Wage and Welfare : New Perspectives on Employment and Social Rights in Europe

This book presents an original multidisciplinary conceptual framework for the analysis of the processes of construction/transformation of workers’ social rights. The framework was developed by taking an analysis of employment and social protection in the Latin European countries as starting-point, and thus offers an innovative alternative to the dominant approaches. It takes account of the institutional forms determining employees’ resource flows and associated rights, and introduces a new analytical category of «resource regimes». Four spheres are identified for the observation of recent resource regime changes: employment systems, public policy frameworks, social hierarchies and industrial relations systems. The various chapters explore how each of these spheres participates in the institution of social rights over resources, and identify key vehicles of change such as transformations in forms of employment, labour market policies, pension reforms, the swing to a logic of competencies, social pacts, and the processes involved in the construction of the European Union. The book brings to the fore the dynamic relation between employment, wages and social rights and aims to contribute to current debates on social protection reforms and employment policies implemented at both national and European levels.