Aliki Mouriki
Active Labour Market Policies, and Guideline 23 on Life Long Learning strategies also refer to the
flexicurity components as defined by the European Commission and the Council.
Flexicurity policies carry by definition the burden of their two seemingly conflicting objectives,
that of achieving the objectives of the renewed Lisbon strategy and of modernizing the European
social model. Flexicurity is required to address at the same time the socio-economic challenges of
globalisation, and the widespread diffusion of new technologies and demographic ageing10, whilst
providing a safety net to workers to help them become more flexible and more “employable”. As
security for workers is no longer guaranteed from the stable employment relationship, a set of policy
interventions is required that will support safe transitions from one job to another and from activity
to inactivity and vice-versa.
3.2. From job security to employment security
Job security, as it was understood in the 1970s and 1980s, as a more or less permanent full time
job until retirement (with few-if any- spells of unemployment in between), now seems an impos-
sible target. Even the less rigid variant of a guaranteed job within the company in conjunction with
changes in the task or job content and in working time (like the Japanese model of internal labour
markets in the 1980s) is more or less a thing of the past. Instead, what workers can aspire to nowa-
days is a life-time security deriving from a sequence of different jobs (often requiring different skills)
with different employers and safe labour market transitions. This shift towards a new type of em-
ployment-related security has been labeled as employment security in the EU jargon and is widely used in
all labour market related policy documents. 11 Employment —or labour market- security is enhanced
when workers are able to adapt to changes in economic conditions, and thus to labour market adjust-
ments, by constantly updating their skills through lifelong learning, and are willing to accept greater
10 In 2006, 16.8% of the EU-27 population was aged over 65 years; this rate is expected to reach 25% by the end of the
decade (Eurostat, 2008).
11 Auer considers misleading the use of the concept of “employment security” in the EU literature and policy agenda
(including the flexicurity agenda) and calls this shift from job security to a new type of security as labour market security,
which combines some employment security within firms with security in transitions and mobility, in the form of
active and passive labour market policies and social rights. He argues that in the transition phase (when a worker is
unemployed), it is income and employability that may be protected —through labour market and welfare institutions-
but not employment per se (Auer, 2008).
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