Brexit has commanded an enormous amount of attention in the UK media, both before and since the In-Out referendum on June 23 2016. Though various studies have already considered the overall role of newspapers in affecting attitudes towards the EU in the UK, this paper will focus on an area in which there has so far been no research: the role of ‘Letters to the Editor’ in newspaper contributions to the Brexit debate and their parts in equipping voters to make an informed choice. It looks at six UK national newspapers, all with varied stances on the EU and with different tones and styles of getting messages across to readers. All letters published in each paper during the month leading up to the referendum will be scrutinised with a view to throwing some light on the following initial questions. To what extent did readers’ letters tend to support and reinforce each newspaper’s stance on ‘Leave’ or ‘Remain’? To what extent did readers’ letters contribute to a real debate in each newspaper, i.e. disputing the content of articles or editorials published by the newspapers or disputing other readers’ letters? How, if at all, did the role of readers’ letters vary between the six newspapers? Finally, were there any differences of note in the style and format of the different newspapers’ letters pages?

The institutional influence, specifically trade unions, on the job insecurity of workers in Foreign-owned Enterprises (FoEs) has been generally overlooked. This study uses national representative private sector data to examine firm’s layoff incident and the number of staff made redundant in response to the recent 2008-2012 recession in the UK. Our probit regression and the Negative-Binomial regression show that overall FoEs appear to be more likely to undertake redundancy and to lay off more workers than Domestically-owned Enterprises. However, the strength of trade unionism, measured by union membership density, has a moderating effect in the incident of redundancies controlling for the adverse impact of the recession on companies studied and a wide range of industrial and firm characteristics. Furthermore, FoEs’ headquarter location seems to have no effect on the propensity of layoff or quantity of layoff in the UK.

Purpose – Despite the fact that hotels rely heavily upon frontline employees, extant evidence on what makes a hotel attractive in the eyes of job applicants is scarce. Thus, this study incorporates the Big Five (BF) personality traits model to identify what potential hotel job applicants are likely to seek in their prospective employers. Design/methodology/approach – Applicants for non-managerial, frontline posts at upscale hotels were approached via 3 branches of a career agency located in England, UK; their responses were gathered via a self-administered questionnaire. The 522 usable responses were utilized in a covariance-based, multi-group structural equation modeling scheme to investigate three main research propositions with regards to the applicants’ personality traits’ influence on their perceptions of a hotel’s attractiveness as a potential employer. Findings - Analysis of responses indicates significant differences regarding the impact of extraversion, conscientiousness and openness on perceived facets of employer attractiveness. Additionally, findings suggest that high self-esteem does make applicants more demanding while work experience also influences their preferences regarding the hotels’ profiles as an employer. Research limitations/implications - The results of this study are limited to applicants for non-managerial, frontline job positions in upscale hotels in the UK. Practical implications - Practically, this study offers practitioners valuable feedback regarding the potential applicant’s personality profile that grants the best fit with a hotel. Originality/value–While different studies tried to identify the organizations’ attributes that attract potential applicants, evidence on what attracts individuals to a hotel is very limited. Hence, the present study tries to address this gap and link potential applicants’ personality profiles with that of hotels as employers.