*** BERNARD CONTER: Origines et impacts de la flexicurité. Centre de Recherche et d'Information Socio-Politiques (Crisp, 1A place Quételet, B-1210 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 2110180 - Fax: 2197934 - email: info@crisp.be - Internet: http://www.crisp.be ). "Courrier hebdomadaire" series, Nos. 2095-2096. 2011, 64 pp, €12.40.
The neologism 'flexicurity' combines the terms 'flexibility' and 'security' and has become an ever-present EU mantra. The prime advantage of this very clear and comprehensive CRISP newsletter is that it makes an instructive investigation into the paternity of the term, leading it to Denmark, of course, but also to the Netherlands. It was in fact in the Netherlands that the notion was coined in the 1990s, the term being invented by a sociologist, Hans Adriaansens, against the backdrop of attempted reforms of labour law and labour market policy. In Denmark, it was not until 1999 that the balance between flexibility and security was schematised in a report by the Danish labour ministry. The author of this book starts by showing that over and above the commonalities (relaxing job protection legislation at the same time as boosting the 'security of employability,' which is supposed to create a dynamic labour market), flexicurity takes quite a different form in the two countries. In the Netherlands, "it lies in facilitating flexible working and providing security to the most vulnerable workers," while in Denmark; "it is more universal and is based on high employment policy spending," the high degree of flexibility in labour law - "which makes it possible to hire and fire with ease"… - being compensated for by high unemployment benefit payments, particularly for the low-paid, and large-scale, active employment policies.
Having painted the backdrop, Bernard Conter explains how flexicurity has found its way into international forums, particularly in the EU, thanks to the work of the European Commission. He methodically demonstrates that starting from an ambiguous notion, the Commission promoted a vision of flexicurity that put the easing of job protection legislation in pride of place. At an EU employment summit in Villnach in January 2006, Commissioner Spidlà set out his vision of flexicurity as follows: "I see it as a policy protecting people more than jobs. To speak in images - when a boat sinks, the priority is not to save the boat, but to save the people who are in the boat." Likewise, the author points out, Spidla raised "the principle of moving from job security to security of employability (or security in a job)". Over time, explains the author, the November 2006 "Green Paper" on updating the labour market "launched as the subject of a public consultation exercise bypassing the social partners," with a group of experts suggesting over-directive flexicurity trajectories, a Commission report tried to "impose said trajectories" and a widely criticised social protection rigidity indicator borrowed from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development "helped boost the mistrust of stakeholders who saw flexibility as a re-packaging of the old flexibility." In the face of the reaction of some of the Member States, the European Parliament and the European Trade Union Confederation, the Commission was forced to rein in its enthusiasm for a notion whose ability "to facilitate consensus is now widely eroded ".
The final part of the analysis examines whether tangible flexicurity models are capable of overcoming the economic crisis that Europe is currently experiencing. The author explains that a veil was suddenly placed over this notion which, in the choppy seas of the economic crisis, "was seen as obscene by many stakeholders." But this has not stopped the Commission from persevering and putting the notion of paper, having returned to its "efforts to promote flexicurity" in the EUR 2020 Strategy, not to mention that the adoption by the Council of common flexicurity principles ensures the approach will continue in the EU employment strategy. Curious because, going by what Bernard Conter writes, it is the countries with the most flexible labour markets that have seen the highest increases in unemployment, the number of unemployed having "more than doubled in Spain" and "multiplied by 1.5 in the United Kingdom and Denmark ". Curious and curiouser.
Michel Theys
*** BERNARD CONTER: La flexicurité en chiffres et en débat. Centre de Recherche et d'Information Socio-Politiques (see above). "Courrier hebdomadaire" series, Nos. 2106-2107. 2011, 63 pp, €12.40.
This CRISP newsletter follows on nicely from the one reviewed above because in it, the same author, Bernard Conter, assesses the extent to which the notion of flexicurity has led to agreements and labour market reforms in a specific Member State, namely Belgium. Conter starts by briefly describing the flexibility and job security situation in Belgium, for which he describes and uses EU flexicurity indicators. He points out that while the indicators may seem to be technically neutral, in reality they are characterised by a strong prescriptive dimension and for this reason, it is not certain that they can be used in the negotiating of integrated approaches at the various levels of power. He then looks at the position of various stakeholders (trade union organisations, employers' organisations, political parties, administrative players) vis-a-vis flexicurity, analysing the handful of common documents produced on the subject by these stakeholders, one of his conclusions being that as most of them see it, "flexicurity is a necessary subject of negotiation, whose content has to be fleshed out in coherence with their traditions and national or partisan viewpoints".
(MT)
*** ALYA AGLAN, OLIVIER FEIERTAG, DZOVINAR KEVONIAN (Eds.): Humaniser le travail. Régimes économiques, régimes politiques et Organisation internationale du travail (1929-1969). Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, Postfach 350, CH-2542 Pieterlen, Switzerland. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Enjeux internationaux" series, No. 16. 2011, 266 pp, €33-50. ISBN 978-90-5201-740-2.
