work

The Lithuanian Free Market Institute (LFMI) warns that, after the recent tax reform, Lithuanian businesses are facing another major regulatory challenge — the implementation of the EU Pay Transparency Directive.

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz famously described culture as a web of narratives. The way societies understand the labor market is one such narrative — and it matters, because the story we choose shapes how we regulate and manage economic life.

According to the explanatory note of the draft law, strike activity in Lithuania remains consistently low, while in countries such as France, Italy, and Belgium, strikes are a common and effective tool for defending workers’ interests. But do collective labor conflicts actually improve workers’ well-being in the long run?

Platform workers in the Czech Republic are not, by and large, a captive workforce in need of rescue. They are people who have made a rational choice to work flexibly, on their own schedule, for income that suits their circumstances. Good regulation should make that choice safer and more transparent. It should not make it impossible.

The idea of a 4-day working week has already captured minds in many places around Europe. Like UBI, it is a devilishly sweet temptation that is almost impossible to resist.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said at Davos that Slovakia could become a country that will experiment with a four-day working week. It is a flattering topic and so several media immediately picked up on it.

The Lithuanian Free Market Institute, together with its partners Free Trade Europa and law firm TGS Baltic, is holding a roundtable discussion to discuss new forms of work that have been created via digitalization and the changing nature of employment that is being sought by platforms and individuals alike. 

Social policy can be seen from a fragmented perspective with a purpose to justify growing costs of welfare and ideological battles against the free market economy. Such policies try to advocate limits of the market economy or even undermine its role, for the sake of making ‘progress’ in changing the economic system.

The term \"wage\" and its size are very important in national discussions about labor markets, taxes and insurance payments, but also part of international comparisons for investors deciding to build a factory or to place investments in a specific country. A lot of confusion has been created by the introduction of gross wage with arbitrary distinction between \"employee paid\" and \"employer paid\" taxes and contributions.

A second initiative to collect signatures to support a petition calling for an unconditional, universal basic income (UBI) for all citizens in the European Union (EU) has ended. The required one million signatures were never reached. Why?