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Файл:Сравнение социальных моделей Европы. Социальная и трудовая политика в Европе. Учебно-методическое пособие
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in the economic cycle to be absorbed, but these instruments of economic
straint
Cuts in certain types of interest.
ing
ally,
including social security and
An end to consensus on pay
Disagreements within the trade
Respect for Maastricht
ocial inclusion and
Exchange control in a setting of
Leadership and direction at a time
vre to
tors
management were signed away by European convergence during the
1990s, and can hardly be used any longer. During the so-called golden
years of capitalism, the 'baby boom' more than regenerated the labour
force, but population ageing in the 1990s represents a challenge for
social security systems and for the continuation of pensions schemes.
Table 2 sets out a schematic summary of the contrasts between the pacts'
differing scenarios.
Table 1
Pre- and post-EMU contexts
Pre-EMU Post-EMU
External contingency
Unemployment, budget deficit
Issues at national level
Salary increases
Shared consensus on pay re
and diagnosis.
Trade union unity in relative terms
Issues at European level
convergence criteria
Motivation of the actors
Government:
Budgetary consolidation. Fall
unemployment
Labour costs compared glob
pension rates
restraint.
union movement
Employment, s
pensions
Government:
Achieving room for manoeu
cut labour costs
sluggish economic growth.
Trade unions:
Continue to be central actors
Employers:
of uncertainty
Trade unions:
New balance of power in sec
and
regions
Employers:
Encouragement of decentralisation
111
The content of social pacts has sought to respond to local economic
and social changes. In brief, the agreements address three main issues:
wages, quantitative labour flexibility, and social security.
1) Wages. Wages are a key issue in this comparative study. The
study of employees' behaviour has been an important factor in the pacts
(although not in all, e.g. Spain). In many cases, the traditional binomial
linking wages and productivity has been replaced by a new binomial:
wages and competitiveness. Generally speaking, there is a tendency for
wages to fall as a share of GDP. However, after several years of
declining purchasing power and a failing wage share in GDP, there is
now less and less consensus that pay restraint is a mechanism for
controlling inflation and a compromise of new investment and job
creation. The new emphasis on controlling and limiting growth in wage
costs is linked to reductions in pension scheme contributions. This is
very disturbing in the medium and long term.
2) Flexibility. Flexibility, too, has been an important factor in
social pacts, although the claim that flexibility is in retreat should be
treated with some caution. Perhaps the most important issue has been
the retreat of quantitative flexibility (based particularly on contractual
arrangements relating to working hours and other forms of atypical
employment): that has perverse effects not only on job insecurity and
instability, but also on consumption and economic growth. In this
context, attempts have been made to control atypical employment and
limit the abuse of working hours agreements in certain countries
including France, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal. On the other
hand, flexibility is linked in pacts to the development of European-level
directives on employment. In particular, flexibility is associated with the
impulse provided by active employment policies, and this has
specifically called for agreements to extend part-time working to
integrate particular groups (e.g. women and young people) on the labour
market. In this respect, the Netherlands provides an impressive model of
labour flexibility based on part-time working.
3) Social security. The main objectives that have guided social
security reform are control of public spending, a reduction in the public
debt, and lower labour costs. The chapter by Hassel and Ebbinghaus
analyses this question in depth, and argues that the policy of the reform
has a meaning (it is simply a question of concessions at the point of
112
exchange) on the one hand, and a particular aim (reducing labour costs)
Regulated national
Accommodating monetary
Economic and Monetary
Redistribution of
Pay restraints and
phasis on
Restrictions on welfare
of
Centralisation and
tion towards
on the other. In this respect, the pact concluded in Finland, as Tim
Kauppincn reports, is an eloquent and illustrative example of reducing
social contributions on the lowest wages, thereby affecting industrial
activities that are labour-intensive and have low productivity. However,
many authors in this book issue warnings about the dangers of social
dumping that could flow from measures designed to achieve
international competitiveness through lower social security
contributions. These measures may be effective in the short term, but not
in the long term, as one of the basic features of the European scenario is
ongoing ageing of the population and increases in pensions expenditure.
Table 2
Main differences between agreements signed in the 1960s and 1970s
and those signed in the 1990s
Social agreements
(1960s and 1970s)
Context
economies
Baby boom
system.
