquidity, and address how the welfare effects of such employment changes should be valued. Based on currently available empirical research, we develop estimates of the opportunity costs of hiring or releasing an employee during periods of high unemployment with and without other market distortions. In contrast to conventional benefit-cost analysis practice, which treats releasing workers as having a negative opportunity cost, we estimate an opportunity cost for firing that is positive and equal to about 73% of pre-firing compensation, primarily because of the “scarring effect” of unemployment. Also in contrast to conventional practice, we estimate an opportunity cost for hiring an unemployed worker that is less than the worker’s opportunity cost of time.

The recession of 2008–9 inflicted a larger cumulative loss of UK output than any of the other postwar recessions. Nevertheless, employment rates remained higher than might have been expected given the experience of previous recessions. The main reasons for this appear to be a combination of high firm profitability levels going into the recession, supportive monetary and fiscal policies during the recession, reductions in real producer wages and relatively buoyant real consumer wages. Unemployment had reached its lowest levels for 30 years going in to the latest recession and has also remained relatively subdued through the downturn, certainly compared to previous recessions. A combination of lower inflow rates into unemployment, allied with a relatively higher outflow rate into employment underlie this. As government support for the economy is scaled back, it may be however that it will take a long time for employment to return to levels last seen before the recession.

Sick pay has been debated recently in several economies, including the US, Germany and Sweden. There is, however, little academic discussion of the nature of sick pay, or of how it should be structured. This paper clears the ground for such a discussion in two ways; it identifies a conceptual difference between the North American model, rooted in job protection, and the European model, which is predominantly a form of social insurance. Secondly, it argues that experience-rated sick pay provided by employers avoids the classical problems of insurance markets. US-style paid sick leave is an example of such a scheme.

When do exports lead to rents? And when are they shared with employees? This paper proposes a double empirical test that deals with this question, based on a mix of rent sharing theories and Cournot Oligopoly. We find that most of the OECD exporting activities are associated with some rents that are shared with employees. However, we also show that the destination of sales matter, as rents seem to originate mostly from exporting to other OECD economies or, to a lesser extent, selling to own markets. Exports to developing countries' however, seem to be associated with positive rents only in a small minority of industries.

The challenge for labour market policy in the new member states and other transition economies of Eastern Europe has been to redress the sharp drops in employment and rises in unemployment in a way that fosters the creation of productive jobs. This paper first documents the magnitude and productivity of job and worker reallocation. It then investigates the effects of privatisation, product and labour market liberalisation, and obstacles to growth in the new private sector on reallocation and its productivity in Hungary, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. We find that market reform has resulted in a large increase in the pace of job reallocation, particularly that occurring between sectors and via firm turnover. Unlike under central planning, the job reallocation during the transition has contributed significantly to aggregate productivity growth. Privatisation has not only stimulated intrasectoral job reallocation, but the reallocation is more productive than that among remaining state firms. The estimated effect of privatisation on firm productivity is usually positive, but it varies considerably across countries. The productivity gains from privatisation have generally not come at the expense of workers, but are associated rather with increased wages and employment.

This article examines the influence of equity ownership structure (stock market listing and identity of shareholders) on human resource management practices. The empirical analysis uses the 2004-2005 Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (REPONSE survey), based on a sample of 2930 establishments with 20 employees or more, representative of the French private sector. Our findings confirm the importance of listing and, to a lesser extent, of the identity of shareholders as determinants of human resource management practices, considering temporary work arrangements (agency work, fixed-term contracts and sub-contracting), pay policy (wage levels and use of variable pay) and training expenditures.

In this paper, we estimate the rate of return to first degrees, Masters degrees and PhDs in Britain using data from the Labour Force Survey. We estimate returns to broad subject groups and more narrowly defined disciplines, distinguishing returns by gender and controlling for variations in student quality across disciplines. The results reveal considerable heterogeneity in returns to particular degree programmes and by gender, which have important policy implications for charging students for the costs of their education.