The Crisis of Labour, Widespread Precarity and Basic Income

2011

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2007

The labour and social laws of the post socialist countries can be described by three basic features, creating a particular composition of labour law regimes. These three main threads, determining the fabric of labour law are: an allergic reaction to the past, together with a carried forward inheritance of the past and finally, these two controversial features mitigated and smoothened by the European accession. Before 1989 the world has been looked upon as divided into two parts: the world of human rights and economic freedoms and the world of social protection and political lawlessness. Of course —now we know— neither the freedoms nor security were not guaranteed to the extent believed on the opposite part of the world, this fact did not change the desires of the people: while peoples of countries of freedoms wished economic security, the eastern countries of paternalistic state-care are were longing for freedom.

2010

An assessment of the “exit” strategies that are proclaimed to get out of the crisis leads to serious concerns that the welfare state will be further demolished and labour laws and social security systems watered down, all in the name of economic recovery. Although several opinion makers and politicians expressed that the crisis could create a chance to reverse the disastrous economic policy agenda that still threatens the financial stability of the European monetary union the main message is nowadays to cut deficits, expenditure and wages. The effect is a continuation of the policy of unequal redistribution of income and profits. Neoclassical thoughts remain to challenge the welfare state.

Monthly Review, 2004

Europe's trade union movement is on the defensive. It is also in a deep political and ideological crisis. At present, the trade unions are unable to fulfill their role as the defenders of the immediate economic and social interests of their members. They have lost ground in all sectors and industries. What was, in the post-Second World War period, the strongest and most influential trade union movement in the capitalist world is today openly confused, lacks a clear vision, and hesitates in its new social and political orientation. Ironically, the same theories, analyses, and policies which gave it its strength in the postwar period have now become a heavy burden. The ideological legacy of the "social pact" is now leading the trade union movement astray.

2018

This thesis is a critical investigation of the ambivalent relationship between the concept of labour and the concept of value creation in immaterial capitalism. The thesis defines this relationship as the labour-capital relation. The relationship is studied by an examining of the historical developments in the transition from a Fordist to a post-Fordist mode of production and the transition from a passive to an active labour policy. As a result, the thesis finds four breakdowns between: Life- labour, common-private, right-obligation, and work-labour – that all point to a form of discrepancy in the capital-labour relation. The thesis claims that these four breakdowns consequently result in precarious working conditions for workers and a weakened bargaining power for trade unions expressed in failed identity politics. The thesis claims that former attempts to cope with precarity and identity politics fail to understand the flexible and immaterial characteristics of contemporary labour and value production. The aim is to illustrate how attempts that either call for fixed employment and stable income (welfare) or quantify and standardise value (workfare) are insufficient. As a result, the thesis suggests looking at a basic income as a structural stable compromise in-between the four breakdown as respectively a – remuneration, compensation, stratification, and decommodification – that all point to a form of ‘third way’ in the capital-labour relation. The examination of basic income is approached on a macro level and not as a concrete application model. The focus is to propose how contemporary production and a basic income together share a critical potential to understand capital, labour and identity in a new way benefitting trade unions and worker rights. As such, the thesis suggests unions and Danish labour market policy to take in a broader recognition of labour and employment not only perceiving wage as predetermined for value production. One of the thesis’ central insights is to understand how production not only should be understood economically, but socially and politically as well. The thesis has for the same reason methodologically engaged with fiction, i.e. constructing a fictive case, as an alternative methodological approach to cope with the wider socio-political infrastructure not applicable in quantitative and qualitative inquiries. The thesis asserts that working with fiction as a form of paradigmatic case provides a certain particularity and generality that is able to open up and provide a language for discussing, in this case, precarity and identity not only distinctive for categories such as workers or welfare recipients but as immanent within life itself.

Development and Change, 2014

The recent upsurge in workers' struggles globally has bought labour again to the forefront, despite predictions that the working class was no longer relevant as a force for social transformation. Neoliberal globalization, with the hypermobility of capital, has led to the emergence of new forms of flexible work/labour, the coexistence of old and new working classes, and an extreme rise in inequality, realigning class structures nationally and globally. Financialization has ushered in a new regime of accumulation and there is a deepening crisis of reproduction. Can a Marx plus Polanyi theoretical integration capture contemporary dynamics of capitalist globalization and the role of labour? What do the trajectories of such struggles in the South tell us about the limits and potentialities for a counter-capitalist movement? More crucially, is the route to full social citizenship entitlements still possible via employment (with its further extension universally), or is it to be reached by directly demanding citizenship rights, bypassing labour-based demands? How do recent collective actions express workers' interests/identities as workers, citizens and consumers? What role is the state playing in responding/mediating/facilitating these struggles? The Introduction delineates some of these contentious issues which frame this Forum Debate. The contributors all offer different perspectives and critical insights on the connections between forms of labour, possibilities for action and organization, the relationship between labour struggles and social citizenship and the role of the state in contemporary capitalism. The conclusion reflects on some of the equally controversial proposed alternatives and argues for going beyond minimalism and for the imperative of radical rethinking to ensure dignified work and full social citizenship entitlements as part of a new social emancipatory political project. Many thanks to the Development and Change Editorial Board for critical and constructive comments, and to Paula Bownas and Friedl Marincowitz for support and efficient handling of the Forum Debate.

