|
Second France/ILO Symposium
The future of work, employment and social protection:
The dynamics of change and the protection of workers
(Lyon, 17/18 January 2002)
GENERAL REPORT
PETER AUER AND BERNARD GAZIER
The idea of holding a series of symposia on "the future of work" arose at a meeting between the French Minister for Employment and
Solidarity and the Director-General of the ILO. It was subsequently included in the France-ILO framework agreement. The aims are to hold
high-status international talks on issues associated with changes in work and employment as a consequence of globalization and technical
change and their impact on social protection and worker security in the industrialized countries, and to promote exchanges between the
academic and political worlds including the social partners. This conference was the second in the series.
The first conference (January 2001, in Annecy) provided an overall view of the changes taking place and the types of measures that might be
taken in response. Although there were a wide range of analyses and approaches, there was general agreement on the need to ensure social
integration and cohesion by giving everyone access to decent work and by establishing a new balance between flexibility and security. The
discussions, equally distant from a belief in the strength of the market forces alone and from blind faith in the "regulate everything" approach,
focused on the details of responsible political action. This first conference ended by stressing that it would be useful to continue such
exchanges between researchers and specialists, social partners and political decision-makers from different disciplines and different countries,
"because today politics has too little time to think" (Juan Somavia) while "better understanding for more effective action" (Elisabeth Guigou)
was needed.
Following on from this, the second conference was entitled "The dynamics of change and the protection of workers".
It took a fresh approach in two ways.
First, its subject and viewpoint: a dynamic analysis of the links between employment, work and social protection. The thinking was therefore
in terms of changes and transitions on an individual level, in terms of the policies applied on a national level, and the need for an integration of
policies in order to address complex problems. The numbers of participants were deliberately kept small, with half of the 70 participants from
France and half from other countries, mainly OECD. They were either well-known researchers or decision-makers, most of them from the
fields of employment, work and social protection policy.
The discussions were organized around three themes.
1. Transitions on the labour market.
2. The links between paid work and household work.
3. The current prospects for collectively managing the developments identified.
These issues were first discussed in small parallel groups, before being examined in three successive full sessions.
A concluding round-table discussion was held on the "Impact of globalization on the economy, the labour market and the protection of
workers", attended by Mrs. Elisabeth Guigou, then France's Minister of Employment and Solidarity, and Mr. Juan Somavia, the Director-General of the ILO.
FIRST SESSION: PREVENTING EXCLUSION AND PROMOTING INCLUSION: TRANSITIONS ON THE LABOUR MARKET
The work here was based on three reports.
Günther Schmid (Germany) looked at unemployment insurance from the point of view of individual transitions on the labour market in a
European context.
Anne-Marie Brocas and Frank Von Lennep (France) looked at access to retirement and focused on transitions within one particular age
group: French workers aged between 50 and 65.
Per K. Madsen (Denmark) focused on active employment policies in Denmark and studied an employment system which is heavily
transition-based.
Four main elements emerged from the work in this session.
1) Towards a better understanding and a better evaluation of the transitions occurring on the labour market
The reports presented described the tangled web of factors that are the cause of "critical" transitions, in other words transitions involving the
risk of exclusion. These range from poor skills to health, housing and transport problems, etc.
The distinction between exclusion and relegation was examined: the first combines poverty with a lack of a social role, while in the
second the granting of a transfer benefit, which may be permanent, is linked to withdrawal from the labour market.
Genuine "grey areas" were identified for certain age groups: since the grey area for young people is already very familiar (the
transition from initial training to employment), the grey area for workers between 50 and 65 was considered in detail. These workers in
transition to retirement may: have taken early retirement, be unemployed and exempt from seeking employment, be covered by a support
programme for the disabled, or still be employed by their firm, but on much lower pay.
