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The issue of employment status lies at the heart of much conflict in the gig economy, with many gig economy workers effectively excluded from statutory employment protection because of it. Establishing employment status continues to be the gateway to accessing most UK statutory employment rights, a fact which makes the exclusion of casual workers from much statutory protection seem arbitrary and unjust. Employment status has been historically determined by common law conceptions of the contract of employment. This creates particular difficulties for casual workers, who have typically had to prove a requirement to perform personal service and to show that the contract was based on mutual obligations in order to be recognised as employees. The advent of the gig economy has seen the concept of employment status evolve as courts and legislators have struggled to adapt to a more flexible labour market. Likewise, gig economy employers have gone to considerable lengths to try to circumvent the legal protections available to their workers. This chapter will examine the evolving role of common law doctrine in defining employment status and the emergence of the category of ‘worker’ as an definition of employment status for those who work in the gig economy. It will analyse prominent cases involving gig economy employers (such as Uber BV v Aslam) and explore how these cases have re-defined contractual doctrine. Finally, the chapter will analyse the Taylor Review (2017) and examine the viability of a conceptual uncoupling of statutory employment protection from contractual doctrine.

The employee-organization relationship (EOR) has increasingly become a focal point for researchers in organizational behavior, human resource management, and industrial relations. Literature on the EOR has developed at both the individual – (e.g. psychological contracts) and the group and organizational-levels of analysis (e.g. employment relationships). Both sets of literatures are reviewed, and we argue for the need to integrate these literatures as a means for improving understanding of the EOR. Mechanisms for integrating these literatures are suggested. A subsequent discussion of contextual effects on the EOR follows in which we suggest that researchers develop models that explicitly incorporate context. We then examine a number of theoretical lenses to explain various attributes of the EOR such as the dynamism and fairness of the exchange, and new ways of understanding the exchange including positive functional relationships and integrative negotiations. The article concludes with a discussion of future research needed on the EOR.

Using Spanish establishment-level data on temporary and permanent job and worker flows, we examine firms’ relative usage of fixed-term contracts in response to changes in their prior net employment expectations for the short-run and the long-run – viewed as proxies of how a wide variety of future shocks are ultimately perceived by establishments. The employment response of establishments to changing net employment expectations for the short-run is, primarily, suggestive of their reliance on fixed-term contracts as a buffer to cushion short-run changes in demand as well as to shield permanent workers from downward workforce adjustments. In contrast, their response to changes in net employment expectations for the long-run mostly hints on the use of fixed-term contracts as a screening device. Therefore, policies providing financial incentives to convert fixed-term into permanent contracts – thus targeting firms’ using fixed-term contracts as a screening device, are likely to only have limited effectiveness.

I historically compare changes in institutional frameworks creating academic positions linked to temporary employment by analyzing university employment statistics in Chile, Colombia, Germany, and the USA. I find that temporary academic positions were institutionalized through the creation of previously inexistent academic categories called a contrata in Chile, de cátedra in Colombia, “junior professor” without tenure in Germany and “postdoc” in the USA; used in higher education and employment laws since 1989, 1992, 2002, and 1974, respectively. Under institutional frameworks demanding the maximization of students and research, universities have increasingly contracted academics through temporary contracts under rationales that differ between regions. In Colombia and Chile, public university leaders and owners of private universities contract such teaching positions to expand student numbers through lowering costs. In Germany and the USA, employment insecurity is mostly driven by temporary scientific positions under a main rationale of scientific expansion. The share of temporary positions has increased exponentially in Colombia and Germany in recent decades, whereas in the USA there has only been an increase since 2012. Moreover, in Chile, the share of permanent positions has decreased since 2012. The common trend is one of isomorphism of vertical academic structures sharing a pyramidal form, with a wide base of academics working under conditions of contractual insecurity. Such trends follow a rationale for maximization of student numbers as well as administration, and scientific production that is in tension with prioritizing wellbeing and improvement of academics’ working conditions. Yet, in these environments, the institution of tenure in the USA and recent Chilean regulations on accreditation represent mechanisms counteracting precarious employment.

There are ten universal principles of United Nations Global Compact in four areas namely human rights, labour, environmental and anti-corruption, and this chapter will explore the sixth principle of labour standard on elimination of discrimination in employment and occupation, in particular the doctrine of constructive dismissal in Malaysian labour relations. Constructive dismissal is creating a new challenge in labour relation in Malaysia.

