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A growing body of social science literature has examined the organizational innovations and staffing practices comprising new flexible forms of work. Researchers have investigated the depth and scope of these changes and questioned how they affect diverse groups of workers in the United States. Reviewing the research on this transformation reveals a model of combined and uneven flexibility, characterized by the opening of opportunities that are differentially distributed across different groups of American workers, emerging under conditions in which effort is intensified, control is decentered, and employment is destabilized. The essay concludes by suggesting additional areas of inquiry for sociologists concerned with new forms of work organization.

This report provides a snapshot of the policy actions being taken by OECD, EU and G20 countries in response to growing diversity in forms of employment, with the aim of encouraging peer learning where countries are facing similar issues. It shows that many countries are reflecting on whether existing policies and institutions are capable of addressing effectively the current (and future) challenges of a rapidly changing world of work. In recent years, many countries have seen the emergence of, and/or growth in, particular labour contract types that diverge from the standard employment relationship (i.e. full-time dependent employment of indefinite duration). These include temporary and casual contracts, as well as own-account work and platform work. Several countries have also seen growth in false self-employment, where employers seek to evade tax and regulatory dues and obligations. These changes are driving policy makers worldwide to review how policies in different areas – labour market, skills development, social protection – can best respond. How can policymakers balance the flexibility offered by a diversity of employment contracts, on the one hand, with protection for workers and businesses, on the other?

I have always admired labor organizers, in part because their long hours and incredible ability to listen, engage, and sympathize with people from every political persuasion make it possible for the labor movement to survive. I do not envy them, however, particularly at this moment in history. They often find themselves in untenable situations, faced with impossible moral and political dilemmas. As one Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Worker organizer from the Tufts University campaign—where the union recently lost an election—explained to me in January 2010, "You can't win an election without employer neutrality. Yet you can't get neutrality without making concessions you don't want to make."

Es wird versucht, einige Elemente in der Entwicklung neuer Formen von Arbeitsorganisation deutlich zu machen und die sozioökonomischen Faktoren herauszustellen, die diese Entwicklung bedingten. Aus vier wichtigen Gründen sind Alternativen zu tayloristischen Arbeitsformen von Interesse; es sind dies: die Arbeitszufriedenheit, Demokratie am Arbeitsplatz, Produktivität und Arbeitsbedingungen. (IAB2)

One of the Canadian government's planned measures for the reform of industrial relations, announced in Oct 1976, was a program to improve the quality of working life through worker participation. Reasons for the introduction of such proposals, & their consequences, are explored. These measures are best understood as a strategy for motivating workers to show greater concern for employers' interests. Unions were not included in the proposals of the human relations movement, but are now included in current worker participation proposals. Full employment, since World War II, has proven detrimental to capital's interests by reducing the utility of fear of unemployment as a basis for discipline. Both wage controls & worker participation were introduced as a response to falling corporate profits. Job enrichment & similar proposals actually serve capital's interests by producing a more flexible & smaller labor force, which is also more compatible with current technical innovations. Union participation in management decisions is best viewed as a strategy for subordinating organized labor to the interests of capital in situations where organized worker resistance has been present. The case of the Canadian postal service, Post Canada, illustrates this. Work reform in the actual interests of workers ultimately implies a socialist revolution. W. H. Stoddard.