ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the changes that have taken place in employment practices and regulation in advanced industrial countries. It canvasses employment trends to show that job security and the other features of the standard contract of employment are fading. The new labor market rewards skill, flexibility, adaptability, and entrepreneurial self-marketing. The labor law regimes reflected prevailing human resource theories that counseled firms to organize work into stable, long-term relationships arranged in internal labor markets. The chapter describes numerous initiatives that together comprise not one but a cluster of green shoots that have emerged in different countries in response to the challenges posed by the end of the standard employment contract and the spread of precarious, unpredictable, and non-standard forms of employment. It describes a number of policy "green shoots", without prioritizing them or insisting that each one is either effective or transplantable. The chapter concludes by considering what countries can learn from ameliorative policies and programs in other countries.
