Japan and Italy encountered severe economic problems in the early 1990s, and the governments had to deal with those issues effectively under the increasing neoliberal pressures of globalisation. In this context, labour market deregulation was considered an effective tool to cope with those economic problems. However, the forms and degrees of labour market deregulation in the two countries were quite different. This book seeks to explain the differences in labour market deregulation policies between Japan and Italy, despite the fact that the two countries shared a number of similar political, social and labour market (if not cultural) characteristics. Uniquely, it takes a political, rather than economic or sociological perspective to provide a theoretical and empirical analysis of the processes of labour market deregulation in the two countries. The precarious working conditions of an increasing number of non-regular workers has become a prominent social issue in many industrialised countries including Japan and Italy, but the level of the protection for these workers depends on a country’s labour market policies, which are affected by the power resources of labour unions and labour policy-making structures. This book provides a useful perspective for understanding the root causes of this phenomenon, such as the diffusion of ‘neoliberal’ ideas aimed at promoting labour-market flexibility under globalisation, and demonstrates that there is still room for politics to decide the extent of deregulation and maintain worker protection from management offensives even in an era of globalisation. Labour Market Deregulation in Japan and Italy: Worker Protection under Neoliberal Globalisation will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese politics, Italian politics, political economy and comparative politics.

The economic crisis has revealed the dark side of deregulation in the labour market: rising unemployment, limited access to social security and, due to low wages, no savings to count upon in bad times. This book casts light on the empirical relationship between labour market deregulation through non-standard contracts and the three main dimensions of worker security: employment, income and social security. Focusing on individual work histories, it looks at how labour market dynamics interact with the social protection system in bringing about inequality and insecurity. In this context Italy is put forward as the epitome of flexibility through non-standard work and compared with three similar countries: Germany, Spain and Japan. Results show that when flexibility is carried out as a mere cost-reduction device and social security only relies on insurance principles, deregulation leads to insecurity. 'The political economy of work security and flexibility' is essential reading for academics, students, practitioners and policy makers interested in the outcomes of labour market developments in advanced economies over the past twenty years.

According to 'varieties of capitalism' (VoC) perspective, coordinated market economies (CMEs) attain comparative advantages by coordinating industrial relations and maintaining regulation to a greater extent than liberal market economies and mixed market economies (MMEs). Yet, Japan, a typical CME in the VoC literature, introduced greater labour market flexibility than Italy, an MME. This article analyses why this is the case and claims that the institutional complementarities that had functioned well previously in Japan have been unraveling since the early 1990s and neoliberal deregulation of the labour market ensued. This comparative study of Japan and Italy shows that economic stagnation and the globalisation of finance and production exerted neoliberal pressures on the state and employers to increase competitiveness by introducing market-oriented policies and business strategies. However, the power resources of labour unions and the partisan composition of the government affected the characteristics of neoliberal changes in labour market policy.

This book casts light on the empirical relationship between labor market deregulation through non-standard contracts and the three main dimensions of worker security: employment, income and social security.

High economic growth and relatively equitable distribution were among the most conspicuous characteristics of the postwar Japanese political economy. The lure of the Japanese model, however, has faded since the 1990s. Growth is in short supply and equality a thing of the past. In Welfare through Work, Mari Miura looks in depth at Japan's social protection system as a factor in the contemporary malaise of the Japanese political economy. The Japanese social protection system should be understood as a system of "welfare through work," Miura suggests, because employment protection has functionally substituted for income maintenance. A gendered dual system in the labor market allowed a high degree of labor market flexibility, which enabled Japan to achieve high employment rates as well as strong legal protections for regular workers. In recent years, conservatives gradually replaced the productivism and cooperatism that had resulted from earlier party politics with neoliberalism, which, in turn, hampered the effectiveness of the welfare through work system. In Miura's view, the dynamics of partisan competition fostered ideational renewal, just as the political visions and ideologies of the governing party strongly affected the design of the social protection system. In the scenario Miura describes, the partisan dynamics since the 1990s resulted in the policy change that further undermined the social protection system, and the ensuing disruption has been felt throughout Japan.

As global power relations increasingly favour international capital, it becomes crucial for labour and employment lawyers to center their field in a supranational context. As long as wages, social security, and taxes remain national matters, states compete at this level in order to attract foreign investment. This does not bode well for employees or the self-employed. Most ameliorative measures come in the form of unenforceable and‘soft lawand’ guidelines and recommendations. The conference recorded in this vitally important book confronts this losing battle of local responses to global challenges. The book reprints the papers submitted to that conference by twenty-three outstanding scholars from fourteen countries. Among the many critical issues they expose and discuss are the following: and• the proliferation of varieties of non-standard employment; and• protection of migrant workersand’ rights by regional organizations; and• global and regional trends in the human resources function; and• work training and education policy; and• effectiveness of equality and non-discrimination standards; and• involvement of employees in workplace decisionmaking; and and• the need for an equitable social safety net. In the course of the discussion the authors examine cases from many countries, including not only EU Member States (both West and East) and the U.S., but also Japan, Chile, South Africa, and Indonesia. With a focus on the nexus of multinational enterprises and international standards, the book provides both a sharp image of where labour law stands in todayand’s worldand—revealing serious social problems in a clearer light than is usually encounteredand—and a very valuable guide to directions to pursue and potential solutions, offered by some of the most engaged and committed minds in the field. It is an indispensable resource for legal workers in this and‘eye of the stormand’ of globalization.

This text analyses the policies and provision of vocational education in advanced industrial countries against the backdrop of changing labour markets.

Income inequality has skyrocketed in Canada over the past few decades. The rich have become richer, while the average household income has deteriorated and job quality has plummeted. Common explanations for these trends point to globalization, technology, or other forces largely beyond our control. But, as Jobs with Inequality shows, there is nothing inevitable about inequality. Rather, runaway inequality is the result of politics and policies - what governments have done to aid the rich and boost finance and what they have not done to uphold the interests of workers. Drawing on new tax and income data, John Peters tells the story of how inequality is unfolding in Canada today by examining post-democracy, financialization, and labour market deregulation. Timely and novel, Jobs with Inequality explains how and why business and government have rewritten the rules of the economy to the advantage of the few, and considers why progressive efforts to reverse these trends have so regularly run aground.

Labor market deregulation, intended to boost productivity and employment, is one plausible, yet little studied, driver of the decline in labor shares that took place across most advanced economies since the early 1990s. This paper assesses the impact of job protection deregulation in a sample of 26 advanced economies over the period 1970-2015, using a newly constructed dataset of major reforms to employment protection legislation for regular contracts. We apply the local projection method to estimate the dynamic response of the labor share to our reform events at both the country and the country-industry levels. For the latter, we employ a differences-in-differences identification strategy using two identifying assumptions grounded in theory—namely that job protection deregulation should have larger negative effects in industries characterized by (i) a higher “natural” propensity to adjust the workforce, and (ii) a lower elasticity of substitution between capital and labor. We find a statistically significant, economically large and robust negative effect of deregulation on the labor share. In particular, illustrative back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that job protection deregulation may have contributed about 15 percent to the average labor share decline in advanced economies. Together with existing evidence regarding the macroeconomic gains from job protection and other labor market reforms, our results also point to the need for policymakers to address efficiency-equity trade-offs when designing such reforms.