Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

SZALMA IVETT / SZEL BERNADETT
„Even those who have qualifications cannot get a
job. Even more people with more than one degree
are not wanted by the labor market” (group 10).
We are past the society of work (Offe, 1991;
Beck, 1999), which means that it is not
guaranteed that everybody can find a job.
Therefore, we do not let individuals to judged
by their work. We should not let the society
be split in two parts: the majority, who has a
job according to the traditional norms, and the
remarkable minority, which is out of the labor
market. Although, the participants value work,
as they regard it as the essence of life: ‘It is not
good if people live without work and they do not
have job opportunities” (group 14).
They miss the security of workplaces: ‘The
employers get support if they employ unemployed
people, but they will just employ them until they
get the support, then they are going to fire them.
It is not worth doing this procedure. The employers
will not invest anything in their skills. Why do
employees train themselves? This is not a longterm,calculable
job opportunity. The employers
should employ the employees for at least 5 years, so
the employees would be secure for at least 5 years,
in this case they would be able to plan” (group
10). The only solution for people to find or
keep their jobs is to be ready to adapt to the
new situations (job, position and environment
changing). Project work is spreading, which
means that employees get temporary job
contracts. Yet, it seems that most of the people
are not yet ready for flexible employment.
The participants are not against illegal work.
Even more, they commiserate with illegal
workers: ‘People accept illegal jobs, because they
have to live on something” (group 10). At the
same time, they do not feel the same solidarity
with the employers. They believe employers
are the beneficiaries of illegal work by tax
evasion: ‘Employers are always searching for
loopholes. You (employee) are defenseless, but
you have to undertake this game” (group 14).
They emphasize that the defenseless position
forces employees to accept illegal work: ‘You
know this is not correct but you do not have any
other choice” (group 14). In accordance with
quantitative analysis, we can find that people
who are in unfavorable position in society use
the illegal sector.
3. SUMMARY
In the deliberative analysis, the first hypothesis
was partly supported. Those who posses more
cultural capital (higher education, access
to internet) are more likely to support the
deregulation of the labor market. Concerning
educational level, those who completed
tertiary school are more likely to agree
with the deregulation of the labor market
than the less educated people. Educational
background had a significant effect in each of
the sections. Those who use internet prefer the
liberalization of the labor market in T1. The
fact that older people are more likely to agree
with the liberalization of the labor market
than the young is exactly the opposite of what
we had expected. We believe that this
is due to the fact that those who are
over 55 are mostly out of the labor
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market. Thus, if the labor market was
more deregulated than it is today, it
would not mean any uncertainty for them, but
would mean uncertainty for people in their
active age. As for the employment status, I