Posted By
Ian Brinkley
13 November 2012
As the Chancellor prepares for the Autumn Statement, he will be trying to respond to the Heseltine Growth Review, No Stone Unturned.
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Posted By
Ian Brinkley
19 September 2012
The new productivity statistics that came out this morning show the UK falling behind some other major economies. Between 2007 and 2011 there was no growth in productivity (measured by GDP per hour worked) in the UK. In contrast, productivity went up by 7 per cent in Japan, 6 per cent in the US, and 3 per cent in Canada.
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Posted By
Ian Brinkley
12 September 2012
The TUC was yesterday (11 Sept) reported to be moving towards backing co-ordinated industrial action to increase public sector pay. This is of course a perfectly legitimate goal for trade unions to pursue. Trade unions have also committed the TUC to campaign for maximising the number of jobs in the public sector in order to sustain quality public services. These are also legitimate goals. However, these objectives are not, under current circumstances, compatible. Unions can either campaign for higher pay for their members or keep as many of them as possible in jobs in order to preserve services, but not both.
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Posted By
Ian Brinkley
21 August 2012
Government ministers have reportedly taken the BBC to task for being insufficiently enthusiastic about the employment figures – a charge hard to fathom given current levels of uncertainty about labour market prospects. At the risk of being officially denounced, it is perfectly legitimate to look beneath the totals – good as they are - and suggest things are not quite as robust as the official view suggests.
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Posted By
Ian Brinkley
17 August 2012
Recent media interest in zero hours contracts has shed some light into a largely forgotten corner of the UK’s flexible labour market. The zero hour contract, in effect, requires the individual to be available for work, but his or her employer are under no obligation to provide work. Some employers see zero hours contracts as a way of ensuring flexibility and remaining competitive in situations where work fluctuates unexpectedly from day to day or week to week. However, some of those on zero hours contracts see them as exploitative, where they bear all the risk and where the balance of interest lies almost entirely with the employer.
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Posted By
Ian Brinkley
09 May 2012
The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill outlined in the Queen’s Speech includes some welcome labour market measures, such as support for more family friendly employment.
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Posted By
Ian Brinkley
18 April 2012
Since its launch in 2002, The Work Foundation has been instrumental in influencing change in all areas of work. With so much happening over the past decade, we wanted to highlight ten of our most impactful programmes of the last ten years:
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Posted By
Ian Brinkley
16 March 2012
A major focus for comments on the latest labour market figures was the much bigger rise in unemployment for women compared with men. Of the 28,000 increase in unemployed by the ILO measure, 22,000 were accounted for by women, with the female unemployment rate rising to 7.7 per cent.
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Posted By
Ian Brinkley
16 February 2012
Yesterday’s unemployment figures made grim reading with 2.7 million unemployed on the international standardised measure used by the International Labour Office (ILO). This includes all those who said they had looked for work in the past 4 weeks and were able to start a job in 2 weeks time.
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