The Regulation of Employment

2021 ◽  
pp. 605-623
Author(s):  
Patrick Emmenegger ◽  
Paul Marx
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Job Security ◽  
Temporary Employment ◽  
Employment Contracts ◽  
Coordinated Market Economies ◽  
Production Models ◽  
Security Regulations ◽  
The Welfare State

The regulation of job security is an important, but understudied, aspect of the welfare state. This contribution reviews academic debates that aim to explain the development of job security regulations across time and countries. While earlier debates focused on dismissal protection as an issue contested between capital and labour, the varieties-of-capitalism approach has emphasized the complementarity between job security regulations and the production models in coordinated market economies. Recently, political economists have begun to discuss diverging regulatory trajectories for open-ended and temporary employment contracts. This is argued to produce ‘labour market dualism’ and conflicts within the working class between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. The labour market crisis that began in 2008 seems to have changed the politics of job security regulations in those countries that were heavily affected.

The Labour Market, the Welfare State and European Convergence

1996 ◽  
pp. 73-101
Author(s):  
Renato Brunetta ◽  
Leonello Tronti ◽  
Renzo Turatto
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
The Welfare State

6. Problems

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Garland
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Real ◽  
Moral Hazards ◽  
The Welfare State

The welfare state is, at its core, a problem-solving apparatus, designed to manage dysfunctions that are endemic to the economic and social life of modern nations. But welfare states also generate problems of their own—such as moral hazards, excessive bureaucracy, soaring costs, and labour market rigidities—that sometimes threaten to bring the whole enterprise into disrepute. ‘Problems’ shows that these issues are troubling and consequential, but in weighing their significance we ought always to ask: ‘what can be done?’ and ‘what are the alternatives?’ That the welfare state has its problems is undeniable. The real question is whether these problems are manageable and how they compare to those of other arrangements.

The Scandinavian Origins of the Social Interpretation of the Welfare State

1989 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Baldwin
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Initial Development ◽  
Sufficient Power ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Welfare State

If a question can be mal posée, surely an interpretation can be mal étendue. This has been the fate of the social interpretation of the welfare state. The cousin of social theories of bourgeois revolution, the social interpretation of the welfare state is part of a broader conception of the course of modern European history that until recently has laid claim to the status of a standard. The social interpretation sees the welfare states of certain countries as a victory for the working class and confirmation of the ability of its political representatives on the Left to use universalist, egalitarian, solidaristic measures of social policy on behalf of the least advantaged. Because the poor and the working class were groups that overlapped during the initial development of the welfare state, social policy was linked with the worker's needs. Faced with the ever-present probability of immiseration, the proletariat championed the cause of all needy and developed more pronounced sentiments of solidarity than other classes. Where it achieved sufficient power, the privileged classes were forced to consent to measures that apportioned the cost of risks among all, helping those buffeted by fate and social injustice at the expense of those docked in safe berths.

Abbau von Inflexibilitäten auf dem Arbeitsmarkt – Ist die Wirtschaftspolitik auf dem richtigen Weg?

2000 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-250
Author(s):  
Norbert Berthold
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Employment Protection ◽  
Economic Environment ◽  
Economic Damage ◽  
Coalition Government ◽  
The Public ◽  
Protection Legislation ◽  
Generous Welfare ◽  
The Welfare State

Abstract The situation on the German labour market is still a catastrophe. The institutional set-ups on the labour market and the welfare state obviously no longer fit the fundamentally changed economic environment. There is next to no competition on the labour market and unions and employers' associations use the generous welfare state to transfer the burden of adjustment to changes in the economic environment onto the public at large. Institutional mismatch is prevalent. The red-green coalition government has not only realized that persistently high unemployment inflicts tremendous economic damage but that it is also politically destabilizing. It has therefore announced that the performance on the labour market during its term of office shall be its own measure of success or failure. This paper discusses whether the regulatory steps taken by the red-green coalition government, like implementing stricter employment protection legislation, reintroducing full pay when sick, and changing the law concerning low-paid jobs, are suitable for reducing this institutional mismatch.

Worker and the Welfare State in Imperial Germany

1991 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 18-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Steinmetz
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Imperial Germany ◽  
The Social ◽  
Insurance Funds ◽  
The Welfare State

A complex relationship existed between working-class formation and the development of the welfare state in Imperial Germany between 1871 and 1914. In the 1880s, the Social Democratic party voted against the three major national social insurance law's, and many workers seemed to spurn the incipient welfare state. But by 1914, socialists were active in social policy-making and workers were participating in the operations of the welfare state. Tens of thousands of workers and social democrats held positions in the social insurance funds and offices, the labor courts and labor exchanges, and other institutions of the official welfare state. Hundreds of workers had even become “friendly visitors” in the traditional middle-class domain of municipal poor relief. This shift is interesting not only from the standpoint of working-class orientations; it also challenges the received image of the German working class as excluded from the state —an interpretation based on an overly narrow focus on national parliamentary politics.

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