European Labour Markets

Learning Outcomes

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of the approaches to developing and implementing employment and training policies in different Member States within the context of the over-arching objectives of the Lisbon Strategy and the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines.
• evaluate the impact of contextual factors (regimes of labour market regulation, employment relations and training) on policy implementation in the field of employment and training;

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• understand the nature of employability itself and use the knowledge and skills developed to operate more effectively as a professional HRM specialist in a transnational context.

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• labour market characteristics: employment and unemployment rates, disaggregated by gender and age; distribution of skills and qualifications;
• social dialogue and social partner engagement in the development and implementation of employment and training policy, including strategies for lifelong learning.
• the European Employment Strategy and its underpinning Luxembourg Process and their broader relationship with the Lisbon objectives; differences in training regimes and conceptual approaches to competence, and the implications of these for developing an overarching European Qualifications Framework;
• European diversity in employment relations regimes, including the institutions of collective bargaining, and the implications of these for European social dialogue and the transposition of European Directives;

The five sessions of the Module are designed to develop understanding and knowledge of the similarities and differences in the labour market characteristics of the European Member States and candidate countries, as well as the reasons for these similarities and differences in terms of the different regimes of labour market regulation, employment relations and training. These five sessions are briefly described below.

Globalization and restructuring

This part of the module will consider the meaning and impact of globalization and its role in accelerating restructuring: shocks, meta theories and changing paradigms. Implications for the EU and mechanisms of structural adjustment to global competition. Using a generic heuristic restructuring model to analyse drivers of change and predict the impact on employment at sector level; forecasting future skills needs from analysing the impact of restructuring on the level and range of skills needed in key occupations.

European labour markets: This session will compare the labour market characteristics of major EU economies and examine progress towards the Lisbon objectives in terms of levels of employment and issues like gender differences in labour market participation. Discussion will focus on explaining diversity in terms of differences in regimes of labour market regulation and their relation with economic structures as well as historical and cultural factors.

Strategies for Employment: This session will examine strategies for promoting employment from the OECD Jobs Strategy to ILO initiatives, and EU and APEC policies. EU strategies including the European Employment Strategy and the Luxembourg Process will be analysed in detail, along with the Lisbon objectives. National Action Plans for Employment will be compared across the EU, highlighting good practice in issues like labour market activation and their scope for transfer discussed.

Training and development: the role of training in European strategies in support of the Lisbon objectives. Structural differences in training regimes across the EU will be discussed in terms of state regulated versus market-led systems and in terms of workplace versus school-focussed systems. The different conceptions of competence across Europe will be presented along with attempts to reconcile these with a common European Qualifications Framework to promote labour mobility.

Employment relations and social dialogue: social dialogue arrangements at the European level and their role in determining employment and training policy. The diversity of social dialogue approaches will be compared across Europe – traditional typology of industrial relations systems and alternative conceptions based on the balance between concertation versus market approaches as tendencies present in all member states at all times, but in different proportions.

A combination of lectures, individual and group work and seminar discussion. The course will be assessed through an individually agreed, structured assignment, unique to each participant. This could, for example involve the comparison of the employment chapters of National Reform Programme Reports in several member states against a common benchmark, offering a critique of the extent to which existing services match the current needs of the member state given its labour market conditions.

Formative

This is how we’ll give you feedback as you are learning. It is not a formal test or exam.

In-class formative opportunities

• Assessment Type: Formative
• Feedback: Students attend a week long module where there are sessions built in during the day for students to receive formative feedback.
• Final Assessment: No
• Group Work: No

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.