Aspects of European Socio-economic Integration: Labour Conditions in Greece
- PDF / 225,960 Bytes
- 17 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 96 Downloads / 168 Views
Aspects of European Socio-economic Integration: Labour Conditions in Greece Georgios Odysseus Tsobanoglou
Received: 21 October 2012 / Accepted: 16 June 2013 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
Abstract The current crisis in Greece, a European Union member for over 30 years, has brought to the surface the character of the Greek politico-administrative system as it handles employment, migration and associated forms of social protection. The employment relationship seems to be embedded within a bifurcated system of labour whereby the employment relationship is secure only in the public sector while the private sector is controlled by a precarious system of labour security, a separate health system and with its own political organisation. The lack of a unified national labour system does not allow the formation of a national system of employment (qualifications) and, hence, a way to overcome nepotism and the political (party) patronage system which defines, in a determining way, labour relations. This division is maintained by the politicoadministrative labour regime put in place, under the extra-ordinary political situation that emerged after World War II. The paper explores this hidden reality defining the organisation of the employment system in Greece, its politico-administrative controls that seem to aim at ‘arresting’ the emergence of a social economy. This leads to a hidden social economy of a fragmented private labour market, which is regulated separately from the secure “public” employment sector. This rather anachronistic and discriminatory system of political order of labour divides workers in Greece. Keywords Greek institutional crisis . Labour fragmentation . Barriers to social development
Preamble Relations between states and their citizenry are not, in general, uniform or even homogenous. Political history, historical continuity and discontinuity in national G. O. Tsobanoglou (*) University of the Aegean, Mytilene, Lesvos, Greece e-mail: [email protected]
J Knowl Econ
democratic forms, established notions of social protection and modalities of social “welfare”, with their associated notions of social citizenship, all constitute and subsequently define methodologies with which we may measure the relationship between the citizen and the public administration in a national and, subsequently, supra-national territory. In Greece, the conflict between society (Gesellschaft) and juridical order (Verfassung) has involved a regime since World War II (WWII) which is exceptionally undemocratic, embedded within a quasi-military apparatus of “administrative provision”, operating as real welfare only for those who are “politically correct” (Tsobanoglou 1993, 2001b). Welfare (political and social inclusion measures, particularly for employment and social security) meant the right of entry to employment in the state nomenclature. This became the main field in which social protection was provided, through salaried employment which afforded generalised protection including clearly defined pensi
Data Loading...
