In such a context, international institutions and more specifically the EU ones seem unable to shape coherent, credible and coordinated solutions to find a sustainable way out of the recession. Every country tries to limit its own loss of competitiveness and to preserve to some extend its national social stability. Even if employment losses and unemployment rise seem to be universal issues, their levels and rhythms remain very different in each country though highlighting the long-running specificities of the social models’ institutions. Social protection system, as well as public sector can be effective shock absorbers and on the opposite labour market flexibility can exert important pro-cycle effect.

The paper will aim at analysing and confronting the different effects of the crisis within two different areas: the US and EU, the latter facing an increasing heterogeneity. It will focus on employment and social policies that have been implemented since the beginning of the recession in six countries (the US, the UK, Denmark, Germany, France and Spain) and will tackle the role of social actors – and more specially trade unions - in the governance of the labour markets. It will try to set an assessment of the relative resilience of each national social model facing the recession (e.g. labour market institutions, welfare systems, industrial relations within each country) and will also analyse the way these models could be deeply reoriented when taking into account the neo-liberal employment and social policies that have been implemented since the last decades. A special look will be given to policies and regulations (or lack of) at the EU level, as well as social actors’ strategies and their consequences on Lisbon agenda re-orientation. The theoretical perspective will be to provide a renewal framework of the common typologies on capitalism trajectories (Amable, 2005 ; Hall and Soskice, 2001) as well as on social models (see Esping Andersen, 1999). According to Sen’s approach, the purpose is also to highlight the different institutional frameworks and resources that could be converted into workers’ capabilities.

Bringing forward new longitudinal data on occupations and work in Britain, 1951-2001, this paper argues that the contemporary social division of labour cannot adequately be explained by appealing to the abstract forces of global markets and technology. Conventional labour market theory highlights the determining effects of `horizontal’ supply and demand forces. Choice at the margin between work and leisure determines supply; productivity at the margin determines demand. Skill biased technological change is predicted to shift the balance between demand and supply in favour of more educated, skilled labour power. Our analysis exposes the limitations of this a-historical account. The character of work and occupations is shaped in important ways by specific material and historical conditions. These conditions do not have even and universal effects.

Evidence is adduced to highlight the continuing salience of manual work, low status (often routine) non-manual jobs, and a significant growth in the established professions. Our analysis challenges the grand narratives that point to an ascendant `weightless’ economy and a receding material world of production. It is the contention of this paper that Britain is better characterised as a `pear-shaped’ economy propped up by millions of low status, manual and non-manual jobs.

The first section provides an exegesis of the arguments that refer to a structural break in work patterns and processes. With a focus on developments in Britain, the second section describes both shifts and continuities in the jobs that people do. Why are so many people undertaking jobs in the first decade of the twenty-first century that would have been familiar 50 years ago? This question is addressed in section three, with reference to the critical economic and political ruptures that shaped labour patterns in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century. The analysis reveals the limitations of technology driven accounts of work restructuring and the resulting occupational division of labour. The concluding section draws some parallels between past and present controversies in the political economy of work.

These theoretic deficiencies stimulated, especially mainstream economics to find some new approaches for the explanation of this phenomenon; theories of differed compensation, human capital, Pareto Improvement and Signalling emerged to explain unpaid overtime. Every theory mentioned above is based on assumptions of neoclassical economic analysis. In our critique, we do not only detect an analytical lacunae, but also an empirical one. Every approach analyses labour as a simple input in production process and neglects its social character. Moreover, every of these theories avoid to cast doubts on the basic neoclassical assumption that labour wage is the reward of labour contribution generally. Following the foundations of Marxist analysis, we argue that working time extension generally and unpaid overtime particularly are forms of absolute surplus value extraction. In addition we observe this phenomenon especially in recent years for some particular reasons. The falling tendency of rate of profit, which led to the economic crisis of 1973, pressed capitalists to implement radical changes in production process; changes in production organisation, to introduce informatics technology in the sphere of exchange. Additionally to them, the developing tertiary sector of economy are structural factors which facilitated capitalists to extract more surplus value. Furthermore, the so called capitalist restructuring, which was described above, was also accompanied by institutional changes too; the labour market was also deregulated having its impact on working time extension, that we can observe nowadays. Moreover, unions weakening took place during last years due to previous structural changes, social and historical reasons. This fact led workers to a situation with restricted bargaining power. Consequently, employees cannot demand effectively a possible working time reduction or to rewarded for the labour which have offered. All these factors played a determinant role in working time extension and particularly in the rising phenomenon of unpaid overtime.

In the present paper, our main focus is first to analyze critically the neoclassical labor market and to reveal the real sociopolitical ambitions behind irrational, unrealistic, theoretical assumptions. Next, we proceed with a heterodox multiple equilibrium labor market analysis and relevant theoretical and policy implications.

