Job quality in European employment policy: one step forward,two steps back?

Introduction

Ever since the Lisbon Strategy raised the profile of employment policy within the European Union (EU) by explicitly stating that its aim was to sustain ‘economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion’ (European Council, 2000), the expression ‘more and better jobs’ has become more of a rhetorical catchphrase of European employment and social policy rather than a policy of substance. In practice, both EU institutions and individual governments have prioritised the quantity of jobs, as measured by the unemployment rate or the labour market participation rate, basically ignoring their quality (Muñoz de Bustillo et al., 2011; Raveaud, 2007). Despite institutional and academic efforts, job quality remains a contested concept, insufficiently penetrating policy-making at EU level.

Studies on this issue mainly focus on the role of ideas and actors in formulating policy (Burchell et al., 2014), as well as on the balance between economic and social goals shaped by institutional and political developments (Souto-Otero, 2017; Streeck, 1995). We seek further to develop knowledge in this area by expanding the existing discussion to include the role and impact of statistical job quality indicators in EU employment policy. In short, we argue that indicators play a key role in formulating and assessing policy problems which tend to be ignored when not measured. Moreover, indicators represent a necessary element of the EU’s governance in the area of employment, relying on goals, benchmarks and targets, none of which can be monitored, evaluated or sanctioned without appropriate indicators. Theoretically, we propose an analytical framework integrating agenda-setting and public policy research (Jones and Baumgartner, 2005; Kingdon, 1995), with an EU-focused analysis of social policy formulation (De la Porte and Pochet, 2012; Streeck, 1995).

The contribution of this article lies in examining reasons for the lack of effective progress observed thus far in developing job quality indicators capable of guiding European social and employment policies. We first review institutional perspectives of job quality in the context of the current policy debate within the EU with the aim of explaining why the issue remains on the political backburner. In this context, we consider how job quality has been framed as a social policy problem in the evolving EU employment strategy, and how its measurement has been defined and redefined. We then address the question to what extent proposed definitions and indicators of job quality have been driving policy-making at EU level. To what extent has job quality been included in EU governance and what impact has it had so far? To this end, we undertake an extensive document analysis of EU publications and policy debates, focusing particularly on the role of the European Commission, a key driver of EU policy in this area. We conclude by identifying the principal political and methodological shortcomings hindering progress on job quality within EU employment policy.

Overall, we show how such a complex concept as job quality has been defined and operationalised in EU policy-making. The policy impact of any job quality indicator depends not only on methodological quality and data availability, but also on the power relations between the actors involved. Job quality remains highly contested and contentious, as it is viewed differently depending on whose perspective it is evaluated from. In particular, we point to constant contradictory pressures from different sides of the social partners’ negotiating table, as well as to the tension between social and economic surveillance within EU institutions. Re-entering EU employment policy, the flexicurity narrative merging seemingly incompatible calls for a better quality of work with labour market deregulation is used to illustrate this point. We conclude by arguing that conceptual clarity and practical operationalisation are vital prerequisites for including job quality in any employment strategy put forward by the EU in the future.

Articulating and measuring job quality in EU employment policy

In this article, we argue that our core question as to why progress towards better jobs in Europe has been so slow and so unpredictable can be at least partially understood through considering theories of public policy-making. Many institutions and actors may have started their involvement in this process with a simple rational-choice approach, believing that the path to better jobs could be achieved by careful measurement and careful conceptual analysis of the roles of the various aspects influencing employment policy – regulation, trade unions, EU institutions, etc. This theory of public policy-making rationalism might have worked with other less political and less divisive policy objectives, but cannot explain the route taken so far in defining job quality, and will probably be an even worse description of the way ahead. We are not advocating replacing this approach with one grand theory, but perhaps several theories can each explain a part of the process.

For instance, another useful public policy theoretical framework posits that many public and social policy-making processes are better described as ‘incrementalism’ processes or ‘punctuated equilibriums’ (Jones and Baumgartner, 2005). The reasons for cycles of change and retrenchment can vary, as some policy priorities suddenly override others. In the case of job quality, for instance, it could be argued that progress is often undermined by socio-economic crises in the EU, such as the credit crunch crisis, the Euro crisis and more recently Brexit – in each case, the urgent trumping the important.

