Word: labors
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Torres and other labor experts say it's an open question whether these schemes make much of a difference. In the short term, they may well slow the rise in unemployment. But if the current crisis continues, as many economists are predicting, at least for this year and probably into 2010, even pay cuts, work-sharing schemes and shorter working hours won't be enough to safeguard jobs. "The real issue is can it be sustained?" Torres asks...
...nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, chief economist Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel argues forcefully that governments should do more to retrain workers and overhaul their labor-market policies to ensure that once recovery comes, new jobs are created in sufficient numbers to swiftly bring the jobless rate back down again. But ask him about the German short-work measures, and he's skeptical. "They can't stop rising unemployment," he says, "they just delay it." Indeed, in its latest economic forecast released March 31, the OECD expects unemployment in Germany to rise from its current...
...particularly strong in China, where the global economic crisis has led to the closure of 7.5% of the country's small and mid-size companies since the end of 2008. In February, the central government's powerful State Council ordered companies throughout the country to notify local government-backed labor unions if they planned to cut either 10% of staff or more than 20 employees. In Beijing, state-owned enterprises have been ordered not to lay off any of their employees this year. The government is also looking to make positive examples of private businesses that keep on staff. That...
...That doesn't mean they're always popular, especially if they involve involuntary pay cuts. Several Taiwanese high-tech companies, for example, began a forced policy of unpaid leave at the end of last year, prompting hundreds of workers to protest in front of the government's Council of Labor Affairs. The council requires that employers pay at least minimum wages and sign agreements with their employees on the terms of the unpaid leave. Even so, workers often feel they have little choice but to accept the policy. Michael Kramer works at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world...
...biggest is that only workers on fixed full-time employment contracts tend to be covered by the schemes. But they aren't necessarily the most vulnerable to job cuts in hard times; rather, it's the millions of part-time or temporary workers on more precarious labor contracts who are the first to lose their jobs. Numbers vary widely from country to country, but in Spain, for example, around one in three workers are in temporary employment. Unemployment there has soared to more than 14%, up from 9% in the beginning of last year. Migrant workers are also especially vulnerable...