This thesis begins by revisiting and building on themes of labour market segmentation, with particular reference given to Marx's seminal account of segmentation in Capital, Vol.1 (Chapter 25). Marx distinguishes between an active army - the stable full-time employed - and the relative surplus population - the precariously employed reserve army and the residual surplus - and suggests further fragmentation of these main groups into sub-strata. Marx's perspective of segmentation is grounded in fragments of a general theory of employment that, as a long-term tendency, identifies continual advances in constant capital that abolish work and proliferate the reserve army. This thesis builds on these themes by formulating a concept, the 'transference dynamic', which underpins a general theory of employment segmentation. A short history of segmentation under capitalism traces recent phases of development in both developed and lesser-developed nations. Stress is placed on the role of political configurations that regulate capitalism in ways that can either counter the general tendency, such is the case under the Fordist model of capitalism, or strengthen its logic. The theory of employment segmentation and the lessons drawn from the historical account are spliced together with an analysis of the contemporary phase of capitalism, labelled here as the neoliberal model of development. It is demonstrated that the coercive international regulatory dynamic of the neoliberal model reasserts and extends the competitive principle of the capitalist mode of production. Through this extension, nations are transformed into competition-states vying for scarce and globally mobile capital to operate on their shores - the primary source of national prosperity and employment - by implementing capital-friendly neoliberalized policy. This analysis of neoliberal global capitalism reveals an expanding surplus population within a context of deepening international segmentation. This employment crisis is expressed as a hierarchy of nations that is determined in part by their uneven development. Those at the bottom of the hierarchy, comprising a majority portion of the world's population, contain a massive reserve army and residual surplus population unincorporated into wage-based capitalism, without any obvious support of means of life and with little hope for the future. Finally, mainstream solutions are criticized for failing to address either long-run or contemporary drivers of the employment crisis. In response, this thesis pitches a project of multi-faceted radical reform that counter-regulates capitalism by adopting a combination of local, national, regional and global forms of democratic socialist governance.

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Australian women’s participation in paid work has been and continues to be strongly influenced by gendered patterns of parental care. This thesis examines how children structure another dimension of economic stratification in Australia, hourly wages. Previous studies from the United States and Great Britain show women who care for children have lower wages than their childless counterparts and that this motherhood gap in pay is partly explained by mothers’ interruptions to employment and movement into part-time jobs. Outside the US and Britain fewer studies of the motherhood gap in pay have been undertaken. Compared to these two countries, Australia has lower maternal employment rates and higher rates of part-time work. These features may increase wage disparities between mothers and childless women in the Australian labour market. Australia, unlike Britain and the United States, has a history of centralised wage regulation, leading to a comparatively narrower wage distribution and a higher minimum wage. These institutional features may offer protection against downward wage mobility. This thesis investigates how motherhood influences the hourly wages of Australian women using panel data. Previous Australian research has documented static wage disparities, relying on cross-sectional data. My analysis draws on the first six waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey (2001-2006), a large, nationally representative panel survey. The thesis is comprised of three studies. First, I investigate the overall motherhood gap in pay in Australia in 2001. In aggregate, the mean wage of women with children is equal to that of childless women. After imputing a potential wage for mothers who are not employed, I show that the overall motherhood gap in pay would be considerably wider in Australia were fewer mothers to exit the labour force. This is because mothers without tertiary qualifications are less likely to be employed than mothers with a certificate, diploma or degree. Second, I use the panel design of HILDA to estimate female wage equations using fixed-effects regression. Controlling for differences in observed human capital, part-time work and unobserved heterogeneity, I find each child lowers wages by 6%. The analysis also reveals that mothers’ propensity to work part-time does not explain any of the Australian motherhood gap in pay. After incorporating detailed controls for time-varying job characteristics, I find that part-time wages are 14% higher than full-time wages. On average, the pay premium for part-time work more than offsets the pay penalty associated with one or two children. Third, I narrow my focus to Australian women experiencing a birth between 2001 and 2006, assessing whether the wage premium for part-time work extends to transitions at this point in the lifecourse. I investigate patterns of wage growth among mothers returning to employment within 3 years of a birth. My results reveal that Australian mothers who transition from full-time to part-time hours have significantly higher wage growth than mothers who remain in full-time employment. Taken together, my results suggest women’s part-time employment has a distinctive form in Australia. I find no evidence Australian mothers’ part-time employment constitutes a low-paid segment of the labour force. Isolating a causal explanation for the comparatively high wages of Australian women’s part-time employment is difficult, though two factors are likely to be important. First, Australian mothers’ participation in part-time employment rapidly increased during the 1970s and 1980s, a period when wages were largely regulated through collective agreements. Although wage determination has become more deregulated since the mid-1980s, the principle that part-time employees should receive pro rata wages does not appear to have been contested by Australian employers. This could be because demand for labour in feminised industries has remained strong. Second, decisions to remain attached to employment around childbirth could possibly be structured by the availability of part-time work. Rather than transition into a lower waged part-time job, Australian mothers may exit the labour force drawing on supports for stay-at-home mothers in the Australian family payment and taxation system. In the longer term, mothers who continue in part-time work may have fewer opportunities for upward mobility and flatter wage trajectories. As additional waves of HILDA become available, such divergences in wage trajectories will be able to be empirically investigated. This study examines female wages in a period of strong economic growth and low unemployment. Part-time employment may not be positively associated with wages in a macroeconomic context of lower demand for labour and rising unemployment. An interesting avenue for future research would be to compare how transitions into part-time work influence female wages across periods of strong and weak labour market growth.

