Job security, precarious work, and freedom of contract

Modern labour markets appear segmented into good jobs for full-time employment and bad jobs, which are precarious and poorly remunerated. To achieve flexibility and save on labour costs, employers use strategies such as casualisation and outsourcing of work. Statutory employment law rights such as protection against redundancy and unfair dismissal generally apply only to good jobs. Using their freedom of contract to turn jobs into precarious work relations, employers can avoid legal protections for job security. Although the courts sometime challenge bogus contractual terms as shams that conceal a standard contract of employment, courts cannot in general override what the employer and worker have agreed. The segmented labour market and the growing degree of exclusion from statutory employment rights are forms of structural injustice. The remedy must lie in Parliamentary legislation that controls and replaces contractual arrangements for precarious work.