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Many extensions of classical human capital theory regard labour market rigidities as a prerequisite for firms to invest in general training. From this perspective, the German labour market reforms since 2003 should have reduced their willingness to support the apprenticeship training system. This article demonstrates that, on the contrary, German firms did not abandon the training system but instead changed their training strategies after the implementation of the labour market reforms. We analyse the new training strategies that German firms deployed to cope with the increased labour market flexibility engendered by the labour market reforms. Switzerland, where no such reforms occurred, serves as the counterfactual. The results demonstrate that German firms successfully reduced the net costs of training by involving apprentices in more work and reducing non-productive tasks.

This introductory article to the special issue proposes that proponents of the European marketization project need to give serious consideration to the negative externalities that are created by virtually all moves to extend the scope of markets. The theme is applied particularly to the case of the labour market and its special characteristics. Attention is given to tensions between the idea of ‘flexicurity’ and policies designed to deal with the Eurocrisis. The former recognized that, if workers were to accept the potential job losses implied by labour market flexibility, they needed certain reassurances of security, such as generous unemployment pay and further training. The policies imposed on the debtor countries involved in the crisis have removed most such possibilities of security. The theme of coping with the negative consequences of intensifying markets is also used to introduce and integrate the remaining contributions to the special issue. L'article liminaire de ce numéro spécial suggère que les partisans d'un projet européen axé sur toujours plus de marché devraient prendre sérieusement en considération les externalités négatives créées par quasiment toutes les initiatives visant à élargir le champ d'action du marché. Ce thème s'applique en particulier au cas du marché du travail avec ses caractéristiques particulières. L’article se focalise sur les tensions entre l'idée de « flexicurité » et les politiques destinées à affronter la crise européenne. La flexicurité suppose que, pour que les travailleurs acceptent les pertes d'emploi potentiellement impliquées par la flexibilité du marché du travail, ils doivent pouvoir bénéficier de certaines assurances en termes de sécurité, comme des allocations de chômage généreuses et une formation complémentaire. Les politiques imposées aux pays débiteurs victimes de la crise ont supprimé une grande partie de ces dispositifs de sécurité. La question des conséquences négatives de l'intensification du jeu du marché est également abordée pour introduire et intégrer les autres contributions de ce numéro spécial. Der Beitrag führt in das Thema dieser Ausgabe von Transfer ein und argumentiert, dass die Befürworter des europäischen Vermarktlichungsprozesses sich ernsthaft mit den negativen externen Folgekosten auseinandersetzen sollten, die mit nahezu allen Schritten zur Ausweitung der Bedeutung der Märkte einhergehen. Dabei wird der Schwerpunkt auf den Arbeitsmarkt und seine besonderen Merkmale gelegt. Der Beitrag beschreibt ferner die Spannungen zwischen dem Konzept der „Flexicurity“ und den Maßnahmen zur Bewältigung der Euro-Krise. Im Rahmen des Flexicurity-Ansatzes wurde anerkannt, dass Arbeitnehmern im Gegenzug zur Flexibilität des Arbeitsmarktes und den damit einhergehenden potenziellen Arbeitsplatzverlusten bestimmte Sicherheiten gewährt werden müssen wie etwa großzügige Arbeitslosenunterstützung und Weiterbildungsangebote. Durch die Maßnahmen, die den Schuldnerländern im Rahmen der Krise auferlegt wurden, stehen die meisten dieser Sicherheitsangebote nicht mehr zur Verfügung. Die Bewältigung der negativen Folgen, die mit der Intensivierung der Märkte einhergehen, ist ein Thema, das auch in die folgenden Beiträge dieser Ausgabe von Transfer einführt und sie miteinander verbindet.

Throughout much of the advanced industrial world the building and construction industry has been extremely reliant upon migrant workers to meet industry labour force needs. However, changes to work organisation in this sector, such as extended subcontracting chains and the increased significance of ‘phoenix’ operators, have reinforced greater recourse to migrant workers, especially temporary and undocumented workers. Considered in the broader context of the widespread embrace of labour market flexibility and state engagement with neoliberal-oriented labour market policies that include less-restrictive labour migration programs, organised labour has been confronted by new and quite different industrial challenges in responding to migrant workers. This article evaluates the significance of this shifting terrain in the construction sector for unions at the national, international and transnational level in engaging and organising migrant labour.

