Complexities of flexible labor

This study deals with the restructuring of the labor process that has been taking place for several decades. It analyzes and compares these processes within the United States and Germany to better understand how complex trends in employment regulation, work, and workers’ representation – often referred to as labor flexibility – affect employers, the individual employee, and the labor market itself. The study considers four fundamental and interrelated dimensions of the labor process: space, work, employment and time. These dimensions provide a helpful framework for analyzing the changing labor process in informational capitalism. The analysis combines quantitative and qualitative empirical information and focuses on developments within the IT industry and the work of software developers. The central thesis of the study is that the complex trends within the labor process have ambiguous impacts on the economy, society and workers. This book offers new insights and analysis for readers in social science and politics who are interested in current restructuring of labor and the labor market and who are concerned about the manifold consequences of labor flexibility.