Social Security Outside the Realm of the Employment Contract: Informal Work and Employee-Like Workers

Review that discusses the arguments for reform of the social security and social protection systems currently operating in the world, given their propensity to exclude or minimise support for labour market participants in atypical employment. Among other things, it comments on the challenges of providing adequate social security and social protection for people in informal work and 'hard to reach' sectors of employment, and the suggestion that the standard employment contract – an important device for social insurance purposes – is now ‘in retreat’. It also discusses the assumptions made by contributors that a universal basic income can overcome the status and other multiple barriers typically faced by hard-to-reach workers in the informal economy; or that measures from standard-setting bodies like the International Labour Organisation are making much difference in the face of the radical transformations being seen in the world’s labour markets, whether in what the editors call the global North or the global South. Book title: Social Security Outside the Realm of the Employment Contract: Informal Work and Employee-Like Workers by Mies Westerveld and Marius Olivier (editors) and contributors, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, USA, Edward Elgar, 2019, 275 pp, ISBN 978 1 78811 339 7 Cased; 978 1 78811 340 3 eBook