Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
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CATHERINE SPIESER<br />
be found, the number of people explicitly<br />
unemployed was never significant, as few remained<br />
without a job for long. 6 In that context,<br />
the definition of unemployment was written<br />
in the law only in 1989. The fact that such a<br />
conception of unemployment was the only existing<br />
one in the analyses of labour allocation<br />
carried out before 1989 probably explains the<br />
somewhat prolonged belief of many Polish analysts<br />
and policy-makers that unemployment<br />
was a natural side effect of transition that would<br />
resolve itself through market mechanisms.<br />
In 1989, the initial government proposal for<br />
an unemployment benefit scheme forecasted a<br />
moderate increase in the number of unemployed<br />
(300 000). In reality, registered unemployment<br />
jumped from 55,000 people (0.2%) to<br />
1,125,000 (6.1%) within twelve months; more<br />
than one million people became unemployed<br />
in 1990 alone. The registered unemployment<br />
rate increased steadily during the 1990s and<br />
peaked at 20% in 2002-2003 (see table 2). By<br />
2003, more than one in two registered jobseekers<br />
had been without a paid job for more<br />
than a year. The trend only reversed with EU<br />
accession. In 2005, unemployment started to<br />
decrease, which is explained both by the large<br />
numbers of Poles who emigrated to other<br />
EU countries, which had opened their labour<br />
markets in 2004 (UK, Ireland and Sweden),<br />
and to an increase in job creation in Poland<br />
itself.<br />
The Employment Act of 1989, revised in 1991, set<br />
the basis for new labour market governance and<br />
institutions compatible with a capitalist market<br />
economy and the conditions of eligibility for<br />
unemployment compensation. It introduced<br />
an initially broad definition of unemployment,<br />
which was subsequently restricted on several<br />
occasions in later years. Unemployment grew<br />
as a result of the combination of uncertain<br />
economic conditions, wide-scale economic<br />
restructuring, adaptation to a changing market<br />
environment, hardening budget constraints on<br />
large state-owned enterprises, and dismissals<br />
becoming an option to adjust workforce thanks<br />
to the changing governance of work.<br />
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