The government identified the small business sector as an important variable in sustainable economic growth and employment creation. The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of minimum wage regulation and employment protection policies on the unemployment statistics of South Africa. Unemployment is an aspect that needs attention to assist with long-term sustainability of growth. The questionnaire was distributed to approximately 20 000 small business owners in South Africa and 1239 responded. Of the 1239 responses, 900 could be used. The research propositions were that employment protection legislation relates to a decrease in job creation and minimum wages relates to higher unemployment. The third proposition is an assumption made in the event that the first two propositions were proved correct. These propositions were proved incorrect. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

The impact of strict employment protection legislation (EPL) on unemployment is still uncertain. However, evidence in literature points to the hiring and firing provisions of EPL being the source of some of the labour market rigidity in South Africa.Hiring and firing provisions comprise a number of elements such as severance pay, dismissal procedures, probationary employment and temporary work arrangements. This research investigates the impact of these measures on the hiring and firing decision through a survey questionnaire distributed to approximately 20 000 small business respondents, who were also tested on the impact of EPL on small business in creating new jobs.The purpose of the research was therefore to contribute to the literature on the role which EPL plays in the hiring and firing decision, and ultimately on unemployment.The results of the research point to a still strong perception that EPL in South Africa is strict despite evidence to the contrary, and that small business respondents believe procedural elements play a significant role in their hiring and firing decision, but some uncertainty with regard to the role of severance pay. The strongest indication was the perception of the regulatory burden of EPL faced by small businesses. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This thesis examines how the Swedish Act On Support and Service to Certain Impaired persons (LSS) has given rise to substantial opportunities for people with disabilities to participate in society and to live under the same conditions as all other citizens. These objectives have in turn created a new profession, personal assistants, who work daily to transform the words of diversity and community participation into practice. The terms of employment of this new category of workers appear in diverse way both when it comes to the scope of their working tasks, as well as the employment protection especially for workers in the private sector. Because of the discrepancies that exist against the Swedish Employment Protection Act (LAS) and the rich variety that characterizes the performance of work, this inquiry aims therefore to seek to investigate to what extent an employee can be dismissed in relation to the LSS-right to personal assistance as well as how this can be understood from the impaired persons point of view. Initially, a legal scientific method is used to seek answers in this area. A sociological approach has also been applied to complete the parts where laws and other traditional sources of law have not been able to provide satisfactory answers. The findings that conclude this investigation claim that the perceived uncertainty of the tasks as well as the discrepant employment protection is maintained through the continuous link to the LSS-legislation.   Key words: LSS, private sector, dismissal, employment protection, the impaired person’s attitude towards the personal assistant

The theme of this thesis is the protection of the eployees upon termination of the employment. The aim is to comprehensively assess the current legislation of termination of empoyment, with regard to the degree of protection that is provided to employees. It deals with the protection of employees, their position but also the claims related to the termination of the employment relationship. This thesis is dividend into five chapters, the first of which relates to the functions of labor law with an emphasis on the function of protection as a core function of labor law. With regard to weaker position of the employee to the employer, it is clear that labor law generally tries to balance this inequality or in some way eliminate it in order to provide the highest level of security. The second charter presents the core of this thesis and deals with the varoius types of termination of employment. It contains their assessement in relation to ensure adequate protection of employees but also the positives and negatives of legislation including possible aplication problems that are occured in practice. The emphasis is placed primarily on the termination of the employment relationship in view of the fact that the need to ensure a sufficient level of protection of employees in this unilateral termination method...

