Flexibility with security: driving a new compact down under?

This paper will examine the relevance of flexicurity, or the intersection of the particular interests of business (flexibility) and workers (job security), to Australia under two primary heads. Firstly, is flexicurity a useful tool for developing a new compact to increase national competitiveness while bolstering security through the welfare safety-net and enhanced training regimes for the unemployed? Secondly, how might flexicurity be utilised as a tool for rebuilding those cooperative relationships between government, social partners and business which became seriously fractured in the neo-liberal period? This paper also emphasises ways in which the policy framework itself could build trust and develop consensus. In order to give a flavour of how flexicurity has developed both conceptually and in practice, the paper begins with an examination of the way in which flexicurity was negotiated and subsequently pursued on a macro level across the European Union.

Excerpts from publication.

This paper will examine the relevance of flexicurity, or the intersection of the particular interests of business (flexibility) and workers (job security), to Australia under two primary heads. Firstly, is flexicurity a useful tool for developing a new compact to increase national competitiveness while bolstering security through the welfare safety-net and enhanced training regimes for the unemployed? Secondly, how might flexicurity be utilised as a tool for rebuilding those cooperative relationships between government, social partners and business which became seriously fractured in ...  [+] Show more