A further useful theoretical contribution in the study of public policy is known as ‘group models’ or ‘subsystems theory’. According to these theories, we should not be looking for simple, unfragmented paths but rather recognise the ability of think tanks, political groupings, pressure groups, researchers and scholars to set agendas and change policy (Heclo, 1977). As the number of actors increases, so too does the complexity of the possibilities for informal and dynamic alliances. Kingdon (1995) goes further, suggesting that, given the number of different ways to define problems and the nature of competition between politicians jockeying for advantage, along with the vagaries of policy-making, the sheer number of possible directions of travel yield a process that can be more accurately described as ‘organised anarchy’ (referred to elsewhere as the ‘garbage can model’) (see also Béland and Petersen, 2017).

In this process of policy development, many aspects interact with one another in complex, non-linear ways. Policy problems are identified by actors and ideas take the form of contested problem definitions. Actors then formulate potential policy alternatives to address these problems, which are not always coherent. Concrete policy decisions are then framed and brokered in a process shaped by the balance of power between actors. This article will illustrate just how well this theory suits the concept of job quality and its ongoing redefinition.

Finally, earlier research on the Open Method of Coordination (De la Porte and Pochet, 2012) and EU social policy (Copeland and Daly, 2018; Streeck, 1995) indicates that the presence of agreed and concise indicators is necessary for raising the profile of social issues and increasing the likelihood of any corrective action, just as in the macroeconomic public policy sphere. Thus, any employment strategy needs to be underpinned by indicators, if rhetoric and discourse are to be turned into action. In this article, we review the extent to which this was the case in the period between the adoption of the Lisbon Strategy and that of the European Pillar of Social Rights, positing that statistical indicators are a powerful aspect of problem definition and monitoring, with a significant impact on policy debates. If indicators, however, are ambiguous, policy responses also end up being framed in an ambiguous way, open to interpretation and discussion by various stakeholders.

As this article argues, the development of job quality indicators and the conceptual articulation of job quality in EU employment policy are thus closely interlinked. Putting job quality high on the policy agenda, the launch of the Lisbon Strategy stimulated efforts to come up with a suitable methodology for its measurement. Progress in this area in turn provided policy-makers with working definitions of job quality, allowing for the formulation of more specific policy recommendations in this area.

Applying these lenses of public policy theory to the EU’s process of attempting to improve job quality provides a good way of understanding what has happened in the past, as well as allowing a more realistic understanding of what to expect in the future. In the following section, we therefore review some of the milestones in the articulation and measurement of job quality in EU employment policy, considering to what extent these processes have been successful and what impediments were encountered.

Translating discourse into actions: job quality indicators in the Employment Guidelines and European Semester

In the previous section we reviewed some of the key policy strategies developed at EU level in the area of work and employment. Such strategies constitute a reference framework for the monitoring and assessment of how Member States perform. In practical terms, they frame the narrative and provide key terms and indicators used in the cycle of EU economic and social governance coordination, currently synchronised within the European Semester, an annual process setting priorities, evaluating performance and outlining recommendations. This is where job quality indicators could potentially play a role. However, as we demonstrate in the following review of the evolution of socio-economic governance in the EU, job quality has barely featured here. We argue that this is largely accounted for by weaknesses in the conceptualisation of job quality (giving no clear indication of the direction for improvement) and the dominant commitment to flexibility in the policy discourse. Overall, the process described below closely resembles Kingdon’s (1995) theory of organised anarchy, with multiple actors attempting to converge in the formulation of the job quality problem.

The ‘more and better jobs’ objective set in Lisbon and reasserted during the subsequent Council meetings in Nice and Stockholm gave job quality a prominent place among priorities for common employment policy. The 2002 Employment Guidelines (European Commission, 2002) reiterated the calls for improving the quality of jobs, employment and work, while also specifying the areas to be addressed in order to achieve improvement in job quality. The list mirrored the Laeken proposal, including all 10 dimensions. This was certainly an important contribution of the Laeken framework, as it provided a working definition of job quality. However, its methodological weaknesses and the lack of agreement on indicators and data sidelined job quality in the formulation of concrete targets. Instead, the emphasis remained on full employment, flexible forms of work and lifelong learning, with the underlying assumption that action in these areas would also bring improvements in job quality.

