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Liberalisation of public services: Boosting precarious employment in Europe?

This research project explores the impact of public service liberalisation on employment in Europe, focusing on the increase in precarious and low-wage jobs. It examines the processes of liberalisation, market and ownership structures, company reactions, and the effects on employment and industrial relations.

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Liberalisation of public services: Boosting precarious employment in Europe?

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  1. Liberalisation of public services: Boosting precarious employment in Europe? Jörg Flecker & Christoph Hermann, FORBA Vienna Work, Employment and Society Conference 2010, Brighton

  2. Public service liberalisation and precarious employment • Competition, shareholder value  restructuring and cost cutting • Fragmentation of bargaining systems • Non-standard work: ‚atypical‘ and ‚very atypical‘ jobs (Eurofound 2010) • Precarious: insecure work with low income and low levels of social protection (falling below societal standards) (ILO 1997, Dörre 2005, IAB 2010).

  3. The PIQUE Project • 3 year research project (2006-2009) • 6 countries: AT, BE, GE, PO, SW, UK • 4 sectors: • Electricity • Postal services • Local public transport • health services (hospitals)

  4. The PIQUE Project • Processes of liberalisation and privatisation, ownership and market structures, forms of regulation • Literature and data analysis on impacts on employment, industrial relations and productivity • Company case studies on company reactions and consequences for employment, productivity and quality • Representative survey on users‘ perspective

  5. MARKET AND OWNERSHIP STRUCTURES • Large variety of market structures • Shift towards highly competitive markets only in few sectors and countries • Concentration processes  public monopolies are replaced by private oligopolies • Move to private ownership stronger than towards competitive markets

  6. Evolution towards more competitive market structures (2006)

  7. Evolution towards private ownership (2006)

  8. COMPANY REACTIONS – Major strategies • From public to private law companies • Mergers and acquisitions • Private and foreign ownership • Subsidiaries and outsourcing • Internationalisation and diversification • Cost-cutting

  9. COMPANY REACTIONS – Cost cutting • Reorganisation and new technology • Reduction in employment • Intensification of work • Payment of lower wages • Non-standard employment

  10. EMPLOYMENT

  11. NON-STANDARD EMPLOYMENT

  12. EMPLOYMENT

  13. INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS • Fragmentation of public sector employment system • Differences between ‘old’ and ‘new’ employees • Differences between incumbents and new competitors • Differences between parent companies, subsidiaries and outsourced services • Emergence of two-tier labour relations systems • Evasion of collective agreements through self-employment

  14. Boosting precarious employment? • Cost cutting  employment cuts and non-standard employment • Non-standard employment: part-time, fixed-term, temporary, self-employment • Growing diversity of employment conditions (fragmented bargaining systems) • Country differences: more encompassing labour regulation in Sweden and Belgium • In most sectors/countries only some aspects of ‘precarisation’ apply • Widespread shift to precarious employment in postal services in Germany and Austria

  15. The PIQUE Consortium 15 www.pique.at Working Lives Research Institute, London Metropolitan University, UK Forschungs- und Beratungsstelle Arbeitswelt,Vienna, Austria Instytut Socjologii, Universytet Warszawski, Poland Instituut voor de Overheid, K.U.Leuven, Belgium Hoger Instituut voor de Arbeid (HIVA), K.U. Leuven), Belgium Wirtschaft- und Sozial- wissenschaftliches Institut (WSI) der Hans-Boeckler-Stiftung, Duesseldorf, Germany Institutionen för Arbetsvetenskap, Göteborgs Universitet, Sweden

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