Employee Benefits and Paternalistic Work Regimes. Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Company Welfare in Italy

Abstract

This article examines the changing role of employee benefits in work regimes in light of the controversies associated with paternalism. We review historical (industrial, scientific, bureaucratic and sophisticated) and recent (libertarian) variants of paternalism, and then define its contemporary developments by matching two terms long considered antithetical, ‘market paternalism’. We argue that this neologism best captures the emerging features of work regimes, in particular the recent popularity of company welfare, by appreciating the marketization of employee benefits and the measures of fiscal, possibly corporate, welfare that support it. Evidence to substantiate this argument comes from an overview of historical forms of paternalism and current company welfare schemes in Italy.