2) Public measures affecting transitions on the labour market
Transitions on the labour market can and often need to be the subject of public intervention. Such intervention cannot be haphazard, but
necessarily involves restructuring the systems for the protection of workers and redistributing a whole series of rights and obligations. It
became clear that it could be dangerous or just simply unworkable to develop certain rights or individual freedoms separately, without taking
into account all the possibilities and constraints surrounding them. The failure of the part-time early retirement schemes in France was a clear
example. More generally, emphasis was laid on the risk that changes may have unwanted effects, that pressure will be shifted onto other
categories of people or other fields, and on the risk of stalemate where the existing schemes are based on complex, old compromises that are difficult to alter.
Three examples in particular were discussed, which illustrated how legitimate, but also how difficult, the necessary measures can be.
The continuation and development of training programmes for workers over 40: would they benefit those with a lower level of skills?
The proposal to modulate the way in which pensions are calculated for workers in arduous working conditions and, alongside this, to
encourage firms to progressively limit the number of arduous posts: is there not a general tendency for stress to increase?
Lastly, allowing firms to make workers redundant. Firms in Denmark have a fairly free hand when it comes to making workers redundant,
but this is offset by a high level of public intervention, particularly in the form of active employment policies. In Sweden, the authorities have opted to directly restrict firms' freedom in this field.
The different distributions of rights and responsibilities were thus identified and discussed; their effects should be evaluated overall and from a
dynamic perspective.
3) The key role of the firm and the social partners
The decisions taken by firms and their human resources management policies are all too often dictated by short-term or even very short-term
concerns. Measures need to be promoted upstream, well before the "critical transitions" appear. This is why the social partners play such a
key role.
Far from disqualifying them, the complex nature of the transition processes and the difficulty of managing them in good time suggest that the
social partners need to be involved. New subjects to be negotiated and managed, such as the package of rights relating to training and
mobility, were mentioned. Public employers (central government and local authorities) have plenty of scope to promote "best
practices" in this field.
4) The need to look at transitions on the labour market in a broader and more open context
How can we ensure that the overall effect of the transitions and the measures relating to them is not neutralized or even reversed by shifting
pressure onto other vulnerable groups or other areas, generating inequality and relegation?
The management of the transitions depends first of all on market conditions and the network of institutions governing labour relations and
protecting workers. One question is how regular paid work and voluntary work are linked together. This may be left to the initiative of private
operators and the wide range of contractual arrangements they conclude, with the authorities acting only on certain specific issues. The result
here is a series of huge inequalities in terms of pay, careers and rights. At the other end of the spectrum from this typically Anglo-American type of management, there is the activist and integrated Danish policy, which seeks to stimulate the labour market and make
it as homogeneous as possible. But for the time being it still only partly takes account of the situation of those who are inactive, which is why there are many groups in Denmark who are not working and dependent on public support.
The ambitious idea of "transitional markets" proposed by Günther Schmid includes, in negotiations on mobility, the option of taking part in
useful social activities. This begs a number of questions about how such changes to the rights and obligations on the labour market can be
introduced and managed. However, in terms of political feasibility, the proposed network of mutual obligations has the advantage of being
able to benefit all workers and therefore likely to be supported by them. This report resulted in a proposal to change the unemployment insurance system and the active employment policy into an employment and mobility insurance.
SECOND SESSION: RECONCILING WORK AND FAMILY: AN APPROACH BASED ON LIFE CYCLES/TRANSITIONS
The reports in this session on the links between work and family related to countries in which there is a high proportion of mothers of young
children in paid employment: Denmark, the USA, France and Sweden, all countries which nevertheless have very different institutions
regulating the labour market and different family policies.
Gösta Esping-Andersen (Denmark) used a comparative European viewpoint to propose a new approach to male-female equality. He draws a
distinction between problems associated with the compatibility of work and motherhood and the more general and less specific problems relating to gender equality per se.
Jeanne Fagnani (France) looked at the factors currently operating in France and examined the effects of policies to help the parents of young
children and the consequences of the laws reducing working time.
