From refineries in Côte D’Ivoire to mines in Colombia, from the energy sector in Serbia to the glass workers in Turkey, from India to Western Europe, from Australia to the US, people have seen their jobs disappear to sub-contracting companies that usually employ workers at inferior conditions. In other cases, jobs have been terminated, with work being taken over by workers sent in by agencies or on short-term contracts.

“The difference between the living conditions of union workers with permanent jobs and contract workers could be measured in centuries”

Numerous “new ways of employment”, most of them precarious, have been invented and used. This is one area of business where there is no discrimination: Outsourcing through contract and agency labour (CAL) affects the blue collar mine workers in developing countries just as much as the white collar workers in the high-tech biotechnology business in OECD countries. In fact, it could be said that this is one phenomenon that has, to a large extent, spread from the “south” to the “north”, instead of the other way around, unlike most “management techniques”.