I am happy that in most European countries workers are entitled to a 40 or 48 hour work week, plenty of holidays, and paid overtime. Because life is not only work...
One area where more flexibility is required in Southern European, and even Western European, countries is making it easier to hire and fire an employee.
In short, in a buyers market (employers purchasing wage labour) -- without regulation, the buyers hold all the keys (starve or work - that's not a choice).
If you have any examples of de-regulation of a labour market benefiting the majority of the population over say a ten or twenty year period, I'd love to hear about it.
>If you have any examples of de-regulation of a labour market
Because that ever happens. C'mon.
> buyers market (employers purchasing wage labour)
That's not what 'buyer's market' means.
That parentheses explain what I mean by market (the labour market) -- was that unclear? The rest of that sentence tried to highlight what "A situation in which supply exceeds demand, giving purchasers an advantage over sellers in negotiations" generally means in the labour market.
If one side might loose a few days of productivity by holding out for a better deal, and the other side will loose their home and starve -- that's a pretty uneven balance of power.
"it was a rare flicker of opportunity after a series of temporary positions, applications that went nowhere and employers who increasingly demanded that young people work long, unpaid stretches just to be considered for something permanent." ?