Standards of Deviation? Collective Representation of Atypical Workers in Europe and the United States

Rebecca Oliver (IRLE Scholar)

My research investigates collective bargaining institutions and practices for atypical workers in advanced industrial democracies.  What do unions do for the wide a growing body of atypical workers, those outside full-time indeterminate employment relationship? Most centrally, how do outsiders’ employment parameters vary across labor market regimes and what factors influence the degree of inequality between insiders and outsiders across cases?  Furthermore, how do the politics of representing outsiders inform debates about solidarity and dualism?  This project aims to elucidate which factors related to labor market structures, collective bargaining practices shape the incentives, strategies and capacities of labor unions with regard to their position towards atypical workers and the nature of their integration within union structures.  The cases of Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and the United States allow for an exploration of a number of important dimensions of temporary workers.