Social partnership and the rise of the gig economy in Greece: continuity or discontinuity?

Unlike other European countries, the gig economy did not constitute a topic of contention between Greek workers and employers during its early phases of rise and growth, while, up to date, it has not given rise to a new framework for facilitating discussion, collaboration or social dialogue between the parties involved. Greece is a representative case of a Southern European country characterised by crony capitalism and weak labour market institutions, strong clientelism and low levels of policy concertation, a guild-oriented social structure and a history of adversarial industrial relations, trade union fragmentation and low institutionalisation of bargaining procedures. Our empirical findings indicate that these context-specific characteristics have fed into policy legacies and institutional inadequacies that have proven decisive in the ways the social partners have sought to understand and respond to the growth of the gig economy.