Austerita

Expansionary Austerity, Expansionary Precariousness and the Jobs Act. In the last years of the crisis, the devaluation policy on labour has exacerbated the negative effects of austerity on domestic demand. Nevertheless, the European Commission, also in the recent countries recommendations, keeps prescribing continuity in labour policy for more market flexibility, in contracts and wages. The recent European election outcomes did not modify the political equilibrium in the European Parliament, and the economic policy seems to remain under full control of the same parties which have managed the crisis and worsen its economic consequences applying the rigor-without-growth rule. In Italy, PM Matteo Renzi has pledged to slash the country's record unemployment with his American-branded "Jobs Act". But his labour reforms, which will see short term job contracts extended for up to 3 years, are more of the same medicine applied since the turn of the 1990s that have been such bad news for the Italian economy and workers.