<p>Syftet med denna kvantitativa enkätstudie var att undersöka om coaching är rätt metod för individer som befinner sig i inledningsskedet av en ofrivillig arbetslöshet. I ett försök att utröna detta har vi undersökt vilka behov individen upplever sig ha i början av sin arbetslöshet, men också om coachingen tillfredsställer några av dessa. Med Maslows behovshierarki som utgångspunkt sammanställdes frågor som sammanlagt 23 arbetslösa, inskrivna vid fem olika arbetsförmedlingar i Stockholms län, svarade på. Resultaten visar att respondenterna har de fyra första mer basala behoven i hierarkin otillfredställda. Via coachingen tycks respondenterna, förutom ett ökat självförtroende, fått bekräftelse och förståelse, vilket kan förklara att respondenterna känner sig motiverade och redo till att förverkliga sig själva i coachingen. Oavsett kön upplevde en klar majoritet av studiens respondenter stödet de fick via coachingen som positivt. Slutsatsen är att coachingen, i denna studie, visat sig vara en passande metod för att öka den arbetslöses självförtroende och förmåga att anta nya yrkesmässiga utmaningar.</p> / <p>The aim of this quantitative study is to investigate if coaching is a suitable method for individuals who are in the initial stage of involuntary unemployment. In an attempt to ascertain this, we have examined the needs an individual experience having in the start of their unemployment but also if coaching satisfies any of these. With Maslows hierarchy of needs as a starting point questions were formed to the 23 unemployed who participated in the study. The participants were enrolled at five different unemployment agencies in Stockholm county. The results show that respondents have the first four needs in the hierarchy unsatisfied. With coaching the respondents seem to improve self-confidence and get confirmation and understanding, which may explain why the respondents feel motivated and ready to fulfill themselves with coaching. Regardless of sex a clear majority of the respondents experienced the support they received with coaching as positive. The conclusion of this study is that coaching proved to be an appropriate method to increase the unemployed´s self-confidence and ability to meet new professional challenges.</p>

<p>The study is a qualitative survey with the purpose to through interviews with Employment Office social workers examine their perception of possibilities and obstacles in the employment market for immigrants. This purpose is specified through two specific problems; how are cultural and ethnic affiliations portrayed in relation to what is perceived as Swedish in the communication with Employment Office social workers and whether they reckon that the specifications in the employment market are pragmatically or normatively motivated. The materials are presented using a social constructivist perspective and in relation to previously conducted research and our chosen theory. The results are presented and analyzed in themes. The main conclusions drawn from the interviews are that it primarily is the individual prerequisites that are central, but that structural factors also affect the entry into the employment market. The interviewees refer to the specifications as being reasonably formulated, but that there are also implicit norms that determines the outcome of the recruitment process. Moreover, the Employment Office social workers are affected by the Swedish cultural context they work within, and that they experience ambivalence around the fact that employers assume a Swedish norm. This could conceal the competences of the unemployed and thus be excluding.</p>

<p>This study is a critical discourse analysis on the genre of career coaching. Focus lies on questions such as how doescareer coaching articles construct the working subject, and how is working life described in the genre. The categoryof social relations is central to the study. I ask questions about which social relations are of importance, and whichare not, in the career coaching version of working life and how can these relations be interpreted from a critical pointof view. The concepts of power-knowledge is central to the analysis of social relations and the term employabilityconstitute the main theoretical understanding of what distinguish the contemporary labour market. The detailedtextual analysis are made with the tools of modality, transitivity and metaphors.</p>

