The social investment approach as a field of job creation. From the ‘recalibration’ to a resurgent trade-off between employment growth and low wage (white) jobs. A comparison between Germany and Italy

The social investment approach emerged as a new welfare paradigm, aimed at reconciling the traditional functions of the welfare supply with a productive social agenda, designed at preparing people to confront the ‘new social risks’, whether they be related to the problem of balancing paid work and family responsibilities, upgrading the skills, preventing inequalities and promoting the availability of in-kind services. In order to achieve these objectives, especially those related to care needs and work-life balance, the adoption of social investment-based strategies necessarily implies an expansion of the jobs related to health and social care services. In more recent years, many studies have analysed the limitations of the social investment policies because of their different redistributive impacts on social groups. Several studies have found a higher use of these policies for high-income families. Another source of criticism on social investment is that spending on these policies would seem to crowd out more traditional passive social expenditures. In this article, we examine another question related to the widespread of this approach: what are the effects of the social investment policies in terms of direct job creation? In fact, one of the more controversial issues, related to social investment policies, is their direct contribution to the labour market in terms of both quantity and quality of work within welfare services. The article analyses these issues focusing on Germany and Italy, two countries that represent not only two different care regimes but also two distinct models regarding job creation strategies in the care sector. In doing so, particular attention will be paid to long-term care policies, as they represent one of the pivotal areas of the social investment approach, both in terms of social services, to address new social risks, and new jobs related to welfare service

Family, Market and Voluntary Action in the Regulation of the "Care System": A Comparison between Italy and Sweden

In this article we focus on elderly care reforms in Italy and Sweden. According to Polanyi’s theory, we analyze the process of change of welfare regulation in terms of the relation between public redistribution, familial and societal reciprocity and services provided by the market. The main purpose of the analysis is to outline the processes of convergence and divergence between these two welfare systems that have pursued different paths in their historical evolution. In the first part we compare Italy and Sweden in terms of social expenditure for the elderly and the relationships between female labour market participation and supply provision. In the second part we concentrate on the institutional process of change, focusing on the main reforms that have affected the relationships between local public administration, family, third sector and private market organisation

Il welfare aziendale in Italia

L’articolo ricostruisce lo sviluppo del welfare aziendale in Italia alla luce delle trasformazioni che hanno interessato il sistema di welfare e le relazioni industriali. Il welfare aziendale copre una ampia varietà di prestazioni sociali generalmente presenti nelle imprese di medio-grandi dimensioni e per lo più in favore di lavoratori coperti dal welfare assicurativo. Si tratta di prestazioni già presenti in Italia e però negli ultimi anni in forte espansione (anche per l’impulso dato dalla legislazione) o per scelte unilaterali delle aziende o nel quadro di accordi tra imprese e parti sociali. Rispetto alla ampia gamma di soluzioni che si vanno diffondendo, in questo contributo gli autori danno particolare attenzione alle strategie aziendali, a partire da una analisi sulla banca dati EdenRed che ha permesso di dettagliare i servizi effettivamente erogati rispetto alla dimensione d’azienda e alla loro collocazione geografica.The article contributes to the analyses of complementary welfare measures that tend to operate at the company level. The company welfare schemes are found mainly in medium-large businesses and are primarily aimed at the employees who are already covered by the ordinary welfare institutions. They comprise a wide range of complementary services: healthcare, social assistance, work-life balance schemes. Though already present in Italy, these kinds of services have been expanding in the last few years either as a result of unilateral choices on the part of companies or as part of agreements made between companies and unions. The aim of this paper is to address these issues, by considering the EdenRed database, which allowed a detailed examination of these services at territorial leve

Nuovi outsider e forme di rappresentanza del lavoro parasubordinato e professionale in Italia

L’Italia e uno dei paesi europei in cui la membership sindacale si e mantenuta piu alta in questi anni. Questa forza delle organizzazioni sindacali e pero messa alla prova da difficolta nella rappresentanza dei lavoratori piu ai margini del mercato del lavoro, maggiormente sottoposti a fenomeni di instabilita occupazionale e in generale inquadrati in tipologie contrattuali atipiche, compresa una nutrita fascia di soggetti solo formalmente indipendenti ma nella sostanza dipendenti senza tuttavia le garanzie collegate al lavoro standard: parasubordinati, collaboratori, lavoratori con partita Iva mono-committenti. Da qualche anno la rappresentanza di questi lavoratori e entrata nel perimetro della rappresentanza sindacale, sia quella tradizionalmente intesa ad opera dei maggiori sindacati confederali sia in forme nuove, a partire da esperienze auto-organizzate che hanno iniziato a diffondersi in questi anni. Su alcune di esse: Iva sei partita (Architetti e Ingegneri), Strade (Sindacato Interpreti e traduttori), Acta (Associazione dei Consulenti del Terziario Avanzato) e Clap (Camere del Lavoro Autonomo e Precario) si concentra questo articolo, analizzando le forme della rappresentanza promosse e le strategie perseguite nell’organizzare il lavoro professionale e parasubordinato

