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Economic integration is generally thought to favour convergence in the economic performance of previously separated regions; but this is far from universally true, as the experience of the members of the Eurozone testifies. The paper considers the two sharply contrasting cases of East and West German convergence following reunification and the enduring poverty of the Italian Mezzogiorno since Italian unification a century and a half ago. In both countries, political integration delivers much higher consumption in the lagging relative to the leading region than of per capita GDP. Consumption convergence can be supported by transfers but ‘production’ convergence ultimately requires catch-up in the production of tradeables. The paper demonstrates the radically different performance of the tradeable sector in the two cases, and suggests that this may be the result of differences in labour market flexibility, in investment performance and in the social norms required for the production of complex manufacturing.

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.

According to ‘varieties of capitalism’ (VoC) perspective, coordinated market economies (CMEs) attain comparative advantages by coordinating industrial relations and maintaining regulation to a greater extent than liberal market economies and mixed market economies (MMEs). Yet, Japan, a typical CME in the VoC literature, introduced greater labour market flexibility than Italy, an MME. This article analyses why this is the case and claims that the institutional complementarities that had functioned well previously in Japan have been unraveling since the early 1990s and neoliberal deregulation of the labour market ensued. This comparative study of Japan and Italy shows that economic stagnation and the globalisation of finance and production exerted neoliberal pressures on the state and employers to increase competitiveness by introducing market-oriented policies and business strategies. However, the power resources of labour unions and the partisan composition of the government affected the characteristics of neoliberal changes in labour market policy.

New Zealand's highly regulated labour market existed in a wider environment of regulation. The government maintained high levels of intervention in areas such as imports and exports, money markets and banking. While the Employment Contracts Act 1991 represented a substantive break with the tradition of industrial relations in New Zealand, it was in keeping with the philosophy that had driven deregulation in other sectors of the economy since 1984. New Zealand has a unique social welfare system which expanded, in stages, during the twentieth century. The system is funded from general taxation rather than from targeted contributions and, in this respect, is unlike the social security systems in most other countries. The National government's labour market and social security changes were clearly designed to enhance labour market flexibility and reduce welfare dependency. A Labour/Alliance coalition government was formed following the elections in November 1999. Once again, industrial relations have been the subject of government attention.

A major focus of India's ongoing policy debate over labour market flexibilization has been the statutory requirement that firms employing 100 or more workers cannot dismiss employees without prior government permission. The case for repealing that requirement (or greatly increasing the workforce threshold) is notably underpinned by Basu, Fields and Debgupta (2009). Here, the author challenges their particular theoretical argument for hiring and firing at will based on the voluntary signing of contracts, demonstrating that their general policy conclusion is logically unsustainable even within the framework of that model. The case for labour market flexibilization through voluntary contracting thus remains unfounded.

Labour market flexibility is an important issue in both development and labour economics. More flexibility in the labour market is believed to facilitate job creation, but also makes it easy for employers to terminate employment contracts and may be in conflict with the notion of decent jobs as promoted by the International Labour Organization and workers' unions. It is therefore not surprising that labour market flexibility or inflexibility has received a lot of attention in the extant literature. Using a sample of about 4700 firms from six African countries, we investigate the impact of restrictive labour regulation on a number of economic outcomes and find that more restrictive labour market regulations are detrimental to export propensity, export intensity, investment and employment. Policy-makers must be cautious, however, when implementing employment regulations as too flexible regulations may benefit employers at the expense of employees.

Over the past decade, the World Bank has moved closer to accepting the International Labour Organization's (ILO's) core labour standards (CLS) and, in the process, sought to balance its promotion of labour market flexibility with a new focus on labour market regulation. The Bank's change of approach includes the 2009 decision to review and subsequently remove its labour market flexibility indicator (used to score the extent of labour market flexibility amongst its member-states) from its flagship publication, Doing Business. The aim of this article is to chart the softening of the Bank's emphasis on labour market flexibility and distil the contributing factors. With reference to the global financial crisis and the Bank's organizational characteristics, the article evaluates the work of international trade unions and the ILO as agenda-setters and compliance monitors and pro-labour industrialized states as ‘insider advocates’ in broadening the Bank's commitment to the CLS. The article demonstrates t...

