Suchergebnisse

Employers should be careful to avoid unlawful promises when comparing company wages and benefits between the company's union and union‐free locations. The same admonition is true when comparisons are being drawn between raises and other increases among unionized groups.

By the standards of the International Labour Organization (ILO), working conditions in Europe are relatively enviable. This chapter, however, highlights a number of trends that are both counterproductive for companies and harmful for employees and the community. Over the past twenty years, the conditions and forms of work organisation have been changing in ways that no longer meet the evolution of the working population. In particular, they no longer match the high and 'expressive' expectations of ever more qualified employees, the increasing number of women in the labour market, changing lifestyles and an ageing workforce. During this time, the notion of 'quality of work' has sometimes been high on the political agenda. It is now being taken into consideration at the European level thanks to the new European Pillar of Social Rights and the concept of sustainable work. This chapter explores academic and political discourses on the quality of work and provides a review of working conditions in Europe and current challenges in this area. It is based on successive waves of the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) conducted by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound). In conclusion, we ask whether the notion of sustainable work can be incorporated into the ILO's forward-looking approach and become a decisive factor in the future of the world of work.

By the standards of the International Labour Organization (ILO), working conditions in Europe are relatively enviable. This chapter, however, highlights a number of trends that are both counterproductive for companies and harmful for employees and the community. Over the past twenty years, the conditions and forms of work organisation have been changing in ways that no longer meet the evolution of the working population. In particular, they no longer match the high and 'expressive' expectations of ever more qualified employees, the increasing number of women in the labour market, changing lifestyles and an ageing workforce. During this time, the notion of 'quality of work' has sometimes been high on the political agenda. It is now being taken into consideration at the European level thanks to the new European Pillar of Social Rights and the concept of sustainable work. This chapter explores academic and political discourses on the quality of work and provides a review of working conditions in Europe and current challenges in this area. It is based on successive waves of the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) conducted by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound). In conclusion, we ask whether the notion of sustainable work can be incorporated into the ILO's forward-looking approach and become a decisive factor in the future of the world of work.

This report uses European Working Conditions Survey data to examine working conditions and their implications for worker's health. Ensuring the sustainability of work in the context of ageing populations implies a greater number of people in employment who can remain in the workforce for longer. The report examines the interplay between work demands –which carry an increased risk of exhaustion – and work resources – which support workers in greater engagement and well-being. The findings indicate that physical risks have not increased but remain important, while emotional demands have increased, underlining the growing importance of psychosocial risks at work. Changes over time suggest that although the risk of poor health is concentrated in certain occupations, those occupations traditionally considered to be protected are increasingly exposed to risks that are likely to affect workers' health and well-being.

Everybody imagines he knows about working conditions in Victorian England, particularly the excessively long hours resulting from the use of machinery to which the workers became increasingly enslaved. In the famous words of James Philip Kay, "Whilst the engine runs the people must work – men, women and children are yoked together with iron and steam. The animal machine – breakable in the best case, subject to a thousand sources of suffering – is chained to the iron machine, which knows no suffering and no weariness." It is equally well-known that the worst aspect of employment was the exploitation of women and small children in textile factories and mines. Factory conditions were causing disquiet as early as the 1780's, and the revelations of the witnesses before a succession of committees and commissions in the early part of the nineteenth century are too familiar to need repeating here. The same may be said of conditions in the mines. Who has not been moved by that description of girls at work in the mines of the West Riding – "Chained, belted, harnessed, like dogs in a go-cart, black, saturated with wet, and more than half naked […] they present an appearance indescribably disgusting and unnatural"? Yet it is also common knowledge that factory and mine workers were only a minority among the working classes at the mid-century, numbering about 1¾ millions compared with the 5½ millions employed in non-mechanised industry. Agriculture and domestic service, in fact, employed twice the number of those working in manufacture and mining at this time.