Abstract
Labor educators and activists know that the consequences of long-term unemployment fall hard on workers, their families and their communities. This edited volume presents thought-provoking comparative research related to the effects of unemployment and strategies to mitigate employment loss in economic downturns. These works by researchers and practitioners from the U.S., Canada and Europe were presented at a 2011 conference sponsored by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California, Los Angeles. Much of the book serves to familiarize readers with the methods used in European countries to cope with unemployment—methods rarely used in the U.S. It is a volume geared mostly toward experienced researchers and experts but does offer other readers insights into how unemployment could be dealt with differently than in the U.S.
Richard Freeman’s foreword invokes characters from Dr. Seuss to present the economic crisis of the Great Recession. Freeman skillfully explains the financial implosion of 2008 and its reverberations in a very accessible manner, an account that could certainly be used in labor education and elsewhere. The Grinch (who stole Christmas) symbolizes the greed and cold-heartedness of the Wall Street financiers who took the U.S. economy and much of the world economy to the brink of collapse and disaster. The Whos, small beings who come together and make their voices heard, characterize Occupy Wall Street.
Lauren Applebaum, the volume’s editor, lays out the parameters of employment loss in her introduction and underscores the persistence of high unemployment rates even in the so-called recovery. She highlights the lasting effects on families, particularly on children and their educational success, the permanent income loss even after re-employment, and the psychological and economic stress and shows that the entire labor market is impacted over the long term, as older workers delay retirement and younger workers face difficulties finding jobs.
Subsequent chapters compare the U.S. and European policy responses to employment loss and are particularly significant for U.S. readers who are unfamiliar with the more effective European alternatives. One key strategy used in European countries is work-sharing or short-time work, a strategy in which firms reduce hours across a workforce rather than lay off workers. This, in combination with partial unemployment compensation, can reduce layoffs and buffer income loss. Brusentsev and Vroman offer a detailed comparison of experiences in four countries, the U.S., Canada, Germany and Belgium, in implementing short time compensation (work-sharing) programs. Although available in a number of states in the U.S., such programs are used quite rarely. Till von Wachter details the long-term earnings loss for workers who experience unemployment.
Tiraboschi and Spattini consider the various policy models used among the 27 countries in the European Union to confront unemployment. They analyze the combinations of labor market policies, social protection and employment protection policies that have been in force during the Great Recession to determine which combinations worked most effectively to address unemployment.
Two other chapters take up additional aspects of unemployment. Oldenhuis and Polstra consider how firms of different sizes coordinate with social service agencies to offer employment to unemployed persons in the Dutch city of Groninge. Diette et al. examine psychological effects of unemployment and identify causal links between unemployment and emotional well-being. This research supports what many of us know—that unemployment negatively affects people. Their evidence proves very helpful in substantiating such claims.
Altogether this volume is rich in data and conceptually valuable in thinking about how things could be done differently than in the U.S., it is limited by its academic style. If some of the ideas were presented in more popular style, they could be helpful for labor activists to consider in their own work.
The political struggles embedded in these policies are not presented and perhaps deserve their own book. Outside of Freeman’s chapter and some of Appelbaum’s introduction, the absence of such a contextual backdrop makes it more difficult to understand why and how these much more humane policies came into being in the first place.