With the organization of the Social Summit in Porto, in May, the Portuguese presidency of the European Union sends a clear signal that it is concerned with its social pillar. Let's look at the matter from the weaker side of the social problem, namely, the precarious worker and the intermittent society.
Temporary work, precarious work, intermittent work, self-employment, part-time work, work in outsourcing, work uberized on a platform, everything precarious, everything transitory, everything transitory, everything fluid, this is the way of the cross of the so-called precarious and pluriactive workers, the so-called intermittent society of the great universe of capitalism low cost.
Let's look at some aspects of this socio-labour reality in the current European context, at a time when everything is accelerated by the digital transformation and the ride of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Low cost capitalism and intermittent society
We are in 2021, in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic and facing a serious health, social and economic crisis. Over the past 20 years, while the social issue has come and gone without a satisfactory solution in sight between the national and European planes, capitalism low cost seizes and takes advantage of the so-called “creative destruction”.
We are witnessing a long transition from post-industrial societies to knowledge societies and in that transition capitalism low cost it is “only” a perverse exploitation of a temporary drift of this capitalism of the knowledge society which, by its very nature, should not tolerate such perverse effects for long.
Let's see what is at stake in the labor markets and in the transition to this knowledge society of the digital age, after all, an increasingly intermittent society:
– From mass industrial employment to more qualified and personalized work,
– From the collective and unionized contract to the individual or independent contract,
– From rigid employment to flexible working hours (hour banks),
– From the job , for telecommuting ex situ without apparent limit,
– From employment for life to employability and lifelong learning,
– From routine and repetitive employment to collaborative and shared work,
– From low-paid fixed employment to work and remuneration by objectives,
– From employment under outsourcing to work under outsourcing,
– From employment with rights to work mediated by temporary work agencies,
– From self-regulated employment to work under the provision of services,
As it turns out, the signs are very contradictory. From the outset, the increasing intermittence of the labor and professional relationship, then the social polarization of capitalism of platforms with well-paid collaborations for the most qualified workers, on the one hand, and poorly paid collaborations, with variable income and without rights for the uberized workers on the other.
Finally, the lack of clarification of the European social model and the absence of regulatory policy for the digital transition.
Indeed, given the broad spectrum of this digital capitalism, the problem is, in the first instance, mostly European and, in this context, the European Union is clearly in need of a new doctrine of economic and social policy from which the so-called “social pillar European” is, for now, a very distorted and fallacious brand image.
The situation would not be, perhaps, so serious if it had not been pulverized, in record time, by capitalism low cost, in its most intensive and perverse version.
Over the past twenty years, the “creative destruction and disruptive innovation” operated by the large technological platforms of accommodation, transport, tourist reservation, payment methods, logistics and distribution and outsourcing, created gigantic bubbles in these sectors and made the workers gigs and the generation slasher, that is, the universe of precarious and intermittent workers.
Here, and given the current digital acceleration, we are left with the bitter feeling that covid 19 came to “draw attention and restore order”, where political and social institutions had failed and sinned by default.
The European social pillar and the paradox of integrating the labor factor
We are in 2021, in the middle of a pandemic, and with four major transitions on the horizon: the climate and energy transition, the demographic transition, the digital transition and the transition of the European social model, as a result of profound changes in migratory flows, in the structure of markets employment and social security models.
These profound changes occur simultaneously and do not let us see the flickering light of the horizon clearly. Furthermore, they allow for a manifest contradiction to form between the assertion that we are a “generous community of fundamental social rights”, on the one hand, and the cruel realism of the growing impoverishment of the middle classes motivated by closures, relocations and corporate transformations, each more intense and frequent, on the other.
This growing divergence cannot but cause profound damage to the personal convictions surrounding the European idea and project, in particular, when there is an abundance of political rhetoric about the so-called European social pillar.