Activation measures in Finland have meant the weakening of the level, qualification criteria, coverage, and time limits of social benefits in a way inimical to the post-Second World War Nordic welfare model. These changes have been accompanied by a growth of labour market flexibility, of non-traditional forms of employment, and a widening wage dispersion. This article traces these developments, but also shows that despite changes in social protection arrangements and labour market organisation, labour market demand has not increased and underemployment has remained at a substantial level in the Finnish labour market.

The concept of ‘flexicurity’ has become ubiquitous in the labour market policy recommendations of the European Commission. EU member states have been encouraged to increase labour market flexibility while maintaining security through the promotion of ‘employability’ and an ‘adequate’ floor of unemployment benefits. The economic crisis that erupted in 2008 has, however, provided flexicurity measures with a strenuous test. As this article demonstrates, those countries that have maintained relatively strong employment protections have tended to experience fewer labour market disruptions than countries with weaker employment protections. The article also suggests that while there has been some convergence in employment and social protection policy across Europe, the trend has been towards less security rather than ‘flexicurity’.

This article attempts to answer the question to what extent recent reforms aimed at flexibilizing the German labour market affected immigrants and how this explains the (in)stability of their employment paths. Based on the 1996–1999 and 2001–2004 German micro-census panels, we focus not only on transitions from employment to unemployment and vice versa, but also on the type of employment, either open-ended or fixed-term. Dynamic random effects models explore the effects of the employment status in the preceding year on the employment status in the subsequent one for various groups of immigrants. Results confirm the more precarious nature of immigrant employment with a more frequent mobility in and out of unemployment, a more pronounced incidence of fixed-term employment and a higher instability of open-ended jobs.

Theoretically, the central research question of this article pertains to the way in which national institutional arrangements, namely educational systems, and related modes of labour markets and welfare provisions, affect the aggregate effectiveness of youth labour market integration in the new EU member states in comparison to the old EU countries. The study utilizes the European Union Labour Force Survey 2004. Results of the cluster analysis provide substantial support for distinct patterns of labour market entry in terms of the stratification of labour market exclusion, downgrading risk and labour market mobility of LM entrants in different CEE countries. Furthermore, the article reveals also new aspects of labour market entry in the EU-15 countries while considering not only educational signalling but also the labour market flexibility dimension.

Most UK Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) have committed themselves to developing an Enterprise Strategy for their region. This commitment is mainly in response to the current Labour government's keenness to see enterprise and entrepreneurship at the centre of any economic development agenda. Pro-entrepreneurship policies have been embraced as a means of generating economic growth and diversity, ensuring competitive markets, helping the unemployed to create jobs for themselves, countering poverty and welfare dependency, encouraging labour market flexibility and drawing individuals out of informal economic activity. The regional dimension of economic regeneration has been influenced, in part, by increasing interest in the local ramifications of national innovation and entrepreneurship policies, and also by growing awareness of the local or regional phenomenon of enterprise creation and innovation. The authors examine the connection between R&D activities in universities and the creation of new businesses (in particular ICT firms), and especially the role that social capital plays in fostering these relationships or connections. Preliminary empirical analyses suggest the importance of university–high-tech industry social capital in generating technology based start-ups. The findings suggest a case for fostering ‘connectedness’ between research universities and high-technology firms in regions with interest in technology-based entrepreneurship.

It is widely assumed that workers whose labour market situation is insecure are likely to be individualistic, with negative attitudes towards trade unionism. This article uses Spain as a critical case to test the effects of labour market flexibility. Survey data reveal that, in fact, the attitudes of insecure workers towards trade unionism and mobilization at work are more positive than those of stable employees, and they are more critical of the prevailing economic system. These results are discussed within the framework of current debates on the crisis of trade unionism and the effects of flexibility in industrial relations.

This article analyses labour market flexibility in the Central and Eastern European countries (the CEECs). An empirical approach is taken that concentrates on macro level issues including labour protection, labour market policy and the role of trade unions in wage setting. The authors conclude that labour relations are not less strictly regulated in the CEECs than in the EU countries. Expenditure on labour market policy is relatively low in most CEECs. Decreases in wages, and especially decreases in nominal wages, indicate the flexibility of wages in the CEECs and the minor role played by the unions in the wage-bargaining process.

