Ledermaier, Stefanie

This overview report synthesizes and compares industrial policy capacity within nine European case study regions which have been analysed as part of the pilot project Future of Manufacturing in Europe.

While the youth labour market has improved considerably since 2014, one legacy of the recent economic crisis is the large cohort of long-term unemployed young people, which represents nearly one-third of jobless young people. This report provides an updated profile of the youth labour market in 2016 and describes trends over the past decade.

The concept of NEET (young people not in employment, education or training) has, since 2010, been widely used as a tool to inform youth-oriented policies in the 28 Member States of the European Union. While it has been a valuable addition to more traditional indicators used to understand the economic and social vulnerability of young people and their labour market participation, it has often been criticised because of the heterogeneity of the population it captures. This report explores the diversity of NEETs and suggests seven subgroups into which the NEET population can be disaggregated using data routinely collected for the EU Labour Force Survey.

Youth unemployment policy has tended to focus on two groups: young people with low educational attainment and those with higher education who have failed to find work. However, there is a large group of middle attainers who tend to be overl...

The European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) annual report for 2015 explores the issue of job creation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). SMEs are increasingly recognised as a job engine for Europe. However, given the heterogeneity of the vast SME population, not all contribute equally to employment growth. This study seeks to identify which SME types are more or less dynamic job creators and to determine their main drivers and barriers for job creation.

Since the onset of the economic crisis, the unemployment level among young people has risen sharply and although an improvement is now being registered some EU countries still have stubbornly high youth unemployment rates. Young people, especially those who are not in employment, education or training (NEET), are now the group at highest risk of social exclusion, with severe consequences not only for the individuals concerned but for the economy and society as a whole.

National wage-bargaining institutions are crucial in achieving pay outcomes that help to increase employment and economic growth within the context of avoiding macroeconomic imbalances within the European Monetary Union. Using a large set of empirical macroeconomic data from a variety of sources, including Eurofound and the European Commission AMECO database, this report analyses how the institutional features of national wage bargaining regimes influence pay outcomes.

This report examines four scenarios of social partner cooperation in the hairdressing sector, aimed at improving the quality of work and employment. The scenarios are based on trends that reveal high impact and high uncertainty qualities, such as the re-evaluation of the sector as a craft sector, technological change, the effects of climate change, and the polarisation of the sector due to the dominance of shopping malls. These scenarios, which were developed on the basis of desk research, interviews with national social partners and focus groups of the sectoral social partners, are then mapped onto the four main quality of work indicators, as defined by Eurofound (career and employment security, skills development, reconciliation of working and non-working life, and health and well-being), in order to formulate policy pointers for how the social partners could develop strategies to improve the quality of work and employment in the future.

Medtronic is the world’s largest medical technology company, currently employing around 45,000 staff globally. In its search to become the market leader in its area, around two years ago Medtronic Galway introduced lean processes to both its production and support services. The Galway plant is one of Medtronic’s largest production plants globally and is an important employer in the west of Ireland. Based on a number of case study interviews focusing on its recent workplace innovation, a number of interesting findings emerged, such as: innovation as a necessity for the future of the company; communication as a key factor for engaging employees; mutually beneficial solutions such as smoother production and enhanced staff responsibility; top-down innovation with some involvement of workers; trade union involvement; increase in output and wages – fair reward for extra contribution; increase in productivity; lack of trade union concern over the increase in monitoring staff performance and cross-skilling; interaction between external and internal trade union.

In 2010, European-level social partners in the print industry identified the need to further intensify their cooperation. It led to meetings between the UNI Europa Graphical and Packaging [1] group, which represents workers in the sector, and Intergraf [2] on the employers’ side. Social partners formed a strategic partnership and worked on a joint project on socially-responsible restructuring [1] http://www.uniglobalunion.org/Apps/uni.nsf/pages/sec_graphicalEn [2] http://www.intergraf.eu/