Suchergebnisse

Today, there is a widespread suggestion that permanent workers are increasingly subject to precarious working conditions. Due to international competition and declining union density, job qualities of permanent workers are assumed to be under strain. According to proponents of a democratization of risk rationale, low job qualities that were traditionally attached to secondary labour markets are transferred to workers in primary segments of the labour market. In this study, the authors test this theoretical rationale among workers in 11 Western European economies, using two waves of the European Working Conditions Survey. The results do not confirm a democratization of labour market risk. Lower job qualities are highly associated with flexible employment contracts and highlight a clear gap between insiders and outsiders.

AbstractThe current economic crisis is assumed to create new pressures for the welfare state. In this article we investigate to what extent the crisis leads to changes in Dutch welfare state policies and institutions. Usually these changes are operationalized in terms of retrenchment (cost reduction) or restructuring (institutions). We focus, however, on developments in social rights in the hope of gaining better insight into the content and extent of policy change. This perspective combines attention for costs and institutional structure with attention for the content and substance of social rights. We start by analyzing the development of social rights in the Dutch welfare state as a reaction to the economic crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. Consequently, we will analyze current perceptions of social risks and social rights as well as how we think these perceptions will be affected by the pressures brought on by the economic crisis of 2008–09. Using an institutional perspective, we examine the consequences of the current economic crisis for perceptions of social citizenship and entitlement to social risk protection within the welfare state.