Dominique Anxo (Sweden) presented a detailed comparison of time allocation and the distribution of tasks within households in France and
Sweden.
Three main themes were discussed in this session:
1) The compatibility of work and motherhood.
There is a striking contrast between the countries of Europe which have developed a number of public policies for families - paid maternity or
parental leave, entitlement to leave if a child is ill, public or subsidized childcare facilities,
etc. - and the USA, where families have to manage on their own and where only those who are comfortably off are in a suitable position to
bring up their children.
However, there are still plenty of problems with the policies in Europe.
In the case of France, the burden of looking after dependants falls largely on women, who are also expected to work variable hours. In the
Scandinavian countries, there are many guaranteed rights for female workers, resulting in high job segregation, with women being
concentrated in sheltered, public-sector jobs.
When it comes to time spent on housework there are much wider inequalities within the couple in France than in Sweden: French women
spend considerably more time on housework than Swedish women. This disparity is linked to the wage inequalities between men and women,
which are more marked in France than in Sweden, and the greater availability in Sweden of opportunities to maintain career continuity across
periods of part-time work and leave.
2) Gender equality
The segregation identified in the Scandinavian countries contrasts strongly with the closer integration seen in the USA.
In Denmark and Sweden, the cost of recruiting a young woman is high
because she has a wide range of entitlements, which encourages private firms to
be discriminatory, statistically speaking, while female employees also exercise
their rights more readily if their colleagues and superiors are also female. This
produces a strong trend towards segregation, although "positive action" policies
and recruitment rebalancing policies are starting to find a foothold in private firms.
The better integration seen in the USA is the result of a strong tradition of
fighting for equal treatment before the law for individual men and women -
provided that the women behave like men and do not mention family constraints.
The most well-educated American women have largely taken advantage of these
opportunities, but usually at the expense of their family life. Women can be made
redundant for refusing to agree to work overtime for family reasons. Taking
poorly paid part-time work that provides less social protection is thus one of the
ways that many Americans use to "reconcile" work and family.
3) How to reconcile work and family?
The discussions mainly focused on the approaches that are currently available.
The Scandinavian policies are one possibility, although they have proved
difficult to transplant. They are complex and expensive, they require an
extremely well-developed social protection system, and they entail the risk of
segregation.
On the other hand, the individual legal equality achieved in the USA
sometimes effectively involves renouncing motherhood.
Another option, which is probably more available but difficult, is suggested
by French experiences and involves combining the development of public or
subsidized childcare facilities with the promotion of reductions in the weekly
working time.
There are disadvantages, however: shorter working time may be offset by
the growth of irregular and atypical hours, making childcare more difficult, if
not impossible. Should this be opposed? It would risk limiting the job opportunities
for young women. Or should we simply accept the trend and compensate
for it? The risk is that the mother and child's biological and social rhythms will
be disrupted.
Given these difficulties, the only "solution" still readily available, and all
too often resorted to, is a reduction in fertility. This has two major disadvantages.
First, it is not what most mothers want, since the majority say they want two or
three children. And it is not sustainable in the long term, since it prevents the
population from being replaced.
The following were among the approaches and solutions discussed:
taking the affirmation of the rights of the child as a basis;
changing career profiles to avoid penalizing young mothers; and
better integration of paid work and unpaid work in social policies: parental
activities, and also training.
Finally, one way out might be to regard motherhood as one of a number of
essential transitions on the labour market. A series of protections could then be
developed in support of motherhood within a wider universal system, including
obligations or opportunities such as military service, jury service, retraining, etc.
There could be a coalition in support of such an approach, since firms would
have less incentive to discriminate, and workers without children would also
benefit from the measures.
SESSION 3: BETWEEN THE MARKET AND REGULATION: DO THE NEW SOCIAL REGULATIONS PROVIDE LIFELONG SECURITY?
