Job Quality in an Era of Flexibility

9Job quality, flexibility and obstacles to collective agency

Pedro Mendonca

Introduction

The impacts of flexible working schemes on job quality and employee well-being have recently become an important topic of debate in both the public and academic spheres (Henly, Shaefer and Waxman, 2006; De Cuyper and Witte, 2007; Kalleberg, 2011; Holman, 2013; Henly and Lambert, 2014). In addition, academics have highlighted the key role that trade unions may have in regulating employers’ behaviours over forms of flexible employment (Hoque, Earls, Conway and Bacon, 2014; UNITE, 2016; Simms, 2017). This chapter aims at contributing to this debate by examining the scope that trade unions have in actively addressing issues of job quality. This will enable ...