Critique, 2003

British Journal of Industrial Relations, 2009

This is a very substantial compendium, in three volumes comprising a total of 70 papers featuring 82 authors. It comes at the very substantial price of £450 for the set. It follows the format now well established by the publisher, Edward Elgar; with this new set, their International Library of Critical Writings in Economics reaches number 207, with many further volumes in preparation. The publisher clearly must perceive them as serving a profitable purpose. This is hardly surprising as the costs of preparation will be slight-essentially the editorial work, plus requesting copyright clearance, as all the papers are replicated exactly from their original source. Largely without exception, the papers have appeared in leading economics journals within the last 20 years. Few potential readers will not have access to these in electronic archive. The justification for library (or individual) purchase of the set must therefore be in the insights gained from the editor's selection and its structuring, along with the editorial commentary on these. The declared purpose is 'to provide the reader with a "feel" for many of the more important recent contributions in labor economics, as well as convey the excitement of the modern labor literature'. This is an objective which any teacher on an advanced course would certainly share. With labour now firmly established as one of the most active and densely populated fields of economics, it is a particularly ambitious objective. 'Recent' contributions are being interpreted as from the last 20 years (the only outlier is the seminal paper from 1984 by Lazear and Moore on the rising tenureearnings profile as an incentive device). This precludes contributions from the field's various Nobel Laureates including George Akerlof, Gary Becker, Michael Spence and George Stigler. Arguably, their intellectual contributions are appropriately represented through the inclusion of work building on their insights, notably the complete section on human capital. Nobel prizes always excite, but it is left to the reader to speculate which, if any, of the selected contributions will come to be seen as having definitively shaped the content or methods of labour economics. More generally, the balance of authors across the selected papers is curious. The leading contributor to Recent Developments in Labor Economics, by a substantial margin, is John Addison, the editor, with nine included papers; the next most frequent, authoring five papers, are Pedro Portugal (three co-authored with Addison) and Barry Hirsch; followed by Dan Hamermesh and Steve Machin with four each;

Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 2014

This introductory article to the special issue proposes that proponents of the European marketization project need to give serious consideration to the negative externalities that are created by virtually all moves to extend the scope of markets. The theme is applied particularly to the case of the labour market and its special characteristics. Attention is given to tensions between the idea of 'flexicurity' and policies designed to deal with the Eurocrisis. The former recognized that, if workers were to accept the potential job losses implied by labour market flexibility, they needed certain reassurances of security, such as generous unemployment pay and further training. The policies imposed on the debtor countries involved in the crisis have removed most such possibilities of security. The theme of coping with the negative consequences of intensifying markets is also used to introduce and integrate the remaining contributions to the special issue. Ré sumé L'article liminaire de ce numéro spécial suggère que les partisans d'un projet européen axé sur toujours plus de marché devraient prendre sérieusement en considération les externalités négatives créées par quasiment toutes les initiatives visant à élargir le champ d'action du marché. Ce thème s'applique en particulier au cas du marché du travail avec ses caractéristiques particulières. L'article se focalise sur les tensions entre l'idée de « flexicurité » et les politiques destinées à affronter la crise européenne. La flexicurité suppose que, pour que les travailleurs acceptent les pertes d'emploi potentiellement impliquées par la flexibilité du marché du travail, ils doivent pouvoir bénéficier de certaines assurances en termes de sécurité, comme des allocations de chô mage généreuses et une formation complémentaire. Les politiques imposées aux pays débiteurs victimes de la crise ont supprimé une grande partie de ces dispositifs de sécurité. La question des conséquences négatives de l'intensification du jeu du marché est également abordée pour introduire et intégrer les autres contributions de ce numéro spécial. Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag führt in das Thema dieser Ausgabe von Transfer ein und argumentiert, dass die Befürworter des europäischen Vermarktlichungsprozesses sich ernsthaft mit den negativen