The aim of this article is to analyse some of the key issues in relation to new management discourses, and above all to consider their social impact in terms of their influence on overall social policy and practice. An overview will be provided of the different historical phases of management thinking, from the approaches that connect social modernisation with bureaucratic regulation, to the theories that link the postmodern world and complexity. It will also be shown how the current management guru literature, with its manipulation of the metaphors of excellence, networks and chaos, is threatening to impose a purely economic approach on how the workforce is employed. The ‘moral harassment’ and ‘corrosion of character’ resulting from a labour market that has been made excessively flexible cannot be avoided simply by relying on people's lost sense of trust, their emotions, or their individual competences. Finally, an analysis of labour market flexibility and the social role of work will be presented, with a view to identifying a new institutional framework for the management of work.

In the intense debate around questions related to labour market flexibility one of the contested issues has been the relationship between temporary work and unemployment. Temporary work has here been regarded either as a precursor to recurrent unemployment, or as an entry port to stable employment. Little is however known about actual mobility patterns, including whether or not temporary employment can act as a stepping stone out of unemployment. Using a sample of initially unemployed, this is here examined through an analysis of the relationship between temporary employment during a one-year observation period and employment and unemployment during a subsequent twelve-month long follow-up period. The results evince the great overall vulnerability of the unemployed, but also that the permanent and temporary jobs obtained by unemployed differ relatively little in the employment security they offer. This suggests that the type of employment contract is of minor importance for the long-term employment prospects of the unemployed. This holds for women as well as for men, contradicting some earlier conjectures about gender specific mobility patterns.

The launch of the Euro on 1 January 1999 has increased the pressure for EU-wide wage restraints and further flexibilization of labour markets. In the run-up to the European Union summit in Cologne, Dutch ministers Zalm (finance) and De Vries (social affairs and employment) urged their EU colleagues to Europeanise government intervention aimed at keeping wages down, so that profits will go up and (supposedly) more jobs will be created. The OECD (1999: 17) has also said, in a special report about the EMU, ‘There is no guarantee that EMU will set forces in motion that would automatically lead to a better functioning of Euro area labour markets. The sooner countries implement policies that foster greater labour market flexibility, the more they will be to absorb future shocks.’ But ‘the fight for Europe is in full swing’ (Dornbusch, 1997), because in several European countries, most importantly France,1 there are trade unions, social movements and parts of the political left that oppose such policies, and propose a shorter workweek and/or an increase in purchasing power instead. The European Union is facing very high unemployment, and two antagonistic social logics are counterposed to each other (Coutrot, 1997: 40).

The principal actors in the production process are employers and workers; however, historically, labour has always been portrayed as the flexible variable. This has not changed but what may be new is the way flexibility is extolled and used. Strategies such as the restructuring of capital, investment practices of capital and international trade agreements are often discounted from the discourse and hidden in economic agendas. One must not also forget the hierarchical nature of the capitalist system and its constant quest for an increased margin of profit. Consequently, the discourse on flexibility may serve to mask that pervasive motive in the current global market. Though a long-standing concept in economic history, flexibility is also a descriptive adjective for most market-related concepts (e.g. flexible specialization, the flexible firm, wage flexibility, production flexibility and labour market flexibility). In this article, I examine the uses, abuses and misuses of the concept of `flexibility' as applied to the balance of power between capital and labour.

In attempting to reconcile the objectives of both employment security and labour market flexibility, the 1977 Acquired Rights Directive (ARD) represents the type of social legislation championed in the Treaty of Amsterdam. This article discusses the 20-year history of this Directive in order to examine some of the problems which arise when policy is driven by economic and social objectives which may be mutually inconsistent. In particular, we consider whether the continuing legal confusion associated with this Directive can be, in part, attributed to the conflict between these objectives. This examination concentrates particularly upon the impact of the ARD upon the attempts by EU Member States Government, particularly Britain, attempts to impose market-based reforms upon the public provision of services.

PRESS COMMENTARY on Blair's first months has emphasised the pace of change. What has been overlooked is the substantive continuity with Tory policy in certain areas, notably the labour market. Hostile to both trade unions and the unemployed, Blair's government is continuing and developing the main lines of Tory labour market policy, although with a new attempt at ideological legitimation. The attack on the working class continues on three fronts. The first is a hardening of the work discipline to be imposed upon the unemployed. The second is to postpone even what little improvement in trade union rights had been promised, giving employers a space of time in which to ensure that rights to trade union recognition will not bite. The third is to embrace the neo-liberal ‘labour market flexibility’ agenda, resisting most attempts to improve social protection of labour at European and at UK level. The exception is the prospect of a national minimum wage, although exceptions now seem likely for participants in the youth ‘welfare to work’ scheme.