<p>Denna undersökning syftar till att förstå anställdas och mellanchefers uppfattningar om införandet av ett nytt system för kompetensutveckling i Habiliteringen i Handikapp-förvaltningen Västra Götalandsregionen. Vi har ställt oss följande två frågor: Vilka uppfattningar finns och vad för slags reaktioner har uppkommit bland anställda och mellanchefer vid förändringsarbetet? Vilka följder kan dessa reaktioner ha fått för förändringsarbetet? För att kunna besvara dessa frågor har vi gjort fyra individuella intervjuer med mellanchefer och fyra gruppintervjuer med anställda, där sammanlagt 14 anställda deltog. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att anställda och mellanchefer har svagt intresse för det nya kompetensutvecklingssystemet när det gäller både dess användning och dess vidareutveckling. Det svaga intresset tror vi bland annat beror på att anställda och mellanchefer, på grund av bristande information om systemet, har endast ringa kunskap om dess innebörd och heller inte förstår dess syfte. Det svaga intresset kan även bero på att anställda och mellanchefer över lag ser få positiva aspekter med systemet för egen del.</p>

<p>Syftet med denna studie är att beskriva och analysera anställdas uppfattning om förändringen av arbetstider inom sjuktransportsförvaltningen Halland. Följande frågor har ställts: Hur upplevde anställda arbetstidsförändringen inom ambulanssjukvården? På vilket sätt gavs de anställda möjlighet att vara delaktiga i arbetstidsförändringen? För att besvara dessa frågor har individuella intervjuer med sju anställda genomförts. Resultatet visar att det fanns både en positiv inställning och ett visst motstånd till förändringen. Den positiva inställningen kan förklaras genom att ledningen tagit hänsyn till åsikter som funnits angående förändringsarbetet. När det gäller motståndet var både en högre kostnad för arbetsgivaren och en lägre lön för de anställda bidragande orsaker i kombination med en upplevd osäkerhet inför en minskad möjlighet till långledighet. Den utbredda motivationen och engagemanget för arbetstidsförändringen hos de anställda har enligt oss flera orsaker. Främst är det en förändring som förbättrar de anställdas arbetstider och ger större möjligheter till sociala aktiviteter, tid med familjen samt vila och avkoppling. Andra orsaker kan ha varit de goda möjligheterna som de anställda gavs från ledningsgruppen att få vara delaktiga och vara med och påverka arbetsprocessen, vidare gavs möjlighet till inflytande i de olika beslut som fattades. Kommunikation som funnits mellan anställda och ledningsgrupp har främjat möjligheten till frågor och respons kontinuerligt under hela förändringsarbetet.</p> / <p>The purpose of this study is to investigate employees’ experience of a change project at the Halland County Council ambulance service. To answer the question, a qualitative method was used. The following questions were asked: How did the employees within the ambulance service experience the work time change? How did the employees participate in the work time change? Individual interviews were conducted with seven employees. The results showed most employees were positive to change, but that there was some resistance to the reduced working time. The positive attitude explanation may lie in the direction taken to views that existed on the change process into account. The resistance was due to both a higher cost to the employer and lower pay for employees contributing causes combined with a perceived uncertainty about the reduced possibility of long holidays. The widespread motivation and commitment had several reasons. Foremost it is a change that improves the employees' working time and provide more opportunities for social activities and recovery. Other causes may have been the possibility that they were given to participate, have a voice in the work and the opportunity to influence in the decision making. Communication that existed between employees and management team promoted the possibility of questions and feedback continuously throughout the change process.</p>

<p>Syftet med studien är att skapa en förståelse för hur en byråkratisk organisation arbetar för att på en och samma gång vara såväl regelstyrd som deltagaranpassad samt hur detta påverkar individerna som deltar i verksamheten.</p><p>För att uppnå syftet har det utgåtts från följande frågeställningar:<em> </em><em> </em></p><ul><li>Hur upplever deltagarna samarbetet med konsulten?</li><li>Hur ser Arbetslivsresurs metod för arbetet med deltagare i omställningsuppdrag ut?<strong></strong></li><li>På vilket sätt individanpassar konsulten mötet med deltagarna? </li></ul><p>För att uppnå syftet har kvalitativ metod tillämpats. En intervju har genomförts med en konsult på Arbetslivsresurs som bland annat arbetar med omställningsuppdrag samt har intervjuer utförts med åtta deltagare som medverkat i omställningsuppdrag i anslutning till Arbetslivsresurs. Resultatet visade att konsulten i samtalet med deltagarna använder en arbetsmetod som utgår från individen. Vidare visade resultatet att samarbetet medfört positiva upplevelser för deltagarna samt upplevde deltagarna ett individanpassat bemötande i stor utsträckning.</p><p> </p> / <p>The aim of this study is to create an understanding of how a bureaucratic organization is structured in order to be rule-driven as well as adjustable to participants and how this affects the individuals that participate in the activities provided by the organization. To achieve the purpose, we have sought to answer the following questions:</p><p>• How is the cooperation with the consultant perceived among the participants?</p><p>• What does Arbetslivsresurs’ working method with participants in the transition look like?</p><p>• How does the consultant adjust the meeting to each participant?</p><p>To be able to achieve the aim, a qualitative method has been used. An interview has been conducted with a consultant who works with transitions at Arbetslivsresurs. In addition, eight interviews have been conducted with participants who have been involved in transitions connected to Arbetslivsresurs. The results show that the consultant uses an individualized method in the meetings with participants. Furthermore, the results show to a large extent, that the cooperation has generated positive experiences for the participants as well as an experience of a personalized treatment.</p>

