"Precarious work" is not a short-term tactic to reduce costs or defeat a union organizing drive, but a long-term strategy for shedding accountability to workers and eliminating employee rights based on the existence of an employment relationship.
The use of contract labor and precarious work is part of the a global business strategy to cut labor costs and undermine decent work through labor market “flexibilization” or casualization. The International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF) proposes the following definition: “precarious work is the result of employment practices by employers designed to limit or reduce their permanent workforce to a minimum, to maximize their flexibility and to shift risks onto workers. The resulting jobs typically are non-permanent, temporary, casual, insecure and contingent. Workers in such jobs often are not covered by labour law and social security protections”.
To understand what is at the core of this employer strategy, it is important to understand that the entire framework of labor law, including international labor law, is based on the permanent employer/employee relationship: full-time work, under a contract of employment for unlimited duration, with a single employer, and protected against unjustified dismissal. From a historical perspective, employers discovered over time that slave labor was not economically efficient and that legally "free" workers could be contracted without the cost of providing them housing and food. Workers struck back by organizing unions and winning the right to bargain collectively as employees. Now employers are trying to turn the clock back by ridding themselves of permanent employees as such. Many employers have created a world of work where there is no longer a need to bust unions or use violence against union leaders when they can just take away the potential members. This practice not only maintains a pattern of exploitation abroad but also cements working-class poverty at home.
In the midst of global economic crises, market instability falls hard on those millions of workers with insecure jobs. Contract, temporary, or casual workers without union representation have no bargaining power to negotiate for severance pay or other safeguards when layoffs occur. While companies may use the excuse of a recession to further erode labor rights and reduce regular permanent jobs, we believe that stable jobs are the key to building the middle class needed for a sustainable economy in the future.