This chapter specifically analyses some of the constructive dismissal awards and its implication to labour relations in Malaysia. The methodology employed in this chapter is the analysis of case laws using criterion-based sampling from the Industrial and Superior Court awards on constructive dismissal.

There has been an increasing number of awards on constructive dismissal made by the Malaysian Industrial Court over the last nine years. From the year 2009–2013, the Industrial Court has made 663 awards on constructive dismissal, mostly against employers. With compensation awarded to each employee amounted to as much as 24 months of back-pay salary plus a month’s pay for every year of service, employers can no longer neglect this pressing issue.

The concept of constructive dismissal falls within the purview of section 20 of the Industrial Relations Act 1967 in Malaysia. Constructive dismissal is a ‘deemed dismissal’ if an employer is guilty of a breach of the employment contract which goes to the root of the contract. It arises when a workman terminates his/her contract of employment and considers himself/herself discharged from further obligations because of the employer’s conduct.

With a good understanding of the constructive dismissal awards, it is expected that organizations will manage and treat their human resources as their greatest assets and prevent constructive dismissal claims from taking place. This will eventually help to improve and maintain harmonious labour relations. This chapter is likely to provide insights into the Malaysian labour relations environment for international business operations.

In the context of Malaysian labour relations, studies on constructive dismissal are limited as it is considered as a new area and a specific area of study. This chapter therefore hopes to fill the existing gap in the literature, to highlight some of the recent awards and lessons to prevent constructive dismissal claims from taking place and generally to contribute to the constructive dismissal literature.

The growing incidence of precarious employment across many sectors is a serious challenge for a developing country like India. Neo-liberal arguments justify precarity as essential for the development of the free market economy and advocate realigning human resource practices with an ever-changing business environment and labor cost conditions. This chapter seeks to identify the determinants and dynamics surrounding precarity of workers engaged in temporary employment in India. It uses the unique Employment and Unemployment Survey data set published by the National Sample Survey Organisation of Government of India for two time periods 2009–2010 (66th Round) and 2011–2012 (68th Round) to bring out the dimensions of precarity and identify the determinants (both micro- and macro-levels) of participation in temporary employment. We find that precarious employment is most likely to affect the young, women, non-union members, those belonging to minority and socially deprived communities with low land holding and low educational status. Precarious employment is also most pronounced in states where labor-intensive industries are exposed to global import competition and where labor laws are rigid. The chapter concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for the economic and social policies that Indian governments have adopted in recent years.

Today, there is the real possibility that self-management and workplace democracy will follow socialism into the dustbin of history. But the connection of self-management to socialism was misconceived from the beginning. Workplace democracy has its own roots in the historical struggle against slavery and against autocracy. The paper reviews the history of the theory of inalienable rights that applies not only against the self-sale contract and the political contract of subjection but also against of the self-rental or employment contract, today's contract of subjection for the workplace. The paper concludes with the current debate about corporate governance.

Traditionally, hiring indefinite duration contract employees has been the dominant method used by U.S. organizations to staff their labor needs. Indefinite duration contract employees, hereafter referred to as “regular” employees, have three defining characteristics: (1) they are hired directly as employees of the organization whose work they perform; (2) the duration of the employment relationship is unspecified, with a mutual expectation that it will continue as long as it is mutually satisfactory; and (3) the employment relationship provides ongoing – as opposed to intermittent – work. When their demand for labor increases, organizations staffed exclusively by regular employees can respond by having their employees work overtime or by hiring additional regular employees. Conversely, when their demand for labor decreases, such organizations can either maintain “inventories” of excess regular employees or reduce labor inputs by laying-off or reducing the work hours of regular employees.

Highly educated and skilled contract workers come from a range of occupations, have different worker characteristics, and work under organizational practices that are precarious in varied ways. Our current understanding of the experience of contract work does not fully encompass this diversity. This chapter focuses on early-career contract workers who contract across national borders – an increasingly prevalent but little understood phenomenon – to broaden our understanding of contract work. I draw on an analysis of 38 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 30 international and early-career contract workers in the United Nations (UN) system in Geneva, Switzerland. Eight participants were included in follow-up interviews. I find that my participants demonstrate flexibility to their employer. They accept uncertain and short-term contracts, because they hope to secure longer-term positions within the prestigious UN system. Demonstrating flexibility impacts them, their relationships, and has financial implications as participants center the demands of their contracts. At times, participants place limits on how much uncertainty they will bear. This chapter thus illuminates the experiences of an understudied group of contract workers – early-career workers in transnational settings – who fall within the broad umbrella of contract workers. It highlights how even elite workers experience challenges as they engage in contract work.