Work without protection: informal work

Jan Breman and Marcel van der Linden

Chapter 10 in The Elgar Companion to Decent Work and the Sustainable Development Goals, 2025, pp 128-138 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The Standard Employment Relationship (with formal labour contracts, mediated by public authorities) has enjoyed a life span of a few decades in a limited part of the world. The changing balance of forces between labour and capital since the 1980s is reflected in the decreasing labour share in national GDPs around the globe. Capital, already in the initial stage more powerful than labour, has become increasingly hegemonic in its globalized spread. The ‘Rest’ is not becoming like the ‘West’, but is turned the other way round. It means that the labour policy of neo-liberalism, with its brand of informality/precarity which now dominates in a collusion between public governance and private enterprise, refuses to be held accountable for the regular and regulated employment and secure livelihood of the working classes. For most people, “decent work” therefore remains a distant goal.

Keywords: Business and Management; Development Studies; Economics and Finance; Sociology and Social Policy; Sustainable Development Goals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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