The politics of labour market adjustment in post-1989 Poland. Trajectory of policy reform, politics of social change and emerging welfare regime
Résumé
Labour market adjustment is constructed by the policies that set the rules for the governance of employment and un-employment. Therefore, labour market polices have redistributive implications. Their orientations are defined in a process involving various socio-political actors (unions, employers associations, government with a partisan orientation). This has been particularly salient in Central and Eastern Europe given the pressure for adaptation to new market conditions resulting from economic liberalisation. Starting with a critical review of Esping-Andersen’s concept of welfare regimes, which places emphasis on the politics of social risk redistribution, this paper explores the policies and politics of labour market adjustment in Poland since 1989. It builds on original and secondary material and has a strong empirical component. The aim is twofold: (i) to identify which welfare regime (if any) is gradually taking shape and (ii) to uncover the socio-political compromise on which it rests. While policies have generally tended to become minimalist over time, retracing the trajectory of policy reform in two domains - unemployment compensation, on the one hand, and the rules governing employment relationship, on the other - reveals that there are two contrasted worlds of ‘labour market politics’.