Abstract

The Author goes into the discontinuous working patterns issues in order to underline the contradictions and the loopholes of the social security system as regards the social protection of atypical workers. She moves from the analysis of the actual labour market and of its changes: during the last decades, new flexible working patterns - characterized by the rotation of periods in and out of work, have flanked the full time employment relationship until pensionable age. The high level of working discontinuity, and in turn of retributive and contributive discontinuity, endanger the atypical workers pensions and unemployment benefits. The social protection for unemployment is inadequate: unemployment is no longer a future and uncertain occasional and temporary event, but it has become a physiological event internal to the labour market. The unemployment insurance, therefore, funded as it is on the typical insurance model (unemployment as a future and uncertain event), shows several loopholes in the social protection of non standard workers (apprenticeship, temporary and vertical part time workers). After describing the loopholes and the contradiction of the present social security system for unemployment, the Author defines the concept of availability for work in terms of laboriousness and calls for a reform of the system. The reform should provide for the inclusion in the benefits of all the laborious and flexible workers and improve the manpower active policies.