Transfer 4/2007: Open issue
Description
The annual “open issue” of Transfer covers a series of different issues that are relevant to both academics and trade unionists. In this issue, flexicurity, older employees, gender and quality of work and the marketisation of the public sector are four important subjects covered.
While flexicurity is seen by many European policy-makers as a strategy that can successfully reconcile the twin needs of employment flexibility and security, Andranik Tangian argues that it is an illusion to think that adding flexicurity into employment policy can achieve an equitable balance between the rights and interests of employers and workers. There will be more losers than winners.
Gerhard Bosch and Sebastian Schief argue that measures to increase the participation rates of older workers, agreed by European politicians in 2001, are insufficient. Most European countries need to develop a more comprehensive policy for older employees that respect five key issues: equality, humanisation of work, qualifications, flexibility and motivation.
Alexandra Scheele argues in her article on gender equality that the quality of work is embedded in a capital-oriented strategy where the issue of the quality of work is placed a poor second to the issues of productivity, setting low wages and poor labour rights.
In articles on the marketisation of the public sector, Ole Busck provides an analysis of how the outsourcing of public sector contracts for refuse disposal in Denmark has led to a decline in working conditions, training, pay and safety standards with rival contractors engaged in a race to the bottom in a bid to be competitive. Elsewhere Alan Stoleroff discusses how trade unions have reacted to a revolution in public sector services in Portugal and asks whether the Lisbon strategy’s reference to social dialogue is merely rhetoric when it comes to implementing changes that significantly alter practices and rights traditionally associated with collective bargaining.
Table of contents
Main articles
- Andranik Tangian: European flexicurity: concepts, methodology and policies
- Gerhard Bosch and Sebastian Schief: Older employees in Europe between ‘work line’ and early retirement
- Alexandra Scheele: Gender and the quality of work: an overview of European and national approaches
- Ole Busck: Marketisation of the public sector leads to socially and environmentally irresponsible contracting: the case of Denmark
- Alan Stoleroff: The revolution in the public services sector in Portugal: with or without the unions
- Kristine Nergaard and Torgeir Aarvaag Stokke: The puzzles of union density in Norway
News and background
- Soft law – second best solution or a privatisation of social rights? Some pointers for a future discussion
(Horst Mund and Klaus Priegnitz)
Book reviews
- Andrew Glyn
Capitalism unleashed. Finance, globalization and welfare
(Andrew Watt) - Juri Hälker and Claudius Vellay (eds.)
Union Renewal – Gewerkschaften in Veränderung
(Kathleen Kollewe) - Alain Lefebvre et Dominique Méda
Faut-il brûler le modèle social français ?
(Hedva Sarfati) - Frederik Mispleblom Beyer
Encadrer. Un metier impossible ?
(Kathleen Kollewe) - Frank Gerlach and Astrid Ziegler
Innovationspolitik – Wie kann Deutschland von anderen lernen?
(Jürgen Hoffmann) - Sandra Polaski
Winners and Losers – Impact of the Doha Round on Developing Countries
(Hedva Sarfati) - Dean Baker
The United States since 1980
(Andrew Watt)
Reports
- Europe’s new social reality – does the winner take it all?
‘Europe’s new social reality’, conference held on 21 June 2007, Brussels
(Gerald Klec) - Collective bargaining and decentralisation in Germany
Annual meeting of GIRA (German Industrial Relations Association), Jena, 27-28 September 2007
(Otto Jacobi) - The future of legal Europe
Congress to mark 15 years of the European Academy of Law, Trier, 27-29 September 2007
(Johannes Heuschmid) - 2nd National Congress – ver.di united services union
Leipzig, 30 September to 5 October 2007
(Otto Jacobi and Kathleen Kollewe) - Does it matter who assumes responsibility for social and employment security?
An international workshop, Amsterdam, 27 October 2007
(Hedva Sarfati)
