Who we are

The Collaborative Laboratory for Work, Employment and Social Protection (CoLABOR) is a non-profit association, holding the Collaborative Laboratory seal awarded since its foundation in 2018, and revalidated by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) until 2028. 

It mobilizes resources from academia, businesses, public administration, and social and solidarity economy organizations with a view to deepening knowledge of current and foreseeable problems around three areas of activity:

  • Work, employment and technology

  • Social protection

  • Social and solidarity economy

CoLABOR addresses the complex problems in these areas of activity through an interdisciplinary approach, combining contributions from economics, sociology, public policy, law, data science, and computer science. Its interdisciplinary perspective views labor and social protection systems not as autonomous fields but as deeply interconnected institutional complexes, where characteristics and changes in one area have a strong effect on the other. 

CoLABOR benefits from the pluralistic nature of its members, which includes academia (ISCTE-IUL, University of Coimbra, University of Minho, Institute of Economic, Financial and Tax Law of the University of Lisbon), the private sector (Mota-Engil, Sonae, DST Group and CONFMINHO), the public sector (Lisbon City Council) and the Social and Solidarity Economy sector (Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa and the National Confederation of Solidarity Institutions). The members bring tacit and scientific knowledge to CoLABOR's activities, as well as ensuring that the research agenda is anchored in the needs of the public, social and private sectors.

Based on its fundamental values ​​– which aim to guarantee respect for women and men in the workplace, through attitudes and behaviors that do not compromise the dignity of workers and to provide a work environment that promotes their professional and personal development – ​​in 2023 the CoLABOR Gender Equality Plan was approved, and, unequivocally establishing workplace harassment as a clear violation of decent work, the Code of Good Conduct for the Prevention and Combat of Workplace Harassment was created.

STRATEGIC VISION  

CoLABOR's research agenda stems from three major trends, approached through the lenses of work, employment, and social protection:

  • The digital transition

  • The green transition

  • The demographic transition

CoLABOR structures its work along four lines of action: 

Transformations and Dynamics in Employment

  • CoLABOR has been focusing on changes in the dynamics of work, employment, and labor relations. This line of action focuses, in particular, on the impacts on employment resulting from the digital, green, and demographic transitions, such as job creation/destruction promoted by automation, the decarbonization of industrial products and processes, or the increased weight of employment in health services for the aging population. The profile of economic specialization and positioning in global value chains are other central issues highlighted in the line of action "Changes in employment dynamics".

  • This line of action has the main objectives of (i) identifying changes in employment arrangements, skills and qualifications; (ii) mapping changes in the employment structure and their impacts on job quality and social protection; (iii) adding value to public and private employment policies at the national, local or organizational level; and (iv) exploring digital data that allow us to unravel ongoing changes in work and employment dynamics.

Work organization and industrial relations

  • The digital, green, and demographic transitions impact not only job creation/destruction. Beyond this dimension, impacts are observed in the field of labor relations and work organization that require a deep understanding. Emerging trends such as the platformization of work, digitization, automation, teleworking, decarbonization, and lifelong learning are challenging traditional relationships between employers and workers, unions, employers' associations, and the State. CoLABOR considers these changes to be of central importance in contemporary societies and proposes to develop work in this area to support partners in their strategic decisions and orientations.

  • This line of action has the following main objectives: (i) to make visible the different processes through which the digital, green and demographic transitions impact workers and the organization of work; (ii) to develop responses and guidelines for challenges that workers and organizers face in the dynamics of work and employment; and (iii) to promote the co-creation of convergences between employers, workers and regulatory processes that contribute to guaranteeing fair working conditions and socio-economic progress.

