The social work charter comprises of a raft of directives concerning working time and conditions such as part-time working and health and safety regulations. The social work charter reduces the flexibility of employers to employ different types of worker, and increases their costs. For example, social charter regulations give part time workers the rights to similar benefits as full time workers. This is the eurocrats observing the positive trend towards flexible, convenient part-time work, and stopping it by legislating an organized policy. Social contracts between workers and companies reduce the flexibility of both parties.
Unemployed people are immobile because they get generous benefits from the welfare state.
They have little incentive to get jobs because of the high level of welfare benefits and cannot get jobs because they are too costly to employers. Those employees who are in work are immobile and locked into hierarchies because membership, however repressive, has its privileges. It is not worthwhile for individuals trapped in hierarchies by organizational benefits to move, because the employment related benefits such as company pensions accrue ONLY to those with jobs. Companies are obliged to provide expensive and compulsory benefits to employees. Such benefits mean that the total labor cost far exceeds the wages paid.