Employment and Social Quality

The European Network on Employment and Social Quality (ENEQ-Project)

Phase 1  The Policy Area of Employment Seen From the SQA Perspective: 2000-2005

The European Foundation on Social Quality was commissioned by DG Employment and Social Affairs of the European Commission to apply the first design of the social quality theory to the policy area of employment in nine Member States. This was the result of a number of explorations on general employment topics, published in the thematic issue ’Social Quality of employment.’ It was also an outcome of the European Parliament’s conference on social quality, including the topic of employment, in 2000, the results of which have been incorporated in the book ‘Social Quality: a Vision of Europe’.

The European Network on Employment and Social Quality (ENEQ-Project) could start with scholars from nine European countries. The choice for this policy area was quite clear.  As argued at that time at national and European levels, employment continues to be the most difficult and conflict-ridden part of economic policies and all other policy areas, oriented on relevant aspects of employment. At this stage the ‘social quality approach’ (SQA) was in an early stage. Simultaneously with this European project, the even more extensive European project for developing social quality indicators would start. They couldn’t take advantage of each other. In this project the main thrust of the research concerned the significance of the ‘adaptability-pillar’ of European employment policies. The objective was to elaborate and apply the concept of adaptability to Europe’s labour markets and especially to assess the tension between flexibility in working time and employment security. It referred to first theoretical notions about the conditional factors of social inclusion, and socio-economic security.

The project chose the area of flexicurity as its core focus. This involves the lifelong combination of secure and flexible employment and lies at the heart of the partnership for a new work organization. Ultimately, secure employment comes down to employability, to a worker’s employability throughout her/his career, whether she/he works for only one employer or for more than one. The challenge was to recognize or to determine functional indicators of flexicurity as a domain of adaptability and to link them to the preliminary ideas abut social quality indicators. The procedure was to distinguish between its sub-domains and to choose the indicators to explore the changes in these sub-domains. By applying these functional indicators (or monitoring devices) the research found a rise in flexibility (in terms of contracts and employment conditions and of temporary work) which is not, or not systematically, tied to an updating of the conditions of security (socio-economic security). Furthermore they found that in the post-war era women’s growing participation in the labour market has put increasing strains on the performance of care work (which generally is not taken on board by men). This has highlighted an inherent fundamental inequity and prevents the inclusion of women in other aspects of society (social inclusion). It is society’s collective responsibility to alter the imbalance in traditional societal arrangements and to organize the sharing out of care work, as well as its adequate remuneration and fiscal and societal recognition.

This final conclusion – the question of this fundamental inequity –  paved the way for a new theoretical step, proposed by the participants of the ENEQ-Project. First we should make a distinction between functional indicators (or monitoring devices) to explore policy areas and indicators to analyse the changes in the conditional factors in societies. Second, the latter indicators (thus social quality indicators) are necessary but not sufficient to determine (in a quantitative sense) the nature of social quality in communities. Profiles for a qualitative  exploration of cognitive and emotional aspects – the so-called constitutional factors – are important as well.  Furthermore we need ethical standards – or normative factors – to judge the outcomes of the linking of the quantitative and qualitative oriented explorations with the help of criteria. This new step enhanced the theory of social quality in a decisive way.

Publications on the SQ Employment project

An important characteristic of those involved in the SQA were and still are to develop theoretical notions and to play the outcomes in empirical research, in this case in nine countries. But with the publications of the empirical oriented national reports the project was not completed. Immediately afterwards, all those engaged participated in the far-reaching reflection of the outcomes of the theoretical considerations into the practice. This resulted in 2003 in the comprehensive publication of the outcomes of the ENEQ-Project in the thematic double issue of the European Journal of Social quality, called ‘Flexicurity and Security in Employment’ (thematic double issue), European Journal of Social Quality .

According to the introduction of this document, it may be appreciated as a milestone for the SQA at that time. It immediately hit a European Theme, which was high on the agenda. The idea of the conjunction of various forms of flexibility and security in a new employment paradigm – for which the neologism of ‘flexicurity’ has been coined – is being used by an increasing number of research and policy-making institutions.  Indeed, flexicurity, insofar as it would help to reduce unemployment risks and improve the  quality of daily circumstances of people at work, as well as contribute to the adaptability of labour within businesses, appears to be a worthy aim for employment policies – albeit one that at first may appear to be squaring the circle, and one which needs considerable further clarification. Trade unions at that time especially were very wary of a strategy that appears to accept the inevitability of labour-market deregulation and transferring to the welfare state, in a way or another, the cost of security. This document examines how flexicurity may be a useful way of exploring the present situation and tracing new avenues in policy-making in Europe.

Phase 2:  The Policy Area of Employment Seen From the SQA Perspective: 2005-2015

(Description forthcoming.)

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