Recent decades have been marked by the worldwide spread of precarious forms of employment. Temporary contracts, agency work, and casual labor have accounted for a major share of job growth. Thus, growth in recent times, far from favoring the development of decent work, has often fostered new forms of instability. This issue of the IJLR examines the trends and the reasons that lie behind this expansion, as well as their effects on workers and various segments of the labor force such as youth and women and inequality. It also considers the consequences of this development on workers’ capacity to organize and on what strategies trade unions can develop to reverse this trend.
