scholarly journals Volte-Face on the Welfare State: Social Partners, Knowledge Economies, and the Expansion of Work-Family Policies

2021 ◽  
pp. 003232922110143
Author(s):  
Øyvind Søraas Skorge ◽  
Magnus Bergli Rasmussen
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Family Policies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Partners ◽  
Knowledge Economies ◽  
Work Family ◽  
The Welfare State

To what extent organized employers and trade unions support social policies is contested. This article examines the case of work-family policies (WFPs), which have surged to become a central part of the welfare state. In that expansion, the joint role of employers and unions has largely been disregarded in the comparative political economy literature. The article posits that the shift from Fordist to knowledge economies is the impetus for the social partners’ support for WFPs. If women make up an increasing share of high-skilled employees, employers start favoring WFPs to increase their labor supply. Similarly, unions favor WFPs if women constitute a significant part of their membership base. Yet the extent to which changes in preferences translate into policy depends on the presence of corporatist institutions. These claims are supported with statistical analyses of WFPs in eighteen advanced democracies across five decades and an in-depth case study of Norway. The article thus demonstrates that the trajectory of the new welfare state is decisively affected by the preferences and power of unions and employers.

scholarly journals The roles of employers and trade unions in immigration and welfare state policymaking

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (5) ◽  
pp. 521-527
Author(s):  
Carlo Knotz ◽  
Flavia Fossati ◽  
Gemma Scalise ◽  
Gerda Hooijer
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Economic Integration ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Partners ◽  
Integration Of Immigrants ◽  
Research Problems ◽  
State Policymaking

Whether and under which conditions immigrants should be admitted and obtain access to employment and social security is an issue of continuously high political salience across the advanced democracies. Unions and employers, as traditionally influential actors in immigration and social policymaking, have important roles to play in this area, but their exact preferences, strategies and behaviour are theoretically difficult to determine and are still only partly understood. This article outlines a series of research problems regarding the roles of social partners in the social and economic integration of immigrants and discusses how the articles contained in this special issue address these problems.

Vakbonden en sociaal overleg in het laatste kwart van de XX° eeuw

Res Publica ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-117
Author(s):  
Willy Peirens
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Institutional Framework ◽  
Economic Democracy ◽  
Unique Character ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Partners ◽  
Oil Crisis ◽  
The Government ◽  
Role Of The Government

The unique character of the socio-economic negociations in Belgium has lost much of its glamour and prestige during the last quarter of the 20th century.  While before 1975, there was more or less agreement among the social partners to redistribute welfare to the whole society, after the first oil crisis employers tended to see themselves in competition with other employers, with the trade unions and with the state. Both employers' organisations as trade unions wanted to safeguard their own priorities, respectively the competitiveness of the enterprises and the system of indexation. As a consequence, it became very difficult to reach agreements and hence, there have been no or only very small interprofessional agreements signed since 1975.The role of the government in this period evolved from the role of host for the negociations to that of co-actor and finally to director. When no agreement was possible between the social partners, the govenrment itself took the initiative and both trade unions and employers' organisations tried to lobby the government rather than being partners in negociations. The measures of the government, especially those taken with extra-ordinary powers, were often beneficial for the employers. Despite the emphasis by the trade unions on employment, their efforts beared not much fruit. The first priority of both the government and the employers was the enhancement of the financial and the economic situation of the country. Since the interprofessional agreement of 1999-2000, a new period bas begun. Trade unions and employers' organisations are constrained by what happens in the rest of Europe. Between these constaints, they can negociate and conclude agreements on the basis of freedom and responsibility.The level of negociations shifted in this period from the interprofessional level to the level of the sector or even to the level of the enterprise. Another trend is the creation of an institutional framework for social talks on the Flemish level.The challenges for the future are the installation of a European or even an international world-wide institutional framework for social negociations and the development of themes as permanent education, quality of life and work and the enhancement of the socio-economic democracy.

