Global value chain restructuring and changes in work in the EU: facts and perspectives

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Work Organisation Restructuring in the KBS

• Global value chain restructuring and changes in
  work in the EU facts and perspectives

Monique Ramioul Research Institute for Work and
Society- HIVA-KUL
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The value chain approach

• Restructuring of business functions
• Contractual in-house or outsourced
• Spatial domestic or international (nearshore,
  offshore)
• Combination of both

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WORKS case studies

• Period between June 05 and December 07!
• Business functions
• Production
• RD, ICT
• Logistics, customer services
• Sectors
• Food, clothing, IT
• Post and railways
• Public administrations
• Countries

Logistics
IT
Austria Belgium Bulgaria
Denmark France Germany Greece
Hungary Italy
Netherlands Norway Portugal
Sweden UK
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1. Value chain restructuring

• Outsourcing and offshoring but also integration

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1. Value chain restructuring

• A huge variation of restructuring modes
• Value chains are generally becoming more
  elaborated and industries more specialised
• But integration of activities in view of value
  chain control is also observed
• Moving race to the bottom hypothesis confirmed
  for low-skill production activities
  (clothing,food)
• Much greater geographical stickiness in
  high-skill activities such as RD
• Dynamics of moving up the value chain

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2. Work organisation and skills

• More skills needed to work harder?

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2. Work organisation and skills?

• New skills are needed at the higher end of the
  chain
• Inreased knowledge-intensity
• Organisational and technological changes
  accompanying the restructuring
• Speeding-up of business
• Growing importance of non-core professional
  skills, not necessarily strengthening these
• But also more bureaucratisation, standardisation
  and formalisation
• mulitplication of interfaces and spatial distance
  limit organisational flexibility and
  responsiveness
• workers skills and informal capabilities have to
  compensate

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2. Work organisation and skills?

• 1. Figures from employee surveys in 15 EU
  countries (Greenan, Walkowiak,Kalugina)
• Significant DECREASE in work complexity between
  1995 and 2000, and between 2000 and 2005 even
  after controlling for micro and macro
  characteristics
• Significant INCREASE in intensity of technical
  constraints
• No changes in intensity of market constraints
• Significant DECREASE in quality of working
  conditions

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3. Flexibility
Fragmentation of work and employment conditions
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3. Flexibility

• Differentials in working conditions between
  companies, sectors and countries act as a driver
  of restructuring
• same work, same colleagues but under
  different conditions
• Flexibility is unevenly distributed along the
  value chain
• Growing contractual flexibility and/or
  insecurity, esp. at the lower end
• Temporal pressures along the chain
• Growing pressure on the core

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Subsidiary of National Post

• Employees by employment contract
• 15 management
• 98 workers under National Post collective
  agreement
• 120 workers under subsidiary company collective
  agreement
• 80 seasonal workers national minimum wage
• 250 - 300 temporary agency workers

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4. Industrial relations

• Managing restructuring

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4. Industrial relations

• Huge country differences with major role for
  existing national and sectoral structures
• the national and sectoral influence the social
  dialogue structure, negotiated issues and role in
  restructuring process
• Generally a marginal role of union
  representation, esp. when move to regions/sectors
  with weaker structures
• Defining change is a management prerogative
• Response is reactive not proactive
• Marked differences between occupational groups
• Sector differences in the role of representation
  are high

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4. Industrial relations

• intensified power differences between labour and
  management because of larger, diffuse units,
  complex networks and remote contacts
• EU regulations are not very visible at the
  workplace or in the consciousness of workers for
  restructuring issues (EWCs information and
  consultation are minimal)

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WORKS Thematic reports

• Value chain restructuring in Europe in a global
  economy
• VCR and company strategies to reach flexibility
• VCR and the use of knowledge and skills
• VCR and the role of technology
• Changing careers and trajectories
• Working time, gender and worklife balance
• Health and safety and the quality of work
  psychosocial risks
• VCR and Industrial Relations and workplace
  representation
• Changing patterns of segregation and power
• VCR and changes in work future perspectives

Logistics
IT
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The WORKS project
www.worksproject.be