Employment and Citizenship in Britain and France

John Edwards, Jean-Paul Revauger

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138730748
• eBook ISBN: 9781351745758
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Volkswirtschaftslehre
• Subtopic: Wirtschaftsbedingungen

This title was first published in 2000: One of the most significant features to emerge in the world of work during the past decade has been the change from long-term employment, often with one employer, to a pattern of short-term, flexible working arrangements involving short-term contracts, frequent spells of unemployment, rapid movement into and out of employment and greater labour mobility. This text examines the social and economic consequences of this employment flexibility. The book derives from the 2nd Anglo-French Conference on the Transferability of Social Policy held in 1998, which focused on the problems created by employment flexibility and the appropriate policy responses, it also presents commentaries on the consequences of flexibility in Britain and France. It brings together British and French perspectives on such policy questions as the impact on families and their ability to plan in an atmosphere of economic insecurity, the manner in which French and British welfare systems are adapting, the impact on citizens' rights, the need, in both countries, to make pension arrangements more adaptable, and the potential for a "European citizenship" approach to the problem.

1 Introduction

JOHN EDWARDS

The European Employment Summit held in November 1997 in Luxembourg, formulated for the first time, a European employment agenda. The product (as no doubt was the intention) was less of an employment policy than an attempt to formulate a common approach (or perhaps even more loosely, 'flavour') to the way in which increasingly inter-connected employment markets might develop. Since national markets could no longer operate in isolation from one another, the direction that enforced inter-connection took them ought at least (so it was felt) to be given some steer.

If there was one core theme to the new employment approach, it was that of 'flexibility'. This may have been an acknowledgement of the inevitable insofar as elements of flexibility had been entering national (and international) employment markets for more than a decade but what the summit did was to articulate these trends for the first time and to attempt some more coherent approach and some agreement on what aspects of flexibility were 'desirable' and which were not.

'Employment flexibility' can mean a multitude of things, and comes in a variety of forms from 'lifelong education' for a workforce that needs constantly to adapt its skills to changing demands, to the use of interchangeable skills, an increase in contract employment, short-term employment, self employment, low paid and marginal employment, and more intra- and inter-state mobility for employment purposes.

Change is gradual but the social and economic consequences of growing employment flexibility whether integrated and harmonised or left to the free play of the employment market are likely to be considerable. And they constitute as yet uncharted territory. We know something of the economic imperatives behind the development of more flexible labour markets (but we need to know more), and, as some of the essays in this volume show, we have some understanding of the changed nature of the relationship between people and state that the idea of flexibility has brought about. But what is of equal concern (and is reflected in the following essays) is the nature and extent of social and economic insecurity that comes in the wake of employment flexibility. Most employees in all fifteen EU countries still hold long-term jobs with steady pay and make only relatively infrequent job moves during their working lives. However, an increasing number and proportion (but with large variations between countries) are either self-employed or hold jobs that do not last for long - having been engaged to fulfil a particular task or been given a fixed term contract. Their employment experience (and their livelihood) is often tenuous and uncertain and the future may have a habit of drawing-in, so that it stretches no further than the sight of the next job. The situation is ameliorable of course. Those capable of doing so can retrain (and re-retrain), gaining a bigger portmanteau of skills so to be more marketable (flexible or adjustable). Or they can be more mobile and widen their job search area, crossing national boundaries if necessary.

The consequences of this increasingly common pattern of employment are heightened levels of social and economic insecurity. Foremost among the economic (or more exactly, financial) consequences will be the increased difficulty of accumulating pension rights through a multiplicity of jobs and employment. Socially, there is the personal and family insecurity that follows from short-term futures and the inability to plan (both financially and socially). And much of this (along with the psychological effects of enforced shortened horizons) is as yet scarcely known or understood. Some of the territory that the following essays encroach upon has been partially surveyed and there are data and some information to draw on; other parts allow of only conjecture. The essays reflect this variable terrain, some speculative, others analytical, but together they throw some light on a phenomenon which will almost inevitably have a telling impact both on individual and family life and, at a different level, on the relationship between citizens and states.

