LoWER is an international network for research on the workings of the low-wage labour market as a potential mechanism contributing to social exclusion. Its aspiration is to go beyond the boundaries of the labour market in the narrow sense of the word and also account for the role of (product) demand.
LoWER brings together a considerable number of university researchers from various EU-countries, each of whom has been working on low pay, minimum wages, wage structures and wage inequality for a long time. The basic overall aim of LoWER is to generate better socio-economic knowledge on low-wage employment as a mechanism of social exclusion with the aim of providing better insights into how one might fight the problem. This is done in the context of European integration and focused on the joint problems of low-paid employment on the one hand and unemployment among the low-skilled on the other, which together explain the contribution of low-wage labour markets to the problem of social exclusion.
The activities and the membership have developed in three phases. Members (some 40), publications (books, reports and working papers) and related projects can be found at the dedicated web pages.
PHASE 1 January 1996 – December 1998
Data, Analysis and Policies
The network started in 1996 as a project financed by the Targeted Socio-Economic Research (TSER) Programme of the European Union’s Fourth Framework Programme with the broad aim of making an inventory of data, analysis and problems. More information on this phase, including a detailed report on the accomplishments, is given here. Some EU publicity is found here.
PHASE 2 April 2000 – May 2004:
Can improving low-skilled consumer-services jobs help European employment growth
The overarching question asked during in these years (again financed by the Commission, now from the SocioEconomic Key Action of the Fifth Framework Programme) was
whether the improvement of low-skilled services to consumers could help European job growth. The research ventured in four different directions:
- the role of demand: the role of consumption and its potential response to improved quality of services,
- the role of labour supply: preferences regarding the professionalisation of the work in services in relation to other activities, e.g. in the household or as a student,
- the role of education and training: best practices to improve the quality of the work and the workers, and, last not least,
- the role of enterprise: will they improve the quality of the product and, therefore, the organisation of production?
The Work Plan can be downloaded: here.
The concluding report is found here.
PHASE 3 July 2004 – June 2007
The Insecure Perspectives of the Low Skilled in the Knowledge Society
The network is currently in its third phase with broader membership and activities. It is again financially supported by the European Union, via the Citizens and Governance Theme of the Sixth Framework Programme
In the low-skilled and low-paid labour market the structures of time (part-time jobs), skills (overeducation and lacking training) and households (worklessness, inheritance of inequality) are evolving rapidly, with strong interactions, to the disadvantage of low-skilled persons and social cohesion. The overall objective of the network is to stimulate the study of these trends by bringing together (through workshops, open-call conferences, expert groups, exchange of personnel) scholars who have built a tradition of research co-operation in the relevant fields that stretches well beyond the network itself.
The work is organised in four packages addressing
- individual mobility & employer behaviour (abbreviated as Mobility),
- household behaviour & intergenerational transmission (abbreviated as Households),
- gender & skills (abbreviated as Gender) and
- skills & training (abbreviated as Low Skills),
The LoWER3 Work Plan presenting the activities in more detail can be downloaded:
- For more information please contact:
Dr. Wiemer Salverda
Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies
Plantage Muidergracht 12
1018 TV Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Tel: +31 20 525 4199 Fax: +31 20 525 4301