Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to provide a comparative assessment of the actual opportunities given to non-standard workers to avail themselves of main income maintenance schemes. The main question is whether departures from standard labour relationships have consequences on the workers’ actual ability to attain security from social protection schemes. This concerns not only the fact of having formal rights to some forms of social protection, but also, once the rights are formally acknowledged, the conditions to access a given scheme and the actual amount of the benefit provided by the scheme in question.

The chapter is organised as follows. The first three sections are devoted to eligibility to social benefits in the Italian case. First, we focus on the protection available against the major risk analysed in this volume – that of becoming unemployed. The next section thus systematically analyses unemployment benefits in Italy, highlighting any possible regulatory problems that might cause non-standard workers to be exposed to reduced protection, both in the case of fixed-term workers and, in particular, part-time workers (independent contractors are not entitled to unemployment benefits). On the basis of the individual work histories included in the WHIP database, we also try to quantify how likely the various categories of Italian workers are to be eligible for unemployment benefits. We then consider the measures introduced in the last few years in order to counteract the employment consequences of the economic crisis started in 2008 and we provide an appraisal of their effectiveness in fulfilling existing needs. Lastly, we discuss a reform bill currently in Parliament that, if approved, will introduce some changes in the existing unemployment insurance schemes as of 2013.

Then, we focus on other important income maintenance schemes geared to the active population: maternity benefits and sickness benefits. As the general schemes for employees, be they standard or non-standard, differ from schemes earmarked for independent contractors, we analyse them separately.

Finally, we focus on pensions, highlighting the problems that may affect non-standard vis-à-vis standard workers. Although not geared to the active population, pensions are a key programme in the study of the political economy of welfare, and the consequences on pension eligibility and wealth of labour market flexibility cannot be neglected.