The essays brought together in this volume began life as contributions to the Second Conference on the Transferability of Social Policy held in Aix-en-Provence in September 1998, organised jointly by Royal Holloway College, University of London and the University of Provence Aix-Marseille 1, the focus of which was the nature of, and the problems created by, employment flexibility and the appropriate policy responses. As with the first conference on policy transferability, the emphasis of the chapters in this volume is on policies and problems in Britain and France. They are not, however, and nor are they intended to be, comparative as between the two countries (though comparisons are, on occasion, inevitable). The underlying theme of policy transferability is better served not by (often mechanistic) comparisons using terminology that frequently has no common meaning or sense, but by gaining a better understanding of what flexibility - but more particularly - the consequences of flexibility mean in the two countries. The point here is that descriptively speaking, the impact of increased flexibility may appear to be quite similar in France and Britain, whereas, how it is felt by individuals and families may, for a variety of reasons (but not least cultural ones), be different. (Community, extended family, friendship networks, church membership for example, may provide reassurance and support in times of financial and social insecurity in one country but their relative absence in another may expose those who have experienced employment flexibility to heightened levels of insecurity and isolation). Likewise, when we consider policy in relation to flexibility and its affects, we need to recognise the social and political milieu in which these policies are formulated and implemented. At the most basic level for example, we have no reason to assume that the same value is attached to flexibility in both France and Britain and insofar as flexible labour markets can be promoted by public policy, this different evaluation may result in quite different perceptions of the need for a policy response. And policy to ameliorate the effects of employment flexibility (by, for example, creating new ways of accumulating pension rights that take account of the increasingly fissiparous pattern of employment over a working life) will be affected, in the earnestness of their inception and in their content, by the relative weighting that each country puts on the benefits of flexibility on the one hand and the amount of insecurity created on the other. If for example, it is thought acceptable or inevitable that the costs of economic and technological change should lie where they fall, any ameliorating policy response may appear to be otiose. It may on the other hand, appear to be a matter of some importance, and urgency, if value is placed on the welfare and security of individuals and families or if the consequences of flexibility are such as to alter the nature and status of citizenship and the relation between state and citizen in a way that appears deleterious to the worker and his or her dependants.

All these dimensions of flexibility and its consequences are such as not to be easily amenable to comparison between countries. Comparison is possible of course but what the ensuing chapters recognise is that it must be multi-dimensional and must recognise the cultural and linguistic differences within which the phenomenon and policy responses to it, are embedded.

The substantive chapters that follow have been grouped into three sections, though by their nature, they do not easily conform to any precise categorisation. The first section, covering topics under the rubric 'State, Society, and Employment' contains five chapters, most of which by happenstance, are by French contributors.

Révauger begins the substantive chapters with a broad canvas approach to flexibility in which he sketches the increasing trend of employment flexibility and its consequences as generating a process in which a number of players including governments, the European Union, political parties and trade unions are engaged in searching for, and establishing a new 'social settlement' or set of arrangements for negotiating the varied interests at work in the labour market. Employment flexibility for Révauger, is more than a shift in employment relationships from (relatively) long term allegiances between employers, employees and unions to short-term de-unionised and fragmented employment relationships. Rather, it is part of a longer term trend which may result in a very different settlement between the parties in the labour market and, in consequence of this, a re-alignment of political allegiances and interests. It may not happen soon, but if flexible labour markets were to become the norm, the emergence of new social settlements drawn along new lines would appear to be entirely plausible.

As a means of structuring the argument, Révauger identifies a number of components or types of flexibility. The principal distinction lies between internal and external flexibility where the former refers to changes within a company or organisation and the latter to changes in the outside employment market environment. A second level of distinction is that between qualitative and quantitative flexibility. External flexibility can only ever be quantitative whereas internal flexibility can be either quantitative or qualitative. Three general types of flexibility therefore result: external quantitative, internal quantitative and internal qualitative. This typology (which seems to have gained a fairly general recognition) is of value in trying to make sense of the forms that flexibility takes but more importantly in clarifying the complex interaction between flexibility and the complex of interacting components not just in the employment market but in employment structures and sectors more widely. It is this more complex set of interactions that Meyer takes up in his chapter which also brings a number of different countries into the frame. Employment flexibility, Meyer argues, is not a process that affects employment markets, sectors and structures in a uniform and passive manner. Rather, it interacts with them in complex ways and in ways that differ from one country to another. For example, it impacts on male and female workers differently in different countries; its impact will vary as between different employment sectors (service, managerial, manufacturing, administration) and these in turn will differ from one country to another. And, to the extent that greater flexibility is deemed desirable (as, for example, a counter to increasing unemployment), the relative balance that it takes between its three forms will also vary from one country to another. And these differences are nowhere more noticeable says Meyer than between Northern and Mediterranean European countries. The outcomes of increasing employment flexibility therefore, whether intended or by happenstance, will nowhere conform to the Luxembourg Summit pattern, and the idea that there can be a uniform or even common policy response to it is wholly unrealistic. Flexibility may be a common phenomenon in European employment markets, but the consequences of its interaction with employment sectors and structures will be highly varied.

