Suchergebnisse

Since 1984 the local authority in Pitea in northern Sweden has facilitated leave of absence and part-time retirement among its employees. The purpose behind this new policy was to set more jobs free for others to be recruited to It was assumed that the number of replacements would increase through this kind of voluntary reduction of work In the present article some of the results of the Pitea experiment are described The number of cases of granted leave of absence and part-time retirement rose considerably in 1984 compared to the year before The experiment also led to a clear augmentation of vacancies filled by replacements The estimated difference corresponds to at least 22 full-time jobs lasting for a year This means a little less than one and a half per cent of the municipal work force counted in full-time employees At the end of the article two issues are briefly discussed, the consequences of increased labour market flexibility for women and the possibility of drawing general conclusions from the Pitea experience

Looked upon from outside, the Scandinavian welfare states exhibit important similarities with regard to labour market policy. Their governments all do a great deal m response to unemployment and they use the same type of measures for this purpose. Compared with what is regarded as normal in other modern Western nations, large amounts of money and other resources are spent on reducing unemployment or at least the burdens of unem ployment. It may thus seem that there is a Scandinavian model for labour market policy. However, when we take a closer look, we soon find that there are significant differences. The same types of programmes exist m all four countries, but they are applied in very different mixes. The main dividing line to be drawn here is between passive and active measures. We argue that active labour market policies are basically oriented towards commodification of labour power, i.e. the aim is to establish, keep or restore the saleability of labour power m the market. Passive measures, on the other hand, comprise no commodification element, although they are more or less linked to a requirement that recipients take the jobs available in the labour market. However, they generally lessen the pressure upon people to accept job offers from employers and in that sense there is no doubt a decommodifying function. From this perspective we maintain that the Swedish labour market policy contains the clearest element of commodification because it is most pronouncedly oriented towards making labour power saleable in the market. The opposite pole is represented by Denmark, where decommodifying cash benefits play the most important role. Norway and Finland are somewhere in between. For a long time Norway has had very low unemployment and accordingly less strong motives to develop its policy in the one or the other direction, while Finland, although having the reasons, has not put as much emphasis on active measures as Sweden or developed as generous passive measures as Denmark.