The four reports in this session tried to identify the changes that have affected
the ways in which transitions have been collectively controlled over the last few
decades. Focusing on the Anglo-American world and continental Europe, they
found that labour relations were in deep crisis or still undergoing change. The
work therefore concentrated on planning possible ways to reconfigure labour
relations. The panel also discussed the changes needed in the free competition
rules to increase the weight given to social aspects, and the need for a world
social authority.
The first two reports placed the changes that have occurred on the European
labour markets in a broader context.
The report by Marie-Anne Frison-Roche (France) looked at the universal
nature of the need for market regulation, and suggested possibilities for changing
the regulation of the financial or goods markets jointly with the regulation
of the labour market.
Michael Piore (USA) showed how work and employment are being reconfigured
in the USA, in relation to the profound changes taking place in fundamental
institutions like the family, businesses, trade unionism and the State. This
allowed us to measure the gap between Europe and North America.
The next two reports added more detail to the assessment from a European
viewpoint.
Simon Deakin (UK) analysed the crisis in the European employment model
and the solutions suggested to overcome it.
Bruno Trentin (Italy) used his long trade-union experience, including at
European level, to examine the new subjects and forms of collective representation,
action and bargaining called for by the changes that have occurred on the
labour market.
Three points were discussed in detail:
1) Labour relations in deep crisis
The scale of the changes currently occurring should not be underestimated.
They can be seen first of all in the ongoing erosion of the membership and
power of the trade unions in a large number of countries. In the USA, there has
been talk of the collapse of collective bargaining, and the weakened trade unions
are facing competition from new identity groups (such as black and Hispanic
communities). Trade unions in European countries are going through a process
of "corporate disintegration", reducing them to the fragmented defence of
clearly defined interests.
The changes are drawing on trends ranging from the disruption of family
relationships to de-industrialization, the increased use of subcontracting, and the
growth in the range of workers who are neither employed nor self-employed. For
their part, multinational firms are largely able to avoid national constraints.
At a deeper level, we are seeing the fragmentation of the regulating third
party: the intermediaries on the labour market are losing legitimacy and their
ability to mobilize and to conclude agreements, and they now appear to be
defending the interests of particular categories. The growing number of authorities
and viewpoints and the divisions within the trade unions are thus undermining
the legitimacy of the joint or collectively agreed systems.
The previous employment model has been seriously challenged, since it
combined the imperatives of liberating work and protecting workers by generating
an abstract form of occupational status known as employment. Having a
job guaranteed each individual worker and his family a series of protections that
are now proving, as they are called into question time and time again, to have a
much too narrow and inadequate basis.
2) The market economy cannot do without labour law
At the same time, we must not overestimate the changes that are taking
place.
The labour market is not being 'deregulated', as is often claimed. In the
USA, for example, the weakening of the trade unions and collective bargaining
is going hand in hand with the ever-growing importance of judicial protections
and sanctions on the labour market. Whatever the subject: gender equality, eliminating
discriminatory practices, harassment or the prior notification of redundancies
-- the prevailing impression is certainly not that rights are being
withdrawn.
Market relations, as we know, require certain ground rules and trust. The
links that connect the contract with the law and the law with the judge are now
more topical than ever. The legislation concerned is rich and diverse primarily
because of the specific nature of labour relations, which are based on the creativity
and labour of men and women and are required to reconcile the short period
of contractual exchange with the long period of a lifetime and reproduction, as
well as the opposing trends towards individualization and interdependence. It is
also the product of the need for collective relations that balance the powers of
the various operators.
The fragmentation of the regulating third party resulted in two possibilities
being put forward:
referral to and intervention by a judge, whose regulatory ability has partly
replaced that of negotiated agreements between the social partners;
the privatization of the third party through the use of arbitration procedures.
These trends are found at a global level, in a situation where there is a
continuing lack of any central regulatory authority.
3) Solutions explored
The risks presented by the current situation are therefore two-fold and the
result of both anomy (the lack of regulation and disorder), and of hypernomy
(the invasion of controls, prohibitions and sanctions).
