Sep
8
- Working time options over the life course: New work patterns and company strategies – “Profound socio-economic, demographic and cultural changes currently under way in Europe are modifying the way in which people organise their time and income over the life course. The ageing population, globalisation, the transition from a standard working organisation model to more diversified and individualised structures and changes in the gender division of labour – these are all shifting the boundaries between people’s work and personal lives. At the same time, changes in the timing of entry into and exit from the labour market have considerably reduced the time devoted to paid work.”
- Working time developments – 2007 – “This annual update provides an overview of the duration of working time in the European Union and Norway in 2007, based on contributions from the European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO) national centres. The study considers the following issues: average weekly working hours as set by collective agreements – both at national level and for three specific economic sectors; statutory limits on weekly and daily working time; average actual weekly working hours; annual leave entitlement, as set by collective agreements and law; and estimates of average collectively agreed annual working time.”
- Press release, 3 September 2008 – “The average collectively agreed weekly working time in the European Union in 2007 stood at 38.6 hours, according to the annual update of the working time development from Eurofound’s European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO). The report, which looks at working time agreements set by collective bargaining, also found that average paid annual leave entitlement for European workers stood at 25.2 days across the EU in 2007.”
- Industrial & Labor Relations Review – “Abstract: The authors hypothesize that three broad factors affect the degree of workers’ control over the timing and the total hours of their work: the institutional and regulatory environment within the country, labor market conditions, and management and labor union strategies. Drawing from their interviews in 2000 with managers, public sector policy-makers and administrators, and union leaders, as well as from previous literature, they illustrate how these factors actually affected working time and employee control over working time in the United States, Australia, Japan, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Their comparative analysis shows that in some countries, employers and labor unions negotiated contracts that increased employee control over working time and provided employers with greater flexibility; in others, employee control over working time remained unevenly distributed across the occupational spectrum.”
- Twitter helps GOP convention protesters organize, elude police – “… microblogs were written last night by protesters targeting the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. The group was using the Twitter tool to organize its movements and to help protesters elude and fend off police who were using tear gas and percussion grenades to force them to disperse.”
- List of literary movements – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – “This is a list of modern literary movements: that is, movements after the Renaissance. These terms, helpful for curricula or anthologies, evolved over time to group writers who are often loosely related. Some of these movements (such as Dada and Beat) were defined by the members themselves, while other terms (the metaphysical poets, for example) emerged decades or centuries after the periods in question. Ordering is approximate, as there is considerable overlap….”
- Inferno / Dante Alghieri – “The day was now departing; the dark air released the living beings of the earth from work and weariness; and I myself alone prepared to undergo the battle….”
- Divine Comedy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – “The Divine Comedy … written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321, is widely considered the central epic poem of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature…. The poem’s imaginative and allegorical vision of the Christian afterlife is a culmination of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church….”
- The World of Dante – “Dante’s Inferno, widely hailed as one of the great classics of Western literature, details Dante’s journey through the nine circles of Hell. The voyage begins during Easter week in the year 1300, the descent through Hell starting on Good Friday. After meeting his guide, the eminent Roman poet Virgil, in a mythical dark wood, the two poets begin their descent through a baleful world of doleful shades, horrifying tortures, and unending lamentation….”
- Victorian and Victorianism – “For much of this century the term Victorian, which literally describes things and events in the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), conveyed connotations of ‘prudish,’ ‘repressed,’ and ‘old fashioned.’ Although such associations have some basis in fact, they do not adequately indicate the nature of this complex, paradoxical age that was a second English Renaissance. Like Elizabethan England, Victorian England saw great expansion of wealth, power, and culture….”
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. I’m sorry to hear about plumbing problems at your house. I’m pretty sure that it is a quite distraction when you hope to be able to spend times on other interesting...