HUMAN RIGHTS ON THE MARGIN OF EMPLOYMENT : Contingent and Informal Sector Workers in North America

Abstract

Contingent employment has attracted the attention of all stakeholders in the industrial relations community—employers, employees, and their unions and governments. It is a large and growing phenomenon. It poses challenges for unions, both in terms of organizing and in terms of the competition it creates for unionized employees from a more flexible, (generally) lower cost labor force. It poses challenges for governments as legislators since it is often difficult to implement and enforce labor laws in that sector. For employees it can be a source of “bad jobs” in the sense of lower wages, fewer fringe benefits, and little job protection, or it can be a source of “good jobs” in the sense of meeting needs for flexible work arrangements, often to balance work and family concerns for the growing number of two earner families. The papers presented at the IRRA session on this topic and the discussion that occurred at that session highlighted all of these issues for contingent employment in the United States, Mexico, and Canada.