Ines Alisa Wagner

• Teigen, Mari & Wagner, Ines (2022). The Gendered Nature of Pattern Bargaining: Leeway for Change? In Elomäki, Anna; Kantola, Johanna & Sandberg, Paula K. (Ed.), Social Partners and Gender Equality : Change and Continuity in Gendered Corporatism in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan. ISSN 978-3-030-81178-5. p. 29–47. doi: https:/doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81178-5_2. Show summary

  How the gender pay gap is problematised plays an important role in how policy aims to curtail the gender pay gap. This article looks at Norway and asks the following question: How does a Nordic country famous for gender equality advances deal with potential friction between its collective bargaining model and the gender pay gap? Based on document analysis and exploratory interviews, we ask another question: How does the main trade union umbrella association understand the nature of the gender pay gap problem in the Norwegian labour market? The aim of the paper is to interrogate how a particular part of the corporatist regime, namely, the pattern bargaining model, is understood and problematised by the central trade union association, which aims to represent all workers’ interests but has also evolved around the notion of the male breadwinner.

• Doellgast, Virginia; Wagner, Ines & O’Brady, Sean (2022). Negotiating limits on algorithmic management in digitalised services: cases from Germany and Norway. Transfer - European Review of Labour and Research. ISSN 1024-2589. doi: 10.1177/10242589221143044. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Artificial intelligence (AI)-based algorithms are increasingly used to monitor employees and to automate management decisions. In this article, we ask how worker representatives adapt traditional collective voice institutions to regulate the adoption and use of these tools in the workplace. Our findings are based on a comparative study of union and works council responses to algorithmic management in contact centres from two similar telecommunications companies in Germany and Norway. In both case studies, worker representatives mobilised collective voice institutions to protect worker privacy and discretion associated with remote monitoring and workforce management technologies. However, they relied on different sources of institutional power, connected to co-determination rights, enforcement of data protection laws, and labour cooperation structures.

• Doellgast, Virginia & Wagner, Ines (2022). Collective regulation and the future of work in the digital economy: Insights from comparative employment relations. Journal of Industrial Relations. ISSN 0022-1856. 64(3), p. 438–460. doi: 10.1177/00221856221101165. Show summary

  The impact of technological change on employment, inequality and job quality has attracted considerable analysis from both scholars and practitioners. However, less attention has been paid to how digital technologies are changing contemporary workplaces and how workers are responding to these changes. This article reviews recent research from the multidisciplinary comparative employment relations field, with a focus on institutional resilience or change associated with digitalization; and the strategic responses of unions and other worker representatives to these trends. We find that the insights of economists, sociologists and employment relations scholars are complementary, as each addresses a different dimension of technological change and associated worker outcomes. Comparative employment relations researchers are more likely to influence current debates where they both articulate the unique contribution of their multi-method and comparative research methods and aggregate findings beyond single or paired industry and national case studies.

• Wagner, Ines & Teigen, Mari (2021). Egalitarian inequality: Gender equality and pattern bargaining. Gender, Work & Organization. ISSN 0968-6673. 29, p. 486–501. doi: 10.1111/gwao.12774. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article analyzes the role of the collective wage-setting institution of “pattern bargaining” in maintaining the gendered hierarchies of the labor market and gender pay gap in Norway. The gendered labor market is considered a main cause of the gender pay gap, yet current research and policy has not examined the relation of the gender pay gap to the way sectoral wages are set. Norway is an interesting case because its wage-setting model and gender equality are highly esteemed globally. However, although the wage-setting system in Norway creates an overall more egalitarian wage structure than other advanced industrial countries, it has a built-in gendered inequality that is not part of its current discussion on resolving the gender pay gap. We introduce egalitarian inequality to conceptualize this. The article examines the presentation of the gender pay gap in relation to the gendered labor market, and how the pattern bargaining model is presented as both a solution and a hindrance, and which discourse dominates. We analyze the public discourse on the gender pay gap and the pattern-bargaining model, and its interrelations, through the lens of policy advisory commissions appointed by the government, the Norwegian Official Commissions. The findings reveal a dual commitment of upholding both pattern bargaining and gender equality but hardly any willingness to adjust the pattern bargaining model to combat the gender pay gap. A clear hierarchy is expressed in which gender equality is subordinate to pattern bargaining.

