Rethinking Workplace Regulation: Beyond the Standard Contract of Employment

9. Regional and Local Experiments for Labor Market Policy in Europe

155 Chapter 9 Regional and Local Experiments for Labor Market Policy in Europe ida regalia I n assessing the potential for regional and local-level interventions in labor-market policy intended to bolster job security for workers hired on flexible contracts in Europe, this chapter does not take a normative approach. Its aim is not to propose changes or reforms through legislation or collective agreements among social partners, nor to discuss those that already exist. It is also not descriptive: it does not seek to furnish a complete and up-to-date description of how matters stand. The intention —more modest—is to use results of empirical research from European countries conducted in the past fifteen years on programs intended to give greater security to flexible forms of employment, thereby identifying and discussing the different logics available to address the topic. These programs are essentially experimental and, also for this reason, are developed at the subnational level where conditions may be favorable to fostering innovative practices. Finally, that this argument is developed in Europe (indeed, in “old Europe”) is not a mere geographic detail; it identifies a context in which, for both political and economic reasons, political and economic actors have been increasingly concerned about averting the disruptive consequences of substantially market-based regulation. a First premise: nonstandard Forms of employment and the need for new Standards For some time, especially in periods of sustained employment crisis such as the present, there has been an erosion of the standard contract of employment (understood as open-ended and dependent full-time work) 156 Rethinking Workplace Regulation and the development of nonstandard forms of employment, albeit to differing extents among various countries. In a recent study, one of the leading scholars of European labor markets, Günther Schmid, has summarized the trends observed over the last ten years in Europe (2010): Although differently distributed, open-ended part-time contracts are everywhere on the increase except in the new EU-accession countries. Among women and low-wage jobs, they generate numerous risks in terms of social security on conclusion of the work career—all the more so because transitions to full-time contracts are generally infrequent. Trends in the use of fixed-term and temporary contracts are diversified, but in many instances they are rising. The high concentration of these contracts among young adults raises serious concerns as to how they will be able to plan their lives. Also, the diffusion of the self-employed, understood here as ownaccount workers without additional employees, exhibits diversified trends. Many of these workers must cope with fluctuating incomes and a lack of health care or pension. By combining the different forms of nonstandard employment, and controlling for overlaps, one can calculate an aggregate nonstandard employment rate that ranges from the modest levels of the accession countries to the 43 percent of the Netherlands. On using this aggregate indicator, one finds that in the past decade nonstandard employment has grown in almost all the EU member states, and especially in the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy, but has sometimes decreased in the new accession countries. Disaggregating by gender, both levels and dynamics show that the phenomenon mainly concerns female employment. But it is perhaps surprising that the aggregate indicator of nonstandard employment for women records the highest values both in the so-called social democratic systems (Sweden, Denmark, Holland) and the liberal ones (United Kingdom and Ireland), but average values in both the continental conservative systems (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany) and the Mediterranean ones (Italy, Spain), and low ones in the new member-states. That nonstandard employment registers high values in both the social democratic and liberal systems indicates that it is associated with different models of labor-market regulation, to which correspond different employment and income security arrangements. And although nonstandard forms of employment are not necessarily all precarious, even in countries with high-security standards, they entail higher risks of exclusion that standard jobs do. Regional and Local Experiments for Labor Market Policy 157 In terms of socioeconomic performance, nonstandard employment is positively correlated with both labor-market participation and percapita gross domestic product—and hence, in aggregate terms, with both employment growth and economic well-being. On the other hand, it is strongly concentrated among the most vulnerable segments of the labor market: women, young people, and low-skilled workers. Finally, the data seem to indicate that the increase in nonstandard employment does...