Full Employment Policy Research Articles

The political context of social inequalities and health

This analysis reflects on the importance of political parties, and the policies they implement when in government, in determining the level of equalities/inequalities in a society, the extent of the welfare state (including the level of health care coverage by the state), the employment/unemployment rate, and the level of population health. The study looks at the impact of the major political traditions in the advanced OECD countries during the golden years of capitalism (1945–1980) — social democratic, Christian democratic, liberal, and ex-fascist — in four areas: (1) the main determinants of income inequalities, such as the overall distribution of income derived from capital versus labor, wage dispersion in the labor force, the redistributive effect of the welfare state, and the levels and types of employment/unemployment; (2) levels of public expenditures and health care benefits coverage; (3) public support of services to families, such as child care and domiciliary care; and (4) the level of population health as measured by infant mortality rates. The results indicate that political traditions more committed to redistributive policies (both economic and social) and full-employment policies, such as the social democratic parties, were generally more successful in improving the health of populations, such as reducing infant mortality. The erroneous assumption of a conflict between social equity and economic efficiency, as in the liberal tradition, is also discussed. The study aims at filling a void in the growing health and social inequalities literature, which rarely touches on the importance of political forces in influencing inequalities. The data used in the study are largely from OECD health data for 1997 and 1998; the OECD statistical services; the comparative welfare state data set assembled by Huber, Ragin and Stephens; and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Are pro-welfare state and full-employment policies possible in the era of globalization?

There is a widely held belief in U.S. and European economic, political, and academic circles that economic globalization has considerably diminished states' power to follow public policies identified with the social democratic tradition, such as full-employment policies, comprehensive and universal provision of welfare state services, and state regulatory interventions in labor markets and economic policies. And large sectors of the European center-left and left parties believe that European monetary integration made expansionist and full-employment policies practically impossible, except when realized at the European continental level. This article presents empirical information that questions these positions. It documents how specific governments in Europe have been able to carry out such public policies during these years of economic globalization and monetary integration. Some countries (such as Sweden and Finland) that had carried out these policies then later weakened their implementation did so in response to political changes mostly unrelated to globalization of the economy or monetary integration. The article also analyzes and documents how countries that had followed expansionist and full-employment policies have responded to the globalization of financial markets.

EL DERECHO SOCIAL EN EL UMBRAL DEL SIGLO XXI: LA NUEVA FASE DEL DERECHO DEL TRABAJO

As a result of the crisis of the so called wage society the working statute is suffering deep disorganization processes. On the one hand there is a weakening of the protective mechanisms of workers in the framework of working relationships. On the other hand public protection is no longer having the task of an equalling and levelling instrument and its protective intensity is reduced. This causes a change from the welfare to the security state. The globalization process reinforces the tendency towards the increase in equality and the decrease of guarantees. In the Europen Community the political groupings are registered in the same process of deregulation and adjustment of the working market and of the decrease of the part politics play. The regulation contained in the Amsterdam Treaty are still not good enough for the effective guarantee of basic rights. Furthermore the grouping criteria still fail to incorporate social quality. The recent reforms of the rights to work and the security in Spain have followed the same tendencies. The elements for an alternative strategy should be based on the idea that human work is not a merchandise. These elements should be: the public sector should play an important part, the idea that different policies can live together and to support an expansive and not residuary welfare, to reinforce industrial democracy and a type of company which is shared and pluralistic, to stimulate a policy of offensive adjustment and to carry out a full employment policy through an adecuate judicial organization of the working time.

Armaments and Full Employment

Michal Kalecki was in Oxford during the war and wrote the keynote essay in The Economics of Full Employment , six studies in applied economics, prepared at the Oxford University Institute of Statistics, and published in 1944. His essay is about the use of fiscal and monetary policy to achieve full employment in a capitalist economy. A year earlier he had written an article warning that full employment policies might encounter resistance from business leaders and industrialists. In the 1950s Kalecki, who had returned to Poland, appeared to change his view whether full employment under capitalism was a worthy and feasible objective. Two lectures on Armaments and the Business Cycle which he gave in 1955, throw light on this change of view, but they did not appear in English until the series of volumes of his Collected Works started to come out in the 1990s. The present note considers the arguments deployed in the lectures, and goes on to re-examine his original fears of political resistance. It concludes that he was right to stress such resistance, but argues that changes in the structure of capitalist economies in the past half-century have altered the nature of the politcal constraints.