Fordism
Labour
market
Full employment
Labour market regulation
Pay policy
productivity gains
Social
Expansion of welfare state
protection
Institutional
Social agreements
(1990s)
Globalisation
Population ageing
Union
Information society
Unemployment
Security and flexibility
em
competitiveness
state
Coordinated
framework
concertation
direc
partnership
The new post-EMU economic context is marked by a new
equilibrium. The various national analyses not only show how varied the
situations are, but also highlight the existence of common contingent
decentralisation
State direction
113
elements such as the interdependence of member states of the European
Union and economic development subordinated to the disciplinary
criteria of Maastricht. The analysis in this comparative study has
involved examining the impact of external variables (such as monetary
union and, more broadly, the change in the monetary system) in the
signing of social pacts in the 1990s. External pressure has been
temporarily decreased as a result of a reduction in the public debt and
low interest rates in the euro zone, while some countries on the
periphery (i.e. Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Greece) have simultaneously
experienced substantial economic grown and higher employment rates.
The unions need to confront issues like cuts in social security, and
threats such as the uncoordinated decentralisation of collective
bargaining. Where should trade unions place the emphasis with regard to
future social concertation? The EMU has been restricting wage growth,
and the wage share in GDP has fallen, which has in turn been a blow to
social equity. These days, changes in social security aim to achieve
financial stability. The objective of reform of the so-called continental
system of social security is to broaden the state's room for manoeuvre,
but at all events, as trade union involvement in reform in Spain and Italy
shows, the need to obtain a consensus, both at a political level and
among the social actors, is becoming a priority.
The Netherlands and Ireland illustrate the emergence of an agenda
containing new qualitative issues such as quality of life and quality of
work, the debate on stress, and other matters, including social exclusion
related to gender and ethnic background. To conclude, it appears that we
can point to the emergence of a new collective bargaining agenda and
new content in the formulation of social pacts, but their characteristics
are hard to identify. On the one hand, wage growth is clearly limited by
monetary union restrictions; on the other hand, the terms for a new
social contract are still difficult to establish, particularly with regard to
maintaining and respecting social security entitlements at a time when
the population is ageing. Today, inadequate coordination between pay
policy and a reduction in labour costs is re-opening the debate on
‘competitiveness pacts' that may bring with them the risk of 'social
dumping'.
114
Editorial
Jens Lind and Antonio Martin Artiles
(Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research 2007 13: 541, DOI:
10.1177/102425890701300401. The full version of this article can be found at:
http://trs.sagepub.com/content/13/4/541.citation.)
Since we introduced non-thematic or «open» issues of Transfer
three years ago the Editorial Committee has had an ongoing debate as to
whether we should continue with this new system. We were not sure
whether the new system was actually an improvement and whether we
had succeeded in our aim of opening up the journal to more potential
authors. At our meeting in September 2007 in Manchester we finally
decided to continue to publish one non-thematic issue each year. Our
decision was largely based on our experience with this issue: the articles
are all highly relevant to trade unions and European policy-making, and
they are of a good academic quality without being oriented towards a
narrow and purely academic discourse.
Although we are not selecting articles solely on the basis of the
political actuality of the topic, the first article in this issue certainly deals
with a «hot» topic in European politics and trade union strategies.
Flexicurity is seen by many European policy-makers as a strategy which
can strike a balance between labour and capital and simultaneously
improve competitiveness and economic growth. Andranik Tangian’s
article, «European flexicurity: concepts, methodology and policies»,
departs from the recent political and academic discussion and argues
that it is an illusion to expect that such a balance can be achieved and
that the winners are fewer than the losers. Instead, he proposes a
«flexinsurance» based on employers’ contributions to social security
that are proportional to the flexibility of the employment contract and/or
risk of unemployment for the employee, a basic minimum income
system and measures that would constrain financial markets’ pressure on
European governments.
Another ongoing debate is highlighted in the following article by
Gerhard Bosch and Sebastian Schief «Older employees in Europe
between "work line" and early retirement». The ageing population and
current pension systems throughout Europe are seen as major threats to
future wealth and a time bomb under the welfare state. After examining
all the basic trends in labour market participation among older people in
115
Europe, the authors argue that the measures agreed upon by the
European politicians in 2001 to increase the labour force participation
rate for older people are not sufficient. In a few European countries, the
EU recommendations were attained many years ago, but for the majority
of countries it is necessary to create a more comprehensive policy
starting from considerations on five issues: equality, humanisation of
work, qualifications, flexibility and motivation.
