Employment policies and the role of the state in labour markets

Authors

  • Διονύσης Γράβαρης

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26266/jtovol3pp3-36

Keywords:

Employment policies, Welfare state, Labor market, State intervention

Abstract

In the present period of crisis of the welfare state, employment policies and the role of the state in the labour market, in general, undergo profound transformations. The latter are manifested both in the rationality and in the very content of these policies. Thus, with regard to their foundations the employment policies appear to be disconnected from the previous macro-economic «environment» of the keynesian economic policy, while at the same time they seek the reasons for their legitimacy from a purely micro-economic rationality. Within this context of crisis, employment policies appear to pursue two dinstinct aims and, accordingly, to take two dinstinct forms. The first, corresponding to what has been called «passive/traditional» employment policies, includes interventions and arrangements guaranteeing cash benefits for the unemployed. This form of employment policies is characterized by certain antinomies with respect to the ethico-political principles which regulate both the methods of their financing and the scope of their application. These antinomies notwithstanding, within the whole set of state interventions in the labour market this form is of a residual nature, threby indicating that theiw role qua social policies has been considerably weakened. The second form, which in the literature appears under the term «active» employment policies, embodies interventions and regulations aiming either at the (retraining of the labour force or at the subsidization of individual enterprises for offering new employment positions. This form of employment policies has been adopted during the current conjuncture as the most efficient means against unemployment. Nevertheless, the rationality of this form entails significant changes in the conditions under which the state intervenes into the labour market, since the terms of reproduction of labour as a «social good» now follow the logic of valorization of capital. In other words, the social nature of labour (power) is placed aside, for according to the rationality of this new form labour activity is reproduced mainly as ameans for the valorization of capital. In this sense, the separation of labour from the means of production as well as from its social product, which has been «relativized» in the context of the welfare state is reinforced during the present period of capital restructuring, for the conditions of this «relativization» are redefined as conditions of capital reproduction. Although the «active» employment policies seek to legitimate themselves in the sense that they constitute proper responses to the negative consequences and repercussions of the process of capital restructuring upon the labour market, they are riden by contradictions, due to their ambivalen linkages with the macro-economic fluctuations. Thus, while their implict macro-economic aim is to fight inflation -due either to excess demand or to wage costs- quite often they transform themselves into policies of social consumption or in effective instruments for the protection (or the expansion) of the «informal» sector of the economy. It is maintained that these contradictory consequences may stem either from their very rationality or from their subsequent «uses» on the part of the various organized interests and of the state institutions. Such «uses» are illustrated with the help of examples from the Greek experience during the 1980s.

Published

1991-10-16