Transfer stimulates dialogue between the European trade union movement and the academic and research community. It contributes research findings on issues of strategic relevance for trade unions, in particular with regard to developments at the European level. Transfer publishes original peer-reviewed research on issues such as new developments in industrial relations, social policy, and labour market developments.
Volume 18 Issue 1, February 2012
Changes in labour markets since the end of the economic crisis in the 1970s have transformed what was a relatively stable employment model into a much more ‘flexible’ one. In this new scenario, many jobs are unstable and atypical (temporary, part-time, jobs with changing work schedules and so on) and labour market segmentation has increased. As a consequence, workers’ trajectories have shifted from the linearity and stability characteristic of the Fordist production model to a situation in which working lives are subjected to a high degree of discontinuity and variability. The current economic crisis is exacerbating some of these adverse characteristics of contemporary working lives, and also producing new forms of poverty and risks of social exclusion, such as the working poor.