This article considers the international trends to more flexible labour relations in terms of the erosion of seven forms of labour-related personal security and the evolving forms of labour market regulation. It suggests that growing labour market flexibility has been accompanied by a reconstitution of the social wage and a profound re-regulation of labour relations, not `de-regulation', which is an inappropriate term to describe any labour market. The flexibility and market regulation has influenced the extent and character of labour fragmentation, which is creating new challenges for social and labour policy. The article concludes by sketching three possible routes of reform, one stemming from the former era of social regulation, the second extrapolating from the currently dominant market regulations perspective and the third linked to the desirable extension of democracy and the promotion of redistributive justice.

The aim of the study was to find out in what ways young people are willing to be flexible about their work conditions in order to get a job. Attitudes towards flexibility were studied using cluster analysis and data from a survey of young unemployed Finns. The results revealed three significant components of labour market flexibility: contractual flexibility, mobility and unofficial employment. Contractual flexibility meant that a young person agreed on his/her work conditions directly with the employer. Mobility characterized willingness to change residence or even country in order to get a job. Unofficial employment implied the possibility to be employed in the unofficial sector. The pay in this case would be more than the unemployment benefit but less than minimum wages. Half of the respondents took a positive stand to all three components of flexibility. There was also, however, a minority with a negative attitude. These were usually older persons with long work experience. Greater flexibility would compel them to give up many acquired benefits. The conclusion of the study was that those young people who had no benefits to lose were most flexible. Those who had acquired good benefits had strong negative attitudes towards flexibility.

Interest in the use of enterprise awards has been stimulated in Australia by growing pressures to develop a devolved industrial relations system. In particular it is widely thought that enterprise awards permit greater labour market flexibility than do multi-employer awards, and therefore should be adopted more extensively. This paper presents evidence to show that enterprise awards are a good deal more common than is generally supposed Nevertheless, they cover only a small minority of private sector employees and enterprises, and rarely displace multi-employer awards since they usually determine only one or two issues on a single-enterprise basis. While enterprise awards do yield labour market flexibility (in particular upon pay, classifications and working hours/shift arrangements) and are positively connected with several aspects of good industrial relations (higher labour flexibility, lower restrictive work behaviour, shorter strikes, and better use of award restructuring), it should not be assumed that they are necessarily preferable to multi-employer awards. First, many firms and unions will be unable to devote sufficient resources to develop enterprise awards. Second, industry awards are becoming more flexible through fragmentation, the development of enterprise appendices, the use of enterprise flexibility agreements, the establishment of more flexible classification and training provisions, and the adoption of less prescriptive employment conditions. Third, firms can be constrained by union bargaining power in their use of enterprise awards. Product market competition was found to be weakly connected with the distribution of enterprise awards which appear to have arisen in large firms primarily in response to special bureaucratic, technological and labour market factors. In conclusion it was thought likely that enterprise awards will continue to grow in importance, but they are unlikely to displace multi-employer awards, especially among smaller employers.

Despite the interest in the issue of labour market flexibility, there is markedly little research attempting to measure, let alone evaluate, the extent to which flexible labour arrangements have penetrated labour relations in the UK and elsewhere. One of the implications of this is that little is known about the specific forms that labour market flexibility takes across and within each country. Given this, it comes as little surprise that the discussion about the link between globalization and flexibility has remained largely theoretical, with only a few references to usually incidental anecdotal evidence. This article exploits a unique set of labour market flexibility indicators that have been developed at the regional level for the UK over the period 1979-98 and examines empirically the relationship between globalization and flexibility. Through a spatial-temporal exploratory analysis, significant patterns of geographical and functional specialization (in levels and types of flexibility) are identified and then related to local structural factors and demand conditions and to global influences. Global forces are found to have played a significant role for the patterns observed. The implications of this finding are discussed in the concluding section.

