Flexibility of Work During the Pandemic

Abstract

Economic recovery programmes implemented in Portugal and Greece during the Eurozone crisis prioritised atypical forms of work to increase the efficiency and productivity of labour. Just after they exited their structural adjustment programmes, there happened the COVID-19 outbreak with further challenges to their economic wellbeing and labour-capital relations. This chapter aims to comparatively analyse the labour market indicators in flexible forms of work before and during the pandemic. It argues that the economic policies implemented during the COVID-19 crisis had initially aimed to contain the adverse effects of the pandemic on societies, by simply limiting the contagion among individuals. With their widespread coverage, COVID-19 measures tended to sustain the already-in-place flexibilisation policies with increasing numbers in part-time and temporary employment relations. In this respect, COVID-19 practices in the labour market simply consolidated the economic recovery policies implemented in the post-crisis years in Portugal and Greece.