Flexibility, GL cursus and beginselen

Yesterday Bart Snels was the guest of the cursus that the groenlinnks utrecht afdeling organized on our thinking. The organizators of this course, me among others, choose to call Bart not only due to his position as head of the Wetenschapelik Bureau, but also because his own motto for the party is that GL should be an ideenpartij. Who else should we have in a course on ideas of groenlinks?

Of course, Bart made an interesting plea for the flexibilization of the dutch economy. That argument, known to the ones that follow the groenlinks internal discussion, is a nice history to hear. Never you mind that apparently this tale goes against the feeling of the left. The central point of Bart is that a more dynamic economy will include more people in the labour market. And that, beyond doubts, is a goal of the left wing politics not only today, but since two centuries ago.

Critical points to this history are known. Some of mine can be read if scrolling down this blog (to be (liberal) or not to be: that is not the question). My central argument is that the excluded population is already flexible, so is hard to believe that further flexibilization could possibly help. But let's hold the discussion for once. What about segmented flexibilization?

The known example of this segmented flexibilization is a french proposal of around a year ago. The idea was to flexibilize contracts to young people and secure contracts to older workers. Not surprinsingly, this proposal brought demonstrations and chaos in the french debate. Quite unfair to keep young people without labor security, and reasure the old worker in his established position. Now, i wonder if segmented flexibilization is only possible in this way.

Imagine, the opposite case. Imagine that all jobs hold by persons over the 45 years are made flexible, and all jobs offered to persons under the 45 are made fixed. Would that not be precisely the sort of segmentation that has the best of two worlds?

The argument here is that an experienced worker actually does not profit from job security. If he (or she) is fired, with the cv that has accumulated in his working years, the finding of another work will not be too difficult. And precisely the newcomer to the labor market does need security, since to be fired without a builded up cv makes the search for a new job rather difficult. It is possible to imagine that the border should not be an age, but the number of holded jobs. After your third job, you have no rights any more to a fixed contract, would be another formulation of the same idea.

I suppose that this idea has many problems. After all, I am only an amateur economist, and not a professional. But so far it seems to me that this idea would precisely support newcomers, and bring dynamism to experienced workers.

Let's see who react -if anybody- to this post...