• Danaj, Sonila & Wagner, Ines (2021). Beware of the “poverty migrant”: media discourses on EU labour migration and the welfare state in Germany and the UK. Zeitschrift für Sozialreform (ZSR). ISSN 0514-2776. 67(1), p. 1–27. doi: 10.1515/zsr-2021-0001. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article examines the role of the media in the EU freedom of movement debate through the lens of high-circulation German and UK newspapers during the first half of 2014. It explores how the media problematised migration from Eastern European member states and its influence on national host country labour markets and welfare systems. It also analyses how different media outlets positioned themselves in relation to relevant policies or policy proposals. The findings show that most articles in our sample present low-skill, low-wage working European Union (EU) migrant class referred to as “poverty migrants” as a problem to be addressed at the policy level in contrast with the economically self-sufficient migrant with marketable skills. The article contributes to discussions on work, welfare, and mobility in the EU by cross-fertilising the literature on migration policy, freedom of movement, social rights, and the media.

• Wagner, Ines (2020). Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value? Iceland and the Equal Pay Standard . Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society. ISSN 1072-4745. p. 1–20. doi: 10.1093/sp/jxaa032. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Job evaluation systems have a history of being critiqued as upholding gender inequality. Paradoxically, however, the Icelandic Equal Pay Standard (IEPS), a novel and publicly praised gender equality policy, is based on a job evaluation tool. The aim of this article is to stipulate an initial analysis of how key stakeholders in the Icelandic context view and assess the strengths and weaknesses of the IEPS so far. Drawing on organizational literature and feminist institutionalism, the findings show how equal pay for work of equal value can be achieved. At the same time, the article highlights the need for more emphasis on and awareness of the value of feminized work within organizations, which remains underrecognized in the IEPS.

• Lillie, Nathan; Berntsen, Lisa; Wagner, Ines & Danaj, Sonila (2019). A comparative analysis of union responses to posted work in four European countries. In Arnholtz, Jens & Lillie, Nathan (Ed.), Posted Work in the European Union: The Political Economy of Free Movement. Routledge. ISSN 9780367142711. p. 89–108. doi: 10.4324/9780429031021-5.
• Wagner, Ines & Shire, Karen (2019). Labour Subcontracting in Cross-Border Labour Markets: A Comparison of Rule Evasion in Germany and Japan. In Arnholtz, Jens & Lillie, Nathan (Ed.), Posted Work in the European Union: The Political Economy of Free Movement. Routledge. ISSN 9780367142711. doi: 10.4324/9780429031021-10.
• Refslund, Bjarke & Wagner, Ines (2018). Cutting to the Bone: Workers' Solidarity in the Danish-German Slaughterhouse Industry. In Doellgast, Virginia; Puglinano, Valeria & Lillie, Nahan (Ed.), Reconstructing Solidarity: Labour Unions, Precarious Work, And the Politics of Institutional Change in Europe. Oxford University Press. ISSN 9780198791843. p. 67–83.
• Seeliger, Martin & Wagner, Ines (2018). A socialization paradox: trade union policy cooperation in the case of the enforcement directive of the posting of workers directive. Socio-Economic Review. ISSN 1475-1461. doi: 10.1093/ser/mwy037. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The formulation of common political positions from the trade union movement at the European Union (EU) level mainly takes place at the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). In the case of the Enforcement Directive of the Posting of Workers Directive, a central cleavage line runs between neither countries nor political parties, but between different vertical levels of the system of European labor relations—the sectoral and interprofessional levels. Here, due to both horizontal and vertical differences, trade unions were unable to effectively formulate and pursue joint positions. On these grounds, we aspire to provide a theoretical argument on political dynamics in the EU’s multilevel system. While the ETUC representatives internalize supranational norms through their embeddedness in the EU’s institutional landscape, this socialization process does not advance—but rather prevents—integration by disrupting trade union power at the supranational level.

