IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/elg/rokejn/v2y2014i2p134-146.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Workplace relations, unemployment and finance-dominated capitalism

Author

Listed:
  • Gary Slater

    (University of Leeds, UK)

  • David A. Spencer

    (University of Leeds, UK)

Abstract

This paper considers the interconnections between the nature and organization of work and the level of unemployment. We consider how actions taken at the workplace level can impede as well as facilitate the reduction in unemployment. We also consider how the workplace may be reformed to overcome some of the obstacles, economic as well as political, to full employment. Finally, we examine the impacts of the current finance-dominated capitalism on work organization and workers. Our view is that financialization represents a major barrier to full employment, not only because of its tendency to limit real investment but also because of its negative effects on the bargaining power of workers.

Suggested Citation

  • Gary Slater & David A. Spencer, 2014. "Workplace relations, unemployment and finance-dominated capitalism," Review of Keynesian Economics, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 2(2), pages 134-146, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:elg:rokejn:v:2:y:2014:i:2:p134-146
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.elgaronline.com/view/journals/roke/2-2/roke.2014.02.01.xml
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wadhwani, Sushil B & Wall, Martin, 1991. "A Direct Test of the Efficiency Wage Model Using UK Micro-data," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 43(4), pages 529-548, October.
    2. Edward P. Lazear & Kathryn L. Shaw & Christopher Stanton, 2016. "Making Do with Less: Working Harder during Recessions," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(S1), pages 333-360.
    3. Costas Lapavitsas, 2011. "Theorizing financialization," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 25(4), pages 611-626, December.
    4. John Godard, 2004. "A Critical Assessment of the High‐Performance Paradigm," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 42(2), pages 349-378, June.
    5. Rebitzer, James B, 1988. "Unemployment, Labor Relations, and Unit Labor Costs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(2), pages 389-394, May.
    6. Kevin F. Hallock, 2009. "Job Loss and the Fraying of the Implicit Employment Contract," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(4), pages 69-93, Fall.
    7. Shapiro, Carl & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1984. "Equilibrium Unemployment as a Worker Discipline Device," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 433-444, June.
    8. Edwards, P. K., 1990. "The politics of conflict and consent : How the labor contract really works," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 41-61, January.
    9. Paul Thompson, 2003. "Disconnected Capitalism: Or Why Employers Can't Keep Their Side of the Bargain," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 17(2), pages 359-378, June.
    10. Jason Heyes & Paul Lewis & Ian Clark, 2012. "Varieties of capitalism, neoliberalism and the economic crisis of 2008–?," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(3), pages 222-241, May.
    11. Green, Francis & Weisskopf, Thomas E, 1990. "The Worker Discipline Effect: A Disaggregative Analysis," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(2), pages 241-249, May.
    12. Jeffrey Pfeffer, 2007. "Human Resources from an Organizational Behavior Perspective: Some Paradoxes Explained," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(4), pages 115-134, Fall.
    13. Francis Green & Steven McIntosh, 1998. "Union Power, Cost of Job Loss, and Workers' Effort," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 51(3), pages 363-383, April.
    14. Ichniowski,Casey & Levine,David I. & Olson,Craig & Strauss,George (ed.), 2000. "The American Workplace," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521650281, October.
    15. David G. Blanchflower & Andrew J. Oswald, 1995. "An Introduction to the Wage Curve," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 153-167, Summer.
    16. Jamee K. Moudud & Francisco Martinez-Hernandez, 2014. "The political economy of public investment and public finance: challenges for social democratic policies," Review of Keynesian Economics, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 2(3), pages 333-364, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pintu Parui, 2023. "Worker household debt, functional income distribution and growth: A neo‐Kaleckian perspective," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(2), pages 446-476, May.
    2. Eric Kemp-Benedict & Yun K. Kim, 2018. "Technological Change, Household Debt, and Distribution," Working Papers 2018-02, University of Massachusetts Boston, Economics Department.
    3. Ikseon Suh & John T. Sweeney & Kristina Linke & Joseph M. Wall, 2020. "Boiling the Frog Slowly: The Immersion of C-Suite Financial Executives into Fraud," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 162(3), pages 645-673, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stephen Nickell & D Nicolitsas, 1994. "Wages," CEP Discussion Papers dp0219, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    2. Nickell, Stephen & Nicolitsas, Daphne, 1997. "Wages, restrictive practices and productivity," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 201-221, September.
    3. Nickell, Stephen & Nicolitsas, D., 1994. "Wages, effort and productivity," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 20794, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. K Clark & M Tomlinson, 2001. "The Determinants of Work Effort: Evidence from the Employment in Britain Survey," Economics Discussion Paper Series 0113, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    5. Elwyn Davies & Marcel Fafchamps, 2017. "When No Bad Deed Goes Punished: Relational Contracting in Ghana versus the UK," NBER Working Papers 23123, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2291-2372 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Campbell III, Carl M., 2008. "An efficiency wage approach to reconciling the wage curve and the Phillips curve," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(6), pages 1388-1415, December.
    8. Francis Green, 2000. "Why has Work Effort become more intense? Conjectures and Evidence about Effort-Biased Technical Change and other stories," Studies in Economics 0003, School of Economics, University of Kent.
    9. Green, Francis & McIntosh, Steven, 2001. "The intensification of work in Europe," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 291-308, May.
    10. Levine, David I., 1991. "You Get What You Pay For: Tests of Efficency Wage Theories in the United States and Japan," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt9t02v034, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.
    11. Eisenbarth, Anthony & Chen, Zhou Fu, 2022. "The evolution of wage inequality within local U.S. labor markets," Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 56, pages 1-2.
    12. Campbell III, Carl M., 2006. "A model of the determinants of effort," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 215-237, March.
    13. Carter, Thomas J., 2005. "Money and efficiency wages: the neglected effect of employment on efficiency," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 199-209, March.
    14. Senney, Garrett T. & Dunn, Lucia F., 2019. "The role of work schedules and the macroeconomy on labor effort," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 23-34.
    15. Blanchflower, David G. & Oswald, Andrew J., 2006. "The Wage Curve: An Entry Written for the New Palgrave, 2nd Edition," IZA Discussion Papers 2138, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. López Enciso, Enrique & Ramírez Giraldo, María Teresa (ed.), 2011. "Formación de precios y salarios en Colombia T.2," Books, Banco de la Republica de Colombia, volume 2, number 2011b-04, March.
    17. Lester Lusher & Geoffrey C. Schnorr & Rebecca L.C. Taylor, 2022. "Unemployment Insurance as a Worker Indiscipline Device? Evidence from Scanner Data," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(2), pages 285-319, April.
    18. Jhon Alexander Méndez Sayago, 2014. "Plusvalía, salario real y eficiencia del trabajo en el sector manufacturero en Colombia," Apuntes del Cenes, Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia, June.
    19. Blanchflower, David G. & Bryson, Alex & Forth, John, 2006. "Workplace Industrial Relations in Britain, 1980-2004," IZA Discussion Papers 2518, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Olivier Blanchard & Lawrence F. Katz, 1997. "What We Know and Do Not Know about the Natural Rate of Unemployment," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 51-72, Winter.
    21. Maarten Dossche & Andrea Gavazzi & Vivien Lewis, 2023. "Labor Adjustment and Productivity in the OECD," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 47, pages 111-130, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    unemployment; labour productivity; full employment; financialization;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B50 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - General
    • B51 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Socialist; Marxian; Sraffian
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J50 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:elg:rokejn:v:2:y:2014:i:2:p134-146. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Phillip Thompson (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elgaronline.com/roke .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.