Employmentweb_low

EmpLoymEnT, work, And HEALTH inEquALiTiES - a global perspective
Truck driver delivering bags of sand. port
of mangalore (india).
source: © ilo/m. crozet (2002)
Precarious employment
The rising and increasing reliance on both neoliberal policies and
structural adjustment programs has changed the regimes of industrial
relations around the world. The weakening of unions and labour
market regulations in many countries exacerbates this
transformation. The critical forces in this process are political.
Decisions taken by governments, international institutions and
corporations have transformed labour standards around the world,
resulting in rising levels of what is known as "precarious employment"
(louie et al., 2006).
Precarious employment refers to a labour market situation in
which the labour relations that underline standard employment
relationships are inadequate. This means that workers in
"vulnerable jobs" are more prone the fluctuations of the market;
they are unprotected and increasingly unable to support themselves
and their families. In this section we examine the root causes of
precarious employment, to create a clear understanding of the
nature of the public health problem they generate. Once this is
established, we present the available global data on precarious
employment, explore their implications, and illustrate the situation
with several examples (see Case studies 19 and 20).
Global changes in models of production have changed the
requirements of many employers. In many of today's markets,
"flexibility" is the top priority. rapid changes in supply and demand,
outsourcing, subsidies from high-income countries, capital-labour
accords, and changes in employment contracts themselves have
created the need for flexible labour to enable firms to quickly adapt
to changing economies. Meanwhile, as labour markets become less
regulated in many places, standard production models are
becoming useless. With fewer legal mechanisms to dampen the
practice, and increased demand for labour output that matches
rapidly-fluctuating global consumption patterns, workers are
expected to be much more flexible about their labour relationships.
This increased reliance on flexible workers changes the way
labour markets behave and creates difficulties in the application of
traditional analytical techniques. at the micro level, employers have
a bigger need for employees with flexible schedules and salaries.
While some amount of flexibility is required to sustain a dynamic
labour market that can handle structural adjustments, when
increased flexibility addresses rising unemployment numbers in
low- to middle-income countries, employers begin to see it as a
positive feature of a worker's personality and even as a "state of
mind" (Scott, 2004; luttwak, 1998; amable, 2006).
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