IER News & blogs
Workers with few hours - who secures their social rights - The role of social dialogue and collective bargaining
滨贰搁鈥檚 Trine P. Larsen and Anna Ils酶e (FAOS, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), have edited a special issue for the European Journal of Industrial Relations. It consists of contributions from a range of leading European scholars and looks at the role of social dialogue and collective bargaining to creating, maintaining or reducing the risks associated with employment contracts of few hours, such as marginal part-time work, temporary agency work and zero-hour contracts.
Job quality and job satisfaction among male part-time workers
The new article written by Professors and 滨贰搁鈥檚 Clare Lyonette addresses two sizable gaps in knowledge concerning male part鈥恡imers. Are men's part鈥恡ime jobs of lower quality than men's full鈥恡ime jobs? Are male part鈥恡imers more or less satisfied with their jobs compared to their full鈥恡ime peers? For both questions, the article examines whether men's part鈥恡ime employment varies by occupational class.
The article is motivated by the large body of work on female part鈥恡imers, even though male part-time work has been increasing in recent years. Its theoretical framework is rooted in one of the most controversial discussions in the sociology of women workers: the 鈥済rateful slave鈥� debate that emerged in the 1990s when researchers sought to explain why so many women expressed job satisfaction with low鈥恞uality part鈥恡ime jobs. Innovatively, this article draws upon and challenges those contentious ideas to provide new insights into male, rather than female, part鈥恡ime employment.
The results provide clear evidence of low鈥恞uality male part鈥恡ime employment in the UK, when compared with men's full鈥恡ime jobs. Men working part鈥恡ime also express deteriorating satisfaction with jobs overall and in several specific dimensions of their jobs. Male part鈥恡imers in lower occupational class positions retain a clear 鈥渓ead鈥� both in bad job quality and low satisfaction. For more details see .
Clare Lyonette presents her research at the Community, Work and Family conference in Valletta, Malta
Clare Lyonette attended this year's Community, Work and Family conference, held in Malta from May 22nd-25th 2019. Clare presented two papers:
(i) one focusing on the Forces 
in Mind Trust-funded project on self-employment among the Armed Forces Community: 'The transition to self-employment among military veterans – identifying class differences in success and failure鈥�, and
(ii) the other with Professor Tracey Warren from the University of Nottingham on their joint body of research on part-time employment: 'Poles apart? The impact of occupational class and hours of work on part-time job quality for women鈥�.