The Routledge Companion to Employment Relations

19

Employment relations and precarious work

Chiara Benassi and Milena Tekeste

Introduction

Risky, uncertain and unstable working conditions have always affected part of the workforce, from the day labourers in agrarian societies to the guest workers in post-war industrialised European countries. The term ‘precarious work’, however, specifically refers to the growth of atypical, short-term, low-paid jobs in post-industrial economies since the seventies (Kalleberg, 2009). While the post-war manufacturing-based economies could provide relatively homogenous wages and working conditions to large segments of the workforce, high unemployment rates, the expansion of private sector jobs and the advancing neoliberal consensus paved the way to the ...