In the realm of managing industrial relations (IR), organizations are handicapped in two ways: the government?s labour regulations and compliance regime, and their own inability to extricate themselves from half-baked theories and poor management practices. Research findings indicate the growth of the informal sector at the expense of the formal sector, but with low productivity, low wages and virtually no job security. And in the formal sector, data indicates rising conflict often laced with brutal violence. While organizations in the formal sector wait for labour reforms towards greater labour market flexibility that would lead to greater labour mobility and higher productivity and employment in the formal manufacturing sector, they could undertake a paradigm shift in their IR strategy. Such a paradigm shift in IR strategy would not just obviate many of the ills besetting the industrial relations scenario, but provide a competitive advantage. Based on a year-long work in a steel tube manufacturing company in western India, this paper distils the architecture of a paradigm shift in IR strategy for organizational turnaround.

Since the beginning of the 1990s Australia has experienced a gradual but far-reaching process of labour market deregulation. Labour market deregulation has proceeded primarily through the dismantling of the distinctive system of awards - the main avenue of external, protective regulation in Australia for much of the twentieth century. This paper examines labour market deregulation and its implications for the Australian workforce. It situates the changes in terms of their institutional starting point in the award system and the growing pressures in the 1980s for increased labour market flexibility. It argues that labour market deregulation is amplifying existing trends to growth in precarious employment, wage dispersion and the development of a lowpay sector amongst full-time employees. In addition, it is sponsoring a significant fragmentation of working-time arrangements.

This chapter links labour market flexibility with capital accumulation in the context of a post-colonial country like India. The chapter is organized in four sections starting with an understanding of neoliberal age and the nature of capital accumulation in general in the context of a post-colonial economic space. This is followed by an analysis of labour market flexibility. The liberal era which is supposedly characterized by rigid labour laws with an interventionist state in Keynesian sense is marked with growing strength of trade unions and labour organizations in the West and in post-colonial emerging economy like India. The neoliberal age is marked with a diametrically opposite tendency, namely, the weakening of these organizations by the neoliberal states all over the world, North and South alike. This too has some significant implications for both voice representations of labour as well as capital accumulation in the Marxian sense of the latter term. In the third section, the chapter delves into the issue of representation of labour in the neoliberal age. Finally, an attempt is made to decipher the connectivity of flexible labour and weakening bargaining strength of labour with the process of growing financialization and its implications for capital accumulation in post-colonial neoliberal space and time.

In recent decades, economic policy makers across Europe have sought to increase labour market flexibility by promoting the use of temporary employment. The articles in this Feature provide new results on how fixed-term and agency work contracts affect firm productivity and how the segments of two-tier labour markets interact. This article points to a possible trade-off between efficiency and equity when deregulating labour markets. Taken together, the evidence presented in this Feature suggests that flexible forms of employment can be both a boon and a bane for labour markets and for society as a whole.

In the last two decades a broad process of labour market reforms towards more flexible and liberal models has been taking place in Europe. For Central and Eastern European countries this evolution was an important dimension of the wider process of institutional change which accompanied their transition to market economies. This article presents the complex picture of EU countries at the outset of the recent crisis (2007) in terms of the components of earnings differentials, with particular emphasis on the dimensions of labour market flexibility identifiable with contractual arrangements (temporary versus permanent employment) and self-employment. Our main focus is on Central and Eastern European countries but we keep old EU members as benchmarks. Results highlight that different factors lie behind permanent/temporary and permanent/self-employed earnings gaps in the two regions. The dualism between regular and flexible jobs in the CEE labour market is mainly based on workers' attributes; in the Western EU ...

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.

