El debate europeo sobre flexiguridad en el trabajo (reflexiones en torno al «Libro Verde» de la comisión de las Comunidades Europeas)

Abstract

In the political, scientific and legal fields, the oxymoron "flexicurity" is gaining ground as the main organizer of all the labour and social policies. This entails reforming these policies, renewing the instruments of guarantee on behalf of the workers, in order to adapt them to the demands of the technological changes and the renewed systems of production of capitalism. In reality, it consists of reformulating the traditional balance around which labour Law revolves, on the one hand guaranteeing relative legal and economic security to the workers and, on the other, guaranteeing flexible use of the workforce within the productive organizations. This new principle, and how to instrument the legal policies which implement it, is dealt with in several recent documents from the community institutions, among them the "Green Paper", whose main aim is to introduce a political debate in the EU regarding how to modernize the labour Law in order to sustain the objective of the Lisbon Strategy to grow in a sustainable manner, with more and better jobs. The "Green Paper" sets out an outline of the foundations upon which the "classical" labour Law was based, proposing - without placing particular emphasis on the mechanism of social dialogue - a "revision" of the traditional postulates of labour Law, which are regarded as obsolete for facing up to the new socio-economic, labour and productive realities. The community documents represent a stimulus for the latent transition from a "social" constitution of work to a "flexible" constitution of work.