Flexicurity and the dynamics of the welfare state adjustments

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-404
Author(s):  
Oldrich Bubak
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
Economic Competitiveness ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Partners ◽  
Political Economies ◽  
Differential Ability ◽  
The Welfare State

The disruptions of the recent global financial crisis intensified a number of industrial and economic challenges and brought forward a set of often contradictory solutions. Here, we focus on two alternative views on how to (re)establish economic competitiveness and enable growth – flexicurity and austerity. There is much to be learned about the future of these conflicting recipes across changing political economies, particularly considering the importance of the social partners in the development of flexicurity, and their differential ability to influence welfare state outcomes more broadly. Two questions emerge. Attentive to the role and capacity of the social partners, what can we learn about the dynamics of the ongoing welfare state adjustments? How do we make sense of labour market politics in this paradoxical environment? In order to help answer these, we visit the United Kingdom and Denmark – one state offering modest social and employment security, the other a paragon of flexicurity – and find their divergent philosophies, institutional development, and organisational interactions explain not only their respective choices in the aftermath of the crisis, but also their prospects for socially oriented labour policies.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Social Equality ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Innovations ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Welfare State

The introduction to this book considers the ways in which the history of modern social welfare in Britain has been written and explained. These approaches include biographical and prosopographical studies of key individuals and groups responsible for founding the welfare state and administering it; the study of crucial social policies and institutions; appreciation of the key intellectual concepts which underpin the idea of welfare in Britain, including philosophical idealism, citizenship, planning, and social equality; the role of political contestation in the initiation and also in the obstruction of policy and its implementation; and the relation of specific places to the development of welfare in theory and in practice, whether east London in the late Victorian era or west London in the 1960s, both of which districts and the social innovations deriving from them are examined in chapters in this volume.

Path Shifting of the Welfare State: Electoral Competition and the Expansion of Work-Family Policies in Western Europe

2013 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly J. Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Path Dependence ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Major Change ◽  
Welfare Regimes ◽  
Family Policies ◽  
Time Work ◽  
Work Family ◽  
Voter Groups ◽  
The Welfare State

What explains the surprising growth of work-family policies in several West European countries? Much research on the welfare state emphasizes its institutional stickiness and immunity to major change. Yet, over the past two decades, governments in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have introduced important reforms to their welfare regimes, enacting paid leave schemes, expanded rights to part-time work, and greater investments in child care. A comparison of these countries reveals a similar sequence of political and policy change. Faced with growing electoral instability and the decline of core constituencies, party leaders sought to attract dealigning voter groups, such as women. This led them to introduce feminizing reforms of their party structures and adopt policies to support mothers' employment. In all three cases, women working within the parties played an important role in hatching or lobbying for these reforms. After comparing three countries that moved in a path-shifting direction, this article engages in a brief traveling exercise, examining whether a similar set of dynamics are lacking in two countries—Austria and Italy—that have moved more slowly in reforming these policies. Against the prevailing scholarly literature that emphasizes path dependence and slow-moving change, this article reveals the continued power of electoral politics in shaping redistributive policies.

Towards a Europeanization of indirect employee participation: Polish experiences

2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Skorupińska
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Process Analysis ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Employee Participation ◽  
Works Councils ◽  
Participatory Institutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Partners ◽  
New Institutions

This article reports the difficult path of developing works councils as new institutions of employee participation in Polish industrial relations and the atmosphere among the social partners surrounding this process. Analysis shows that the Europeanization of legislation on indirect employee participation does not always translate into effective functioning of participatory institutions in practice. Despite the fact that the initially reluctant attitude of trade unions and employers towards works councils has become more positive in Poland, the role of these institutions in Polish industrial relations remains negligible. The amendment to the Act on Informing and Consulting Employees of 2009 has led to a reduction in the already small presence of works councils in Polish enterprises to a marginal level of about 2%.

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