False Self-Employment and Other Precarious Forms of Employment in the ‘Grey Area’ of the Labour Market

Abstract

The aim of this article is to discuss the problem of false (bogus) self-employment and other precarious forms of employment in the ‘grey area’ between genuine self-employment and subordinate employment in Sweden. Why has this area developed in a longer and shorter perspective? How does the use of disguised and ambiguous forms of employment affect workers, industrial relations and regular labour standards? Examples are given from the construction, road haulage and cleaning industries. The article indicates that work in the grey area has become more and more common in recent years, not only in the context of east-west labour migration, but also among Swedish workers. The author also discusses this development.

Work engagement among different types of solo self-employed: the mediating role of intrinsic job resources

“…These activities are characterized by high skill levels, specialization and competence leading to strong labour market positions, even though the workers involved are often dependent on a single employer (Muehlberger, 2007). At the same time, on the bottom of the labour market, non-core, low-skilled activities of companies are also increasingly contracted out to low-Work engagement among solo self-employed skilled, self-employed workers (Th€ ornquist, 2015). Especially the situation of the latter usually relates to powerful negative health-affecting psychosocial consequences, like an increased sense of insecurity, low feelings of control over one's working life (Bosmans, 2016), and lower feelings of autonomy and competence (Shir et al, 2019), which could all contribute to low work engagement.…”

“…In the post-Fordist service economy there is a rising demand for highly skilled professional self-employed services (e.g. consultants, lawyers, computer operators) (Thörnquist, 2015). These activities are characterized by high skill levels, specialization and competence leading to strong labour market positions, even though the workers involved are often dependent on a single employer (Muehlberger, 2007).…”

Precarious self-employment in urban Europe

“…Dependent self-employment has a longer history in traditional labour-intensive industries such as agriculture, transport and construction (Thörnquist, 2015) and has increased previously during recessions (Román et al, 2011). In some countries, self-employed work that is dependent on the demand of one client has been specifically investigated as a form of precarious self-employment in the construction industry, notably in the United Kingdom and Italy (Williams and Horodnic, 2018).…”

False self-employment: the role of occupations

“…So outsourcing of work to solo self-employed workers is not necessarily a condition of false self-employment. However, due to price differences between regular employment and (solo) self-employment arrangements firms have an incentive to hire self-employed workers to perform activities within the hierarchy of the firm as well, (Th€ ornquist, 2015). If the solo self-employed worker is supervised by the firm, this work arrangement becomes comparable to a hierarchical subordinate employer-employee working relationship, but without all social protection and labour law rights for employees.…”

“…These are arrangements in which self-employed workers perform tasks under supervision of the firm. So, although legally these workers do not have an employee status, in practice they might be in a subordinate relationship with the firm comparable to that of employees (Th€ ornquist, 2015).…”