By the launch of the Europe 2020 strategy in 2010, job quality had lost much of its momentum at EU level. The focus was on restoring employment growth and activating labour markets, with flexicurity principles cited as a necessary set of measures to achieve these goals. This is clearly visible in the 2010 Employment Guidelines (European Commission, 2010b). Guideline 7 was entitled ‘Increasing labour market participation of women and men, reducing structural unemployment and promoting job quality [emphasis added]’. It stated that ‘[t]he quality of jobs and employment conditions should be addressed’, but without giving any details as to how this should be pursued, nor setting any targets or including indicators. The only concrete and measurable target included in the guideline was the employment rate.

Such a way of including job quality in the guidelines greatly reduced its potential impact and failed to overcome the rhetorical level. As a result, job quality was consistently omitted from the annual evaluation of the implementation of the guidelines across EU Member States. A good illustration is found in the Joint Employment Reports (JER), key inputs to EU economic governance which each year examine Member State actions in implementing their employment policy in line with the Employment Guidelines. The sections dedicated to Guideline 7, which includes the promotion of job quality in its title, simply kept erasing that part of the title and accordingly failed to include any issues related to job quality in the evaluation. For instance, in JER 2014 the guideline was reduced to ‘Increasing labour market participation’ (European Commission, 2013: 18), and in JER 2015 to ‘Increasing labour market participation and reducing structural unemployment’ (European Commission, 2015c: 32).

The launch of EMCO’s job quality indicators made its mark on the following revision of the Employment Guidelines in 2015. Its influence resembled the impact of the Laeken proposal on the earlier guidelines. The positive contribution consisted of adding content to the label ‘quality employment’ by providing a list of dimensions that should be addressed by the Member States. Thus, in line with the EMCO proposal, the guidelines recommended that quality employment ‘should be ensured in terms of socio-economic security, education and training opportunities, working conditions (including health and safety) and work-life balance’ (European Commission, 2015b). However, a lack of specific targets or measures to be applied for boosting employment quality meant that the earlier bias towards the quantity of jobs was reproduced. The employer perspective again dominated the formulation of policies based on these Guidelines. In particular, the evaluation of the extent to which countries follow the Guidelines on improving employment quality was limited to a very simplistic assessment of labour market segmentation which included the share of temporary employment and transition rates from temporary to permanent jobs (European Commission, 2016: 52–56). Accordingly, policy responses across Member States that were positively evaluated by the European Commission included the relaxation of employment protection legislation to ease dismissals, which translates into less job security for workers and was found to have an adverse impact on job quality (McGovern et al., 2004; Piasna, 2018; Piasna and Myant, 2017; Rubery et al., 2016). The report’s focus on the quality of working time was similarly limited to policies increasing flexibility to allow for economic adjustments and improved cost-competitiveness (European Commission, 2016: 60–61).

This fits in with yet another important impediment to how job quality impacts EU employment policy. The commitment of EU institutions to improving job quality was in fact rather superficial and inconsistent, often based on inserting the word ‘quality’ before ‘job’, without paying attention to the context and the logical meaning of the message. This is not just a suspicion but can be verified when comparing proposals for the revised guidelines with the final adopted texts. The 2015 Employment Guidelines are a good illustration of this point. Guideline 5 states:

Member States should facilitate the creation of quality jobs , reduce the barriers business faces in hiring people, promote entrepreneurship and, in particular, support the creation and growth of small enterprises. (European Commission, 2015b, emphasis added)

The launch of the Pillar in 2017 with its objective of achieving fair working conditions raised the profile of the social dimension in the governance structure, assigning the social side a stronger position in a subsequent revision of the Employment Guidelines. The wording of the above-cited guideline was again tweaked by changing ‘promote entrepreneurship’ to ‘fostering responsible entrepreneurship and genuine self-employment’ (Council of the European Union, 2018: 9). While this was an important change insofar as it acknowledged that self-employment is not necessarily a route to good quality employment and may be precarious, the meaning of ‘responsible’ and ‘genuine’ was left open to interpretation, thus risking a further dilution of this guideline in the evaluation process.