This thesis looks at the politics of labor market policy in the postwar period in the advanced industrialized democracies. Specifically, the dissertation seeks to explain stark cross-national differences in unemployment benefit systems and employment protection legislation. The theory advanced in this thesis emphasizes significant differences in union organization across the rich democracies. This view, “Varieties of Unionism”, shows how the varying political capacities and policy preferences of labor movements explain most of the cross-national policy differences. In particular, the research points to union movements’ ideological traditions and varying rates of union density, union centralization, and involvement in unemployment benefit administration as crucial explanatory forces. Each feature of union movements captures an important part of why they might choose to advocate on behalf of the unemployed and to their differential ability to have those policy preferences realized, as well as indicating the kinds of preferences they will have for employment protection legislation. In the case of policies directed at the unemployed (or so-called labor market ‘Outsiders’), these insights lead to the construction of an index of “Outsider-oriented Unionism”, which correlates very closely to cross-national variations in unemployment benefit generosity as well as to active labor market policy spending. The thesis also introduces a new fourfold typology of unionism that helps to explain the different combinations of employment protection legislation and ‘Outsider policy’ generosity that exist among the rich democracies, or labor market policy ‘regimes’. The thesis makes this argument with multiple regression analysis of fifteen rich democracies and with detailed historical case studies of Britain, The Netherlands, and Sweden. In making this case, the thesis strongly challenges the explanations of labor market policy put forward by the Varieties of Capitalism literature and Insider-Outsider theory. In addition, the thesis reformulates the traditional Power Resource view by introducing a more rigorous theory of labor movements’ policy preferences and thereby qualifies recent statements that have emphasized partisanship almost alone. Most broadly, the theory challenges the “individualist turn” in recent comparative political economy scholarship and suggests that the field needs to return its gaze far more toward organized interests.

This thesis looks at the politics of labor market policy in the postwar period in the advanced industrialized democracies. Specifically, the dissertation seeks to explain stark cross-national differences in unemployment benefit systems and employment protection legislation. The theory advanced in this thesis emphasizes significant differences in union organization across the rich democracies. This view, “Varieties of Unionism”, shows how the varying political capacities and policy preferences of labor movements explain most of the cross-national policy differences. In particular, the research points to union movements’ ideological traditions and varying rates of union density, union centralization, and involvement in unemployment benefit administration as crucial explanatory forces. Each feature of union movements captures an important part of why they might choose to advocate on behalf of the unemployed and to their differential ability to have those policy preferences realized, as well as indicating the kinds of preferences they will have for employment protection legislation. In the case of policies directed at the unemployed (or so-called labor market ‘Outsiders’), these insights lead to the construction of an index of “Outsider-oriented Unionism”, which correlates very closely to cross-national variations in unemployment benefit generosity as well as to active labor market policy spending. The thesis also introduces a new fourfold typology of unionism that helps to explain the different combinations of employment protection legislation and ‘Outsider policy’ generosity that exist among the rich democracies, or labor market policy ‘regimes’. The thesis makes this argument with multiple regression analysis of fifteen rich democracies and with detailed historical case studies of Britain, The Netherlands, and Sweden. In making this case, the thesis strongly challenges the explanations of labor market policy put forward by the Varieties of Capitalism literature and Insider-Outsider theory. In addition, the thesis reformulates the traditional Power Resource view by introducing a more rigorous theory of labor movements’ policy preferences and thereby qualifies recent statements that have emphasized partisanship almost alone. Most broadly, the theory challenges the “individualist turn” in recent comparative political economy scholarship and suggests that the field needs to return its gaze far more toward organized interests.

This thesis is a study of firm dynamics, family ownership, and employment protection. It addresses the implications of employment protection on firm productivity and how family owned firms react differently with regard to economic shocks. It also investigates whether family ownership matters for the probability of exhibiting high growth. By using a novel data identification strategy, family ownership is identified in full population register data. The thesis also highlights some important caveats in the official statistics on self-employment. / Denna avhandling behandlar företagsdynamik, familjeägande och anställningsskydd. I avhandlingen analyseras anställningsskyddet och hur det påverkar företagens produktivitet, samt hur familjeägda företag reagerar på chocker inom industrin. I avhandlingen analyseras också hur familjeägande påverkar sannolikheten för ett företag att uppnå en hög tillväxttakt. Genom att kombinera olika statistikkällor kan samtliga familjeföretag i den den svenska företagspopulationen identifieras. Avhandlingen belyser också några av de problem som finns i den officiella statistiken över egenföretagare.

