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Job rotation as an important element of labour market policy has only a rather
short tradition in most Member States of the European Union, except in the
scandinavian countries. The transnational partnership "job rotation" was founded
at the end of 1995 and financing for job rotation projects came mainly from the
Community Initiative ADAPT, but also from the European Structural Funds. Job
rotation here is defined as the combination of further training for the employed
and substitution by a previously unemployed person. In the non-scandinavian
countries manifold local initiatives were started, which operate under very
heterogeneous institutional and financial national frameworks. For these reasons
a solely quantitative comparison of results of the individual projects may be
misleading. We attempt to analyse and compare in this study the legal, political
and financial preconditions on the national and local level as well as the
relevant incentives for the firm of job rotation projects. The research
strategy of the study initially identifies the major key areas for job rotation
projects, which can be deduced from the theory of transitional labour markets.
Based on hypotheses about the necessary framework for success of job rotation we
then confront these hypotheses with both quantitative and qualitative indicators
in a third step. For example, the legal framework is compared on the basis of
indicators on the existence of a right to further training for the employed and
unemployed, legal obligations or a levy on firms for further training of their
employees, dismissal protection legislation in case an employees takes a longer
leave as well as the potential use of already existing regulation of active
labour market policies for job rotation project. We compare Denmark, Finland,
France, Italy, Austria, Portugal, Sweden, United Kingdom and Germany.The major
results are:
- far-reaching legal or collectively agreed regulations regarding further
training for the employed and practice-oriented training for the unemployed
and for sections of the non-working population are a necessary precondition
for a wider spread of job rotation;
- incentives for the substitution persons should be clearly positive and
through an adequate reimbursement for substitution work, a sufficient increase
in comparison to unemployment benefits needs to be assured;
- costs incurred through job rotation projects should be ‘fairly’
distributed through a suitable co-funding structure in order to keep the
so-called ‘deadweight’ effects as low as possible,
- incentives for employees to undergo further training must be guaranteed
through the existence of appropriate regulations and leave of absence for the
purpose of improving one’s skills must be flanked by secure dismissal
protection legislation;
- functional regional policy networks are necessary in order to implement
the projects on the interface between labour market policy and structural
policy;
- job rotation in (not only) Germany could gain a new impetus through the
wider spread of further training funds based on collective agreements
including elements of job rotation and complemented through additional funding
by labour market policy or tax reductions to participating firms. Under such a
framework job rotation could make a stronger contribution to the reduction of
unemployment by at the same time reaching higher productivity.
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