This paper deals with the situation on the European labour market and especially on the Czech labour market. It shows the impact of long-term unemployment - a crucial problem in contemporary European countries - on the economy and on the society and its integrity. Great attention is paid to the social parasitism of the long-term unemployed and to the conversion of social protection systems that started in the late 1990s, when the new principle of social protection systems - the coercive principle - was set up. The principal fi ndings concern the decline in long-term unemployment both on the European labour market and on the Czech labour market after the conversion of the social protection systems. Last but not least, the paper deals with labour market flexibility.

The role of the temporary employment industry as an active intermediary in the job market can only be fully understood in the context of wider processes of restructuring and regulation at a particular time and place. In Namibia, the rise of poorly regulated employment relationships occurred in a context of expanding institutional and statutory regulation of the labour market. Here the temporary employment industry thrives within the interstices left by the limits in regulatory coverage. Nonstandard jobs are premised on a selective decoupling of the employment relationship from statutory, and hence almost invariably also collective, protective measures. The mediating role of the employment agency between the client firm and the temporary labourer allows management to evade or dilute the protections that insulate permanent employees from competitive pressures in the external market. As such, temporary agency employment constitutes both a regulatory ‘fix’ for the dilemmas associated with the deploym...

The notion of 'flexicurity' has recently become a buzzword in European labour market reform. It promises to deliver a magic formula to overcome the tensions between labour market flexibility on the one hand and social security on the other hand by offering 'the best of both worlds'. This article gives a state-of-the-art review on flexicurity. The development of the concept is set against the background of changed economic circumstances in the last two decades. The components of flexicurity are presented in more detail, followed by a review of 'real worlds of flexicurity' in selected European countries, with Denmark and the Netherlands as the most prominent examples. The third section considers the transferability of flexicurity policies across borders. Finally, we concentrate on collective actors involved in promoting the idea of flexicurity at European, supra-national and national levels. We conclude with a discussion of some tensions within and criticisms of the concept.

The paper conceptualizes changes in the labour market and suggests labour market policies/reforms after Slovenia has joined the European Monetary Union. The loss of monetary sovereignty implies that in case of an external shock the labour market is burdened by a large amount of the adjustment process. But to increase flexibility of the labour market requires politically unpopular reforms. At the moment, Slovenia is faced with high inflation and a rigid labour market, which is also a key element of its low competitiveness. The reforms were halted under the pressure of their unpopularity. The paper, although concentrating on Slovenia, has general implications since the experiences of the newcomer to EMU are significant for other transition economies which are expected to follow the same path.

This paper examines the labour market in Macedonia, a country with the highest unemployment rate in Europe. I describe labour market institutions and policies during the transition. I also examine job creation and job destruction using firm-level data and I estimate short-term and long-term elasticities of the labour demand. The analysis shows that there are regulatory barriers to the labour market flexibility. I can also conclude that the privatization of socially owned enterprises has failed to promote job creation. Nevertheless, labour market problems seem to stem from factors other than substantial sluggishness of firms in adjusting employment to variations in wages.

The importance of a country's ‘investment climate’ for economic growth has recently received much attention. In this paper we use a new survey of 1,500 Chinese enterprises in five cities to measure more precisely components of the investment climate and their effects on firm performance. Our firm-level analysis reveals that both ownership and investment climate measures matter for investment, productivity and growth. In particular, firm performance is positively correlated with foreign and domestic private ownership, light regulatory burdens, limited corruption, technological infrastructure and labour market flexibility. In contrast, gains from improving banking access and physical infrastructure are quite limited.

Over the next few years, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic will experience fundamental structural changes in their economies, not least because of their accession to the European Union. The economic adjustment processes that will take place in these countries require a high degree of labour market flexibility. This paper analyses whether the labour markets in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are flexible enough for these processes to take place smoothly. In particular, it discusses the following areas: labour force participation, qualification and regional mobility of the labour force, wage-setting systems and statutory minimum wages, labour taxes, government regulations affecting working time and protection against dismissal, and public job-placement services. The paper reveals that there are impediments to labour market flexibility in all of these areas. It also shows that the specific rigidities vary from country to country, both in nature and in intensity. Comparative Economic Studies (2004) 46, 272–310. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ces.8100026

