Improving Workplace Quality: New Perspectives and Challenges for Worker Well-Being

EDITORIAL
The volume presents a selection of contributions mostly from the fourteenth annual conference in commemoration of Prof Marco Biagi on Wellbeing at and through Work held in Modena (Italy) on 17-18 March 2016. The papers cover a number of countries and a wide range of issues in relation to quality of work and employee well-being including discrimination, harassment, disability, and work-life balance addressing them in an interdisciplinary perspective. Moreover, a number of regulatory approaches ranging from legislative interventions to voluntary measures are analysed in an attempt to cast light on the problem of well-being at work.
Certain legal problems of discrimination are highlighted by Wendy Greene with respect to the USA. In particular, her legal analysis is concentrated on the questionable interpretation by the courts of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act aiming to protect employees from any form of discrimination on the basis of race, colour, sex and religion. The focus of the paper is on “misperception discrimination” by which employees suffer discrimination based on false assumptions about their ethnic or national origin. The author draws attention to the evident discrepancies and sometimes paradoxes deriving from the courts’ interpretation which may be potentially harmful for employees.
In a similar vein Elena Gerasimova considers the role of the national courts in shaping anti-discriminatory policies and business culture in Russia. She focuses her analysis on the impact of a landmark court ruling, Konstantin Markin vs Russia, which demonstrates highly controversial aspects and attitudes to this problem as well as the general weakness of international law in the face of national sovereignty and the primacy of national legislation.
Also in relation to Russia, Nikita Lyutov investigates the problems of discrimination legislation with particular reference to age and disability discrimination, and its compliance with the international labour standards. While highlighting a significant gap in the legislation and case law and the reasons for this lack of provisions, the author outlines some constructive ways to harmonise domestic law with international standards.
A further dimension of well-being concerning harassment at work is addressed by another Russian scholar, Elena Sychenko, who provides a comparative analysis of the regulatory approaches to this problem in France and Italy. By highlighting the lack of attention to this matter in Russia, the author argues that this problem is not sufficiently taken into consideration even in the European countries with a sounder anti-discrimination legislative framework.
Another crucial aspect of worker well-being linked to the conciliation of work and family life is at the centre of Trina Jones’s analysis exploring the effects of work-life balance policies on low-wage workers in the US. The author argues that for a number of reasons these workers have limited access to such benefits compared to their higher-wage counterparts. In this regard the author provides some interesting insights into a complex question concerning advantages and disadvantages of these policies, advocating the extension of these benefits to low-wage workers.
Maddalena Cannito reflects on the use of parental leave as a means to improve employee well-being and the prospects for its more effective implementation in Italy. The author argues that legislative measures alone are likely to be insufficient and should be supported by a range of measures aimed to encourage fathers to take parental leave. Even though the research is limited to the Piedmont region, it provides useful insights into the general situation at national level in relation to parental leave, in particular paternity