Social Security Transformations 

  • Social protection is at the heart of the Welfare State, its main objective being to combine economic efficiency with social progress in order to ensure the well-being of all citizens. To this end, it is essential to consider the driving forces of change such as the digital, green, and demographic transitions. It is clear that new forms of work and their organization – digitalization, platform companies – are challenging traditional social security schemes, leaving an increasingly significant number of workers unprotected. Concomitantly, the demographic transition is reflected in an aging workforce in various occupations and a labor shortage in some sectors. In this context, the main objective of this line of action is to analyze the transformation of the social security system in the face of the identified transitions, developing forecasts about proposed social policy reforms, particularly in terms of their distributional and sustainability impacts.

  • This line of action has the following main objectives: (i) to evaluate the social security financing model; (ii) to identify trends of change based on the evolution of expenditure and the effects of legislation establishing the right to different benefits; (iii) to evaluate extraordinary social policies related to the pandemic (simplified egalitarian lay-off and AERT) following a cost-benefit approach; (iv) to create and optimize a microsimulation model as a cross-cutting instrument for research in social protection.

Evaluation of social services

  • There is a growing need for social protection to include economic and demographic dynamics in its scope of analysis (e.g., family dynamics resulting from the greater integration of women into the labor market), as well as reforms to the welfare state (e.g., decentralization of powers from the central government to municipalities), which means a need for a response in terms of public policies and social innovation products.

    Long-term healthcare systems are key to addressing the demographic transition, and are under pressure to improve their capacity and quality of response. Similarly, the green economy, the digitalization of work, and demographic transitions face tremendous challenges requiring increased efficiency and sustainability of financing, improved access, and equitable redistribution to generate innovative social responses in the social market, where, together with social institutions, private markets and investment funds have become more relevant.

  • This line of action has the following main objectives: (i) to map emerging social challenges and their consequences for the sustainability and governance model of social services; (ii) to define a sustainable model for the provision and financing of health services that integrates home and institutional services; (iii) to design proposals for governance models of social services in line with the administrative evolution of the territory.

COLABOR TOOLS

Integrated within these lines of action, CoLABOR is developing a set of innovative tools based on digital technologies.

  • It is a digital platform for systematizing, critically analyzing, and visualizing statistical and legal information at the international, national, and local levels in the areas of labor, employment, and social protection. Its development and maintenance are the responsibility of CoLABOR. It has been available online at https://datalabor.pt since November 2020.

  • The Technology Impact Assessment Toolkit (TIAT) is a tool for investigating the impact of new technologies on organizations, specifically on work organization, employment, and labor relations.

    This instrument aims to support the selection and adoption of technologies through impact assessment and participatory processes. As a context-sensitive methodology, TIAT seeks to promote social justice by involving stakeholders in reflective and decision-making processes at the micro (organizational), meso (sectoral), and macro (national) levels.

    Aiming to develop this instrument based on the learning and knowledge resulting from related projects, CoLABOR is expected to complete a prototype in 2023, which will be continuously developed in subsequent years.

  • There is a myriad of aspects to be considered regarding Social Protection, in a context of major changes in technological, demographic, economic, social and environmental terms. Faced with these changes, social protection schemes must guarantee effective protection, combating possible consequences such as increased inequality and poverty.

    Given this complexity and importance, policymakers must be equipped with tools that allow them to understand the impact of ongoing changes and to proactively assess the impact of various policy alternatives.

    CoLABOR is developing dynamic microsimulation models for projecting and evaluating the impact of employment, labor, and social protection policies. Four specific models will be simulated: (i) demographic; (ii) labor market; (iii) social protection; (iv) health.

    The development of dynamic microsimulation models is expected to extend until 2026.

  • The Jobs and Occupations Based Search (JOBS) aims to contribute to the available information associated with job supply and demand through a digital tool capable of collecting and analyzing this data in real-time. This function is fulfilled through continuous searching, analysis, and scraping of job offer and demand advertisements on publicly accessible platforms. The accumulated data collected by this tool will populate a longitudinal database and enable various analyses of employment trends.

    CoLABOR plans to begin developing this tool in 2023, completing a prototype by the end of this year. Further development is expected to extend until 2026.