Capet examines the idea of flexibility (in its more general sense) in historical terms taking in the work of Adam Smith, Malthus and Ricardo. He shows that whilst there are no precursors in any precise sense to the modern idea of employment flexibility and its intended and unintended consequences, the idea itself has long had standing in economics. The meanings and nuances have changed but the basic idea of a tenuous and fragile link between the employment market and those who seek work in it is of long standing. In bringing his story up to date, Capet traces the idea of employment flexibility through post war Conservative and Labour government policies in the UK and then, concentrating on Labour party manifestos during post-war years, he demonstrates how rhetoric has changed as the party has come to accept the idea, to the present day when 'new' Labour appears to have embraced flexibility in the service of a modern competitive economy.

If there is one sector of employment that is less well known and less well researched than any other, it is what in France is referred to as the cultural occupations or industries. It is a sector unlike most others and though its nature and composition vary greatly between countries, its main peculiarities are common as Dreyfuss and Marchand illustrate. It is a sector of employment (and self-employment) that is more varied than any other (being as broad as the arts themselves and with all the accoutrements of business added on). Its product takes many forms - some quite tangible such as paintings or photographs and sculptures; others, of a transient nature as in the case of performance art. And most distinctive is the relationship between the producer and the product. In no other sector can the maker of a product be so intimately involved in, identified with, or connected to, the product itself (indeed, they are, on occasions, indistinguishable). Given these peculiarities of the cultural occupations, it is not surprising that they tend to get relatively little attention as sectors of employment and self-employment to be compared with manufacturing, the service sectors, education, banking and so on. Yet, many people do earn their living in cultural occupations and they are as subject to the vicissitudes of the employment market as workers in any other field (indeed, as Dreyfuss and Marchand show, they are more at risk than people in most other sectors).

Fragility and insecurity of employment have also been a feature of the cultural occupations for longer than other employment sectors (as the history of the search for patronage attests), but the nature of this insecurity has changed in a manner that has often been dictated by the way in which the product of 'cultural' activity is marketed and as Dreyfuss and Marchand argue, the manner in which the cultural product is marketed may be such as to 'alienate' the producer from the product of his or her creative activity. There may therefore develop a complex interaction between the creation and marketing of a cultural product and the 'quality' of the conditions of employment and self-employment.

There is another theme that the authors of this chapter develop which attempts to iink the nature of employment flexibility and insecurity in the cultural occupations, to the development of complex sets of allegiances and social movements including the taking of proxy social action (such as street demonstrations) on behalf of other groups of workers. There is, so the argument goes, little allegiance on the part of cultural workers to the job as such (which may be a tenuous, short term, and poorly paid arrangement offering little or no security). Such allegiances as cultural workers have therefore are more likely to be to the cultural product and to ideas and ideologies. And hence the link to new social movements. As Dreyfuss and Marchand argue the case, and despite the fact that some of their data derive from fieldwork in Great Britain, it is clear that this is a very 'French' analysis and that the picture they draw relates more directly to France than to Britain (or indeed, most other European countries).

The chapter by Cutler and his colleagues focuses on Britain. Their concern is with the relationship between labour market flexibility and deregulation on the one hand and welfare state retrenchment on the other. The combination of these, the authors argue, will lead to greater 'modernisation' in social and economic policies. The question that this development then poses is whether 'modernisation' will, in its turn, deliver more security or alternative routes to more security (alternative that is, to long term employment) or whether it will in effect create yet more insecurity. Flexibility and insecurity create new welfare demands (and not least of course, in the field of pensions); response to these will require changes in the welfare system and if this system proves to be too rigid to deliver welfare in modified forms, then a more radical realignment many be necessary. Hence the move towards modernisation with its emphasis on private sector involvement in welfare delivery. Cutler and his co-authors focus their analysis on two areas of welfare provision - pensions and health care and on policies in respect of both by Conservative and Labour governments. They argue that 'modernisation' in welfare policies shows no political or ideological divide and that both Labour and Conservative agenda bear close similarities (as evidenced for example by Labour's formulation of citizenship as being increasingly tied to work and by the growing emphasis on 'welfare to work'). Whichever party was in power, therefore, the prospects for insecurity would look very similar. And the prospects of modernisation the authors show are an increased potential for insecurity in both pensions and health care. When employment flexibility is located in a context of welfare state retrenchment therefore, its negative effects appear to be exacerbated.

