Precarious workers and new forms of social conflicts at the turn of the century: International Conference "Strikes and Social Conflicts in the Twentieth Century", Lisbon, 17, 18, 19 March, 2011

Abstract : The long process of stabilization of the labor force, which was gradually gained by long struggles of the labor movement in the Twentieth Century and materialized by the progressive building of the labor law and an important social legislation, was halted by a new precarization process at the end of 1970s. This process affected the way labor conflicts could occur. The segmentation of the labor market into two parts, between stable workers - those who have a stable full-time job provided by a good social welfare - and precarious workers who are put in a various cumulative situations of job insecurity, part-time jobs or temporary work, makes more complicated the emergence of unified struggles of these differentiated types of workers.