• Wagner, Ines (2017). Trade unions and migrant workers in Germany: Unions between national and transnational Labour market segmentation . In Marino, Stefania; Penninx, Rinus & Roosblad, Judith (Ed.), Trade Unions and Migrant Workers: New Contexts and Challenges in Europe. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISSN 9781788114073. p. 158–178. doi: 10.4337/9781788114080.00018.
• Lillie, Nathan & Wagner, Ines (2017). Practicing European Industrial Citizenship : The Case of Labour Migration to Germany. In Wiesner, Claudia; Björk, Anna; Kivistö, Hanna-Mari & Mäkinen, Katja (Ed.), Shaping Citizenship: a Political Concept in Theory, Debate and Practice. Routledge. ISSN 9781138735989. doi: 10.4324/9781315186214-14.
• Wagner, Ines & Berntsen, Lisa (2016). Restricted Rights: Obstacles in Enforcing Labour Rights of EU Mobile Workers in the German and Dutch Construction Sectors. Transfer - European Review of Labour and Research. ISSN 1024-2589. 22(2). doi: 10.1177/1024258916636025. Show summary

  There is considerable evidence that employers are violating the labour rights of mobile EU workers. However there is disagreement as to whether the lack of enforcement of these rights is caused by poor EU-level or weak national-level potential to oversee and sanction infringing companies and to enforce the rules. This poses the following three questions. Which enforcement gaps exist in relation to EU labour mobility? Which circumstances lead to these particular enforcement gaps? And what is being done to close those gaps? To answer these questions we examine the behaviour of institutions key to these processes, interviewing the respective labour enforcement agencies and trade unions in the German and Dutch construction sector as well as mobile EU workers themselves. We discuss three distinct difficulties encountered in enforcing labour standards: 1) disparities between enforcement institutions in different EU Member States; 2) enforcement challenges faced within the national context; and 3) representation gaps between host country collective representation channels and mobile EU workers.

• Wagner, Ines & Refslund, Bjarke (2016). Understanding the diverging trajectories of slaughterhouse work in Denmark and Germany: A power resource approach. European journal of industrial relations. ISSN 0959-6801. 22(4), p. 335–351. doi: 10.1177/0959680116682109. Show summary

  Germany and Denmark are among the world's largest exporters of meat products. Two decades ago their labour markets were similar, but since then they have diverged significantly. The industry in Denmark has maintained high wages and good working conditions, while in Germany there has been a rapid growth in precarious employment, with widespread use of subcontracted and posted migrant workers. We argue that the key explanation for this radical difference is the power position of the trade unions, which also affects how employers position themselves. We show how trade union power embedded in the local and sectoral industrial relations systems influences the wages and working conditions in German and Danish slaughterhouses.

• Caro, Erka; Berntsen, Lisa; Lillie, Nathan & Wagner, Ines (2015). Posted Migration and Segregation in the European Construction Sector. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. ISSN 1369-183X. 40(10), p. 1600–1620. doi: 10.1080/1369183X.2015.1015406. Show summary

  Worker ‘posting’ or temporary migration of manual workers sent by their employers to work on projects abroad has become increasingly prominent in the European construction industry. It is now normal to find groups of workers from all around Europe on construction sites, living in nearby temporary accommodations, moving on to other projects or back home when the project is complete. This article highlights the interaction between the social and spatial segregation and transnational mobility of these workers in the European Union construction labour market. We argue that the work-focused and employer-dominated nature of the posted workers' social world abroad contributes to their segregation from host societies and reinforces a nationally based labour market segmentation of the European construction labour market. This is because posted workers do not have the same opportunity or interest to build political, social and economic resources in host societies and workplaces as more permanent migrants.