Following on from a conference at Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University in January last year, this collection of essays studies the history of the International Labour Organisation in the light of its permanent attempts to give work a more human face. The period examined was chosen deliberately for two reasons. Firstly, the book's editors explain in the introduction that the yeas 1920 to 1970 were "the apogee of the Industrial Revolution" and its spread around the globe, which led Europeans and Westerners in general to wonder "how to ensure the high standard of living of formerly industrialised States could be ensured, particularly for their working classes, in the face of competition from new countries, competition felt both from the export of their cheap, manufacturer products and from their cheaper workforce." It goes without saying that this question remains highly topical amidst the growing power of the BRICs. Secondly, as Prof. Robert Frank explains in the conclusion, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 - a date often looked back upon in the current economic crisis - gave rise to a world crisis that was in fact the "first globalisation." One would have to await the 1970s for the "start of the second globalisation, the one we are currently experiencing," which means that between 1929 and 1969, the world lived in "a period of between-the-globalisations." During this period, the International Labour Organisation, the last surviving remnant of the Versailles Treaty of 1919, was "a kind of outlier of the first globalisation" that has never stopped working to humanise work around the world, and for this work it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1969. Over time, the process of humanising work has taken different forms and meanings: health and safety for some, the expression of a "living social law" for others, but during the 1960s it asserted its literal meaning as countries were shaking off the colonial yoke and the development of countries of the South hemisphere was continuing apace. The essays cast a look at this history from various angles in three phases: from 1929 to 1940, when the ILO faced the (first) crisis of globalisation; 1940-1948, with the question of human labour in wartime to liberation; and from 1948 to 1969, when the ILO faced problems of growth, democracy and the newly emerging globalisation. In the third section of the book, Lorenzo Mechi, a researcher at the political science faculty of Padua University, points out how the ILO worked with the nascent European worked closely with the European Communities. Prof. Robert Frank concludes that unlike the first globalisation, the second "was not regulated," being an "ultra-liberal inspiration." The current crisis, that began in 2008, only "challenges this deregulation, which has been found to be dangerous, even in economic terms." To solve the current crisis, therefore, the ILO will remain a precious tool.
(MT)
*** OANA AILENEI (Ed.): Le rôle de l'économie sociale dans les dynamiques socioéconomiques locales. Des concepts aux initiatives d'innovation sociale à l'échelle des quartiers en Europe et à Roubaix, France. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (1 av. Maurice, B-1050 Brussels. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Regional Integration and Social Cohesion" series, No. 7. 2011, 361 pp, €46-50. ISBN 978-90-5201-714-3.
This book emerges from a doctoral thesis in economics at Lille Science and Technology University (France) in 2007. The author now works at the Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion at the European Commission. Oana Ailenei starts by pointing out that European countries are currently experiencing multidimensional social exclusion situations, such as the snowballing of poverty, the whittling away of social and political rights and the destruction of social goods. Her second postulate is that the role of the State has been altered by the process of liberalisation in the 1980s, particularly in the United Kingdom. These premises lead her to consider the role of the economy in local social inclusion and development action in the socio-economic field. "Is the social economy only an immediate response to the urgent need to remedy the shortcomings of the State and the indifference of the market? Or is it also a lever for social change or even a viable, alternative development model?" These are the questions answered in the book by examining the economic data from a sociological point of view because the author believes it is obvious that "orthodox economic science is finding it ever more difficult to come up with answers to current challenges (poverty, unemployment, social exclusion, changes on the labour market, the ageing population, etc)". The book has a theoretical dimension (putting into perspective concepts like the social economy, social capital, local governance, social exclusion, local development and social innovation) along with an empirical dimension (cases studies in Belgium, Italy, France and the United Kingdom). The author makes use of investigations on the ground in disadvantaged neighbourhoods of Roubaix, formerly an industrial boom-town in Northern France, which provide a tangible setting for the historical and socio-economic background, along with local development trajectories. The book ends by answering both questions in the affirmative, arguing that the social economy generates fundamental value-added for society."
(PBo)
*** GÜLSEN SCHORN: Das Pflegekind in der Rechtsprechung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts und des Europäischen Gerichtshofs für Menschenrechte. Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, Postfach 350, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). 2010, 520 pp, €77-40. ISBN 978-3-631-60193-8.
This book is primarily a compilation of family law legal cases in Germany and Europe. Analysing more than a hundred legal decisions taken between 1981 and 2008, the author identifies contradictions and approximations between family law cases at the German constitutional court and the European Court of Human Rights. There are obviously several different types of contradiction. The book focusses on differences in the interpretation of children's rights and other aspects of family law. On the latter, although mainly assessing legal cases in the two courts, the author describes how both the German constitutional court and the European Court of Justice expanded their powers and have altered their interpretation of law over the years. Gülsen Schorn therefore uses the research to help readers understand the case-law similarities between the German and European courts and how this approximation has developed over time. The first part of the book is devoted to psychological and sociological questions about children and their relationship with their parents. The author looks at sociological aspects underlying family law and then examines the German constitutional court's powers and how they have developed. He describes the relationship between the German court and the United Nations, particularly in the light of the UN's Convention for Children's Rights. The author then examines cases from the various courts and changes in case law. After identifying the substantial law of the German court, he analyses its case law, paying greater attention to the Görgülü case that ruled that EU family law had primacy over German family law. Analysis of this court case is also found at the start of the chapter on European child protection legislation. The author starts by examining the history of the European Court of Human Rights and how it has changed over time, going on to examine substantial law on the court's powers and various decisions that lay down important case law (also examining their influence).
(JD)