The third article in this issue builds on the almost classical
discussion on gender equality in the labour market. Alexandra Scheele
discusses in her contribution, «Gender and the quality of work: an
overview of European and national approaches», how the quality of
work is defined and how it is linked to gender issues. The starting point
in the gender debate is the gendered participation in paid work and the
segmented pattern of female employment. These issues are relatively
easy to define and discuss, but when it comes to the quality of work the
debate becomes much more blurred: what is good work? Scheele
outlines the EU quality indicators and the ILO decent work indicators
and compares them with the German initiative on a 'New Quality of
Work'. She concludes that the debate on the quality of work is embedded
in a capital-oriented strategy where productivity, low wages and poor
labour rights seem to be dominant with the result that the quality
dimension is suppressed. Furthermore, the gender issue is being reduced
to the simple message that women should share the same conditions as
men - not taking into consideration the work-life balance for women.
Flexicurity, the ageing population and the gendered pattern of
employment are all issues on the general European agenda on
employment standards and included in policy recommendations to
stimulate economic growth and to deal with some general aspects of
inequality and other social aspects. From the perspective of the ruling
neoliberal strategy, which forms the basic assumptions on how to
organise society to achieve the most effective and productive allocation
of resources, another important issue in EU policy-making must be a
restructuring of the production of services. The dominant
recommendations are very clear: more market and more competition.
From this perspective public services have been under attack for several
years.
116
The next two articles comment on this issue and report on national
experiences in Denmark and Portugal. In 'Marketisation of the public
sector leads to socially and environmentally irresponsible contracting:
the case of Denmark', Ole Busck shows how the national
implementation of the EU directives has affected public sector
outsourcing of refuse collection and how working conditions in this
sector have deteriorated. In Denmark, during the 1990s some 70% of
refuse collection was contracted out by the municipalities to private
operators and the choice of operator most frequently fell on the cheapest
offer. The result has been a significant worsening of the working
conditions among garbage men. Health and safety standards have been
undermined, training has been abandoned and employment security has
been reduced. In theory this should not happen because the contract
between the municipality and the contractor defines acceptable
standards, but in practice the municipalities' main interest is to save
money and they close their eyes when breaches of norms and standards
occur.
'The revolution in the public services sector in Portugal: with or
without the unions' by Alan Stoleroff provides us with an example of
trade union attitudes and difficulties in influencing the comprehensive
reform process of the public sector which in Portugal has resulted in a
general rise in industrial conflicts. Despite an official commitment to
involve unions in the process, governments have pursued their own
goals of achieving a 'revolution' in public sector employment relations with or without the unions. Stoleroff concludes his article by posing a
number of questions which cannot easily be answered, but are key for
the evaluation of trade union behaviour in the restructuring of the public
sector. Have the unions' strategies and tactics reduced the possibilities of
genuinely negotiated solutions? Are the unions' accusations of the
government having an 'anti-bargaining attitude' a self-fulfilling
prophecy? Is the imposition of austerity and reformist measures of
rationalisation the result of a style of governance or an anti-labour
orientation? Is the Lisbon strategy's reference to social dialogue merely
rhetoric when it comes to implementing changes which alter the
established 'effort bargain' and established rights in the public sector?
The last article in this issue, 'Puzzles of union density in Norway',
deals with one of the most persistent themes over the years in this
117
journal: trade union membership and organisation. Kristine Nergaard
and Torgeir Aarvaag Stokke start from the recent debate in Transfer on
the impact of the unemployment insurance system (the Ghent system)
on trade union membership rates in Denmark, Belgium, Finland and
Sweden. After presenting the details of trade union membership in
Norway they concentrate on explaining why membership rates have
remained practically constant in this country - unlike elsewhere in
Europe. They point to a number of factors behind this stability, but their
main argument is that a deeply rooted and institutionalised industrial
relations system including a favorable attitude among employers
towards unions secures this stability.
118
УЧЕБНОЕ ИЗДАНИЕ
СРАВНЕНИЕ СОЦИАЛЬНЫХ МОДЕЛЕЙ ЕВРОПЫ:
СОЦИАЛЬНАЯ И ТРУДОВАЯ ПОЛИТИКА В ЕВРОПЕ
Магистерская программа: «Социальное администрирование
на промышленном предприятии»
Под редакцией И.Е. Козловой
Н.Ш. Валеевой
Ответственный за выпуск Т.Я. Виленская
119
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