POLITICAL SCIENCE / Labor & Industrial Relations

Against a background of population ageing, policy makers in the majority of industrialised countries are developing policies aimed at extending working life and promoting the benefits of employing older workers. This report reviews developments in several countries and offers recommendations for public policy.

With the increase in mothers' employment both the government and many employers are promoting flexible working policies to improve work-life 'balance'. This report considers the effects of these changes on the lives of both women and men. It examines three employment sectors in detail - banking, grocery retail and local authorities.

This is the last of three reports in a longitudinal study that has followed the journey of a group of young people from less advantaged families through Higher Education and into the labour market. This report focuses on the young people's progress from full-time study into the graduate labour market. Free PDF available at www.jrf.org.uk

This important book takes readers behind the closed doors of elite employers to reveal how class affects who gets to the top. Drawing on 200 interviews across four case studies - television, accountancy, architecture, and acting – it explores the complex barriers facing the upwardly mobile.

There is a growing recognition that people over the age of fifty experience discrimination in the labour market. This ground-breaking report provides new evidence that ageism and discrimination are also having devastating effects on the lives of people as young as forty, with a cost to the economy of up to £31 billion per year.

Policy makers across the world confront issues relating to lone parents and employment, with many governments seeking to increase the participation of lone parents in the labour market. This book offers an analysis of policies and provisions in several countries, identifying policy lessons. Chapters are written by experts on lone parenthood.

This book explores some of the diverse ways in which work helps to structure the relations between social policy and personal lives. Drawing on a wealth of theory, the authors explore questions that are central to our understanding of how the personal is not only shaped in and through work, but also contributes to social relations at work.

This book explores the representation of women’s interests in the world of work across 4 trade unions in France and the UK. Drawing on case studies, it unveils the social, organisational and political conditions that contribute to the reproduction of gender inequalities or, on the contrary, allow the promotion of equality.

Frances C. Galt explores the role of trade unions and women’s activism in the British film and television industries in this important contribution to debates around gender inequality.

Governments worldwide assume that national competitiveness can be improved by developing workforce skills. This book critically examines this 'high skills' vision at both policy and practice levels. It challenges an oversimplified policy rhetoric that underestimates the complexity of the processes involved in developing a skilled workforce.

This book provides the first critically informed discussion of work and workers in the UK welfare sector under New Labour. It examines the changing nature of work and explores the context of industrial relations across the welfare industry.

It is often argued that the regulated labour markets, relatively generous social protection and relative wage equality of European welfare states has become counter-productive in a globalised and knowledge-intensive economy. Using in-depth analysis of employment, welfare and citizenship in a range of European states, this book challenges this view.