In the past decades, European labour markets have undergone profound changes, witnessing a process of liberalisation and flexibilisation, in part through the spread of various forms of atypical employment. These new forms of employment have been argued to be of generally lower quality than standard employment, presenting several disadvantages across a range of employment-related dimensions. Nevertheless, the disadvantages experienced by atypical workers are argued to differ depending on nationally specific institutional settings, as employment regulations, welfare institutions and collective representation are commonly claimed to play a significant role in the shaping of disadvantage. Within the field of comparative political economy, a literature has emerged dealing with issues of dualisation and insider-outsider divides associated with these new forms of employment, mainly focusing on institutional divides in employment and welfare protection and political representation between standard and atypical workers and their consequences in terms of social inequalities. Authors within this literature have argued divides to be different across groups of countries within Europe. Specifically, an important distinction has been claimed to exist between Liberal countries, where divides are argued to be limited, and Southern European countries, where they are said to be among the highest. But this literature has mostly considered disadvantages from an institutional perspective, without empirically investigating whether institutional divides actually translate into individual disadvantages. At the same time, within sociology, authors have investigated individual disadvantages experienced by atypical workers under the broad concept of precariousness. Nevertheless, these scholars have not provided a systematic analysis of the relation between different institutional frameworks and individual disadvantages. This thesis aims at partly bridging these two literatures, by providing an analysis of how different institutional settings impact on disadvantages as experienced at the individual level. To do this, this thesis explores the disadvantages experienced by a specific category of atypical workers, namely temporary agency workers. It focuses on two countries which have been argued to present very different institutional divides across a broad range of employment-related dimensions. The UK is seen as the main example of Liberal country in the European context, providing limited employment protection to all workers, a fragmented system of industrial relations and a social protection system mainly based on means-testing and mostly aimed at poverty prevention. In contrast, Italy has been considered one of the European countries with the most highly segmented labour market, with high employment protection for core workers but very little for workers at the margin. At the same time, both its industrial relations system and it social protection system are said to strongly discriminate against people in atypical forms of employment. These claims are explored through semi-structured interviews with temporary agency workers in the service sector, trade unionists and other relevant stakeholders involved in atypical employment. The study demonstrates that temporary agency workers in the two countries experience partly different disadvantages. Although differences in the institutional settings can be said to contribute to explaining these differences, the analysis reveals a more complex picture. I show that institutional divides do not necessarily translate into individual disadvantages, as they interact among each other and with other factors in moulding individual experiences in a variety of ways. At the same time, individual disadvantages are present even when no institutional divide exists. Thus, the study argues that considering disadvantages only in terms of institutional divides oversimplifies a more complex and varied reality, and calls for more attention to be paid to how institutional divides are translated into individual disadvantages.

This essay is about flexibility in relation to employment protection through a gender perspective. It handles the regulations of fixed term employments and how they are regulated in collective agreements in different sectors. The sectors studied are chosen by statistics on male- and female dominated sectors to apply a gender perspective. 90 percent of Swedish workers are covered by collective agreements and many of the studied agreements differ markedly from both the regulation in the Swedish law and from each other. The study shows that depending on which sector you are working in your employment protection will differ. Especially in female dominated sectors the regulations of fixed term employments are even more flexible than the law and the regulations in male dominated sectors. According to the gender structure of the labor market, women have lower status, which could be an explanation to why the regulations tend to be less favorable for women. The result of the study shows that collective agreements in female dominated sectors tend to have regulations according to the Swedish law or less favorable than the law. The male dominated sectors on the other hand tend to have collective agreements that are stricter regulated than the law when it comes to the area of fixed term employments. By that said the regulations of fixed term employments seem through a gender perspective be better for men than for women.

This paper examines how a reduction in EPL affects the utility of older workers, by changing the probability of re-employment as well as the risk of becoming unemployed. I generalize the Bailey-Chetty framework and make a one-period model that shows maximizing search behavior of the agent. With data from previous studies, and Swedish authorities, the model is calibrated. The results show predominant negative welfare effects. When the re-employment probability increases more than the risk of becoming unemployed decreases, one will need to increase the compensation less compared to when the risk of becoming unemployed increases more than the re-employment probability. The result also exclusively shows that the current social security fund is too generous and had to be reduced to reach an optimal level. On the other hand, the social security fund is more optimal when the probability of re-employment increases more than the risk of becoming unemployed. Furthermore, the results show that younger workers have a worse welfare from the unemployment insurance fund compared to older workers.