Post Covid Era: Future of Economies and World Order
The Changing Structure of Work and the Role of the Covid 19 Pandemic in the Security-Flexibility Dilemma
Abdullah ErolThe concept of flexicurity, which was put forward to ensure that employees can work in a decent environment, has not achieved the expected outcomes over the years due to technological developments and some impositions of the economic system. Globalization and the development of communication technologies have profoundly affected the labor market. The fundamental dynamics of the working environment, which is desired to be balanced with the concept of flexicurity, have changed to a great extent due to the decreasing demand for labor and the increase in labor supply. The image of flexicurity has not made the desired contribution to the provision of justice in working life since problems that are much different and more complex than the ones it is aimed to solve have emerged and have not been developed to solve them. Naturally, wages were formed at an increasingly lower level; ostensibly, "independent" workers were employed instead of employees. In this way, employers tried to escape from the responsibilities imposed on them by labor laws. Every day, more and more people have to join the group of "independent" workers who do not have any security and are manipulated by the employer as desired and whose contracts can be terminated without incurring additional costs (severance pay, notice pay, etc.). With the Covid 19 epidemic, the unfair working conditions that this group is exposed to, which are called "quasi employee" in the legal literature and "precariat" in the social policy literature, have become even more visible.