• Wagner, Ines (2015). EU Posted Work and Transnational Action in the German Meat Industry. Transfer - European Review of Labour and Research. ISSN 1024-2589. 21(2), p. 201–213. doi: 10.1177/1024258915573187. Show summary

  This article traces the course of a transnational action in the German meat industry involving an alliance of transnational posted workers, a local civil society organization and the trade union NGG (Gewerkschaft Nahrung-Genuss-Gaststätten). As labour’s channels of influence have broken down and posting of low-wage workers has intensified, trade unionists have responded by building coalitions with societal actors. The case illustrates a complementary approach to studying how resistance unfolds in transnational workplaces under conditions in which traditional avenues for protest are blocked or marginalized.

• Wagner, Ines (2015). The Political Economy of Borders in a 'Borderless' European Labour Market. Journal of Common Market Studies. ISSN 0021-9886. 53(6), p. 1370–1385. doi: 10.1111/jcms.12256. Show summary

  The reconfiguration of political space lies at the heart of the European project and is the subject of manifold studies on the new shape of the European Union, but relatively little attention has been paid to the ways in which borders are de‐ and reconstructed in a pan‐European labour market. In a pan‐European labour market, state borders shift. Postings made via subcontractors and agencies providing temporary workers also rearrange the borders of the firm. However, we know very little about how these bordering practices interact within the pan‐European labour market. This study argues that while borders have become porous, their porousness is one‐directional, in the sense that it is in favour of capital but impacts negatively on labour rights. In developing a framework for understanding the relationship between changes in sovereign borders and changes in employment relations in the EU, this article integrates insights from international relations, political economy and border research.

• Wagner, Ines (2015). Rule Enactment in a Pan‐European Labour Market: Transnational Posted Work in the German Construction Sector. British Journal of Industrial Relations. ISSN 0007-1080. 53(4), p. 692–710. doi: 10.1111/bjir.12053. Show summary

  This article analyses the micro‐level rule enactment of the posting of workers framework in the German construction sector. I examine how actors draw on different power resources in order to influence policies without formal negotiation within transnational workspaces and thereby initiate institutional change. Drawing on interviews with posted workers, managers, unionists, works councillors and labour inspectors I show how transnational subcontracting allows the emergence of different regulatory spaces at national and workplace level. The article concludes that the informal renegotiation of employment relations in transnational workspaces is likely to destabilize the posting framework negotiated at policy level.

• Wagner, Ines & Lillie, Nathan (2014). European Integration and the Disembedding of Labour Market Regulation: Transnational Labour Relations at the European Central Bank Construction Site. Journal of Common Market Studies. ISSN 0021-9886. 52(2), p. 403–419. doi: 10.1111/jcms.12096. Show summary

  European integration through mutual recognition has facilitated the growth of a pan‐European labour supply system in which transnational subcontractors ‘post’ workers from low‐wage areas to higher wage areas. This allows employers to create spaces of exception in which the national industrial relations system of the country where work occurs does not fully apply. Drawing on interviews with managers, workers, unionists and works councillors at the European Central Bank construction site in Frankfurt, Germany, this article shows how transnational subcontracting allows employers to access, and create competition between, sovereign regulatory regimes. It concludes that high‐cost, high‐collective good national systems such as the German one, which depend on territorial boundedness for their integrity, are likely to be destabilized by this aspect of European integration.