It is widely held that the social-economic context of the US, characterised by labour market flexibility and deregulation of product and capital markets, lies at the basis of the innovative capacity displayed by the country's productive system in the 1990s, thus accounting for the growth differential with Europe. Starting from a different interpre tative model of innovation and growth, the paper focuses on both supply (institutional and technological) and demand factors. It is argued that, when their interaction is taken into account, there is no strong evidence that more deregulated labour and product markets are among the factors allowing for US growth. In accordance with the view that there is no single road to innovation and growth, this leaves room for the exploration and implementation of policies that might reconcile innovation and growth with safeguards such as those provided by Europe's social institutions.

B ENNER C. (2003) Labour flexibility and regional development: the role of labour market intermediaries, Reg. Studies 37 , 621-633. As contemporary labour markets have become more complex, volatile and unpredictable, labour market intermediaries (LMIs) have played an increasingly prominent role in shaping labour flexibility and regional development. Existing theories of regional development, however, do not adequately account for this prominent role. Using Silicon Valley as a case study, this paper contributes to developing a theory of intermediaries and regional development by highlighting the role LMIs play in three important labour market functions - reducing transactions costs, building networks and managing risk. In doing this, intermediaries play a critical role in shaping the speed and character of labour market adjustment, thus contributing directly to regional development, with significant implications for regional development policy. B ENNER C. (2003) La flexibilite du travail et l'ame nagement ...

In the time of a knowledge-based economy, flexibility has become increasingly important for both employers and employees. The process of making the labour market flexible leads to the greater popularity of atypical forms of employment, with fixed-term employment contracts among them, which are considered to be less consistent with the protective function of labour law in comparison with indefinite- term employment contracts. The right balance between labour market flexibility and job security has become a real concern. Taking into account the legal regulations on fixed-term employment contracts which are now in force in Poland and Switzerland, this paper determines how that relationship has been shaped in those countries with reference to fixed-term employment contracts. W dobie gospodarki opartej na wiedzy, elastyczność staje się istotna dla pracodawcy i pracownika. Dążenie do większej elastyczności na rynku pracy powoduje wzrost popularności atypowych form zatrudnienia, w tym także umowy o pracę na czas określony, które jednak są uważane za mniej bezpieczną formę zatrudnienia w porównaniu do umowy o pracę na czas nieokreślony. W tych warunkach istotnym wyzwaniem staje się zachowanie właściwej równowagi między elastycznością rynku pracy a bezpieczeństwem zatrudnienia. Opierając się na analizie regulacji prawnych o umowie o pracę na czas określony obowiązujących w Polsce i w Szwajcarii, przedmiotem niniejszego artykułu jest ustalenie jak powyższy stosunek został ukształtowany w odniesieniu do umowy o pracę na czas określony.

The labour markets of Australia and New Zealand have been regulated in similar ways, through industrial conciliation and arbitration, since the early 1900s. Globalization and market deregulation generally have led to intense pressure for greater labour market flexibility in both countries. In New Zealand, flexibility was achieved by a radical dismantling of the industrial relations system. What had been essentially a multi‐employer bargaining system was replaced with a system that supported individual employment contracting. In Australia, conciliation and arbitration remained protected by the constitution; however, industrial relations reforms aimed at severely weakening the system were implemented in the 1990s. This paper compares various labour market outcomes across both countries. The trends in both countries are similar despite maintaining different systems. Collective bargaining coverage has dropped. Collective bargaining outcomes have seen reductions in benefits, and significant changes in working time arrangements. Union density has dropped, as also has public sector employment.

This paper argues that the notion of labour market flexibility represents an inadequate framework for understanding the challenges faced by a democratic Indonesia in the post-crisis period. Such challenges entail the need to nourish employment-intensive recovery, developing a credible and cordial industrial relations system and empowering workers to cope with the problems of vulnerability and risk that are inherent in any globally-oriented market economy. The uncritical embrace of labour market flexibility in the pre-crisis period overlooked some inherent problems, such as the failure to develop a coherent industrial relations system. Although labour market flexibility helped prevent a sharp rise in unemployment during the economic crisis, the plummeting of real wages strengthens the case for government interventions in dealing with adverse labour market outcomes.