A new type of exchange is emerging, between responsibility, freedom and
occupational capacity rather than between subordination and security. This is
resulting in the development of new "credit rights", such as social drawing
rights, which supplement "enduring rights", and the progressive blurring of the
dividing line between these two categories of entitlements. A series of shifts in
the subject of collective relations is taking place: in the USA, the emphasis is on
banning discrimination on identity grounds, in the UK, the debate is dominated
by how "corporate governance" can take account of different interests, while in
continental Europe priorities are shifting towards projects and career pathways.
The following were some of the points that were proposed and discussed:
Refocusing the regulator on his responsibilities, with renewed emphasis on
the substantive rights to be guaranteed to individuals. Contrary to many
current trends towards thinking in terms of procedures, the importance of
substantive guarantees was underlined, particularly regarding working
conditions and the rights to mobility and to reconcile work and family.
Separating the regulator from the operator, which calls into question the
involvement of workers in management.
promoting social market authorities at international level; this point was
examined in more detail. It was proposed to tighten links between the World
Trade Organization (WTO) and the ILO. If an issue discussed at the WTO
raised questions of a social nature, they could be referred to a special body
at the ILO. This would be a way of promoting the figure of the judge, which
is currently the most relevant at global level.
ROUND-TABLE DISCUSSION
The round-table session discussed the question of "the impact of globalization
on employment, work and social protection". Alongside Elisabeth Guigou and
Juan Somavia were Jean-Pierre Rodier (Managing Director of Péchiney), Pierre-
Alain Muet (economist adviser to the Mayor of Lyon), Pierre-Paul Maeter (chief
of cabinet of Mrs. Onkelinx, the Belgian Minister for Labour) and Mamounata
Cissé (Deputy Secretary-General of the ICFTU). The debate was led by
Denis Clerc.
The discussion first looked at good and bad globalization. Bad globalization
neglects social rights and the harmful social effects of globalization,
whereas good globalization takes account of those rights. It was agreed almost
unanimously that globalization needed to have a social dimension and that the
ILO should play a part in this. There was more disagreement about the causes
and the procedures to be followed. On the one hand, there are productivity
requirements that necessarily affect employment. In addition, the risk of running
a business also necessarily involves the risk of failure. On the other hand the
group questioned the preponderance of "social" adjustment when firms were
often badly managed or in debt. In the end it is always the workers who "pay".
So firms need to have greater social responsibility. The State is not hostile to
firms; on the contrary it is aware that firms create jobs. But it takes a wider view
and has to consider the general interest, so it needs to provide a framework for
the activity of running a business in order to make firms more socially responsible.
What is more, the State provides measures that allow firms to make adjustments
that are less costly in social terms.
POSSIBLE EXTENSIONS OF THE SYMPOSIUM: PROMOTING "SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY" AT GLOBAL LEVEL
Allan Larsson's contribution underlined the fact that the work of the symposium
was clearly heading in the same direction as the ILO's Decent Work Agenda.
He proposed three possible extensions to enable the discussions at the
symposium to be channelled into useful guidelines for decision-makers at international
level:
1. The implementation in Europe of the European Social Agenda which
France drew up at the end of 2000 when it held the Presidency of the
European Union. Concerns about the "quality of employment" in particular
were examined and expanded during the symposium, and this information
could add to Europe's employment strategy.
2. The summit on sustainable development to be held in Johannesburg in
August-September 2002 under the aegis of the UN. This is a priority issue
founded on three pillars: the environment, the economy and social conditions
(employment and social protection). Only the first two pillars have
been looked at in detail over the past two years of preparations for the
summit. There is a clear lack of preparation on the social aspects, and
this could be an opportunity for the ILO, drawing on the work of the
symposium.
3. The results of the symposium could be useful to the ILO World Commission
on the Social Dimension of Globalization.
| 
General Synthesis of the Symposium