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Flexibility

Flexibility is a term frequently used in the context of EU employment and industrial relations but its meaning is contested. This is because it includes three dimensions.

1. It can refer to employers’ desire for variable (flexible) labour inputs, in terms of numbers employed or hours worked, to match changes in demand for products or services. It can also refer to changing the tasks and skills of employees to increase productivity. The first type is sometimes described as ‘external’, ‘quantitative’ or ‘numerical’ flexibility; the second as ‘internal’, ’qualitative’; or ‘functional’ flexibility.
2. It can also refer to employees’ desire for variable (flexible) contractual arrangements and working conditions to match changing private and domestic needs. Flexibility may concern different forms of contractual arrangement (including ‘atypical work’), particularly as regards working time, to suit better work-life balance.
3. Flexibility is also often presented in the EU context as a policy response to ‘labour market rigidities’, which some economists regard as contributing to unemployment. Strategies on employment have been influenced by studies, such as that of the OECD Jobs Study in 1994, which favourably compare the US labour market with the ‘rigidities’ of those of the EU Member States. However, policies of deregulation aimed at increasing flexibility (e.g. easier hiring and firing of labour) may be seen as threatening employment security and quality of work. For example, when the Commission’s Social Policy Agenda 2000-2005 (COM (2000) 379 final, Brussels, 28 June 2000) refers to ‘flexibility’, it consistently refers to a ‘balance between flexibility and security’ (or flexicurity) to emphasise the broader concept of ‘quality’.

See also: adaptability; fixed-term work; flexicurity; fragmentation of the labour force; part-time work; quality of work; temporary agency work; working time.