Subcontracting has been an important feature of British industrial development. External (inter-firm) subcontracting, common in the building trades, transport and engineering, has been represented as an alternative to large-scale direct management. Meanwhile internal subcontracting to skilled artisans has historically constituted an important alternative to wage labour in a wide range of industries such as clothing and textiles, coal mining and quarrying, iron and steel, engineering and the metal goods trades. Understanding this form of subcontracting is central to explanations of changes in the labour process, industrial relations and gender divisions of labour in these sectors. A considerable literature stretching from the nineteenth century has questioned the possible exploitative consequences of such contractual arrangements. While both forms of subcontracting declined from the late nineteenth century, as firms sought to internalize production and management, external subcontracting continued to be important in several sectors such as construction, transport and some engineering-related trades. It is in these industries that subcontracting established its recognizable modern form, with medium and large businesses delegating tasks to smaller firms or individuals. The last two decades have witnessed a renaissance of subcontracting, in the context of corporate moves towards reducing costs by fostering greater labour market flexibility’. The British road haulage industry was transformed between the wars from a primarily short distance service to a major competitor to the railways, due to technological developments and measures that reduced the immediate cost of vehicle acquisition. As an essentially ‘new’ industry in which subcontracting became a key feature, it provides an excellent illustration of the development of subcontracting relations. The industry’s growth was facilitated by freight clearing houses which subcontracted haulage to individual vehicle owners. These intermediaries were crucial in negating barriers to entry in the haulage trade, by arranging hire purchase (HP) for vehicle purchases and co-ordinating payloads. Such inducements attracted considerable numbers of subcontractors into the sector. While recognizing these potential advantages, virtually all commentators on the industry have stressed the highly exploitative effects of its subcontracting relations. The industry’s trade journal The Commercial Motor frequently highlighted abuses, arguing that while ‘responsible’ clearing houses existed, they were in a minority. Most were said to exploit their powerful position over hauliers, especially those drivers who became tied to their services, driving down their rates with ‘a wonderful compound of cynicism and pretended helplessness’. Contemporary and historical academic analysis of road haulage during this period has generally offered a similar verdict without examining subcontracting in any great detail. This article re-examines this conclusion by explicitly focusing upon the relations between clearing houses and hauliers. It uses the framework of transactions cost analysis to explain how clearing houses were able to push down subcontractors’ rates by exploiting privileged information, while using HP arrangements and other contractual obligations to monopolize the subcontractors’ services. Such practices generated persistently low incomes for hauliers, who found it necessary to work excessively long hours in an attempt to stave off business failure. These problems were exacerbated by overcapacity within the sector, which can be partly attributed to the reduced barriers to entry arising from clearing house incentives. In addition, some clearing houses capitalized upon the potential for opportunism provided by contemporary HP contract law, engineering subcontractor default on HP payments to regain possession of vehicles. The article begins by outlining the emergence and form of subcontracting in road haulage. It then discusses the nature and impact of opportunism in the sector, explaining why independent hauliers enjoyed limited earning opportunities outside their dealings with the clearing houses, the significance of their contractual obligations and the role played by HP commitments. The analysis also considers why exploitative subcontracting relations were able to persist for many years, despite being widely recognized by well-informed observers. In conclusion the article briefly comments on the wider relevance of opportunism for the analysis of subcontracting in other sectors.

