Adapting labour law and social security to the needs of the 'new self-employed' — comparing the UK, Germany and the Netherlands

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Schulze Buschoff ◽  
Claudia Schmidt
2004 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wim van Oorschot

Increasing the flexibility of work and working life has been high on the agenda of Dutch public debate for at least 15 years. Resulting policies have been guided by the aspiration of combining flexibility and security, or of achieving adequate ‘flexicurity’, as the combination of these goals has come to be known. This article describes and analyses Dutch flexicurity policies of recent years, as they have been adopted in the fields of part-time work, social security, labour law and the work-care combination. It shows that the government has made it easier for employers and employees to choose part-time work as a strategy for increasing flexibility. In the field of social security there are numerous problems, especially for ‘flex’ -workers (not for part-time workers as such), but little substantial improvements have been implemented. In labour law important flexibility and security measures have been adopted, but here government has been rather slow in taking the lead. As regards the work-care combination, new policies have improved conditions, but the Netherlands still lags behind other European countries.


2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-101
Author(s):  
Brian Moore ◽  
Joris van Wijk

Case studies in the Netherlands and the UK of asylum applicants excluded or under consideration of exclusion pursuant to Article 1Fa of the Refugee Convention reveal that some applicants falsely implicated themselves in serious crimes or behaviours in order to enhance their refugee claim. This may have serious consequences for the excluded persons themselves, as well as for national governments dealing with them. For this reason we suggest immigration authorities could consider forewarning asylum applicants i.e. before their interview, about the existence, purpose and possible consequences of exclusion on the basis of Article 1F.


Author(s):  
Nico van Eijk

The point of departure for this chapter is the decision of the European Court of Justice in the Digital Rights Ireland case, which annulled the European Data Retention Directive, in part because the use of retained data was not made subject to independent oversight. Next, it examines judgments from the national courts of the Netherlands and the UK, also focusing on the independent oversight issue, declaring invalid the data retention laws of those two countries. From the Digital Rights Ireland case and others, seven standards for oversight of intelligence services can be drawn: the oversight should be complete; it should encompass all stages of the intelligence cycle; it should be independent; it should take place prior to the imposition of a measure; it should be able to declare a measure unlawful and to provide redress; it should incorporate the adversary principle; and it should have sufficient resources.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
SHARON WRIGHT ◽  
PETER DWYER

Abstract Universal Credit is the UK’s globally innovative social security reform that replaces six means tested benefits with one monthly payment for working age claimants - combining social security and tax credit systems. Universal Credit expands welfare conditionality via mandatory job search conditions to enhance ‘progression’ amongst working claimants by requiring extra working hours or multiple jobs. This exposes low paid workers to tough benefit sanctions for non-compliance, which could remove essential income indefinitely or for fixed periods of up to three years. Our unique contribution is to establish how this new regime is experienced at micro level by in-work claimants over time. We present findings from Qualitative Longitudinal Research (141 interviews with 58 claimants, 2014-17), to demonstrate how UC impacts on in-work recipients and how conditionality produces a new coerced worker-claimant model of social support. We identify a series of welfare conditionality mismatches and conclude that conditionality for in-work claimants is largely counterproductive. This implies a redesign of the UK system and serves as an international warning to potential policy emulators.


2020 ◽  
pp. jech-2020-214770
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Richardson ◽  
Martin Taulbut ◽  
Mark Robinson ◽  
Andrew Pulford ◽  
Gerry McCartney

BackgroundLife expectancy (LE) improvements have stalled, and UK tax and welfare ‘reforms’ have been proposed as a cause. We estimated the effects of tax and welfare reforms from 2010/2011 to 2021/2022 on LE and inequalities in LE in Scotland.MethodsWe applied a published estimate of the cumulative income impact of the reforms to the households within Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) quintiles. We estimated the impact on LE by applying a rate ratio for the impact of income on mortality rates (by age group, sex and SIMD quintile) and calculating the difference between inflation-only changes in benefits and the reforms.ResultsWe estimated that changes to household income resulting from the reforms would result in an additional 1041 (+3.7%) female deaths and 1013 (+3.8%) male deaths. These deaths represent an estimated reduction of female LE from 81.6 years to 81.2 years (−20 weeks), and male LE from 77.6 years to 77.2 years (−23 weeks). Cuts to benefits and tax credits were modelled to have the most detrimental impact on LE, and these were estimated to be most severe in the most deprived areas. The modelled impact on inequalities in LE was widening of the gap between the most and least deprived 20% of areas by a further 21 weeks for females and 23 weeks for males.InterpretationThis study provides further evidence that austerity, in the form of cuts to social security benefits, is likely to be an important cause of stalled LE across the UK.


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