Finally, an analysis of employment guidelines illustrates an important source of tension in the debate on job quality within the EU which has significantly hindered its progress: the political struggle between pro-regulation and deregulation coalitions (Mailand and Arnholtz, 2015). Put differently, in terms of political priorities, the concept of job quality has had to fight for attention within the ‘flexicurity’ debate which emerged within the EU during the mid-1990s and had gained a firm foothold within DG Employment by 2008 (for discussion see e.g. Klindt, 2011).

Policy objectives formulated at EU level emphasise the need to ensure flexibility for employers, encourage new forms of work and flexible work arrangements. At most, only ‘extreme flexibility’ (European Commission, 2017e: 116) is undesirable, yet there is no clear delineation of the boundary beyond which the ‘extreme’ form begins. This commitment to flexibility, very much linked to flexicurity policy, distorts the processes of policy evaluation and recommendations in the area of job quality, resulting in very weak and often contradictory guidelines on how to create quality jobs.

Examples of such contradictions can be found in the Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs) issued by the EU institutions to all Member States to assess inter alia the implementation of Employment Guidelines and to put forward proposals for the European Semester. For instance, Lithuania in 2011 was advised to ‘enhance labour market flexibility by amending its labour legislation to make it more flexible and to allow better use of fixed-term contracts’ even though the latter are commonly regarded as indicative of poor job quality (e.g. Green and Mostafa, 2012; Muñoz de Bustillo et al., 2011). Similarly, Poland in 2015 was given the contradictory advice that permanent employment is burdensome, costly and not attractive for employers, but that a high proportion of non-standard and weakly protected contracts may reduce the quality of available employment (European Commission and Council, 2015). We find similar inconsistencies with respect to wages, another important dimension of job quality. The CSRs for Bulgaria in 2015 and Latvia in 2016, for example, recommended wage moderation, as wage increases were considered to be distorting the labour markets and harming competitiveness. At the same time, both countries were warned about high levels of poverty.

Discussion: political and methodological shortcomings

The analysis of the progress made towards articulating job quality in EU employment policy points to several major impediments hampering the development of an EU-level policy-oriented framework for the comparative measurement of job quality.

To begin with, power imbalances between social actors and the role of a dominant narrative have greatly impacted the use of available indicators in policy-making. While EU socio-economic governance assumes the mutual reinforcement and effective balancing of economic, employment and social policy (Council of the European Union, 2006: 23), in practice, this positive interaction has not always worked as intended (Zeitlin, 2007). The influence and organisation of actors in the domains of finance and employment within EU institutions have developed unevenly, resulting in an asymmetry between economic and social issues (Mailand and Arnholtz, 2015; Maricut and Puetter, 2018). The 2008 crisis significantly slowed down the development of social Europe while further accentuating the asymmetry in favour of economic actors, resulting in EU employment policy consisting either of direct calls for more flexibility and less regulatory burdens for employers (e.g. European Commission, 2010a), or making social policy measures conditional on neither imposing any constraints on employers nor obstructing the development of new (in most cases casual) forms of work (e.g. European Commission, 2017d). Even the Social Pillar is built around the vision of balancing rights for workers with flexibility for employers, subjecting the former to the latter.

Furthermore, the articulation of job quality at policy level is undoubtedly hampered by the methodological, conceptual and theoretical confusion about what job quality actually is and from whose perspective it should be considered. Our review of the EU’s institutional initiatives in the area of job quality reveals the absence of a coherent theoretical framework guiding the selection of variables and their meaningful interpretation. The choice of variables tends to be driven by pre-existing policy objectives and data availability rather than by any explicit reference to social or economic theories. Many key dimensions of work quality were thus omitted, for political or practical rather than for conceptual reasons, while too many others were included in a way with little analytical impact (see discussion in Burchell et al., 2014; Sehnbruch et al., 2015). For instance, labour supply characteristics were often mixed up with labour demand indicators, while the distinction between dependent and independent variables became confused. The complexity, overly broad scope and lack of transparency are partly to blame for the limited impact of these initiatives, whether as an advocacy or policy tool (Hoffmann and Dooren, 2017; Ward, 2004). This not only hinders the formulation of concrete policy measures but may even generate conflicting recommendations, as demonstrated by the CSRs discussed above.

