Documents workfare 24 results

"This paper explores and problematizes the exclusion of workfare participants from the scope of employment legislation, offering an opportunity to revisit the scope of the labour protection. As the UK and the Netherlands have been at the forefront of the European activation turn that catalysed the introduction of workfare programmes in European welfare states, the first part of the paper maps the employment protection of workfare participants in these two countries. In the second part of the paper we critically assess the reasons why employment status or, at least, employment protection regardless of status, is not granted to workfare participants and to other persons who are fulfilling financial non-rewarding (at least for the worker herself) ‘work', such as volunteer workers or persons who have been found guilty of an offence and are sentenced to community service. On the basis of our analysis we suggest to expand labour protection to workfare participants, with or without granting them worker status."

"Economic sanctions have gained more political legitimacy and are being more widely used as a tool to improve the willingness of unemployed welfare recipients to participate in activities within the framework of active labour market policy (ALMP). The focus of this article is the use of economic sanctions on cash benefit recipients in Denmark. Quantitative analyses show a substantial increase in the use of economic sanctions in Denmark, including sanctions on those who are categorised as having problems in addition to unemployment. In this article we will direct our attention to responses from both the organisational and individual level regarding the implementation of sanctions. Empirical material consists of interviews with managers and frontline social workers in municipalities with a high number of sanctions. We argue that organisations matter in shaping street-level behaviour, resulting in substantial differences in the use of sanctions from one municipality to another."

"Since the rise of the activation paradigm in the 1990s, the duty to work without a wage has become widespread in European social assistance legislation. This paper investigates in a precise way the extent to which the duty to work without a wage follows the legal logic of a contractual relationship and how this duty is related to the fundamental right to an adequate standard of living. A comparison between German, Dutch and British social assistance legislation shows that the duty to work without a wage increasingly takes the form of a reciprocity requirement. That is, instead of re-integrating into regular paid work, recipients of social assistance are required to show that they are worthy of attaining basic social rights, not only by improving their capability to work but, above all, by showing a willingness to work. It concludes that the duty to work without a wage enhances governmental control over recipients of social assistance rather than improving their employability and notes that, in this respect, the Dutch social assistance regime seems to be stricter than the German and British ones."

"We estimate the effects of conditioning benefits on program participation among older long-term unemployed workers. We exploit a Swedish reform which reduced UI duration from 90 to 60 weeks for a group of older unemployed workers in a setting where workers who exhausted their benefits received unchanged transfers if they agreed to participate in a work practice program. Our results show that job finding increased as a result of the shorter duration of passive benefits. The time profile of the job-finding effects suggests that the results are due to deterrence during the program-entry phase. We find no impact on ensuing job durations or wages, suggesting that the increased job-finding rate was driven by increased search intensity rather than lower reservation wages. A crude cost–benefit analysis suggests that the reform reduced the combined cost of programs and transfers."

"In an age of government imposed austerity, and after 30 years of neo-liberal restructuring, the future of the welfare state looks increasingly uncertain. Asbjørn Wahl offers an accessible analysis of the situation across Europe, identifies the most important challenges and presents practical proposals for combating the assault on welfare.
Wahl argues that the welfare state should be seen as the result of a class compromise forged in the 20th century, which means that it cannot easily be exported internationally. He considers the enormous shifts in power relations and the profound internal changes to the welfare state which have occurred during the neo-liberal era, pointing to the paradigm shift that the welfare state is going through. This is illustrated by the shift from welfare to workfare and increased top-down control.
As well as being a fascinating study in its own right that will appeal to students of economics and politics, The Rise and Fall of the Welfare State also points to an alternative way forward for the trade union movement based on concrete examples of struggles and alliance-building."

"This paper provides a new perspective by classifying active labor market programs (ALMPs) depending on their main objectives and their relevance and cost-effectiveness during normal times, during a crisis, and during recovery. We distinguish ALMPs that provide: (i) incentives for retaining employment, (ii) incentives for creating employment, (iii) incentives for seeking and keeping a job, (iv) incentives for human capital enhancement, and (v) improved labor market matching. Reviewing evidence from the literature, we discuss direct and indirect effects of various interventions, their cost-effectiveness, and draw lessons for transition and developing countries. The paper concludes by providing a systematic overview of how, why, when and to what extent specific ALMPs are effective. In particular, the paper shows that ALMPs retaining employment, like work sharing schemes, should be applied in severe recessions for a limited time period of time only. ALMPs creating employment, like hiring subsidies, perform much better on cost-effectiveness and strengthen the outsiders' position in the labor market, especially during recoveries. In-work benefits and public works are not very cost-efficient in terms of raising employment, but might be cost-efficient in reducing poverty and inequity. Policies readjusting distorted employment incentives, such as activation and sanction measures, have proven to provide cost-effective results during normal times."

"In der Studie wird untersucht, wie innerbetriebliche Übergänge aus Arbeitsgelegenheiten mit Mehraufwandsentschädigung in ungeförderte sozialversicherungspflichtige Beschäftigung (Klebeeffekte) entstehen. Zunächst werden die Gründe erörtert, warum die direkte Beschäftigungsintegration aus Arbeitsgelegenheiten heraus nicht zu erwarten ist. Die entsprechenden Ergebnisse der einschlägigen Evaluationsforschung sind insofern nicht überraschend. Wie und warum Übergänge trotzdem stattfinden, wird im empirischen Teil mithilfe eines Mixed-Methods-Ansatzes erklärt, der qualitative Methoden zur Hypothesengenerierung und quantitative Methoden zur Hypothesenprüfung verwendet. Auf Basis einer breit angelegten, qualitativen Erhebung stellen wir Hypothesen darüber auf, wann und warum Übergänge gelingen können. Grundlage sind 100 leitfadengestützte Experteninterviews in Institutionen, Organisationen und Betrieben, die an der Implementation und am Einsatz von Arbeitsgelegenheiten beteiligt waren. Wir führen daraufhin eine quantitative Analyse der Übergänge aus Arbeitsgelegenheiten in reguläre Beschäftigung durch, um unsere Hypothesen zu testen. Grundlage der quantitativen Studie ist eine Sondererhebung des IAB-Betriebspanels mit jeweils über 1.000 verwertbaren Fragebögen in den Jahren 2006 und 2007. Übergänge finden demnach vor allem in Beschäftigungsgesellschaften und Trägerbetrieben mit einem hohen Anteil an Arbeitsgelegenheiten statt. Bei vielen dieser Übergänge handelt es sich nur scheinbar um ungeförderte Übergänge, da die Weiterbeschäftigung an den Zufluss von Fördermitteln gebunden ist."