EU labour markets Effects of greater product market integration European labour markets are in a state of flux due to the changing market situation induced by international integration. This process affects wage formation through more fierce product market competition and increased mobility of jobs. This development is by some observers taken to enforce labour market flexibility, while for others it signals an erosion of social standards and in turn possibly the welfare society. Since labour is not very mobile in Europe, the effects of international integration on labour markets are mostly indirect via product market integration. We review the channels through which product market integration affects labour markets and perform an empirical analysis of the convergence and interdependencies in wage formation among EU countries. We find that integration is changing labour market structures and inducing wage convergences as well as stronger wage interdependencies, but it is a gradual process. Moreover, the present study does not support the view that international integration will lead to a ‘race to the bottom’ and rapidly erode domestic labour markets standards, nor that it will relieve politicians of the need to consider labour market reforms to improve labour market performance. — Torben M. Anderson, Niels Haldrup and Jan Rose Sorensen

Economists' contest on labour market flexibility has quickly pivoted around the stylised trade off between more flexibility and growth on the one hand and increased inequality of income on the other, the welfare implications of this trade off being too often assumed rather than verified. This article uses the essays collected in the Special Issue on Labour Markets and Flexibility in the 1990s of the International Review of Applied Economics to challenge the terms of this trade off as well as the related welfare assumptions. Some of the most popular tenets in the literature are assessed in the light of the evidence and the arguments put forward by the authors contributing to the Special Issue, in particular, the notion that the European labour market is rigid, the contention that more flexibility is imposed by international competition, or that labour market regulation weakens both employment and output growth, the belief that the main welfare cost of flexibility is increased inequality of earnings or the ...

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.

Recent financial crisis has raised questions about the underpinnings and longevity of economic success in Asia, and has reminded us to be sceptical of pundits and the eponymous populist predictions relating to the region. Several perspectives can guide the analysis and evaluation of industrialization, from ‘state’ versus ‘market’, ‘internal’ versus ‘external’, and ‘macro’ versus ‘micro’. Companies in Korea as ‘latecomers’ have pursued ‘catch-up’ strategies. However, Korean corporate capabilities reside in a restricted number of industries, firms and functions (production), and are poor elsewhere, such as in marketing, technology (design and development) and organization, and small and medium-sized enterprises. Furthermore, many factors regarded once as sources of Korea's success are now seen as weaknesses. The future challenges facing Korea include its dirigiste economy, organizational structures and governance, financial transparency and labour market flexibility. While there are undoubted problems, its ...

International competitiveness studies have hitherto mainly been focused on constructing ranking schemes. This article adds to the literature by analysing World Competitiveness Yearbook data in order to econometrically pinpoint the crucial competitiveness determinants for 35 countries. Applying the system GMM panel data estimator to post-socialist (PS) and capitalist countries separately, several conclusions emerge: i) small and medium enterprises are the main competitiveness generator in the PS block (in contrast to large corporations in the capitalist economies), ii) credit rating is highly relevant in both groups, iii) increasing labour market flexibility in PS countries plays a vital role in boosting competitiveness.

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.

This chapter discusses the evolution of the idea of a flexible labour market as a smooth shock absorber in case of asymmetric shocks. The concept of flexible labour markets became an institutionally well-established concept when the OECD constructed its index of labour market strictness. The OECD recognised, however, the weakness of its narrow approach and the European Commission put forward the more novel notion of flexicurity. Next, this chapter explains how the proposal of the concept of flexicurity aims at reaching a reasonable agreement between both the efficiency and the security principles by taking into consideration the interest of all the stakeholders in the labour market, including those who are inactive or unemployed. Further, we provide a wide overview of the various approaches concerning the issue of flexible labour markets. We also develop a thorough analysis of the implementation of the notion of flexicurity in several EU Member States such as Denmark, The Netherlands, Austria and Spain. In the case of Spain, we highlight the few elements of flexicurity contained in the Spanish labour market reforms during the 1980s and 1990s, as well as in the most recent reforms during the 2010–12 period.