Another major impediment stems from the fact that the definition of job quality and the selection of those employment aspects via which to measure it depend on the perspective adopted. A complex and multi-dimensional concept such as job quality can be analysed from many, often rivalling, political or ideological perspectives. The meaning attributed to job quality will be different depending on whether it is viewed from the standpoint of individual workers, families, employers or from a societal perspective. The difficulties faced by the EU institutions in their efforts to conceptualise and measure job quality and build effective policy measures thus stem from tensions between the different perspectives of the social partners: governments, employers and trade unions (Freistein, 2016). Whilst higher wages may be better for workers, employers would argue that they harm their cost competitiveness. Employer-led forms of work flexibility might represent unpredictability and insecurity for workers, and so on. This has led to a plethora of variables being included in job quality definitions to ensure that these different points of view are incorporated. In practice, however, such a broad scope makes these definitions impossible to operationalise.

These complex problems generate a highly problematic vicious circle: to provide appropriate input to political debates, evidence is needed on the respective outcomes of policies promoting job quality. Yet without a precise conceptualisation and definition of what is meant by ‘job quality’, we cannot provide input to this debate. Furthermore, without such a definition, the EU cannot propose specific guidelines for a more integrated employment policy taking job quality into account and according the issue the importance we think it deserves.

Conclusions

This article has analysed the standing of job quality in current EU employment policy, considering to what extent the articulation of job quality in EU employment policy has been successful, not only in terms of overarching principles but also concrete action. The analysis shows that the progress observed thus far in developing job quality indicators at policy level has been hindered by conceptual confusion, the lack of a shared definition and disagreement on how to mould a multitude of work dimensions into a coherent comparative framework of indicators. Moreover, many labour market variables are contentious and their interpretation in terms of job quality depends on the perspective taken. The interests of workers, employers and public policy-makers often clash, as do the interests of individual human beings and free markets. This poses particular difficulties for international bodies, where any progress is based on a compromise between the interests of employers, policy-makers and employees. As a result, no agreement has been reached on statistically relevant indicators able to help define and monitor job quality.

A policy strategy needs to be converted into concrete aims or targets so that non-compliance can be sanctioned: this is the role of indicators. But the combination of punctuated equilibriums (Jones and Baumgartner, 2005) and organised anarchy (Kingdon, 1995) have led to a failure to effectively integrate job quality into EU employment policy-making. As shown in the previous sections, job quality indicators that follow from EU policy strategies appear ambiguous and ambivalent. Therefore, the actions devised on their basis do not add up to any coherent policy capable of effectively addressing issues of poor job quality. Moreover, our analysis has confirmed what previous studies noted: the dominance of economic surveillance, or market-making social policies, using the ambiguity and confusion in job quality indicators to their advantage and subjecting social policy to market efficiency goals. We thus find little ideational impact of job quality indicators in EU employment policy.

The conceptual confusion with vested political interests is real but not insurmountable. We argue that, in order to integrate job quality analysis better into a coherent social policy framework, it is necessary carefully to define and consider what the relevant dimensions of job quality are, on which level the analysis should focus, and from whose perspective. These choices should then be applied consistently in the formulation of Employment Guidelines and their monitoring across countries (see also Piasna et al., 2017). In addition, successful indicators with a significant influence on policy-makers must not be too complex, both in terms of their methodology and the quantity of variables involved (Ward, 2004).

Raising the profile of social issues on the policy agenda and balancing the input from different sides of the social partners’ negotiating table are essential for counterbalancing the dominance of economic surveillance in the European Semester. The efforts to increase the importance of better working and living conditions in EU policy, together with the launch of the European Pillar of Social Rights, are a much anticipated and welcomed step in this direction. However, the precedence given to flexibility and the persistence of the logic of flexicurity require that a more radical change is, of course, still needed before job quality becomes a concrete and measurable target in the EU’s employment policy.