In fact, at the European level, faced with one of the greatest crises in our recent history, a threatening danger looms over European societies, namely, that the old assertions of the orthodox economy that convert social policy into an instrument of policy adjustment will return. cyclical macroeconomic
For the time being, this issue appears to have been postponed. The measures taken by the European institutions at this juncture are benign enough: the suspension of the stability pact rules, the recovery plan, the creation of joint European debt, the ECB asset purchase plan (low interest).
This is also the reason why European social policy options, in the current context, are very sensitive, as a high social gauge can harm, in the short term, the most fragile small and medium enterprises and a minimum gauge can do stagnate social policy itself (minimum income) and the economy as a whole.
At this stage of European politics, under the Portuguese presidency, the doubts are, however, immense. At all times, the return to liberalization of international exchanges, the rise in market interest rates and the non-compliance with bank and financial obligations (moratoriums and bad debts) will make many of the current socio-business and family situations unsustainable.
It is to be hoped, then, that the aggravated social problem will return to the European agenda, whether in the form of a European social pillar, a European social space or a European social model.
There is no lack of political rhetoric, but the “suspicious territory” in which the social policy of the near future moves, as well as the doubts about the integration of the labor factor, are now better understood.
The European adventure is, therefore, at a crossroads, at least in its current configuration. The question that arises is very simple in its formulation: is the European Union in a position to regulate the uberization, precariousness and intermittence of the labor market, in order to prevent and moderate the negative effects that a perverse association between capitalism low cost and uberization low cost can it provoke in the social work relationships?
As there is, so far, no answer to this question, there is, in terms of economic integration, what we could call the paradox of the integration of the labor factor: the further the process of economic integration in Europe progresses, the greater the burden of effort. adjustment that falls on the labor factor and all the public policies that revolve around it.
In fact, the core competences in matters of labor and social policy are based in the member states, and the European Union is responsible for regulating and regulating those aspects that most conflict with the functioning of the single market, for example, those that allow the practice of dumping social or harm the improvement of living and working conditions or, even, those aspects related to migratory flows that collide with the proper functioning of the labor markets.
Furthermore, the covid 19 pandemic may act as a trigger for the four major transitions mentioned above and be the source of much more serious social inequalities.
In other words, what is at stake is a new doctrine of fundamental social rights, another European social model and a more proactive social policy capable of reconciling, in real time, public health and safety, flexibility and employability in the labor markets.
Here, in all its rawness, the paroxysm at work: the more economic integration progresses, the more constraints are created around the labor factor.
The European institutions are, themselves, reticent to a social regulation made within the European framework, fearing that this economic space will be victim of “an excess of European social space”, that is, that social diversity will funnel in the European social space, putting European competitiveness vis-à-vis external competition.
Now, economic theory had apparently convinced us that the freedom of movement of the labor factor would eventually lead to the equalization of the respective remuneration.
What do we complain about if theory did not tell us when such an equalization would take place!
Final Notes
We are in a truly paradoxical situation. On the one hand, a profound health, economic and social crisis calling for an enlightened intervention by all institutions, at national and European level.
On the other hand, in the era of digital networks, there is nothing more paradoxical and counterproductive than the political and institutional superiority of the bureaucratic order of the European Union, everything that “distributed social networks” do not like.
And what do the younger generations, daughters of the internet nation and the digital revolution, think? They will never withstand the megalomania and omnipresence of European institutions, for the simple reason that they bet on the “institutional and bureaucratic disintermediation” of the established order.
Now, this is the very principle of the so-called uberization of society that capitalism low cost they take advantage like no one else and that, together, they form the basis of the precarious and the intermittent society.
As is easily proven, in this intermittent society, due to the structural break in quality employment, we will be condemned to a society of very different labor regimes, some in Part-time, others under ., others still in a collaborative regime, under many formats, conditions and reputations, if we like, a society where the individual produces himself.
Capitalism low cost, precarious, intermittent society, everything is possible. And, by the way, the alert also for the Algarve region, as the risk of capture by capitalism is real low cost, especially if the inertia of the regional policy system leads to a convergence between touristification, gamification, gentrification, uberization of services and impoverishment of the working classes.
Be careful then.
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