Introduction: Robert Eisner’s Common Sense Commitment to Full Employment and Activist Fiscal Policy

Introduction: Robert Eisner’s Common Sense Commitment to Full Employment and Activist Fiscal Policy

Jobs for Whom? Employment Policy in the United States and Western Europe

Policies to reduce unemployment have been an integral component of government programs in most developed capitalist countries since the end of World War II. Yet this sounds like an oxymoron of sorts in the United States. While the United States has pursued full employment policy only in fits and starts, the national governments of most Western European countries have elaborated explicit commitments to employment policies designed to decrease joblessness. These policies have encompassed the following range of programs: fiscal and monetary policy to stimulate aggregate demand; direct payments to the unemployed; job placement services; policies to reduce the labor force, including increasing job flexibility, reducing the workweek, and promoting early retirement; policies aimed at industrial mobility, primarily getting industries to locate in areas of high unemployment; and active labor market policy (ALMP), which includes programs to increase labor market mobility, training and retraining, sheltered training workshops and employer subsidies for harder-to-employ populations such as the disabled and older workers, and direct job creation in the public and nonprofit sectors. In this paper, I compare employment policy in the United States and Western Europe since World War II. This history shows that the European policies were successful through the mid-1970s, as unemployment rates of 2-3 percent prevailed, but that since then there has been increased unemployment and a retreat from this commitment. Yet participation by labor in policy formulation and a basic level of policies designed to provide a safety net for workers are still taken for granted.

Globalization, Swedish Trade Unions and European Integration

The article argues that the Swedish trade unions were not instrumental in bringing about the Swedish Social Democratic Party's (SAP) decision to apply to the EC for membership on 26 October 1990, despite frequently made claims to the contrary. The trade unions were in fact rather surprised about the SAP turn-around. There had been a change in the position on EC membership within the labour movement after the SAP announcement, but it was anything but unanimous. On the one hand the trade unions of the industrial sector with transnational production structures were in favour, arguing that this was the only way to regain control over transnational capital and international financial markets lost at the national level. On the other hand the unions of the public sector opposed membership, maintaining that accession to the EC undermined the Swedish model with its policies of full employment and generous welfare provisions. The retaining of as many national policy tools as possible would offer a better chance of preserving the Swedish model in times of globalization. Neo-Gramscianism is adopted as the theoretical lens for this analysis, since this allows for account to be taken of the structural changes of globalization within which the debate was placed.

When Jobs Move, Do Black and Latino Men Lose? The Effect of Growth in Job Decentralisation on Young Men's Jobless Incidence and Duration

The spatial mismatch hypothesis suggests that the movement of jobs from central cities to suburbs negatively affects blacks' employment both absolutely and relative to whites. In this paper, data are used from the 1984 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the 1972 and 1982 US Census of Industries to examine the effect of growth in metropolitan job decentralisation on young males' jobless incidence and duration. Overall, growth in job decentralisation is found to affect negatively young black and Latino males' jobless incidence and duration. In addition, the metropolitan unemployment rate is found to affect negatively young black males' jobless incidence and durations only. Thus, the combination of full employment policies with policies to alter the distribution of jobs in metropolitan areas in favour of the central city will do more to improve young black and Latino males' labour market position than either approach by itself.

Institutionalist Approaches to Full-Employment Policies

Institutionalist Approaches to Full-Employment Policies

Unemployment, Human Rights and a Full Employment Policy in Australia

(1998). Unemployment, Human Rights and a Full Employment Policy in Australia. Australian Journal of Human Rights: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 76-94.

Government as Employer of Last Resort: Full Employment Without Inflation

Since WWII it has been the stated policy of the U.S. government to simultaneously pursue high employment and stable prices. Paradoxically, neither accepted economic theory nor practical experience appears to indicate that high or full employment is even possible with stable prices. In this paper we argue that stable prices and truly full employment are indeed possible. In fact, the Humphrey-Hawkins Act sets the goalpost too low; we argue that the government can guarantee a zero unemployment rate, defined as all who are ready, willing, and able to work at the going wage will be able to find a job--only those unwilling (or unable) to work at the going wage would be left without work (which are not normally counted as unemployed). The government does this by acting as the employer of last resort, offering to hire all who show up to work at a fixed wage. In doing so, the government ensures that all who are ready, willing, and able to work at that wage will be provided a job. At the same time, by setting this wage, the government will provide a price anchor that will impart price stability to the system, that is, we will show that a true full employment policy is not, in itself, and indeed could reduce inflationary pressures under some conditions. Further, the full employment policy would help to reduce economic fluctuations (the business cycle) through a powerful built-in automatic stabilizer feature.

