Implications for Union Work of the Trend towards Precarization of Work

KEYWORDS precarious employment, workers rights, collective bargaining, trade union rights, trade union attitude, role of ILO, role of IMPrecarious work is rapidly becoming one of the biggest obstacles to the respect of workers' rights worldwide. Every day, more and more workers find themselves in precarious jobs where they have no right even to join a union, let alone to bargain collectively with their employer. Precarious work is one of the most serious challenges facing the global trade union movement. Unless unions are able to find ways to confront precarious work, to reduce its prevalence as a form of employment and to overcome the restrictions on labour rights that it entails, the strength of organized labour to protect and advance wages and working conditions will be severely, if not critically weakened.There is no doubt that permanent jobs are in decline the world over, being replaced with temporary, casual, part-time and contract jobs. In highly industrialized countries, traditional full-time jobs are rapidly being replaced by precarious forms of employment. In developing countries, ongoing, full-time jobs have always been rare, but rather than moving towards more stable employment, the trend is towards precarious work continuing as the norm. While the current economic crisis has certainly escalated the erosion of stable employment, unions were expressing concern about the increasing reliance on temporary work contracts to fill permanent vacancies well before the crisis hit.This paper draws on the experience of the International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF), its affiliates and other global unions to present some of the responses that unions at local, national and global level are making to the challenge and points to the more promising avenues for further work to drive back precarious employment and secure workers' rights. First it offers an overview of the nature and drivers of the global spread of precarious work.Denial of trade union rightsPrecarious workers typically miss out on many of the benefits associated with full-time, ongoing work with a single employer, and may have reduced or no rights to social security protection. But it is the effective denial of precarious workers' rights to join a union and bargain collectively with their employer that leaves such workers most vulnerable to exploitation. Some precarious workers are formally excluded from the coverage of national labour legislation that guarantees those rights, while others have rights on paper, but no rights in fact because laws are not enforced. And others are too afraid to exercise their rights because they could lose their jobs at any minute.As a result, millions of workers throughout the world and whole categories of employment are effectively being excluded from the reach of International Labour Organization (ILO) Conventions Nos 87 and 98 on freedom of association and the right to bargain collectively, as well as a whole host of other employment rights.There are various employment arrangements used which ensure that precarious workers are effectively excluded from union membership, collective bargaining and social protection. Many precarious workers find themselves in triangular employment relationships, whereby workers are technically employed by a temporary employment agency, subcontractor, labour dispatcher or other third party but actually perform work for another company. Typically in this situation, although their rights to join a union and bargain collectively may exist on paper, there is no practical way to actually exercise these rights. It is the user company that controls their day-to-day conditions of work and in most cases sets the wage rates for the job (which are usually lower than those for permanent workers performing the same work), yet workers in triangular relationships are told that they cannot bargain collectively with this company as it is not technically their employer. …