The four chapters that make up the second section focus more narrowly on the question of economic security and how it can be maintained or created in circumstances of employment uncertainty that is the product of flexible labour markets.

One significant component of employment flexibility that perhaps gets less attention than others is the geographic mobility of workers to find employment or improve their employment prospects. When such movement involves cross-national boundary flows within Europe - as is increasingly the case - it creates complications for the social security standing of migrants. Nationals of one country who move to another may find their eligibilities for benefits of a variety of kinds changed or eroded or made less definitive. This is the territory that Pylypiw explores in her chapter on the transfer of entitlements. One might be forgiven for assuming, says Pylypiw that in a single market with (in theory at least) free movement of labour, social rights would be transferable across national boundaries, that benefit levels would be standardised and that cross-boundary movement for employment purposes would not compromise either entitlement or amount of benefit. Such, of course, is not the case. Pylypiw identifies national differences between member states of Europe on two dimensions. Firstly, there are variations in social rights and entitlements and levels of benefit as between member states. Secondly, there are variations in entitlement (and in entitlements in different countries) as between different categories of employment migrant. In combination, these variations in entitlement make for a very complex and bureaucratic system of benefit transfers such that, as Pylypiw shows, employment mobility even in the single market, can put migrants at considerable risk of insecurity. The picture therefore, is contradictory. If the vaunted benefits of employment flexibility are to be a reality, then employment mobility, as one of its key components, must play its part. But employment mobility it seems, contains in-built disincentives; to be mobile is to increase your welfare insecurity in the present and into the future.

Common to several of the contributions in this volume that include some coverage of flexibility and related matters in Great Britain, is some mention of the manner in which the (present) Labour government has put an increasing emphasis on the status of work (being gainfully employed) as the basis of citizenship. It is being in work or having spent a lifetime in employment that is becoming the defining characteristic of the citizen. Being 'unnecessarily' on welfare on the other hand is to be less than a fully participating citizen. The same set of ideas form the defining context for Hancock and McCreadie's chapter on the function and efficacy of pensions in the domain of employment flexibility. The main thrust of their contribution is an examination of the relationship between increasing flexibility and the efficacy of different types of pension provision in ensuring economic security in old age. New proposals for pensions in the UK to replace or supplement occupational pensions which are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain with the growth of flexibility, put more emphasis on what are known as 'stakeholder' pensions, provided by the state in (increasing) partnership with the private sector. Purchasing stakeholder pensions of course requires the ability to purchase (some proportion) of the pension in the private sector which in turn requires a steady income stream - just what might not be forthcoming in a flexible labour market. As Hancock and McCreadie note therefore, the new proposals reinforce a lifetime's paid work as the route to an adequate retirement income and as such are ill-conceived to meet the demands of flexibility.

Hill's chapter is a complement to that of Hancock and McCreadie, dealing as it does with pension reform and its compatibility (or non-compatibility) with an adaptation to employment flexibility. He scouts slightly different territory however in using as his starting point the World Bank's model of pension provision, identifying the three pillars of pensions management in the public, private and voluntary sectors where both public and private pillars would be mandatory (which is not the case at present in either France or the United Kingdom). Hill also, however, turns his sights on the 'demographic time bomb' debate and the manner in which it has been conducted. He is sceptical of some of the claims made in this debate, particularly as they have been made to relate to the question of dependency rates and pension provisions and more especially as the threat of the demographic time bomb has been used to press the case for the mandatory use of the private pillar of provision.

Hill makes a three-pronged attack on 'time bomb' arguments. He cites data to show that the case has been much exaggerated. Secondly, he argues, even if the demographics were to be correct and we are indeed facing a serious dependency problem, it is far from clear that mandatory private sector...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• PART I: STATE, SOCIETY AND EMPLOYMENT
• PART II: EMPLOYMENT UNCERTAINTY AND ECONOMIC SECURITY
• PART III: CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS AND EMPLOYMENT SECURITY
• Bibliography