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The New Solidarity

The New Solidarity. GUY MUNDLAK Geneva, Feb. 2013. The effects of the financial crisis. pressure. potential. After decades of Flexibilization of labor protections Retrenchment of the welfare state Pressure for further withdrawal of rights and benefits to enable adjustment.

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The New Solidarity

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  1. The New Solidarity GUY MUNDLAK Geneva, Feb. 2013

  2. The effects of the financial crisis pressure potential • After decades of • Flexibilization of labor protections • Retrenchment of the welfare state • Pressure for further withdrawal of rights and benefits to enable adjustment • Hypothesis 1: Recognition of regulatory failures in the capital market will spillover to the labor market • Hypothesis 2: recognizing the thinning protection to those who are laid off and the unemployed will create a new solidarity

  3. The new solidarity • Regulatory measures that pool together otherwise discrete groups, and are sustainable over time, create a new political clientele that seeks to ensure the stability of rights and benefits.

  4. Separating and pooling effects • In labor law • Categorical v. universal rights • Categorical benefits can aid those who most in need of protection • But they also encourage avoidance strategies, competitions among groups, exclusion • Universal benefits are more difficult to avoid, more inclusive and are deemed as ‘everyone’s right’ • Universal benefits are more likely to have ongoingpolitical support, rather than treated as a token of mercy for workers in need • In welfare law • Targeted v. universal benefits • The paradox of distribution • Targeted benefits seem to aid those who are most in need • Universal benefits pool together beneficiaries of the system and strengthen the political basis of the right

  5. Dismissed workers and the unemployedin times of flexibilization and retrenchment • In labor law • Relaxation of just dismissals policy • Increase in categorical protections • Candidates for dismissals suffer from meritocratic fault • Protections against dismissals are a statutory generosity to the most vulnerable workers • In welfare law • Reductions in unemployment insurance • Preservation of welfare (stricto senso) for the least well off • Blaming the unemployed for their misfortune

  6. Responses to the crisis • Those who were laid off were “the best guys” who conformed with the neoliberal ethos • Extending new protections: • A safety net for loss of pension • Raising unemployment fund • Restrictive rules on due process in lay-offs • Unionization of high-tech workers

  7. A new solidarity?

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