Michail Veliziotis

Temporary Employment, Job Satisfaction and Subjective Well-being

This article is concerned with whether employees on temporary contracts in Britain report lower well-being than those on permanent contracts, and whether this relationship is mediated by differences in dimensions of job satisfaction. Previous research has identified a well-being gap between permanent and temporary employees but has not addressed what individual and contract specific characteristics contribute to this observed difference. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, the article finds that a large proportion of the difference in self-reported well-being between permanent and temporary employees appears to be explained by differences in satisfaction with job security. Other dimensions of job satisfaction are found to be less important. In fact, after controlling for differences in satisfaction with security, the results suggest that temporary employees report higher psychological well-being and life satisfaction. This indicates that an employment contract characterized by a definite duration lowers individual well-being principally through heightened job insecurity.

Is temporary employment a cause or consequence of poor mental health? A panel data analysis

Mental health status has an association with labour market outcomes. If people in temporary employment have poorer mental health than those in permanent employment then it is consistent with two mutually inclusive possibilities: temporary employment generates adverse mental health effects and/or individuals with poorer mental health select into temporary from permanent employment. We apply regression analyses to longitudinal data corresponding to about 50,000 observations across 8000 individuals between 1991 and 2008 drawn from the British Household Panel Survey. We find that permanent employees who will be in temporary employment in the future have poorer mental health than those who never become temporarily employed. We also reveal that this relationship is mediated by greater job dissatisfaction. Overall, these results suggest that permanent workers with poor mental health appear to select into temporary employment thus signalling that prior cross section studies may overestimate the influence of employment type on mental health.

Absence management of migrant agency workers in the food manufacturing sector

Temporary workers in low-skilled roles often experience ‘hard’ HRM practices, for example the use of the Bradford Factor to monitor absence, rather than using incentives to reward attendance. However, this peripheral workforce has become increasingly diverse in the UK since the A8 European Union expansion, which has seen over a million migrants from central and eastern Europe register to work in the UK. Importantly, there is also heterogeneity within this group of workers, for example between those who intend to migrate for a short period of time then return, and those who are more settled and wish to develop a career. By considering the particular case of absence management, this paper examines how these different groups of migrants respond to HRM practices. The key contribution of the paper is to examine how different groups of migrants experience these practices, rather than simply comparing migrant and native workers as two homogeneous groups. The paper presents data from the food manufacturing sector in the UK. In total, 88 semi-structured interviews were conducted with operations managers, HR managers, union convenors and workers on permanent, temporary and agency contracts. In addition, data from informal interviews and observation at five companies are presented.

How Can Competitiveness be Achieved in Post-crisis Europe: Deregulating Employment Relations or Enhancing High Performance Work Practices?

Abstract The recent Eurozone crisis has reinvigorated neoliberal policies and brought to the fore an academic and policy debate over the deregulation of employment relations’ institutions ‘in the name of competitiveness’. In the context of this debate, we ask the following question: have firms with employment relations institutions been less able to improve productivity during the crisis? We consider this question by examining data from the European Company Survey. We also look into different models of capitalism to gauge whether there are context-specific institutional effects that may mediate firm-level outcomes. Contrary to the dominant neoliberal discourse, we do not find any strong evidence that employment relations institutions are negatively associated with productivity increases. Instead, we find that certain high performance work practices are positively and significantly associated with productivity increases across EU-15 and in particular institutional contexts. Taken together these results challenge the neoliberal ‘low road’ policies that are focused on dismantling employment relations institutions and suggest shifting the attention towards context-sensitive ‘high road’ policies and practices.

What do unions do in times of economic crisis? Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

Over the last two decades, trade union membership in Central and Eastern Europe has been in continuous decline, and unions in the region are generally considered weak. However, little is known about the actual relevance of trade unions for individual workers in the post-socialist world. We explore the role that unions played in protecting their members from the negative effects of the global economic crisis. Using data for 21 post-socialist countries from the Life in Transition-2 survey, we find that union members were less likely than comparable non-members to lose their jobs during the crisis. This beneficial effect of union membership was particularly pronounced in countries which were hardest hit by the crisis. At the same time, union members were more likely to experience wage reductions, suggesting that unions were engaged in concession bargaining. Overall, our results challenge the common view that unions in the post-socialist countries are irrelevant.

Local-Level Immigration and Life Satisfaction: The EU Enlargement Experience in England and Wales

The 2004 European Union enlargement resulted in an unprecedented wave of 1.5 million workers relocating from Eastern Europe to the UK. We study the links between this migrant inflow and life satisfaction of native residents in England and Wales. Combining the British Household Panel Survey with the Local Authority level administrative data from the Worker Registration Scheme, we find that higher levels of local immigration were associated with a decrease in life satisfaction among older, unemployed and lower-income people, and with an increase in life satisfaction among younger, employed, higher-income and better educated people. These findings are driven by the initial ‘migration shock’ – the inflows that occurred in the first two years after the enlargement. Overall, our study highlights the importance of local-level immigration in shaping the life satisfaction of receiving populations. We also argue that our results help explain the socio-demographic patterns observed in the UK Brexit vote.

Understanding the perception of the ‘migrant work ethic’

Over the last decade, the UK has experienced unprecedented increases in migration associated with the 2004 A8 expansion of the European Union. These migrant workers have been praised by managers in the UK, who have frequently stated that they perceive these workers to have a strong ‘work ethic’ when measured on aspects such as absence from work rates. This article examines this perceived migrant ‘work ethic’ by analysing worker absence data from the UK Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the period 2005–2012. Regression analysis reveals that when A8 migrant workers first arrive in the UK, they record substantially lower absence than native workers, but that these migrant absence levels assimilate within two to four years. If employers use this information to make hiring decisions, this may have negative implications for native workers, but, importantly, only in the short run.

‘CHOOSE TO BE OPTIMISTIC, IT FEELS BETTER?’ EVIDENCE OF OPTIMISM ON EMPLOYMENT UTILITY

Individual’s expected wages exceed predicted market wages. Rational expectations imply the divergence should be zero. If individuals over-estimate the return from their attributes and view the paid-employment return distribution too favourably, then conditional on market wages, subsequent employment utility is likely to be low through disappointment.