Therefore, we begin with a short, comprehensive literature review regarding the theoretical background and the applications of neoclassical labor market theory, along with references to several critical points being already discussed. In the second part, we present an innovative multiple equilibrium model, based on the following three milestones:

• a reversed S-sloped labor supply,
• a heterodox labor demand, based on the rejection of the misleading assumption of diminishing marginal productivity,

a more careful discussion of the causality in the functional relationships.

The present paper attempts to contribute into this debate about the effects of machinery onto the production and labour process. It presents and compares the mainstream “labour market clearing mechanism” and “human capital” argument with Marx’s analysis according to which capitalist competition imposes the presence of the reserve army and the over time deskilling of labour power

On the one hand there was a huge pressure and unwillingness to pass this Act in the Indian Parliament as is evident in the Controller and Auditor General’s Report (called CAG report, which has high stake in policy making in India), which mentions that MNREGA is a complete failure and wastage of the money collected through tax payers. On the other hand there were people who supported and propagated the idea of full employment, its legal entitlement as well as food security and wanted the implementation of this Act. The final Act was derived through the multi-dimensional assortment of arguments from both the opposing and the supporting groups.

There are always complex processes behind making of any Law, which includes various factors like the material conditions at the specific period, the larger struggle by the masses , response by the state etc. Meanwhile with respect to MNREGA, public discourse changed from the questions of unemployment, hunger and relief work to issues of ‘Right to Work’, livelihood and legal entitlement. In this context it is an imperative to engage with the question of how the legal and juridical notions of contract have evolved in the light of debates about the labour laws and unemployment. The pressure of political movements has forced the State to recognize all these at the level of policy. It is interesting that, taken the frameworks of MNREGA, it can be read as an implicit critique of both the neo-liberal project as well as earlier versions of planning and industrialism. While these may mark the radical impulses of recognition in the realm of policy making, it is unclear whether initiatives such as these gestures towards the possibility of a new mode of economic theorizing in the contemporary is creating room for the advancement of neo-liberalism, more so in the context of today’s crisis of capitalism, or providing a stronger political agency to the rural poor.

This will be my departure point where I want to look at the social composition involved in MNREGA, how it is affecting the social and political space. New research and various field works about the implementation of this Act is showing the trend that social exclusion based on Caste and Gender is creating barriers for its implementation. The question of social exclusion needs to be studied. At the same time it is an imperative to engage with the question of whether such economic and welfare policies, such as this Act , even if they judicially evolved, has the scope to usher in equitable social composition and egalitarian structure?

I will try to put forward my arguments with comparative study of two areas, namely Rajasthan (best performing State) and Jharkhand (one of worst performing State) and to look at the question of historical demography of these areas and the challenges confronted during the implementation of this Act, while looking at both the negative as well as positive impact of this policy. As a research scholar from the department of History and as an individual who has been critically engaging (also as an activist) with the implementation and scaling the success rate from below, gives me a great opportunity to talk and discuss about the MNREGA and also to find out the unanswered questions of social composition and exclusion in depth.

Using a combination of micro level data collected from field research in Mumbai (Bombay) and Kolkata (Calcutta), complemented by secondary evidence on the wider social and historical context, the reproduction and transformation of different types of LMIs are explained in terms of their location within changing patron-client politics. The paper challenges the common argument that industrial performance in Mumbai was better because it enjoyed professional company-based unions compared to unions organised at industry level and affiliated to political parties in Kolkata. Our interpretation is that the causality is at least partially in the opposite direction, with dynamic regions providing strong incentives for unions to organise to seek company based ‘rents’ rather than to gain from political redistribution that are more attractive in less industrially dynamic regions. This approach contrasts with some mainstream theories that focus on informational and transaction costs and policy failures as the main determinants of LMIs. Many mainstream models that inform policy assume that LMIs precede growth and misleadingly treat them as ‘exogenous’ variables. An important implication of the paper is that LMIs are ‘endogenous’ variables and therefore a broader set of reforms are required for sustaining economic growth.

In our first section, we elaborate this theoretical approach. In the second, we make use of it in order to characterize comparatively the French and German employment regimes up to the late 80’s. Our third section is dedicated to a condensed analysis of the recent transformation of both employment regimes in both countries. It focuses on the unbalanced reallocation of the global amount of labour throughout society, and on the raise of both employment volatility and working-poors, wich is a matter of concern especially from a gender perspective. Our last section is dedicated to the mechanisms of change of employment norms, in relation to the transformation of the employment regimes of both countries. The notion of policy frame provides for that task most valuable analytical ground.