From labour to learn1: the limits of labour society and the possibilities of learning society

1. The title is originally formulated from a recent ‘ provocative proposal’ put forward by Peter Alheit (1996) in Adult Learning. This article presents sociologically and historically oriented reconceptualizations of the changing relationship between labour and learning in the reflexive modern era. First it claims that the whole modern division of labour does not merely reveal the nature by which we define morality but also it is a crucial condition for the whole solidarity of human kind. It creates between people the holistic system of rights and duties, which bonds them together permanently. Then the article comes to the conclusion that the first modern period, and the Keynesian welfare state policy with its homogenous workforce and policies of full employment, has come to its historical end. Consequently, the steady progress of the population along educational pathways into secure full‐time working lives can no longer be taken for granted. The process of the redivision of labour is liable to generate many problems for society and individual citizens since so many of our societal institutions and expectations have been constructed on parameters defined by the labour market, wage earning and promotions. The article then puts forward the scenario of the risk society where confidence coexists with fear, security with threat, credibility with ambivalence, and conflict over the distribution of goods turn out to be conflicts over distribution of bads. The author sees that education has always been seen as a major component in the great Enlightenment project, which has been connected and incorporated by the national state. Lifelong learning on the contrary has been less incorporated, less an early modern, but more a marginal and informal position, waving the flag for both individuals and groups from below. The article claims that the new era of reflexive modernization may see the rise of lifelong learning and perhaps also the partial collapse of the old pre‐modern educational system. It may be that some of what we regard as European trends in adult education research are at the moment more programmes or wishes than facts, but an understanding of such trends can be helpful for future developments in our research. (Jarvis and Poggeler 1994: 10)

Black Male Unemployment

Public policies intended to raise the wages of unskilled workers, equalize educational opportunity, stabilize employment, and increase imports were sources of the growth of unskilled and, therefore, of black unemployment since 1950. The wartime wage-equalization policy and postwar minimum-wage policies raised the cost of unskilled labor relative to that of capital and of skilled labor. The Fed's inflationary full-employment policy between 1950 and 1970 reduced real interest rates relative to unskilled wages. Subsidies for higher education increased the supply of skilled labor, reducing its cost relative to that of unskilled labor. Trade liberalization increased imports of manufactured goods from developing countries, which displaced U.S. unskilled labor.

NATIONAL CONTEXT AND GENDER IDEOLOGY

This study uses a comparative framework to examine the relationship between individual-level attributes and gender-role attitudes in a state-market society (Hungary) and in a capitalist society (the United States). Data from the 1988 International Social Science Program (ISSP) indicate significant differences in attitudes between the two populations. Both women and men in the United States were more supportive of women's employment than their counterparts in Hungary, despite the Hungarian government's policy of full employment during communist rule. Nevertheless, the level of agreement between women and men (the gender gap) was uniform across national contexts: Women were more supportive of women's employment than men. We also found that individual-level attributes, such as employment status and marital status, differentially affected gender-role attitudes in the two countries. This study contributes to a broader dialogue about the dynamic relationship between social structure and gender ideology.

Effective rightsizing strategies in Japan and America: Is there a convergence of employment practices?

Executive Overview Unprecedented competitive pressures are forcing companies around the world to continually cut costs, restructure, and often to downsize their workforce. In America alone, 3.1 million workers have lost jobs since the beginning of the decade.1 In Latin American and East European economies undergoing a transition from a state-dominated to a market system, privatization brings about pressures for employment reduction. Even highly developed countries like Sweden and Japan, which have traditionally pursued policies of near full employment, have seen unemployment figures increase in the 1990s as a result of restructuring and employment reductions in industry. Nevertheless, there does not appear to be a set of international best practices related to effective downsizing. A leading researcher notes that “human resources management has lagged behind almost all other critical functions…of the global firm.…The range of best HRM practice is wide and appears to vary by economic profile and country cu...

Full Employment and the Welfare State

The modern welfare state and full-employment policies have common intellectual roots. In the 1930s and 1940s, Keynesian visions of full employment and Beveridge-inspired ideas of a universal welfare state grew up in about the same intellectual environment. Both ideas emphasized a government' s responsibility for the welfare of its citizens. The two ideas were also projected by approximately the same individuals. From the very beginning, welfare-state arrangements and full-employment policies were regarded as strongly complementary. Both were designed to improve the economic security of the individual, although welfare-state arrangements deal largely with life-cycle considerations, while full-employment policies focus on the situation at a given point in time. They were also believed to support each other. Not only would high aggregate employment help finance the welfare state by boosting the tax base and keeping down the number of beneficiaries. A reverse causation was also assumed: various welfare-state arrangements were often asserted to contribute to full employment. Hence a virtuous circle was postulated between the welfare state and full employment. Governments also constructed specific institutionaI arrangements and regulations that were explicitly designed to strengthen the consistency and complementarity between the welfare state and full­ employment policies. Actual economic and social developments during the first decades after World War II seemed to support the view of a harmonious, indeed symbiotic,

Unemployment in Industrial Countries: A Danger to ASEAN?

