EMERGE explores Polish and EU labour market
Mon, 27 Apr 2015 09:49:00 BST
The Business School’s Emerging Markets Research Group (EMERGE) heard Dr Hilary Ingham from Lancaster University Management School present her research on the Polish labour market and its role within the European Union labour market and, in particular, asking if the Polish way is the right way.
Hilary is a Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University and her main research interests are in Eastern expansion of the European Union, Polish labour markets, agricultural restructuring in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and rural development. She was the Director of the DFID project entitled Sustainable Rural Development and Agricultural Restructuring (SURDAR) and is now doing some work for the Joseph Rowntree trust on UK care homes.
In her presentation, Hilary outlined new trends in the Polish labour market, pointing out the trend of employers issuing temporary, rather than permanent, contracts. Hilary provided evidence of the effect of the temporary contracts on the Polish economy, suggesting that Poland has enjoyed economic success through its expansion of temporary jobs. However, there were also a number of issues linked to the issuing of temporary contracts highlighted, such as the impact on unemployment, especially for young people and women who are more likely to be employed on temporary contracts and therefore suffer from greater insecurity than those who are skilled/semi-skilled, better educated, those with past employment history and those working in the public sector and on an apprenticeship contract who are more likely to secure a permanent job.
Professor John Anchor, Director of the Emerging Markets Research Group, says “Hilary concluded that it is difficult to say if Poland provides the right employment model although it has enjoyed recent economic success. She also acknowledged the contribution of foreign direct investment (FDI) as one of the important factors of that economic success and suggested that it is difficult to say if the current structure of the Polish labour market is the right one or if it was largely the FDI that helped improve economic conditions in Poland”.