[Extract] This book, a collection of the thirty-four papers of various lengths (and strengths) presented at the 6th Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand conference, is more for reference than a cover-to-cover read. Unfortunately, the papers are not categorized according to sub-theme, but sequenced by author alphabetically - from Anderson et al. on 'Labour Market Flexibility' to Woldring on 'Works (Enterprise) Councils'. Strictly speaking, the collection is not confined to contemporary Australasian industrial relations research, as there are papers on symbioses in Britain and Canada (Cant), politics in Peru (Haworth), and trade unionism in Hungary (Hughes). However, other papers (Lansbury's, McDonald's and Woldring's) make comparisons between Australasian and, respectively, Swedish, North American and European industrial relations phenomena. So the collection is rather of papers researched by academicians in Australasia. The contemporary is especially represented by the themes of equality (Hede and Dingsdag, Fieldes, Mullen and Romans-Clarkson, Nyland and Kelly), the discipline (Gardner and Palmer), trade unionism (Bramble, Hince, Lambert, O’Brien), industry- or occupation-wide phenomena (Cockfield, Junor and Barlow, Maconachie, McGrath-Champ, Riley, Sherwood and Timo, Sonder and Martin, Pullin, Teicher, Underhill and Kelly), organizational behaviour (Cregan, Rosser), public policy (Peetz et al., Plowman) and labour law (Geare). The historical is represented by papers on the Australian Labor Party (Markey), the waterfront (Sheridan) and the Queensland coal industry (Turner). Disappointingly, for this reviewer, there are no papers, comparative or otherwise, on Asian phenomena despite the widely perceived implications of developments there for Australasia.

The evidence indicates that there has been some erosion of the distinction between part-time and full-time employment over the past decade. However, this is almost entirely attributable to the growth in part-time employment, and despite a continuing rigidity in full-time work patterns. It is argued that part-time employment can only make a limited contribution to labour market flexibility so long as full-time work patterns remain inflexible. This paper questions the assumptions sustaining a rigid bifurcation of work into full-time and part-time hours, and considers the case for a more flexible approach to full-time hours in the context of the debate over worksharing.

The model of the `flexible firm' has gained a prominent role in shaping debate about labour market flexibility and employment restructuring in the 1980s. It argues that employers are increasingly segmenting their workers between a permanent `core' of full-time employees, and a `periphery' of part-time, temporary, subcontract and `outsourced' workers. The `core' provides `functional flexibility' through lowered job demarcations and multi-skilling, while the `periphery' provides `numerical flexibility'. This paper argues that these generalisations are based on very selective cases, and reviews evidence which shows that restructuring follows far more complex and uneven lines than this polarisation, which if anything is better reflected in the public sector, which the model omits. The `flexible firm' conflates employment developments due to sectoral restructuring, with `new' `manpower policies', masking the importance of continuities and qualitative changes within these. While registering the increasing vulnerability of many workers, the model fails to note that for many, this is not `new', nor that the dynamic of the eighties is attacking the strength of all workers, including the so-called `core'. Conceptually, the notion of `core' and `periphery' is confused, circular and value laden. The model is criticised for blurring description, prediction and prescription in an ambiguous futurology which slips between research reportage and `best practice' policy. Even here it is ambiguous, and dubious from management's own point of view. Finally, its concern with labour market flexibility is set within the current international climate of neo-classical revival, and the model's institutional interface between Government labour market polices and `leading edge' firms.

The flexibility of the Japanese labour market attracts attention domestically as well as abroad. It is widely believed that labour market flexibility, particularly of wages, has been highly instrumental in rapidly restoring the equilibrium of the Japanese economy with stable prices and nearly full employment through the storms of the oil crises in the 1970s. The paper first identifies the meaning of alleged wage flexibility in the context of the Japanese labour market. Next it reviews what has happened in the system of wage determination under collective bargaining, known as shuntō or synchronised wage negotiations in spring, during the adjustment years following the oil crises. The prime focus is on the functional reforms of the shuntō system as a source of renderinig flexibility to aggregate patterns of wage changes. Finally the paper attempts to interpret such developments from the viewpoint of corporatism.

Since 1984 the local authority in Pitea in northern Sweden has facilitated leave of absence and part-time retirement among its employees. The purpose behind this new policy was to set more jobs free for others to be recruited to It was assumed that the number of replacements would increase through this kind of voluntary reduction of work In the present article some of the results of the Pitea experiment are described The number of cases of granted leave of absence and part-time retirement rose considerably in 1984 compared to the year before The experiment also led to a clear augmentation of vacancies filled by replacements The estimated difference corresponds to at least 22 full-time jobs lasting for a year This means a little less than one and a half per cent of the municipal work force counted in full-time employees At the end of the article two issues are briefly discussed, the consequences of increased labour market flexibility for women and the possibility of drawing general conclusions from the Pitea experience