Precarious work: Towards a new theoretical foundation

Izabela Florczak, University of Lodz
Barbara Godlewska-Bujok, University of Warsaw
Calogero Massimo Cammalleri, University of Palermo

The presentation provides a rudimentary overview of the underlying causes of the development of the precarious work phenomenon in Europe and analyses the policy and judicatory answers to it at EU level as well as discusses the perspectives for and potential trajectories of the development of an adequate institutional framework against precarity at EU level.

Precarious agreements seem to be the next stage of development of employment relations. At the same time, their axiological layer seems to expose their economic violence-based character. Has the culture of violence we live in today affected what we call the employment relation?

The lack of security produced by the precariat can be seen as a degree of participation of flexibility for firms as “social pollution” i.e. as generator of negative externalities. One proposes a full change of paradigm to fight and to tackle the lack of security at precariat level with a solution in terms of internalisation of externalities (i.e. social costs), rather than affecting precarious work either enlarging the area of employment contract or proposing an intermediate way of regulations.