There is widespread agreement that employers are seeking more ‘flexibility’ in their relations with labour and that the economic climate of the past 20 years or so has proved particularly favourable to employers as high unemployment and changes in labour market regulations have weakened the bargaining power of trade unions. In this paper, however, I examine the contradictions embedded in labour market flexibility, and some points of leverage for labour, by examining the recent extension of part time and hourly work in the banking industry in Los Angeles. Unlike other industries, which can opt periodically to relocate in order to refashion their employment relations, the viability of the largest retail banks in Los Angeles is tied to their presence and visibility in Los Angeles and other urban centres throughout California. Banks must, in essence, reconstruct their employment relations in situ . To do this, banks have experimented by recruiting a very different labour supply to staff the part time and temporary positions now being created in branches to replace full time positions. This form of external flexibility is generating some unintended outcomes, however, in the form of higher turnover and problems with labour control. By way of conclusion, I suggest that this ‘labour fix’ in Los Angeles may simply reflect the depth of the ongoing crisis in the banking industry, and not its resolution.

This article addresses several issues surrounding the politics of flexibility in Spain. First, it argues that the strategic role of trade unions develop and condition public policies on labour market reform by couching their strategies in terms of the post‐war labour market strategies and structures of the state, especially as governments attempt to move away from established forms of fordist regulation. Hence, second, a broader political and historical perspective is required that understands the complex political dynamics of state‐labour relationships and their structuring over time. The state's role and its labour market presence becomes itself the object of distinct political interventions and calculations by unions, governments and employers. Any discussion of a ‘post‐fordist’ state, determined to increase the flexibility of the labour market, must look at the complex and difficult ‘transitional’ process.

The 1980s witnessed the emergence of the concept “labour market flexibility” (LMF) in industrialized countries as well as in some developing countries. As a consequence of poor economic performance in the early 1980s, the view that the way in which labour markets operated constituted a significant obstacle to economic growth gained support at the level of policy makers, employers in general and, not least, in part of the academic establishment.

Looks at human resource management (HRM) and in particular how it is used in Mexican literature. Also examines the Thatcherite approach, with regard to declining international competitiveness, in seeking labour market reforms to try and realign competitiveness from Asian economies. Labour market flexibility (LMF) and strategic human resource management (SHRM) are posited as having strategic roles in off‐setting employers′ attempts to discard traditional means of collective labour market regulations.

Over the past decades, Spain has experienced an intense process of deregulation of employment, which affects more than one-third of the labour force in this country. Along with work incentives in the form of income maintenance schemes, the deregulation of labour laws manifested the core element of activation strategies in Europe.

There is a widespread perception among the public and policy-makers that EMU carries one-way pressures for enhanced flexibility in the labour market. We discuss the theoretical basis of this by examining four mechanisms through which the establishment of the common currency and the functioning of EMU can impact on the labour markets, both within the Eurozone and of the New Member States. We argue that the theory and empirics of the link between EMU and labour market flexibility are not conclusive, leaving room for varying degrees of, and directions for, the (de)regulation of national labour markets. This discretion is partly reflected in the experience of labour market reforms in the Eurozone. An examination of the institutional framework for employment policies in the EU further corroborates the conclusion that EMU does not restrict, but rather puts on the agenda, the active exploration of policy options aimed at strengthening the resilience and adaptability of the European economy as well as its quality, fairness and competitiveness. We argue that this is no different today, during or after the crisis, than it was ‘before it all started.’

Increasing labour market flexibility is at the top of the European agenda. A new and challenging view is a lack of mobility in the labour market may arise from rigidities in the housing market. The research in this book has been inspired by the intriguing hypothesis put forward by Andrew Oswald that homeownership may be a hindrance to the smooth working of the labour markets, as homeowners tend to be less willing to accept jobs outside their own region. This book brings together leading economists from across Europe to analyse the interaction between housing markets and labour markets. In the EU homeownership rates have been on the increase, often as a result of government policies, making the barriers that homeownership creates in terms of labour mobility increasingly important. This book shows on the one hand, at the individual level, that homeownership limits the likelihood of becoming unemployed and increases the probability of finding a job once unemployed. On the other hand, the transaction costs inherent in the housing market and homeownership hamper job-to-job changes and increase unemployment at the country level. This insight provides a clear policy message to European policymakers: reform in the housing market, aimed at lowering transaction costs and providing less generous subsidies for homeowners could be an effective instrument for reducing unemployment and improving labour market flexibility. Features Provides a comprehensive overview of the effects of housing market institutions on the European labour market Contains clear policy messages at both the country and EU levels of government Looks specifically at the housing markets in UK, France, Spain, and the Netherlands

