The February meet-up hosted three presentations:
Vassil Kirov of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences presented a recently published paper, “The digitalization of service work: A comparative study of restructuring of the banking sector in the United Kingdom and Luxembourg”, written jointly with Andreas Kornelakis of King’s College London and Patrick Thill of LISER. The study shows that banks in both countries continue to take differing adjustment paths to digitalisation, in line with their different industrial relations regimes. In UK banks, digitalisation led to job losses whereas in Luxembourg lay-offs were limited while training and re-skilling increased.
Astrid Schoeggl of the Austrian Arbeiterkammer (Chamber of Labour), the organisation that represents the interests of 3 million Austrian employees and consumers, introduced “Digifonds”, a programme supporting various research, development and practical projects in the area of participatory digitalisation (and digitally enabled participation).
Michela Vecchi of Middlesex University Business School presented the results of the research she conducted jointly with Catherine Robinson of Kent Business School on the impact of Covid-19 on the existing skill mismatch in the UK labour market. Overall, graduates in the UK during the pandemic had fewer shifts in occupations than average, possibly because their jobs were more amenable to working from home. Still, a good amount moved from employment or self-employment into unemployment.
The slides from the meeting: 
The virtual café format allows for the exchange of ideas and informal discussion of hypotheses, ideas, developing and ongoing projects with other experts from the fields of globalisation, digitalisation, demographic change, work and employment.
The next Open Virtual Expert Café will take place on 21 June 2022, from 4pm – 5.30 pm CET. To register to present your own work (one slide, 5 minute time-slot), or to just listen in and join the discussion, please click here to register.
