ABSTRACT
Employment flexibility represents a change in the socio-economic environment in which those in the labour market and their dependents live. This chapter elaborates that social and economic security and stability are not just incidental consequences of the organisation of employment markets, but are part of our social rights. There is general agreement on the components of the 'new' labour flexibility: more self-employment, short term contract work, flexible terms and conditions that differ between the different status of workers, more seasonal employment, more employment mobility and migration, serial skills acquisition, more retraining, and a reduction in the influence of trade unions. Putting together the arguments from the formulations of social rights, it turns out that social rights as citizen (contract) rights may contain whatever might be agreed to in the political process. On balance therefore, a claim can be made that we have a (social) right to (some degree of) security and stability and to the ability to plan our lives.
