ABSTRACT

The major forms of workplace fragmentation are reinforcing, because women, the young and people from subordinated racial/ethnic groups are disproportionately unemployed or employed less securely than males from dominant groups. So the compounding effect of multiple discriminations has been heightened by increasing unemployment and precarious employment. High unemployment rates force employed workers to accept intolerable amounts of overtime, for fear of losing their jobs. Capitalism has an inbuilt tendency to create unemployment and under-employment. In the globalizing era, an increasingly significant component of the reserve army of labour is the precariat, as it has become known, used by employers as buffers against fluctuations in demand. The Euromarches network, discussed in the previous chapter for its campaigning on behalf of immigrant workers, challenged the increasing segmentation within workforces on the basis of hours worked or not worked, by developing links between workers, the casually employed and the unemployed.