Like the ubiquitous prefix "post," "flexibility" has become a common buzzword of the 1980s in a wide variety of academic writing. The two are in fact often connected, for the essence of this "post" period - whether postmodern, post-fordist, or post-industrial - is said to be flexibility - flexible specialization, flexible accumulation,' flexible firm, labour market flexibility, the "Age of Flexibility." Essentially, the debate surrounding post-fordism flexibility has to do with the way firms, industries and indeed national economies and world capitalism are restructuring in this era of technological change, heightened international competition and rapidly changing markets.

■ The `varieties of capitalism' school argues that firm-specific skills are more common in coordinated than in liberal economies and that appropriate training is facilitated by employment protection legislation. We compare the level of firm-specific skills across 21 countries with different capacities for labour market coordination. The data provide very limited support for the thesis, showing large variation among the coordinated countries. The results indicate `varieties of coordination', which have different implications for the incidence and consequences of firm-specific skill. Improved operationalization of the skill concept seems urgent.

Firms in the same political economy specialize in the pursuit of the same competitive strategy—so the argument of the competitiveness literature. The reason is that national institutions provide specific input factors which, in turn, are required for that strategy. To test this chain of reasoning, I identify the strategy of pharmaceutical firms in Germany, Italy, and the UK. Contrary to the expectations of the literature, I find that the firms in each economy pursue the same strategy variety. Seeking to understand how deviant firms can compete despite comparative institutional disadvantages, I analyse the importance of diverse labour-market institutions for the provision of particular skill types which, in turn, are needed for these strategies. These analyses show that firms succeed in circumventing institutional constraints at the national level by relying on two functionally equivalent institutions: open international labour markets and atypical contracts.

The European Commission recently introduced the concept of ‘flexicurity’ as a way of combining European competitiveness with the European social model. In this context, Denmark appears as the role model for flexible labour market policy. This model seems to solve the problem that certain types of employment, such as part-time and fixed-term jobs, considered important for the flexibility of labour markets, also harbour risks of permanent market segmentation. Interestingly, current ideas about flexibility echo discussions in Sweden 50 years ago. Historically, Sweden’s public discussion of flexibility has changed, from the 1950s’ focus on labour market flexibility and general, rational labour market functioning, through the 1970s’ employee flexibility regarding working hours, to the 1990s’ flexibility in favour of employers. This shift may have occurred because a managerial perspective took over the flexibility concept from labour and the labour unions. Therefore in Sweden, the concept of freedom of choice has become increasingly attached to the neo-liberal agenda, although it was previously used in trade union rhetoric.

Developments within national systems have also been integral to the emergence of a multi-level system. Most EU countries are characterized by an inclusive structure of multi-employer bargaining at cross-sector and/or sector level. In the face of growing international competition in general and EMU in particular there are two seemingly contradictory developments. The first, which is the focus of Chapter 6, is a widespread trend towards more decentralized arrangements giving management greater scope to negotiate at company level. In most cases, however, decentralization has seen ‘a controlled and co-ordinated devolution of functions from higher to lower levels of the system’ (Ferner and Hyman, 1998: xvi–xvii). Or in Traxler’s (1995) terms, decentralization in Western Europe has predominantly been ‘organized’ rather than ‘disorganized’; the company bargaining occurs within the framework of higher-level agreements. Only in the UK, reflecting the different form and status of multi-employer agreements referred to in Chapter 2, has decentralization been ‘disorganized’, with sector agreements disintegrating and being displaced by company-level arrangements. Second, ‘organized decentralization’ has also involved a strengthening of the national level in many countries. Governments have sought national-level agreements with the social partners — so-called ‘social pacts’ — on wage moderation, greater labour market flexibility and reform of social protection systems.