INTERNATIONAL TRENDS IN INSECURE WORK: A REPORT FOR THE TRADES UNION CONGRESS (original) (raw)
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Trade union responses to precarious work in seven European countries
P recarious employment is a major concern today in Europe's labour markets. In recent years, the percentage of employees working under precarious conditions has increased across the continent, accompanied by processes of segmentation and exclusion. Precarious employment refers to employment that combines some of the following characteristics: low levels of income and income security, low job and employment security, bad working conditions, limited access to training, limited social security rights and/or limited voice. Precarious employment affects not only the working situation of the person in such employment but also his or her household through, for example, deficient and volatile income, problems in accessing loans or high levels of insecurity. In very general terms, the growth of precarious employment is associated with several broad developments, including the rise of the service sector and the decline of industrial employment, changes in technology and work organization, changes in corporate governance and employers' strategies, declining trade union power, ongoing drives towards privatization and marketization and individualization. More specifically, a number of labour market developments have led to increased precarious employment. Recent studies indicate a polarization trend in the labour market of many European countries, following the growth in employment in both the highest-skilled and higher-quality (professional and managerial) and lowest-skilled and lowest-quality (personal services) occupations, and with declining employment in the middle of the distribution (manufacturing and routine office jobs) (Goos, Manning and Salomons, 2009; Fernandez-Macias and Hurley, 2008). Most recently, as a result of the crisis this polarization trend has increased with a growing number of European Union (EU) countries experiencing a downgrading of the employment structure through job destruction in the higher sections of the labour market, no growth in the middle, and a growth or relatively minor decline of jobs in the lower sections (European Commission, 2011). There is also a marked rise in various types of atypical, often flexible jobs, including fixed-term contracts, temporary agency work, (dependent) self-employment, project work, and (marginal) part-time contracts (Eichhorst, Feil and Marx, 2010). Such jobs, which first appeared in an expanding service sector, come with lower levels of job security, frequently provide only limited access to social security, may suffer from low rates of pay and worse working conditions, and generally offer only limited training opportunities (ibid.). As a result, work is no longer a guarantee against poverty, considering that in 2009, in-work poverty amounted to 8.5 per cent of the employed in the European Union (Frazer, Gutiérrez and Peña-Casas, 2011). Finally, the quality of standard jobs is also under pressure in certain sectors, in particular in the service sectors that require little education and in the lower end of manufacturing, resulting in low wages and/or very high levels of flexibility. As a result of these developments, even though more people are in employment today than 20 or 30 years ago, for many workers the chances of Contents Contents
Determinants of job insecurity in five European countries
European Journal of Industrial Relations, 2010
This article studies the determinants of subjective job insecurity in five European countries (Belgium, Finland, Germany, Spain and The Netherlands), using data from the WageIndicator web survey. The impact of different variables is estimated using logistic regression.The analysis shows that differences in subjective job insecurity of women are explained by their objective situation in the labour market. In contrast, subjective insecurity increases with age; education reduces job insecurity, as do wages, except at very high wage levels; having a temporary — but not — a part-time — contract contributes to insecurity, which points to the different nature of the two types of contract.
Tackling insecure work: Political actions from around the world.
A SPERI report for GMB The report sets out a range of examples of how and where political action is being taken around the world to tackle different forms of insecure work and improve job security. It highlights new legislation, campaigns and partnerships that seek to protect and enhance workers’ rights and to restrict and challenge insecure forms of work.
What has been analysed in France mainly under the term "précarité de l'emploi" over the past 30 years was mostly dealt with differently in other countries (atypical, non-standard employment). Research on these issues dates back to the 1970s in sociology and institutional economics. More recently some political scientists have endeavoured to link up the labour market theme with developments in systems of social protection and they are talking about "dualism" and "dualization". Despite the constant intellectual investment put into the topic, it is striking that indicators for comparative measurement of the phenomenon have remained rather unsophisticated, as the basic opposition between what Eurostat names "temporary contracts" and "open-ended contracts". On the other hand, because of the spreading of the effects of work and employment flexibilisation into new countries, new categories are appearing since the early 2000s (Prekariat,...
Precarious work, insecure workers: employment relations in transition
2009
Abstract The growth of precarious work since the 1970s has emerged as a core contemporary concern within politics, in the media, and among researchers. Uncertain and unpredictable work contrasts with the relative security that characterized the three decades following World War II. Precarious work constitutes a global challenge that has a wide range of consequences cutting across many areas of concern to sociologists.
PLOS ONE, 2023
Studies are lacking on the employment determinants of job insecurity, that may be helpful to determine highly exposed groups and to assess the feasibility of constructing job-exposure matrices (JEMs) for this occupational exposure. The objectives were to explore the employment determinants of job insecurity in a nationally representative sample of the French working population. The study was based on the cross-sectional data of the 2013 national French working conditions survey including a sample of 28,293 employees, 12,283 men and 16,010 women. Job insecurity was assessed using one single item related to the fear of job loss in the next 12 months. Gender, age, and educational level were studied as well as the following employment variables: temporary/permanent work contract, full/part time work, job seniority, occupation, economic activity of the company, public/private sector, and company size. The associations with job insecurity were studied using bivariate and multivariate analyses. One quarter of the study sample was exposed to job insecurity, without any difference between genders. Lower age and lower educational levels were associated with job insecurity. Employees who had a temporary work contract, lower job seniority, who were working in low-skilled occupational groups, in manufacturing (for both genders) and construction (among men), and in the private sector had a higher prevalence of exposure to job insecurity. The two major employment variables associated with job insecurity were temporary work contract (prevalence ratios>2) and private sector (prevalence ratios>1.4) for the whole sample and for both men and women. Our findings suggested that intervention/prevention measures could be oriented towards specific highly exposed groups of the working population, especially those exposed to temporary work contract and/or working in the private sector. Our study also underlined that constructing JEMs for job insecurity may be possible and could be a useful tool for large-scale occupational health studies.
Insecure times? Workers' perceived job and labor market security in 23 OECD countries
Social science research, 2016
By examining the association between employees' perceptions of job security and central labor market policies and characteristics, this paper seeks to understand the mechanisms through which institutions generate confidence and positive expectations among individuals regarding their economic future. The analyses distinguish between different facets of perceived job security and different institutional mechanisms. My multilevel analyses of a data set that contains information on 12,431 individuals and 23 countries show that some labor market policies and characteristics are more likely than others to provide workers with subjective security. Unemployment assistance in particular is an effective means of reducing workers' worries about job loss. Dismissal protection, by contrast, only unleashes its psychologically protective effects under certain conditions. The paper's main conclusion is that the effectiveness of policies varies and that different types of labor market in...