Le politiche sociali regionali in Italia. Costanti storiche e trasformazioni istituzionali

The regionalization or decentralization of welfare policies is a process common to all European countries, though they have taken different paths and had strikingly different effects. In Italy they have been accompanied for years by the emergence of strong internal discrepancies in the quantity of services and in the performance of local institutions. The article deals with these questions on the basis of three analytical dimensions: first, the quality of the regional and local supply networks; secondly, the characteristics of social needs and demand that emerge in the different regions; and lastly, the nature of the historically-determined relations between the centre of the political administrative system and the various local levels involved in the supply of social service

Beni sociali e creazione di nuova occupazione nei servizi alle persone

Il saggio focalizza l'attenzione sul contributo dato alla crescita dell'occupazione degli invetsimenti sui servizi alle persone. In questa chiave, l'analisi comparativa che viene presentata offre una panoramica delle principali riforme introdotte nei principali paesi europei al fine di aumentare l'occupazione nei servizi di welfare. In questo modo, vengono evidenziati i limiti di strategie (anche comunitarie) che hanno puntato soprattutto alla crescita quantitativa dell'occupazione, senza una pari qualificazione sul versante della qualità e della retribuzione

Social investment, labour market participation and public debt sustainability: An empirical analysis of European countries

This article explores the role of SI Stock, Flow and Buffer policies by shedding light on their relationships with active labour market participation and public debt sustainability for a panel of 22 European countries from 1997 to 2018. We find SI Stock, Flow and Buffer to be positively correlated with labour market participation and more sustainable public debt. When disaggregating the components of SI, we detect a small degree of heterogeneity, with Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) negatively associated with the activity rate and positively associated with the employment rate. This result is coherent with the idea that ALMPs make a significant contribution to increasing opportunities for those already in the labour market rather than creating new jobs for those excluded from the labour market, that is, inactive individuals. In this case, our findings indicate that measures to fight social exclusion and out-of-work expenditure (Buffer), as well as in-kind family benefits, are significantly associated with employability for those excluded from the labour market

Platform Work: From Digital Promises to Labor Challenges

The pervasiveness of the digital ecosystem reconfigures the organization of work. The new industrial revolution is increasingly based on the platform as a new productive paradigm. Platforms are more than a technical device and they produce huge effects in the labour market: lowering access credentials and empowering casualization of work, dis/re-intermediation labour demand and supply, affecting motivations and rewarding systems, reconfiguring process of control and risks transfer, renewing regulative standards, or re-organize representativeness and welfare protection. Fragmentation, precariousness, flexibility and instability become permanent traits of the workforce fostering the emergence of the cybertariat. Moreover, connectivity, evaluation and surveillance determine new working conditions tested on workers outside any bargaining process or institutional work arrangement. Platform workers (both high skilled and low skilled) are still largely unorganized and isolated. Similarly to other non-standard workers, they are exposed to the risk of exploitation and free work in a fast evolving economy based on reputation. Despite platform workers are highly differentiated and heterogeneous and difficult to organize collectively, forms of collective action are emerging at local and cross-national level

Lavoro e politiche di attivazione. L'investimento sociale e lo sviluppo dell'occupazione

il capitolo approfondisce l'analisi delle politiche attive del lavoro in Europa all'interno del paradigma del social investment. Nel quadro delle riforme che hanno teso a spostare il focus degli interventi dalle protezioni pasive a quelle "attivanti", vengono prese in esame le risposte istituzionali dei diversi contesti e il ruolo giocato dagli attori nei processi di mutamento istituzionale. In conclusione, vengono identificati i principali fattori di resistenza ai processi di convergenza su scala europea, tra pressioni sovranazionali e riforme nazionali

Gli studi di caso: Foggia (agricoltura), Bari (policlinico), Lecce (provincia), Trani (settore lapideo)

Il capitolo presenta una comparazione delle forme organizzative e strategie sindacali in quattro diversi settori produttivi: agricoltura, sanità, pubblico impiego e settore lapideo, in quattro province pugliesi. L'analisi prende in esame i seguenti ambiti di ricerca: i ruoli e le funzioni della rappresentanza sindacale, le aspettative dei soggetti rispetto alla offerta di rappresentanza, la percezione presente e futura della condizione lavorativa e occupazionale