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Where Work Goes. Employment Scenarios in Italy After the “Treu Package”
This publication, edited by Nicola Archidiacono, Antongiulio Bua, Marco Coviello, Massimo Iesu, Claudia Ogriseg and Fabio Petracci, represents the continuation of "Employment in Italy in the 1990s" (No. 1). Despite this continuity, the work stands out from the previous publication and represents something substantially different.
It is a widespread belief that, aside from environmental protection, the most serious problem likely to be faced by the world as a whole over the next twenty years is what to do with the excess workforce, including skilled workforce. This is equally the case for industrialised countries, which need fewer workers because of technological progress, and developing countries (to adopt the questionable definition that identifies development with that which passes for industrialisation), which, encumbered by over three billion people (at least two billion of whom live in poverty), tend to export their excess workforce to the industrialised countries, which are not too happy about accepting them. It has been calculated that there will be a demand for 700 million new jobs in the world over the next twenty years, so that every employee with have to fight for his or her position with a competitor, perhaps from the other side of the world. The continental European labour market is still so rigid and expensive that many companies are planning to move their production and service centres to zones of the world where the workforce is cheaper and more flexible. Telecommunications and fast transport are increasingly making such plans more feasible. Towards the end of the 1980s, it was observed that even the most important institutions (banks, multinationals, industrial giants), which were once solid and stable work providers, had suddenly started cutting back on their staff. Bankruptcies, collective firings, mobility and redundancy pay progressively led to the jobs of millions of Europeans becoming more precarious. They suddenly realised that market laws exist in the work environment too, which can lead to the creation or disappearance of a job on their own, without regard to merit. Cultural changes are currently taking place. The job, with its classic connotations of stability, full time work and a permanent contract, is in sudden decline, with all jobs destined to become precarious over time, given that companies close down or fire people in the case of a crisis. Download summary and introduction
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