Full Description
In recent decades, due to unprecedented technological advancements, Europe has seen a move towards on-demand service economies. This has allowed the growth of self-employed professionals who are able to satisfy an increasing demand for flexible and high-skilled work. This book explores the need for reform of regulations in Europe, studying the variance in legal status, working conditions, social protection and collective representation of self-employed professionals. It provides insights into ways that policy could address these important challenges.
Presenting the results of a wide-reaching European survey, this book highlights key issues being faced across Europe: the implementation of universal social protection schemes; active labour market policies to support sustainable self-employment and the renewal of social dialogue through bottom-up organisations to extend the collective representation of self-employed professionals. With its theoretically-informed, empirical and interdisciplinary comparative analysis, this book identifies and explains key strategies to resolve these challenges.
This book will be of great benefit to both advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of labour and economic sociology, political science, industrial relations, human resource management and social law. It will also appeal to scholars, practitioners and policymakers concerned with the labour market and self-employment in the European context.
Contents
Contents:
Foreword David Marsden
1. Introduction: self-employed professionals in a comparative perspective
François Pichault and Renata Semenza
2. New self-employment as a theoretical matter
Renata Semenza and Anna Mori
3. Working conditions and needs: results of a European survey
Anna Soru, Elena Sinibaldi and Cristina Zanni
4. The place of self-employment in the European context. Evidence from nine country case studies: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom
Laura Beuker, Paolo Borghi, Marie-Christine Bureau, Antonella Corsani, Bernard Gazier, Alejandro Godino, Bas Koene, Antonio Martín-Artiles, Oscar Molina, Anna Mori, Frédéric Naedenoen, Maria Norbäck, Klemen Širok, Maylin Stanic and Lars Walter
5. Comparing the national contexts
Laura Beuker, François Pichault and Frédéric Naedenoen
6. Continuity and discontinuity in collective representation
Anna Mori and Bas Koene
7. Conclusions: perspectives on self-employment in Europe
Manuela Samek Lodovici, François Pichault and Renata Semenza
Afterword: conditions for a new social dialogue in Europe
Bernard Gazier
Index
