Flexibility is the enemy of "decent work" The definition of "decent work" or "decent" has been proposed several years ago by the International Labor Organization. In 1999 took place in Geneva, the annual meeting of the 'ILO and the report of the Director General is titled Pour un travail decent. In this report were outlined seven basic forms of economic and social security should be ensured for all workers. The proliferation of atypical or flexible work tends to diminish Most of these 'forms of security and therefore undermines the statute to varying degrees of decent work. I will only mention some of them, with some adjustments and additions to the original text, and note how each of them is eroded, or reduced to zero by such workers.
The employment security, which means not only protection against unfair dismissal or without cause, but also employment stability compatible with a dynamic economy.
Professional security: it implies the possibility of enhancing the profession gradually increasing skills through work and form a stable and recognizable professional identity.
Safety at work: this includes protection against accidents and occupational diseases through adequate regulation in health and safety, which also includes limits on hours and overtime, and the reduction of stress at work.
Income security: the creation and maintenance of an adequate income in able to ensure the worker and his family cover the "human cost" in the face of a given level of social development.
Security representative. It refers to the guarantee offered by the possibility of collective expression in the labor market with free and independent trade unions and other bodies able to represent the interests of workers.
retirement security: the possibility of securing an income through work is capable of keeping, after leaving work, a standard of living comparable to the previous one. This form of security is not listed in the original Oil. The rise of flexible jobs
erode a substantial portion of those securities. Reduces, by definition, those relating to employment stability. While the training and enhancement of professionalism and identity work, as already noted, is made difficult by the variety of work environments, experiences, techniques, models of work organization where a worker is exposed flexible.
safety in the workplace - in this case refers to the physical safety, health - is jeopardized by flexible working, particularly those involving short-term contracts because firms have no incentive to invest in training to security workers in the space of a few weeks or months are no longer employed by them. As for the workers, they do not have the time to learn the codes of the security in which will be occupied for a short time and the motivation to do so.
Another aspect has been repeatedly drawn from research undertaken in different countries. Who works with an atypical tilt to reduce attention to their health. Postpones, for example, the opportunity to undergo a medical examination need to be present at work, hoping to improve, or at least not decrease, the probability of having a new contract about to expire. Underestimating one's state of stress, or forget to visit to go to work, or while commuting to work sick, to affect a lot about the state of health.
Flexible work strongly affects the safety and the level of income. As for the two broad categories of atypical workers, temporary employees and employees or co-ordinated the project, which are formally independent of the research confirms that they have a net annual income is significantly lower than that of staff with a standard contract , is that true self.
The main cause of such gradients is evident. The atypical behavior in many cases, sometimes for years on end, not the normal 12 months of work, or better 11 months working as a paid holiday, plus bonus, 13 months causing the worker's actual salary. May mean rather 8-9 months of work, so not much of full pay. This obviously happens when those who belong to these categories saw a contract expire at the end, whether by employees or employee, and will not find another until after weeks or months. But it also happens with the worst effects for other categories of atypical, for example when one is hired for an indefinite period by a user, because he will be entitled to full pay until you are called by a user.
should be recalled that in the decree implementing the Law 30 is expected that companies administration to match their full pay and the relative contributions of the law caused when the worker is employed in an actual user, while in employment between the worker and the other it is only an availability allowance, divisible, it noted, in units per hour , so as to make it proportional to the time of failure to act. The decrees of the Ministry of Labour, it was indicated, since 2003, € 350 per month for working in administration, in small increments from year to year. In the case of intermittent work allowance drops to 20% of the average wage (approximately 250 €) of employees of the user. In all these cases the contributions are paid in proportion to the periods actually worked.
Done in turn relates to the security of union representation, to drastically reduce it shall, in varying combinations, various factors related to labor flexibility: the flexible mobility of workers from one place to another, the separation of the worker by the firm in which lends his work, which is inherent in the work for rent or administration, the individualization of employment relationships promoted by the reforms of the labor market, the transfer of businesses between regions or abroad.
In parallel with the reduction in security-related employment, income and the amount of fees, it also inevitably reduce the retirement security. According to recent calculations, who began working with the contracts of coordinated and continuous from the time of the multiplication of these, the mid-'90s, when he reached age 60 and at the same time - if unlikely - 35 contribution years full, you can count on maximum pension benefits corresponding to 37% of her salary, which is on average much lower than that of employees.
The list of securities relating to employment, income, and union representation is not merely another elaborate dall'Oil a kind of moral bill of rights for workers. In fact, the same oil through a specific program has started its research in numerous companies in the EU and other countries. To this end, these securities were "operationalized", ie transformed into measurable parameters that can be applied both at the enterprise level, both at the national level. We start, therefore, to have global data bases on the various forms of security that differ in varying degrees, a decent job from what I can not say that. It would be appropriate to make even greater use in Italy.
Luciano Gallino (sociologist)
Source: www.20ottobre.org - 20/10/2007