Employment Relations in Fancy Pants Europe

Hello again and welcome to another fantastico production of utter unabated monotony. Today we will be talking about the European social model of employment relations. The Almighty Omnigendered Lizard Queen/King/Thingy bids you to please check your privileges before you speak... You bipedal, endothermic mammalian scum.

On a more topical note, to continue a running theme we at the Transdimensional Lizard Sanctuary for Criminally Insane Superior Lacertilia or (TLSCISL) Pronounced: til-sizl; would like to again, start the week with a kitten in a low depth of field photograph however, while public demand for kitten produce is rising at alarming rates, supply of said kittens and their respective blurrification devices remains constant.

In due effort to combat this, management, in their divine reptilian wisdom have decided to ration kitten supplies accordingly;

The remaining pieces will be mailed to you over a period of months; providing you comply with accepted reptilian hygiene standards as per the new world law. Hail sithis!

So anyway, after hearing myself and others' rants about the evil neo-liberalist policies coming into practice in the USA and Australia, I am loathed to find that European attempts at socialism, while egalitarian to be sure, are ineffectual and as a whole, rather wasteful. 

The "social model" of employment relations that Europe "employs" (awesome wordplay) is characterised by  free collective bargaining and social protection. The model is based on the conviction that economic progress and social progress are inseparable. (http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/areas/industrialrelations/dictionary/definitions/europeansocialmodel.htm)  

The problem is, that "social progress" is extremely vague, everyone has a different view of it and it doesn't progress uniformly across a large country. Trying to unite a massive hodgepodge of different states with obviously different characteristics, opinions and needs under one uniform social policy is obviously implausible, any half decent lunatic can see that. Basically because their needs are different, the states end up disagreeing on most policies and can't chase solutions to their individual problems without being constrained by their supreme all encompassing rules of economic integration, liberalization and competition law and, "as a consequence, uniform European legislation in the social-policy field has not, and could not, progress beyond the level of relatively low minimal standards that are acceptable to all Member States." (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.library.uwa.edu.au/doi/10.1111/1468-5965.00392/pdf)

Failure to recognise there will never be a uniform nationwide solution for every problem is why "uniform European social policy is not politically feasible or even desirable and there is

reason to search for better solutions". (ibid.) 

They say that a camel is a horse designed by committee, well it seems like European policy was designed by a committee of horses... (finally made myself laugh there)

It's a well known concept that the more people you have debating an idea, the harder it is to reach any sort of conclusion. While they do end up addressing more ethical and humanitarian issues than more capitalist entities do, the bureaucracy formed from trying to implement uniform policies where they don't work is stupid, why can no-one ever find the optimal balance between effective capitalism and social equity... there must be one... Go make one... We dare you.

European Committee

Goodnight From The            TLSCISL                

                                  (do not fear us, or you will face the consequences!)