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• Wagner, Ines (2018). Workers Without Borders: Posted Work and Precarity in the EU. Cornell University Press (CUP). ISBN 9781501729157. 168 p. Show summary

  How the European Union handles posted workers is a growing issue for a region with borders that really are just lines on a map. A 2008 story, dissected in Ines Wagner’s Workers without Borders, about the troubling working conditions of migrant meat and construction workers, exposed a distressing dichotomy: how could a country with such strong employers’ associations and trade unions allow for the establishment and maintenance of such a precarious labor market segment? Wagner introduces an overlooked piece of the puzzle: re-regulatory politics at the workplace level. She interrogates the position of the posted worker in contemporary European labour markets and the implications of and regulations for this position in industrial relations, social policy and justice in Europe. Workers without Borders concentrates on how local actors implement European rules and opportunities to analyze the balance of power induced by the EU around policy issues. Wagner examines the particularities of posted worker dynamics at the workplace level, in German meatpacking facilities and on construction sites, to reveal the problems and promises of European Union governance as regulating social justice. Using a bottom-up approach through in-depth interviews with posted migrant workers and administrators involved in the posting process, Workers without Borders shows that strong labor-market regulation via independent collective bargaining institutions at the workplace level is crucial to effective labor rights in marginal workplaces. Wagner identifies structures of access and denial to labor rights for temporary intra-EU migrant workers and the problems contained within this system for the EU more broadly.

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• Wagner, Ines (2021). SHipping Off Labour and the Covid 19 pndemic .
• Wagner, Ines (2021). Shipping Off Labour: EU Shipbuilding as Globalized Workplaces.
• Wagner, Ines (2021). Retrenchment, Disruption and Re-organisation: double mobility in the EU Shipbuilding industry.
• Wagner, Ines (2021). : Retrenchment, Disruption and Re-organisation: The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on an Internationalised Sector.
• Wagner, Ines (2021). : Retrenchment, Disruption and Re-organisation: The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on an Internationalised Sector.
• Wagner, Ines (2021). (Un)making European labour markets: the case of shipbuilding.
• Wagner, Ines; Fjell, Live Kjos; Frisell, Marte Marie & Østbakken, Kjersti Misje (2020). Likelønn og det kjønnsdelte arbeidsmarkedet: Individuelle preferanser eller strukturelle begrensninger? Institutt for samfunnsforskning. ISSN 978-82-7763-668-9. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Det norske arbeidsmarkedet er varig kjønnsdelt. Kjønnssegregering er en viktig forklaring på kjønnsforskjellene i lønn og er nær knyttet til arbeidstid, arbeidsforhold og karriereutvikling. I den offentlige debatten er lønnsgapet mellom kvinner og menn særlig blitt problematisert som et spørsmål om kjønnssegregering i arbeidsmarkedet og som et spørsmål om individuelle valg og individuell adferd. Samtidig er lønnsnivået systematisk lavere i forhandlingsområder der andelen kvinner er høyest. Denne rapporten ser på de underliggende årsakene som kan hjelpe oss til å forstå lønnsgapet mellom kvinner og menn i det kjønnsdelte arbeidsmarkedet i Norge. Rapporten legger særlig vekt på å undersøke om det er individuelle valg eller strukturelle faktorer ved arbeidsmarkedet som kan forklare lønnsforskjellene mellom kvinnedominerte og mannsdominerte yrker. Selv om dette er viktig å understreke, tar det oppmerksomhet bort fra andre grupper. For eksempel har den kvinnedominerte offentlige sektoren kontinuerlig lavere lønninger enn sammenlignbare sektorer som er mannsdominert. Hvordan likelønnsproblemet forstås og presenteres, har viktige implikasjoner for de politiske løsningene som blir iverksatt. Dokumentanalysen vil derfor konsentrere seg om hvordan lik lønn forstås i den norske debatten, og særlig om hvordan det forstås av Landsorganisasjonen (LO). Spesielt settes det søkelys på hvordan likelønn blir diskutert i tilknytning til lavlønnssektoren og offentlig sektor.

