Transcript Folie 1

Partido Socialista, Novas Fronteiras and Policy Network seminar
in association with the Portuguese EU Presidency
Lisbon, 22 June 2007
Contribution to
The New Social Reality Session I:
How to increase one‘s opportunity in employment
and in the work place
by
Prof. Dr. Ute Klammer
University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
[email protected], [email protected],
• Question:
„How to strike a correct balance between
flexibility and security in the labour
market? What are the different dimensions
that should be taken into account in the
debate?“
1. Key ideas and notions of flexicurity in
different member states
• Main idea of „flexicurity“:
“Reconciliation between flexibility and security“,
• consensus: different types of flexibility have to be addressed
(e.g. external/internal, numeric/functional)
• … and also different types of security
(e.g. rights/claims, empowerment strategies/cash benefits, in
different fields)
• … however: (still) no common understanding/definition of flexicurity,
different national concepts (e.g. Denmark, Netherlands, Germany..)
2. The flexicurity-debate on the EU-level - I
• Commission increasingly focusing on “the right balance between flexibility
and security“, e.g. Employment Guidelines 2003, in particular integrated
guideline 21
• Flexicurity was a topic of the Joint Employment Report of 2005/2006 and
of the report “Employment in Europe 2006“
• Green Paper “Modernising labour law to meet the challenges of the 21th
century“
• Flexicurity was a topic for the the German presidency and will be a topic
for the next two presidencies, communication on flexicurity, development
of common guidelines
• Installation of a high level working group on Flexicurity
• Flexicurity has also been taken up by the Council of Europe
(focus: flexibility and social cohesion), by the ILO and others
2. The flexicurity-debate on the EU-level - II
What are essential ingredients in achieving a good
balance between flexibility and security?
Different reports – different foci/suggestions!
EU - Joint Employment Report 2006:
“Four ingredients“:
– The availability of suitable contractual arrangements
– Active labour market policies
– Credible lifelong learning systems
– Modern social security systems
Possible combinations of flexibility and security
Security
Flexibility
Job Security
Employment Security
Income Security
Combination Security
External
Numerical
Flexibility
- Types of employment
contracts;
-Employment protection
legislation;
-- Early retirement
-Employment
services/ALMP
-- Training / lifelong learning
-Unemployment
compensation;
-- Other social benefits;
-- Minimum wages
- Protection against
dismissal during
various leave
schemes
Internal
Numerical
Flexibility
- Shortened work weeks /
part-time arrangements
-Employment protection
legislation;
-- Training/lifelong learning;
-Part-time
supplementary benefit;
-- Study grants;
-- Sickness benefit
-Different kind of
leave schemes;
-- Part-time pension
Functional
Flexibility
-Job enrichment
-- Training
-- Labour leasing
-- Subcontracting
-- Outsourcing
-Training / life-long learning;
-- Job rotation;
-- Teamwork;
-- Multiskilling
- Performance related
pay systems
- Voluntary working
time arrangements
Labour
Cost/ Wage
Flexibility
-Local adjustments in
labour costs
-- Scaling/reductions in
social security payments
-Changes in social security
payments;
-- Employment subsidies;
-- In-work benefits
-Collective wage
agreements;
- Adjusted benefit for
shortened work week
- Voluntary working
time arrangements
3. Labour market integration over the life-course –
empirical evidence of different welfare state
regimes
Empirical findings:
• Scandinavian welfare states:
work is quite evenly distributed among both sexes and the different age groups
• Conservative/corporatist welfare states:
work and risks are unevenly distributed between
a) both sexes, b) different age groups, c) different qualification groups
• Liberal welfare states:
concentration of paid work on men (similar to the conservative welfare states),
but not on the cohorts in middle age (different to the conservative welfare states)
• Mediterranean welfare states:
similarities between conservative welfare states and Mediterranean welfare
states in their concentration of paid work on prime age men, but difference:
polarisation between women (full-time vs. inactivity)
Labour market integration/ working time options
and social security in different welfare states
Welfare state/
welfare state regime
1
3
2
Availability and take-up
of time options/ arrangements
in different phases of life
or over the life course
Source: Own illustration.
(Impact on)
a) access to social security
sub- systems and level of
income/compensating benefits
b) financing/financial
sustainability of the social
security (sub-) systems
4. Business cycle and life cycle –
complementary or contradictory?
The synchronization of business cycle and life cycle
Business
Production
Worker
Synchronization
Means
&
Synchronization
Markets
Capacity
Business process
Business
Strategy
Synchronization
Work
domains
Flexicurity
diachronization
Other
of life
Life
course
policy
diachronization
Synchronization
(Business) cycle /
phases
(Life) cycle /
Flexicurity
phases
Source: Based on Klammer, Wilthagen et al. (on behalf of the European Foundation), forthcoming.
Important changes in the individual’s different
“life-cycles“
Life-cycle
Dominant changes
Biological life-cycle
-growing life-expectancy
-changing health risks and health chances
Family life-cycle
-changes in marriage and divorce behaviour
-decreasing fertility
-changing family and household forms
Professional life-cycle
-changing values concerning paid work
-“compression” of working life (due to longer education and
earlier retirement)
-new forms of work
-increase of transitions, discontinuous work biographies
-increasing importance of lifelong learning
Life-cycle in the company
-flattening of hierarchies in the company
-changes in the career orientation
-shift towards more responsibility for the employee
(“entreployee”)
-changing age structures, aging of the workforce
Life-cycle in the job
-changes in the working conditions
-changes in the required qualifications
Source: Klammer/Wilthagen et al, forthcoming, inspired by Graf (2001: 26).
Phases of the employee life-cycle in the company
Source: Klammer/Wilthagen et al., forthcoming, illustration inspired by Graf (2001)
Companies’ adjustment to new requirements:
Three different routes towards flexibility in
Human Resource Management
Type
Commercialisation
Negotiated stability
Mutualisation
Exchange relationship
Market
Power
Confidence
Type of contract
Contract of sale
Labour contract
Pact
Steering instrument
Competition
Control
Conviction
Traditional elements
“rim” workforce
Core workforce
Company community
Traditional
requirements
concerning the worker’s
behaviour
Indifference/ restriction
Long-term affiliation
between worker and
company,
complementarity
Affinity
New elements
Externalisation , sham
self-employment
Mobilisation of the
employees, more request
for (internal) flexibility
Teamwork, joint efforts and
achievements
new requirements
concerning the worker’s
behaviour
Economisation of own
abilities, “entreployee”
Flexibility and
availability according to
changing demands
Self-selection and
-organisation, adaptation
Source: Klammer/Wilthagen et al., forthcoming, inspired by Diewald/Brose/Goedicke (2005).
5. Crucial tasks on the way towards a concept
of flexicurity over the life-course –
some own reflections
Crucial tasks:

Support for continuity and upward mobility

Support for (desired) flexibility and discontinuity

Support for transitions

Support for a “decompression“ of working life

Reorganisation of cash benefits along the life-course
(combining the Dutch lifecourse saving scheme with targeted cash
support for defined groups/life phases?)

Strenghtening of basic/minimum security systems

Public labour market and social policy should concentrate on the
vulnerable groups, the „losers“ of flexibilisation!