D. Méda What securities for a reciprocal conception of flexicurity ?

1. D. MédaWhat securities for a reciprocal conception of flexicurity ?

2. Crisis An opportunity to cast a retrospective glance at practices that have been developped in the name of activation and flexicurity

3. Main issues : - Have these policies improved the security of European citizens or made their situation more precarious? - Have they been the reply that Europe needed to constitute a pole of reference relating to the quality of products and living conditions ? • Or have they run the risk of turning Europe into an area characterised by low wages, middle-of-the-road skills, a low level of innovation and vast inequality?

4. PLAN The discourse on activation policies and flexicurity has accompanied a change in the paradigm and in practices throughout Europe What securities do we need to develop a reciprocal conception of flexicurity and make of Europa an area of high quality of employment and life ?

5. How old securities were challenged

6. Old securities implemented by the welfare state were based on full employment and on the coordination or the integration of several general policies

7. - Keynesian economic policy had been subject to widespread definitive criticism ; - Social protection was conceptualized as a cost and even as a danger for the whole economy ; - Rules relating to employment protection legislation have become a focus for criticism : they prevent the positive schumpeterian process of creation/destruction

8. - Globalisation was the pretext to abandon the old conception of the security. - Speed has become a key characteristic of this new world order. - Nation states and their enterprises must therefore ‘adapt’ if they wish to continue trading and surviving

9. The flag-bearers of the rhetoric of activity and flexibility • supply-side economists ; • OECD ; • sociologists and of university teachers who have been close to governments.

10. During the eighties the word flexicurity isn’t yet used. But there is the coexistence of the need of activation (expenditure, social policies, individuals) and the willing to improve the level of skills. • Big ambiguousness of the term of activation : activation policies / active labour market policies

11. 2 regimes or models of activation ? • Universal social democrat model versus liberal model ? The first aims to improve the skills and capacities, the other to lead back as quick as possible to the labour market. • is it still true ? Is there a convergence during the 2000s ? • Sweden and Denmark continue to present a different profile of labour market expenditure from that in other countries

12. Labour market policies, active expenditure, training, % of GDP, 2005 Source : Eurostat

13. conditions for eligibility and the conditionality of benefits have been reinforced, • controls and penalties have increased, • the use of private operators has grown, • managerial techniques that involve passing unemployed workers and minimum allowance beneficiaries on to paid-by-performance private providers have been used more widely, • systems for carrying out experiments and assessments have been developed.

14. increasing incidence of interviews as the period of unemployment lengthens, • establishment of contracts and of individualised action plans with rights and duties, • stricter definition of the supply of suitable employment. The criteria which allowed unemployed people to refuse a job in Sweden were withdrawn in 2007

15. In France in 2007/2008 : • Reform of « suitable job offer » • Reform of the Public employment service • Reform of the social income (RMI)

16. What evaluation can we make of these policies ?

17. How to assess the activation policies ? • How is quality of work measured ? • What is the link between activation policies and the improvment of quality of work ? • How might we measure the potential loss of productivity ?

18. II. What securities do we need to develop a reciprocal conception of flexicurity and make of Europa an area of high quality of employment and life ?

19. Is flexicurity still a reasonable, sustainable objective ? • Do we need to make work contracts more flexible ? • Is it possible to develop flexibility and security at the same time ?

20. Four dimensions of security : • “job security” ; • “imployment security” ; • “income security” ; • “combination security” .

21. « Employment security » is better than « job security », which is often linked to strong EPL however « job security » is one of the main condition of employability

22. “Income security” = the replacement rate of the income is high enough and the benefit is paid during enough time to allow the job seeker to get a new job without too much stress however these elements are considered as disincentives to a quick return to work

23. Do we really need a reduction of employment protection legislation ? - methodology of the index of strictness of EPL ; - no increasing of the risk of facing legal proceedings - interpretation of the success of Danish model

24. Passing from a conception of security based on job protection to one based on the protection of people involves equipping not only people, as the Commission points out, but also equipping the markets

25. The unbalanced development of security and flexibility

26. The common principles of flexicurity are based on the idea of ‘reliable and responsive life longlearning strategies’ to keep the skills of workers up to date especially those of the most vulnerable workers’. But none of the objectives planned in the ‘Education and training 2010’ – neither leaving school too early, nor the number of people leaving the education system with no skills, nor adult access to training while in employment – has been achieved

27. Esping-Andersen : • the main risk in our society now is a lack of skills • We need of a genuine investment • this investment must cover all individuals and constitute the responsibility of the state. • this investment must be made mainly during childhood

28. Active and passive expenditure : • Replace passive measures by active measures ? • Or add new measures to prevent new kind of risk ? • How make the arbitration between short and long term ? How distinguish between consumption and investment ? • Is it desirable to have a specific treatment for this kind of investment ?

29. Two conceptions of activation Strict conception : • Reduction of social expenditure that does not incorporate an incentive to return to work ; • Opposite of the original version of active labour market policies. • Disastrous long-term consequences : worked seen purely as a duty; people seen as lazy individuals who, like animals, need incentives to return to work; the development of bad, low-paid jobs; and the dangers of a massive stagnation of skills and a Europe marked by precariousness. Broad conception : • All the resources that enable all citizens to stay at work, to find work and possibly even quality work • Take into account the factors that prevent people from finding employment or staying in employment and even prevent people from finding better jobs and achieving higher output.

30. Factors which have been taken into account : • health problems, • lack of childcare and services for dependants, • Lack of basic education, skills and qualifications, • Bad working conditions, • poor housing, • inadequate transport, • low substitution income, • absence of macro-economic policies for supporting demand and of fiscal distribution policies…

31. The policies and the securities for which an “investor social state” is responsible : - a very high-quality childcare system - a major reform of the education system - a secure transition between school and employment • the development of systems that enable workers to see training as a natural option ; • re-training programmes ; • Anticipation of restructurations; • Improvement of work conditions in order to make work more sustainable and more suitable to people’s aspirations • Macro-economic and fiscal policy

32. … in the respect of a sustainable Europe Production is not a society's main objective, GDP is not an indicator of well-being any more than it is an indicator of progress. Take into account the social health of our societies as well as of changes to their natural heritage. Grow the capacity to allow all individuals to find the conditions in which they can achieve self-realisation.