Denmark, Germany, and Britain have marketized their employment services in different ways. This chapter introduces the tasks involved in moving jobless people into, or closer to, paid work (assessment, advice, training, job placement, and the organization of make-work schemes). In Denmark New Public Management and municipalization trends have combined to produce dramatic fluctuations in the volume of work and the rules of the market; marketization has proceeded in three waves since 2005. In Germany, there are diverse market segments reflecting the persistence of three different transaction modes in the wake of the Hartz reforms; marketization was implemented in 2002–5. In Britain, a series of privatization experiments led to the creation of a highly concentrated, centralized, and uncompetitive market, with several multinational firms managing the bulk of the market as Work Programme prime contractors; this market structure was created in 2008–11.
Opening the black box: Actors and interactions shaping European sectoral social dialogue
