Stability, flexibility & security in labour markets? (II)

Abstract

One major shortcoming of most of the literature on flexicurity is however the silence on the importance of the regular stable employment relationship for productivity and security. In the understanding of flexibility that I subsume here, flexibility is the possibility for protected transitions between jobs and between other situations and jobs. While by definition one is protected when in a regular employment relationship, the periods without employment should in many instances be protected. This could be situations of unemployment, in active labour market policy measures, in further training, on maternity and parental leave, etc. But while it is not difficult to imagine that one stays in transit or is “lost in transit” (Brzinsky-Fay, 2006) and accumulates long periods of rotation between only temporary positions, this is no desirable situation from the point of view of security. What have to be developed are good transitions to regular jobs and in a life-time perspective as many as possible should benefit from participation in the regular labour market on regular jobs. Therefore the end-point of a good transition is a regular job of some longevity.