Fleksibilizacija tržišta rada.

The purpose of this paper is to present flexibilization as a common name for different methods which, in order to increase profit and to keep the competition level, tend to transfer labor costs by diminishing social elements traditionally connected with work as it has been known for decades. The main mechanism to this end is reducing the restrictions and rigidness of labor law, which primarily has a negative impact on the safety of the working place, but also a positive effect on social and labour inclusion of women and elderly persons, who are recognized as hardly employable cathegories of workers. The most flexible labour relations are in the USA, but flexibilization took place first in Europe due to the transformation of the rigid labour laws in 1970s. Because of the trade unions action, the flexibilization in its basic sense, namely the cutting of costs, was transformed into "flexicurity", the system in which the state has taken over some of the social burden from the employers. There is also a detailed classification of the flexibilization methods, either legal or non-legal. Some of the current issues on this topic with respect to Croatia have been analyzed too, since the flexibilization has appeared in several reforms in the field of labor law and social security in Croatia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]