Full employment policies encouraged international and capital flow liberalization, enabling industrial countries to grow rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s and providing access to their markets to developing countries. The industrial countries' failure to adjust to rapid technological change, however, resulted in rising inflation and unemployment from the end of the 1960s. A wave of new protection against labour-intensive imports from developing countries followed in the 1970s. The growth of imports of clothing and textiles from ASEAN countries decelerated. Unemployment limited women's access to full-time work and was highly concentrated among young people, minority ethnic groups and older people. uFortress regionalism and calls for 'fair trade marked further protectionist reactions. Unemployment has become the industrial countries' principal economic problem. It is giving rise to political unrest in industrial countries and to difficulties in international that threaten the global trading environment. The growth of imports from developing countries, including ASEAN countries, and capital flows to them, have been reduced below their potential. The policy reforms being undertaken by most industrial countries are little and too late .

Economic Policy for Full Employment: Proposals for Germany

Since the mid-1970s, Germany has suffered high unemployment levels. In 1996, there was a shortfall of 6-7 million jobs. Unemployment, which means a loss of production, and is the main cause of poverty and the fiscal crisis, has been exacerbated by reunification and by recent corporate and government strategy. This subordinates all social goals to that of international competitiveness, with downsizing and unemployment used to hold down workers' wages, social benefits, rights and aspirations. The article argues that any alternative economic policy for full employment, more social security, ecological sustainability and economic democracy must, therefore, be based on large-scale public investment, an expanded public sector, reduced working hours and a targeted labour market policy. This would be mostly self-financing and could be defended against a hostile economic environment but would require major changes in the distribution of income and power. The Maastricht Treaty presents new but not insurmountable obstacles.

Women’s Employment or Return to “Family Values” in Central-Eastern Europe

BARBARA LOBODZINSKA * Socialism in Central-Eastern Europe reinforced only the formerly existing patriarchal system by allowing men to run governments and by fortifying their leading positions at home and work. The basic socialist legal foundations claimed for all, without supplying the system with functional application of a related legislation. As a reaction to the previous socialist constraints and pressures in the former Soviet Bloc countries, a strong new push toward removing women from gainful employment and toward - so called - traditional family values can be seen. Even some women are opting now to be financially supported by their men, to stay at home and to concentrate on care of their children. Men become more eager to elbow out female competitors from the shrinking employment opportunities. Unemployment is a new, post-socialist, phenomenon. Previously, workers had job security resulting from the full employment social policy. Getting away from the cradle to grave state protection for all citizens, the new governments are trying to save this part of expenditures that under socialism was spent on subsidies for social and family policies. To analyze women's family and employment roles combined with their attitudes toward these roles, under the new conditions, calls for a review of the previous system. Many facets of the former strategies and ways of thinking are still functioning. The former system created numerous parallels in the outcome of social institutions and social relationships. research studies conducted before and after 1989 in one of the examined countries can illustrate a pattern in most of the region. WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT BEFORE AND DURING THE POST-SOCIALIST TRANSITION PERIOD Employment In spite of ideological, legislative and social policy efforts to secure positions of equality for men and women in the socialist societies, an extensive discrimination against women persisted, manifested in the concentration of women in lower priority sectors of the economy, in lower posts occupied, and in lower wages (Beyer, 1992; Fuszara, 1993; Lobodzinska, 1978 and 1983; Paukert, 1991; Putnam, 1990; Reszke,1991-a and 1991-b; Sokolowska, 1963; Sziraczki and Windell, 1992; Waluk, 1963, and others). Marxist doctrine implemented in socialist countries confronted the task of including women in economic activities as equal partners with men. The outcome was basically on a pledge level, influencing citizens to think that a potential for equal opportunities existed. Studies on equality principles in socialism indicate that family allowances and benefits for employees were taken for granted. They were not considered a privilege but a revenue added to entitlements stemming from employment. They were regarded as inherent obligations owed by the State to its citizens: as premises of the system (Bromberek, 1987; Ferge, 1976; Flakierski, 1992; Koralewicz-Zebik, 1984; S. Nowak, 1966; S. Nowak, 1981). The right to work - and to entitlements (e.g., free health care, free education, job security, paid retirement, paid vacations, protection of under-age employees, etc.) - was guaranteed to all citizens, with considerable additional advantages for working women and mothers. Thus, the present departure from the previous gains is now perceived as termination of beneficial advantages in labor relationships. Under the conditions of political and economic instability, and the labor market conditions now considered as worse, the old survival technique comes in handy and the preservation of the family becomes an undisputed priority for women. Resentment against the capitalist market economic reforms and their political promoters is the attitude of the majority. This has resulted in the recent return of the communists to power in Poland, Lithuania and Hungary 1993-4). Due to the full-employment policy under socialism, women made up between 40-50% of the entire labor force (see, table I). …

