Regulating new forms of employment : local experiments and social innovation in Europe / edited by Ida Regalia

In recent years new forms of employment, including arrangements such as part-time, temporery and fixed-term employment, temporary agency work, self-employment, and distance and teleworking, have sprung up at local and regional levels throughout the world. Using a comparative framework, this empirically rich volume focuses on how these types of non-standard employment can be regulated in very different social, political and institutional settings. After surveying these new forms of work and the new demands for labour-market regulation, the authors identify possible solutions among local-level actors and provide a detailed analysis of how firms assess the advantages and disadvantages of flexible forms of employment. The contributors provide six detailed case studies to examine the successes and failures of experimental approaches and social innovation to these new forms of employment in various regions in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.This book will be of great interest to sociologists, political scientists, industrial relations experts, policy makers, representatives of the social partners, students of labour studies, and to all those interested in new approaches to employment protection.