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Re-Thinking Europe鈥檚 Skill Needs: Reflections Following the European Year of Skills

IER's Professor Terence HogarthLink opens in a new window co-edited a timely new book examining Europe's evolving skills landscape, published by Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini (FGB). The book, "Re-Thinking Europe's Skill Needs: Reflections Following the European Year of Skills," was launched at a major conference in Rome on October 29th. This publication and the conference were part of the SkillsPULSE project, a 3-year Horizon Europe initiative coordinated by FGB, which aims to advance our understanding of skills shortages and gaps across Europe.  

The Rome conference featured distinguished speakers, including OECD's Glenda Quintini, and addressed crucial topics such as labour shortages, green jobs, and AI's impact on workforce transformation. The event brought together experts, researchers, and policymakers to discuss how Europe can better anticipate and address its future skills needs. Professor Hogarth's contribution to this project continues IER's tradition of leading international research on skills and labour market dynamics.

Baltina, L. and Hogarth, T. (eds) (2024). . Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini.

Permanently marginalised? Securing living hours among part-time workers in hotels and restaurants in Northern Europe

IER's Professor Trine LarsenLink opens in a new window and collaborators from Denmark, Ireland and Norway have published new research examining the wage and working conditions of marginal part-time workers in the hotel and restaurant sector across these three countries. Their comparative study, which focuses on workers employed for fewer than 15 hours per week, analyses how different industrial relations models and sectoral traditions have shaped worker protection over the past two decades.  

The research reveals that whilst social partners have successfully implemented various initiatives to protect and increase hourly wages across all three countries, efforts to guarantee minimum weekly working hours have had limited success, with Denmark showing the most positive impact. The study highlights the varying effectiveness of bipartite, tripartite and unilateral measures in securing 'living hours' for marginal part-time workers, offering valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities in protecting vulnerable workers across different national contexts.

Ils酶e, A., Larsen, T. P., Trygstad, S., Ryan, L., Nergaard, K., & McMahon, J. (2024).  European Journal of Industrial Relations, 0(0).

The 42nd conference of the International Working Party on Labour Market Segmentation

IER recently co-organised the prestigious conference, held at Copenhagen 糖心TV School on 5-6 September, in collaboration with Copenhagen 糖心TV School and FAOS, University of Copenhagen. The well-attended event brought together international academics and practitioners for three engaging roundtable debates addressing critical European labour market challenges.  

The debates covered timely topics including the EU's minimum wage and pay transparency directives, recent migration trends and mobile work and job quality in the platform economy. Each roundtable featured presentations from leading international scholars alongside Danish trade union and employer representatives, offering unique perspectives on how these issues are understood both in academic discourse and among social partners. This combination of theoretical and practical insights provided participants with a comprehensive understanding of current labour market developments and their implications.

Public procurement as a policy tool

Building on extensive work on sustainable public procurement over the past years, IER's Dr Eva Katharina Sarter presented a paper entitled "Hidden Debates: Public Procurement as a Venue for Negotiation", which examined the political dimension of debates on the strategic use of public procurement to foster (social) policy goals.

The invited presentation examined debates surrounding the importance of economic and social considerations in public procurement regulations at different levels and tensions and conflicts arising in multi-level contexts. It was part of the workshop "The Regulatory Governance of Public Procurement: Assessment of the Research Field and the Ways Forward" held at Free University Berlin in Germany.