Uncertainty and the Institutional Structure of Capitalist Economies

In this working paper Distinguished Scholar Hyman P. Minsky explores the theoretical and practical causes of today's rising economic uncertainty and insecurity. He begins by noting views of uncertainty held by Keynes and adherents of the new classical economics by comparing Keynes' The Treatise on Probability and Sargent's Bounded Rationality in Macroeconomics. According to both views, decisions are made by agents based on varying degrees of ignorance and supposition; the agents have a more or less limited amount of knowledge and base their judgements on their own idea of how the economy works (their model of the model). In addition, agents are not homogeneous but have differing abilities and histories. Thus the internal models used to guide decisions are not consistent from agent to agent. Minsky notes that although according to Sargent's concept of bounded rationality all agents at any one time need not be acting according to mutually consistent models, Sargent ignores a point stressed by Keynes about the decision-making process: Economic events at any one time are the result of past mental models (and corresponding actions and expectations), and those past models are different from current models (and correspondingly different actions and expectations); therefore, factors that might determine long-term expectations are in a continuous state of flux. Despite this difference, the gap between the ideas of the two schools of thought have narrowed. Minsky points out that capitalism in the United States is an ever-evolving construct that recently entered a new stage: money manager capitalism. In this form of capitalism, nearly all businesses are organized as corporations; pension and mutual funds are the predominant owners of financial assets; and managers of these funds are judged solely on the total return on fund assets (dividends and interest plus appreciation in share value). One consequence of the money manager structure is predominance of short-run considerations in decision making. Historically, the public has had limited tolerance for uncertainty. During the New Deal era this intolerance led to the creation of institutions and arrangements to reduce uncertainty and create transparency in both financial markets and corporate governance. For example, crop insurance set floors to farmers' incomes, and deficits run by the federal government set floors to aggregate profit flows. However, the focus of money manager capitalism on short-run returns and uncompromised profit margins has increased economic uncertainty at the firm and plant levels through the chronic need to reduce overhead and variable costs. These activities have unraveled the traditional relationships between firms and workers and increased economic insecurity among employees. Minsky asserts that since existing institutions and arrangements cannot contain this uncertainty, new institutions and arrangements must be created to offset the effects felt by the losers in the gamble imposed by uncertainty. Such measures are necessary to prevent these individuals from becoming alienated and hence recruits for an alternative to democracy. Accepting the view of Henry Simons that the focus of economic policy is not narrowly the economy but rather to that the economic prerequisites for sustaining the civil and civilized standards of an open liberal society exist, Minsky suggests that full employment programs analogous to certain New Deal programs (the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the National Youth Administration, for example) should be considered to meet these goals. How would such programs be financed? According to Minsky, the U.S. economy has ample resources, but the question is one of how willing we are to mobilize these resources, that is, to tax and borrow for such projects. For example, welfare in its current form (AFDC and food stamps) exists because it is the cheapest way (short of a policy of doing nothing at all) to take that ratio care of the population in need. Full employment policies are more humane but more expensive and require a larger and more innovative public sector. For government to institute programs to offset the uncertainties of money manager capitalism, it must validate government debt with government revenues. The current high rate of government debt to gross domestic product (GDP) is the result of the irresponsible fiscal policies of the 1980s; a responsible program would assure the decline of the ratio of federal debt to GDP over time from its current 65 percent to about 50 percent. The reduction could be accomplished by transforming the tax structure to a value-added revenue system in which, for example, the individual income tax is replaced by a progressive consumption tax with broad bands and a high per person deduction and value-added taxes are levied on production or distribution and on imports. Imposing such a revenue system would allow the United States to transform its economy from one based on transfer payments to a full employment economy, from one that generates resentment to one that maintains commitment to democracy.