In the Netherlands, wage-setting is mainly taken place via collective bargaining. In the collective wage agreement, wage levels relate to qualifications levels. The second hypothesis is difficult to test for the Dutch construction, health and printing sectors, giving the fact that the collective agreement is generally extended to all enterprises and is covering all employees. It might become relevant in comparison to the evidence in other countries in our research project.
For the Dutch construction sector the question is whether perhaps women and ethnic minorities more often are self-employed, and therefore work under economic contracts instead of under employment conditions. Research points out that economic contracts are cheaper since self- employed under-invest in several insurance contributions. It might also be that some subcontractors companies do not respect the collective agreement. The collective agreement then appears to work as a threshold for job-seekers willing to enter the industry.
For the IT sector, where work is evaluated in terms of performance, the wage structure might have a negative impact on the position of women. They have little appreciation for the culture of
evaluation and constantly showing ones ability to ‘score’ on the performance criteria that are being set by the company.
Hypothesis 3a on recruitment and networks
Regarding the hypothesis on formal and informal forms of recruitment, we conclude that also in this issue there is no clear divide between the one and the other. The construction industry is on the one extreme with informal hiring, followed by printing and IT, whereas health is at the other end with above all formal recruitment. However, the over represented and underrepresented groups in the occupations under study may use several ways to findings jobs (like appeared to be the case in construction), in most cases there is a combination of both informal contacting and formal contracting. For example, the organisation of training -via apprenticeships or internships helps pupils to build a personal network and to find a job (e.g. in construction or IT). But also within the school-to-work trajectories, student dropout and exclusion occurs. In a later stage of the life-course, people may again apply for a job and get one by way of both informal and formal recruitment.
In printing, although all interviewees say that they just want the best, subjective criteria, such as ‘fitting in the team’ play an important role. It seems that this is more the case in smaller firms than in larger firms. On the other hand in the few cases that women or ethnic minorities are in a position of making decisions about recruitment, these same social networks and subjective criteria tend to be in favour of women and ethnic minorities. But formalised forms of recruitment can also be disadvantageous for women and ethnic minorities. For example the profile in the ad text affects the people applying for the job. If a firm is only interested in older, more experienced printers, it reduces the chances for ethnic minority printers, because (on average) these workers are younger. Or if a company mentions in its ad that they do not want people with a ‘nine to five’ mentality (possibly meaning a lot of overtime or irregular hours), this can have an impact on the number of women applying for the job.
In construction, informal recruitment is taking place, this gives advantages to the indigenous workforce, which is commuting from the villages in the countryside to the large-scale construction projects in the cities. When women or ethnic minorities work in the companies, they are doing so because of knowing other persons. This form of recruitment appears to prevail, whereas in enterprises employees have long-term tenure relationships. Firms make use of external flexibility by contracting sub-contractors, self-employed and making use of collegial hiring. For ethnic minorities, the informal recruitment is a handicap to integrate, especially when they have no relatives in the
companies and do not participate in the informal networks. An exception is the vocational training school: a successful career in the school provides graduates a network into the labour market. Informal recruitment often occurs in IT, but in periods of extreme labour market scarcity, also people who come from outside the enterprise networks are being hired. It is for this reason that many enterprises have stated that they have hired people not only from other European countries, but also from America, Asia or Australia. In the current period of rising unemployment, almost no recruitment takes place, and when jobs are available, there is competition between job-seekers on the basis of their qualifications and work-experience.
In health-care there is no division between formal and informal recruitment. All hospitals use formal recruitment methods. It is however not clear whether or not this increases for women and ethnic minorities the opportunities to gain access to the sector. Firstly, although women are over- represented it is difficult to establish a causal relation between recruitment methods and their performance in this sector. Secondly, in terms of representation of ethnic minorities, these formal recruitment methods do not coincide with a proportionate representation of these workers.
Hypothesis 3b. On temporary and flexible contracts
This hypothesis is not relevant for the Dutch cases presented in this study, because none of the companies hired employees on temporary contracts. People will get permanent agreements, after a -varying- probationary period of one week to one year. The hypothesis might be relevant in making cross-national comparisons.
An exception to the rule is the discussion on self-employment. Self-employment occurs in construction and IT, not in health and printing. For IT we have however no substantial information about the effects on self-employment on ethnic minorities and women. In construction, there is some evidence since the self-employed work under different conditions than employees. The economic contracts of self-employed per project can relatively easily be adjusted to market forces, this is in contrast to employment contracts that are determined between the employers’ associations and the trade unions and are prevalent for a longer period of time. There is some evidence that in the construction industry, ethnic minorities relatively often work as self-employed, but this is mostly the case in lower qualified work. This needs further study.
Hypothesis 3c. on extended formal employment protection
We have found no evidence to support this part of the hypothesis. Firstly, in printing and health this is not relevant, because employers in these sectors are more concerned about preserving their qualified workers. Therefore it is in the interest of the company to offer solid permanent contracts. Secondly, for IT this might be relevant, but we have no indication to which extent this specifically affects women and ethnic minorities. Thirdly, in construction enterprises apply different ways of internal flexibility: they make use of subcontractors, self-employed, temp agencies, so in work processes the inner circle of own staff employees is relatively small. Moreover, the construction wage agreement contains a stipulation on terminating the contract when no work is available.