Precarious work: An European and national perspective

Although the notion of precarious work exists in the labour law for more than 30 years, it does not have a clear and unitary definition at the level of the EU or at the level of the country, much less at global level. The doctrine put forward this concept, by analysing niche cases - that appeared on the labour market due to the development of consumer society (for example persons used for promoting clubs, discotheques, restaurants or various travel sites, street ticket vendors, online work in extremely diverse forms, etc.) or simply forms of work that existed from the very beginning but were never properly regulated (providers of services at home: gardener, interior design "handyman", working in domains considered illegal in some states such as prostitution etc.). Then, this category also included cases of work that although they are developed in regulated domains exhibit conditions of discrimination, inequality, harmful for the health or other inferior conditions and need an additional protection status (this is maybe the broadest category and raises the biggest problems of systematization). Therefore, starting from various concrete examples, it was ascertained the need to focus on vast categories of people working in unusual conditions". In other words, although in the cases mentioned work is being provided, this may either not be recognized as such or not benefit of the "standard" protection offered to employees in general, i.e. certain categories of employees working in the same niche domain.