10 - Reducing Workaway

Summary

Labour markets are the most sensitive and protected markets we have, as the very health and wellbeing of our citizenry depend upon them. All of us, regardless of our background, education and/or skill level, rely on the labour market to some extent – and some of us are much more dependent upon it than others. For good reasons, there are significant constraints placed on what people are allowed to sell/buy on the formal market for labour, and some of these constraints have been with us for centuries. This is one important reason why the world's labour markets – beyond Europe – remain protected behind imposing border walls and fences, while the barriers to other markets (capital, services and goods) have been slowly rescinded.

In this global context, Europe's willingness and ability to reduce barriers to human mobility is both astonishing and commendable. Because my criticisms of the EU are sometimes misunderstood, let me be absolutely clear on this point: I have long advocated for a world with fewer limits on human mobility (see Moses, 2006), and I see free mobility within Europe as the Community's greatest achievement. But there is more to creating a common labour market than simply reducing barriers to entry. (Just as there is more to securing freedom than the lifting of restrictions.) As described in Chapter 2, local labour markets are highly regulated, and for good reasons. These regulations provide a legal and institutional context, within which individual wage bargains are secured. Europe's integration of these highly regulated markets threatens this dense network of protections in ways that are both complex and costly (for workers).

It is rather remarkable, then, that there has been so little written about the integration of labour markets. Unlike our effort to create a common currency union in Europe, there has been no attempt to commission work that can describe how (or why) we should integrate local labour markets, or even what an optimum labour area might look like. I am not aware of any attempt to collect, systematize and/or compare the experiences of large states when they integrated their local/regional labour markets. One can only speculate as to why Europe has chosen to push forward, blindly, in its effort to create a common labour market.