ABSTRACT

Flexibility, it is claimed, is the cure-all when labour market conditions deteriorate. It combats rigidities, being synonymous with adaptability, pliability and being up-to-date. Since its 1994 White Paper, everything on the European labour markets is supposed to be flexible, including workers, their training, their schedules, the number of hours worked, their wages and the production systems on which they work. The fact is that flexibility simply aims at shifting the risks linked with economic fluctuations onto the shoulders of workers and thereby reducing the cost of labour. In this way, flexibility prompts the development of forms of work that are on the borderline between non-participation in the labour force and employment, with short-term, highly unstable jobs that rarely generate enough income for survival. They are therefore closer to non-work than to employment. The effects of flexibility policies on employment may leave us sceptical, but their effects on the quality of employment leave no room for doubt.