Suchergebnisse

AbstractAddressing the social protection of platform workers, the French legislator in 2016 and then in 2019 made moves to incorporate these workers into the general social security regime with regard to certain covered risks (work injury and occupational diseases), and to improve adequacy (enabling possible access to complementary coverage). However, these moves rest on radically opposed perspectives. Rather than reasserting the legal responsibility of the employer vis‐à‐vis workers' health and safety, we see responsibility placed with the platform, but only on a voluntary basis under the aegis of corporate social responsibility. This risks fragmenting social benefits, to be determined by each platform, thus weakening the practices of mutual protection and risk pooling among enterprises and workers that lie at the heart of social security. In doing so, the legislator has broken the link that had as its historic objective the goal of social inclusion and has encouraged in different ways the privatization, or a re‐commodification, of social security in the commercial interest of private insurance companies. Moreover, this has been done using the Trojan Horse of the French labour code. This approach is in contrast to the converging position of international organizations, such as the European Union, International Labour Organization or the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development, recommending that States establish a right to social protection for all atypical workers and non‐salaried workers. Instead of identifying the common challenges that face workers who work for platforms, and offering responses specific to their situation, rather, it considers platform work as one of the new forms of atypical work undertaken by those who may have the status of employee or self‐employed.

Non-European immigrants in an illegal situation in France1 – sans papiers – are considered very differently under labour law and social security legislation. In labour law, they are treated, at least partially, like legally-employed workers. However, the extreme vulnerability of these workers in dealings with their employers can only be remedied by the recognition of residency rights based on their actual employment situation. This is not a controversial legal issue at present in France. As far as social coverage is concerned (health, maternity, disablement, and retirement), illegal immigrants were excluded from the scope of application of social security legislation in 1993 and relegated to social assistance, with all the perverse effects that entailed. The radical change in French legislative policy on the right to social protection for foreigners since 1993, initially by imposing legal residence as a condition for access to social security systems and benefits, then instituting a minimum, continuous residency requirement for access to a reduced 'selection of care, obviously raises the issue of the incompatibility between national positive law and international laws adopted by France.

Employee participation is deemed necessary in the name of good governance and corporate social responsibility. For this reason it forms an essential aspect of legal instruments drafted by international public institutions and aimed at multinational enterprises. Despite this, enterprises clearly prefer to take a unilateral approach in the rules they adopt to implement CSR policies, and an individual approach to employee relations, to the detriment of collective labour relations. CSR thus presents two radically different facets: one of which is favourable to transnational social dialogue, while the other presents firms with an opportunity to regain areas of control over their employees at the expense of public freedoms and fundamental rights. The co-existence of these two aspects of CSR confronts public authorities with the following dilemma: either they allow self-regulation to take its course, and risk seeing violations of international labour law and national legislation, or they intervene in order to ensure compliance with existing international instruments.

Rares sont les idées qui, nées à la fin du XIXème siècle, sont aujourd'hui encore au cœur d'un projet politique dont les fondements et les finalités sont d'une extraordinaire actualité : l'éradication de la pauvreté et du besoin face aux risques de la vie par la solidarité collective, substrat de l'émancipation et de la liberté individuelle. A la veille de son centième anniversaire, l'OIT réitère son engagement en faveur d'une protection sociale universelle socle, de la naissance à la vieillesse. Le défi peut sembler immense quand plus de la moitié de la population mondiale reste à ses marges. Pourtant, dans les Etats émergents économiquement ou en transition politique, la sécurité sociale s'impose non seulement comme un horizon, mais encore comme une amarre solide face aux turbulences politiques, aux mutations économiques et aux carences institutionnelles. La sécurité sociale est certes malmenée. Remise en cause dans les périodes d'austérité, elle est en proie à des défis majeurs qui traduisent, plus que des signes d'épuisement, une crise de la démocratie sociale dans un contexte de globalisation, d'informalisation de l'économie, d'émergence de nouveaux risques et de nouvelles formes de travail, de transformation des modèles familiaux, d'évolution des solidarités, de précarisation de l'emploi, des revenus et des ressources, de la place des femmes dans la société, de migrations internationales…. Mais l'histoire de la sécurité sociale et des modèles qu'elle a engendrés ici et là montre une réelle capacité d'adaptation, d'hybridation et de modernisation, exprimant par là même son extraordinaire plasticité aux contextes sociaux, économiques et politiques. Ainsi la Sécu ne cesse d'être réinventée ! Parce qu'elle permet de mettre l'homme à l'abri du besoin et de combattre les inégalités, la sécurité sociale fait partie des éléments constitutifs du contrat social. En tant que valeur commune pour chaque Nation et, par-delà, pour l'humanité tout entière, la sécurité sociale pourrait contribuer au ré-enchantement du monde pour peu qu'elle soit considérée non pas comme une charge, mais comme une chance pour le progrès économique et le développement humain. Sans rien céder sur l'analyse critique, les auteurs de cet ouvrage, qui viennent d'horizons géographique, disciplinaire, politique, économique et culturel très divers, le démontrent.