L.W.M. Delsen

Gradual retirement: Lessons from the Nordic countries and the Netherlands

Over the past two decades, labourforce participation rates of older workers decreased in all OECD countries. Early retirement and disability are the most important explanations. The central question addressed in this article is the role part-time employment for older workers (gradual retirement) can play in reversing this downward trend, by reducing the number of early withdrawals from the labourforce, thus easing future financial problems resulting from demographic changes. This article considers what can be learned from experience and policies in Denmark, Finland, The Netherlands and Sweden.

Bikes versus lease cars: the adoption, design and use of cafeteria systems in the Netherlands

In the 1990s, Dutch employers started adopting individualized pay systems, commonly called ‘cafeteria systems’. Reports on their use by employers and employees suggest a bewildering variety in their adoption, design and use (by employees). This paper presents an analytical framework to analyse this variety. We distinguish as the main explanatory factor whether there has been voluntary or coerced adoption. The latter refers to introduction as part of sectoral collective labour agreements. Different adoption drivers are argued to have consequences for the design and employee use of cafeteria systems.

Employment opportunities for the disabled

Policy makers in the OECD Member States have developed quite different programmes and institutional arrangements to create and promote employment opportunities for the disabled. These policy approaches include legal interventions, employment support services, financial support of open employment and sheltered employment. This chapter describes the various instruments supporting employment of disabled people applied in the EU Member States and the USA. Their effectiveness is assessed, based on a review of available evaluation studies. Conclusions are drawn to further needs of evaluation research and policy recommendation are made.

A new concept of full employment

The target of full employment depends upon the goals regarding labour force participation rates, the length of the work week and frictional unemployment. Although nearly all social groups agree that stronger economic growth would contribute most to solving the unemployment problem, the prospects for a return to the conditions prevailing before 1973 are poor. The article argues that a general saturation, demographic developments and environmental problems may cause bottlenecks for economic growth. Important changes in the labour supply and in the sectoral distribution of employment are eroding the full-time, full-year concept. In addition, advances in information technology make it imperative to re-examine the old concept of full employment. A new full employment concept is proposed that includes a legal right to a basic amount of employment, i.e. at least part-time employment, combined with a right to a (partial) basic income. It is argued that this new full employment concept is not only economically efficient, but socially desirable.

Labour market institutions and economic performance in the Netherlands

The central question of this article is whether or not effectiveness and efficiency are improved by the stronger reliance on markets given Dutch labour market institutions and their resulting corporatist wage formation. In answering this question, besides the influence on the production costs (neoclassical approach), we explicitly deal with and quantify the ‘hidden’ transaction costs (institutional economics approach) of more decentralized labour relations, flexibilization of the labour market, and working conditions ‘à la carte’. The results presented cast doubt on both the efficiency and the effectiveness of recently introduced tailor-made solutions in the Dutch economy.

European integration: Current problems and future scenarios

Since the Second World War social security systems in most Western European countries have expanded dramatically. Besides the classical contingencies of old age, unemployment and ill health, other contingencies fell successively under the coverage of social security. Moreover, social security was extended to more and more categories of the population. Economic growth paid for it all. However, since the economic recession of the mid-1970s the days of relatively carefree and optimistic expansion of social security have ended. Everywhere governments have been under pressure to cut back on their social expenditure and to reform their national social security system. However, from the national contributions one gathers that this pressure has seldom resulted in anything which resembles a wholesale reform. Fear of the unknown, politicians’ vacillations, and numerous vested interests probably prevented this. As a result, real reform was postponed until well into the 1980s and, in some cases, the 1990s. Even then, change has often been the sum of numerous partial reforms instead of the result of wholesale reform. In a sense, therefore, the current debate and controversy on social security is a belated result of the reversal of the 1970s. Most issues, especially the financial ramifications of social security, have been debated at a national level. But in the last decade of the twentieth century, European developments, in particular the impending introduction of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), have begun to loom over national issues.

Improving the employability of the disabled: A practical approach

The lack of information on the level of disabled individual, on the enterprise level and on the level of society as a whole, is one of the major barriers to the integration of disabled workers into open employment. The article discusses the kind of information necessary for effective counselling of the disabled regarding employment. Some Dutch experiences with integration of disabled workers into a competitive employment system are outlined, and some recommendations are made for future action. A five-phase action programme which aims to create permanent paid jobs for disabled workers and to increase accessibility to the labour market, taking into account the present economic and political situation of mass employment and deregulation, is put forward.

Introduction: Changes in European social security

In this chapter we will present a classification of models of social security to help us develop a framework for the analysis of recent changes in European social security systems. To that end we will first, in section 2, give a brief survey of some historical roots of social security systems in the countries of Europe. We will also present a classification of social security models, as developed in the early 1990s. In section 3, subsequently, we will attempt to define some of the main dimensions of change in social security since then. In both section 2 and section 3 we will also touch on European integration, and its consequences for the development of social security in the European Union countries.

Das niederländische Bündnis für Arbeit und seine Wirkungen

Jobs, Jobs und abermals Jobs’ ist das politische Schlagwort in den Niederlanden. In diesem Artikel werden die Hintergrunde des niederlandischen “Beschaftigungswunders” erlautert und die zentrale Frage beantwortet, ob es moglich und erwunscht ware, das “Poldermodell” in Deutschland einzufuhren und zu implementieren. Gefolgert wird, dass die Ubertragbarkeit des Poldermodells beschrankt ist. Es gibt betrachtliche kulturelle und institutionelle Unterschiede zwischen den beiden Landern. Die Kehrseite des Beschaftigungswunders ist ein starkes Anwachsen der ungesicherten Beschaftigungsverhaltnisse mit unerwunschten sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Konsequenzen. Deutschland spielt eine zentrale Rolle in der Europaischen Union; eine Lohnermasigungspolitik in Deutschland konnte zu einer europaweiten Rezession fuhren, da ein Teil der Inlandsnachfrage ausfiele.

Good Neighbours: Germany and the Netherlands

All OECD Member States are confronted with a number of important structural changes. These common changes include: the internationalisation of the economies, the advances in information and communication technology, and the ageing of the population and the labour force. There are many definitions of internationalisation in use. A broad definition is: “the intensification of economic, political, social and cultural relations across borders” (Holm and Soerensen 1995, p. 1). Partly internationalisation is the result of a purposeful policy to lift barriers on international trade and capital flows. The new information and communication technologies also intensify and facilitate the internationalisation process. The third common change, the ageing of populations creates considerable pressure on the financing of social programmes. While expenditure on social programmes is rising due to the ageing of populations, the number of working age people will be growing only slowly or declining. A consequential fiscal crisis has to be prevented.