Flexibility and security: an asymmetrical relationship?
geographical and professional mobility. Providing a smoother transition between jobs, or from work
to non-work and vice versa, is one of the basic pillars of flexicurity policies.
However, this smooth transition is not available to all workers. A considerable share of the EU
workforce is trapped into insecure and low quality jobs, with very few prospects of improving their
employment status and upgrading their skills. According to the analysis of the findings of an EU
survey on the forms of employment integration in the EU-15 countries, in 2001 over half of the
workforce was in low quality jobs, either secure, or insecure (Paugam & Zhou, 2007).
Moving away from the quest for job security to that of employment security (or labour market secu-
rity) is not a question of an individual choice, not even so of business prerogative, 12 but rather of
the prevailing institutional and labour market context. The expansion of precarious jobs is far from
being compatible with increased workers’ employability. Insecure jobs provide fewer, if any, training
opportunities; they are all too often associated with low pay, poor job satisfaction, greater difficulties
in achieving work-life balance and a clustering of negative features that increase the vulnerability of
workers and jeopardize their future employment prospects. The more insecure workers feel, the less
employable they become.
Employment security is also affected by the prevailing degree of satisfaction with the society in
which individuals live and their confidence in the future. As the table below illustrates, the expecta-
tions from the future vary greatly in the EU-27 countries. Respondents from the majority of the
“old” EU-15 countries are far more pessimistic about the future than those in the new members.
12 Although some types of firms can enhance the employability of their workforce through continuous training and
multitasking (e.g. the learning organization).
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