Who takes care of non-standard career paths? The role of labour market intermediaries

Publication by Nadège Lorquet (currently working in the HR department of a multinational company), Jean-François Orianne (professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Liège), François Pichault (Director of LENTIC, professor HEC Liège)

Abstract :

As flexible career paths become more common in European labour markets, how to combine the flexibility required by non-standard work with new patterns of security is the focus of political debate. Some European Union (EU) countries have launched radical labour market reforms, while in others such reforms remain limited. This paves the way for bottom-up solutions developed by private and non-profit labour market intermediaries in order to support the job transitions of non-standard workers. We map these initiatives through a multidimensional grid and explore the extent to which they contribute to renewed regulation of modern labour markets. We outline two ideal-typical approaches. The first extends internal labour markets to triangular employment relationships by considering workers as ‘quasi-employees’. The second involves more disruptive solutions by treating non-standard workers as ‘quasi-self-employed’.

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This research was financially supported by the French-speaking Government of Belgium (Actions de Recherche Concertées (ARC).