Austerity stabilised through European funds: the impact on Slovenian welfare administration and provision

Abstract

The article explores how austerity stabilised through European funds affects institutional change, work organisation and employment relations within Slovenian welfare administration and provision. It shows that increasing dependence upon European funds turns the state into an intermediary characterised by project modes of work organisation that weaken human resource and financial capacities for domestic policy development and provision. It uncovers that project modes of organising, traditionally present within non‐governmental sector, are also entering the public sector. This shift increases the vulnerability of third and public sector workforce and frustrates young and excluded workers' transition into permanent jobs.

Precarious Education-to-Work Transitions: Entering Welfare Professions under a Workfarist Regime

“…Moreover, EU-funded schemes pose additional challenges for new entrants. While research already demonstrates that EU-funded schemes increase bureaucratic workload and precarity for welfare providers (Greer et al, 2019;Samaluk, 2017), this article highlights the effects of this transaction on those entering welfare professions. Findings show that unfamiliar and bureaucratic transaction is for many employers simply not worth the effort, which results in underutilisation of available schemes and repeated failed attempts of eligible graduates to access these conditioned and constantly changing schemes.…”

“…This article focuses on neo-corporatist Slovenia, characterised by capable welfare state institutions that used to provide relatively stable employment and social security but came under pressure with entry into the EU in 2004, the Eurozone in 2007 and a subsequent global financial crisis characterised by more invasive EU governance (Samaluk, 2017). It looks at the experience of becoming welfare professionals in social protection ('socialno varstvo'), which includes diverse social services aimed at social integration of vulnerable groups and teachers in preschool, primary and secondary education.…”

“…2 Owing to austerity caps on public sector hiring, only 159 out of 476 interns on ESF quasi-internship schemes in social protection, running between 2010 and 2015, remained employed after their subsidised internships ended. 3 The next generation has also been facing a general post-crisis increase in non-standard employment, which was in welfare provision created also through various bureaucratically demanding EU-funded projects and general ALMP schemes (Samaluk, 2017). In social protection programmes, only 40% of workers in 2015 were employed full-time and one-third were employed through ALMP schemes (Smolej-Jež et al, 2016).…”

“…Moreover, the workfarist turn has also affected female-dominated welfare professions, which are closely tied to the development of the welfare states and their contribution to social reproduction (Evertsson, 2000; Himmelweit, 2017). The workfarist turn has considerably decreased professional and employment standards in welfare provision and recruitment by reducing paid internships and replacing them with unwaged labour, temporary projects and various active labour market policy (ALMP) schemes (Baines, 2004; Samaluk, 2017). Nevertheless, experience of becoming welfare professionals, who are entering through these non-standard recruitment channels, has been largely neglected, although it can offer a unique perspective on the mismatch between professional norms and standards and actual workfarist labour market conditions eroding these.…”

“…This article focuses on Slovenian nationally regulated education and social protection professions in a post-crisis context, characterised by largely unchanged entry rules, demanding the acquisition of specific university degrees and postgraduate work experience, and the radically hindered entry routes to meet these rules. Post-crisis austerity measures and continuous fiscal discipline have capped public sector hiring, eliminated traditional government-funded internships and replaced them with pre-conditioned EU-funded projects, quasi-internship or general ALMP schemes that have completely changed the way the transaction of funding provision is organised, increased workload for providers, and hindered entry and permanent integration into these professions (Greer et al, 2019; OECD, 2017; Samaluk, 2017). This article looks at the contemporary experience and strategies of those entering welfare professions under these volatile workfarist labour market conditions.…”