Beyond labour flexibility in Italy

Over many centuries, human societies across the globe have established progressively closer contacts. Recently, the pace of global integration has dramatically increased. Unprecedented changes in communications, transportation, and computer technology have given the process new impetus and made the world more interdependent than ever. Multinational corporations manufacture products in many countries and sell to consumers around the world. From this perspective labour law doctrine has been studying for some time how labour legislation is changing as a result of the growth of post-Fordism and of economic globalisation, with the possibility of a crisis of the latter. Europe has urged its member states to combine the flexibility necessary for businesses to compete on the global market with solidarity that emphasizes inclusion, cohesion and workers’ rights. This political orientation has recently generated the term “flexicurity”. Trade unions’ adjustment to a globalized world economy is not unproblematic and remains best described as work-in-progress. Laissez-faire globalisation has increased the role of the market and reduced that of democracy, in the name of capitalistic efficiency. However, using globalisation to legitimate the growth of inequalities among nations and within single nations, weakening democracy, has done no favours to “market anarchy”, as is demonstrated by the dramatic financial crises that the citizens of the world are experiencing at first hand, suffering from job instability and unemployment.