<p>Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka möjligheterna till kompetensutveckling på två olika verksamhetsområden inom Landstinget Halland. Vi vill få en förståelse för vilka förutsättningar som krävs för lärande och kompetensutveckling inom organisationen. Avsikten med undersökningen  är att få svar på forskningsfrågorna: (1) Hur upplever medarbetaren sina möjligheter till kompetensutveckling inom Landstinget Halland? (2) Hur ser vårdenheternas arbetsplatslärande ut? (3) Vilka förutsättningar finns för arbetsplatslärande inom vårdenheterna? (4) Vilka faktorer bidrar till att medarbetarna inom Landstinget Halland vill stanna och utvecklas? För att få svar på dessa frågor har vi gjort nio stycken individuella intervjuer med respondenter som innehar olika yrkesgrupper inom Landstinget Halland. Resultatet vi fick var att respondenternas upplevelse av sina möjligheter att kompetensutvecklas inom Landstinget Halland var och goda och att det finns ett gott lärklimat och en infrastruktur för hur ett lärande ska ske. Det upplevs att Landstinget Halland är generösa vad gäller utbildningsutbud. Det finns även en upplevelse att de själva kan påverka vilka utbildningar de vill gå. Det tre största svagheterna som hindrar kompetensutveckling är tid, brist på resurser, och kraven uppifrån organisationen. Detta tror vi påverkar möjligheten till kompetensutveckling på grund av att tidsbrist hindrar respondenterna från att vara kreativa och reflektera under sitt arbetsplatslärande. När det sparas pengar dras det in på bemanning och detta hämmar lärandet då färre medarbetare ska göra samma arbete på mindre tid och slutligen kraven uppifrån minskar medarbetarnas handlingsutrymme, vilket påverkar dess personliga utveckling och arbetstillfredsställelse. Respondenterna upplever att de har en stor frihet under ansvar då de kan påverka och vara delaktiga i beslut som rör deras vårdenhet. De upplever även att Landstinget Halland är en trygg och stabil organisation, vilket bidrar till högre arbetstillfredsställelse och att medarbetarna vill stanna och utvecklas.</p> / <p>The purpose of this essay is to examine the possibilities to competence development within two different departments at the country council of Halland. This is done to obtain an understanding of the existing preconditions for learning and competence development within the above mentioned organization. The purpose of the study is to get an answer to the following questions: (1) How does the employees of the country council of Halland view their abilities to develop new competence themselves? (2) How are the healthcare units learning within the workplace structured? (3) What are the precondition for learning within the workplace? (4) How are the co-workers within the country council of Halland attracted to staying and at the same time given the opportunity to develop themselves? To get an answer to these questions we have conducted nine individual interviews with respondents in different professions within the country council of Halland. The outcome of these interviews shows that the respondents view their possibility to develop competence as good and that there is a good climate for learning. They also show that there is an adequate infrastructure that enables learning whithin the country council of Halland. It was also found that there is a wide selection of different educations made available to the employees. The employees also find that there is a great deal of freedom when it comes to individual choices and preferences among these educations. The three main weaknesses to be able to develop competence were found to be lack of time and resources for participating in various courses and educations along with the demands from the management. We believe that the lack of time hinders tha respondents being creative and reflective during their workplace learning. When cutbacks are done within the organization they are not seldom done in the number of staff which hampers the learning due to the fact that fewer employees are to conduct the same tasks within a smaller timeframe. At the same time the respondents feel that they have a lot of freedom to act and that they also have the possibility to influence and be a part of the decisions taken that effect their own workunit. In conclusion, tha employees of the country council of Halland view their own organization as stabile and reliant which contributes to a high level of satisfaction and that the employees are willing to stay and develop themseves within the organization.</p>