A tale of oversimplification and deregulation: the mainstream approach to labour market segmentation and the recent responses to the crisis in European countries. WP CSDLE “Massimo D’Antona”.INT – 102/2013

De Stefano, Valerio (2013) A tale of oversimplification and deregulation: the mainstream approach to labour market segmentation and the recent responses to the crisis in European countries. WP CSDLE “Massimo D’Antona”.INT – 102/2013. [Working Paper]

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Abstract

During the last 30 years there has been a distinct growth of labour market policies professedly aimed at promoting the creation of employment through the use of non-standard work contracts, such as fixed-term and/or part-time employment or temporary agency work (TAW). In most of the cases, these reforms neither significantly affect the standard, open-ended, full-time contract of employment nor the relevant dismissal regulations. This “flexibility at the margin” approach has now been called into question even by those institutions that had previously advocated deregulation of non-standard and “flexible” forms of employment: the risk, it is now argued, is that workers, particularly young workers, women or workers belonging to disadvantaged groups, are “trapped” in an endless series of precarious, instable working contracts for a considerable amount of their working lives.

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