• Pedersen, Axel West; Grødem, Anne Skevik & Wagner, Ines (2019). Trygdepolitikk og trygdemottak i åtte nordeuropeiske land. Institutt for samfunnsforskning. ISSN 978-82-7763-640-5. Show summary

  Rapporten sammenligner utviklingen i inntektssikringssystemene for befolkningen i yrkesaktiv alder og deres bruk i åtte nordeuropeiske land. I tillegg til de fem nordiske landene omfatter sammenligningen Nederland, Storbritannia og Tyskland. Kapittel 2 gjør rede for hovedtrekk i den kronologiske utviklingen i trygdepolitikken i hvert av de åtte landene over de siste to til tre tiårene. Kapittel 3 sammenfatter forskjeller og likheter mellom landenes trygdesystemer med hensyn til sjenerøsitet, tilgjengelighet og andre generelle systemtrekk. Kapittel 4 tar spesielt for seg dreiningen mot aktivering i sosialpolitikken som alle de åtte landene i varierende grad og på ulike måter har forsøkt å iverksette siden midten av 1990-årene. Kapittel 5 tar opp det mer analytiske spørsmålet hvorvidt den observerte variasjonen mellom land og over tid i trygdesystemene og trygdepolitikken har påvirket andelen trygdemottakere og avhengigheten av henholdsvis trygdeinntekt og arbeidsinntekt blant befolkningen i yrkesaktiv alder. Rapportens funn sammenfattes og diskuteres i kapittel 6.

• Pedersen, Axel West; Grødem, Anne Skevik; Rasmussen, Magnus Bergli & Wagner, Ines (2019). Inntektssikring for befolkningen i yrkesaktiv alder – en sammenligning av syv nordeuropeiske land. Institutt for samfunnsforskning.
• Wagner, Ines (2018). Certified Equality: The Icelandic Equal Pay Standard. Institutt for samfunnsforskning. ISSN 978-82-7763-606-1. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In 2018, Iceland introduced a statutory certification process for companies and institutions with over 25 employees, which, through this process, must prove that they pay men and women the same for the same job. This mechanism moves the burden of proof from employee to employer and forces companies to develop a more transparent system for the way they value different jobs. The purpose of the certification process is to close the relatively small but sustained wage gap between the genders. Based on qualitative in-depth interviews with key government informants, social partners and HR leaders in Iceland, this report takes an initial look at how the Icelandic Equal Pay Standard was established and how it works in practice. The findings show that the Icelandic Equal Pay Standard moves focus from individual explanations of why women earn less than men, to establishing a supportive institutional environment for equal pay between the genders at the corporate level. «Supportive» means public support, but also a transparent environment in which cases of inequality cannot remain unknown or hidden.

• Wagner, Ines & Grødem, Anne Skevik (2018). Sertifisert likestilling: Likelønnsstandarden på Island. Institutt for samfunnsforskning. ISSN 978-82-7763-604-7. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  I 2018 introduserte Island en lovpålagt sertifiseringsprosess for bedrifter og institusjoner med over 25 ansatte, som gjennom denne må bevise at de lønner menn og kvinner likt for samme jobb. Denne innovative mekanismen forflytter bevisbyrden fra ansatt til arbeidsgiver og tvinger bedrifter til å utvikle et mer gjennomsiktig system for måten de verdsetter ulike jobber på. Hensikten med sertifiseringsprosessen er å tette det relativt lille, men vedvarende lønnsgapet mellom kjønnene. Med utgangspunkt i kvalitative dybdeintervjuer med statlige nøkkelinformanter, arbeidslivsparter og HR-ledere på Island tar denne rapporten en første kikk på hvordan likelønnsstandarden ble etablert, og hvordan den fungerer i praksis. Funn viser at den islandske likelønnsstandarden flytter fokus fra individuelle forklaringer på hvorfor kvinner tjener mindre enn menn, til heller å etablere et støttende institusjonelt miljø for likelønn mellom kjønn på bedriftsnivå. «Støttende» betyr her generell offentlig støtte, men også et gjennomsiktig miljø hvor tilfeller av ulikhet vanskelig kan forbli ukjent eller skjult.

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