It seems like the narrative of a quaint period drama: a time when newly minted graduates would enter a company and stay for the rest of their lives. In return for hard work came the promise of security, a gradual increase in salary and a comfortable life.

Today younger workers are spending longer at work, are changing jobs more often and are more likely to be on precarious temporary or fixed-term contracts. For some it provides flexibility and the ability to skip from employer to employer, picking up valuable skills along the way. But there are rising concerns about a growing and potentially corrosive problem of poor-quality, precarious and temporary work.

Many on low incomes feel part of a growing “precariat”, stuck on short-term, low-hour contracts, with little hope of progression in their jobs. It’s an issue, too, it seems, for a growing number of occupations, ranging from fluorescent-jacketed service workers to ambitious graduates taking jobs in areas including the tech industry, media and academia. Employers, keen to cut costs and stay nimble-footed, prefer the flexibility of a workforce on a variety of contracts. But it’s also an environment where insecure work, bogus self-employment and free-riding on internship schemes is increasingly common.

The numbers capture some of the changes in the workplace. Full-time work remains by far the most common form of employment. But the proportion of these workers on temporary contracts has doubled in the past decade or so, up from 5 per cent to 10 per cent.

The rise was sharpest among workers under 25, where numbers jumped from 15 to 33 per cent, according to the OECD. Almost a quarter of people work part-time. The proportion who want to work full-time but can’t find the work has tripled from 10 per cent to 32 per cent over the past decade.

But the numbers tell us only so much. They don’t delve into detail around the nature, security and quality of work and contracts. To shed more light on the numbers in low- or zero-hour contracts, the Government has commissioned a study from researchers at the University of Limerick.

In international terms, however, Ireland still compares well when it comes to workplace security. Most job growth in recent years has been in full-time rather than temporary work. And the length of time that workers spend with an employer appears to have increased slightly.

But as an open and globalised economy, experts say, we’re unlikely to be immune from a worldwide shift away from secure jobs and towards more temporary or short-term contracts. “In some cases, nonstandard forms of work can help people get a foothold in the job market,” says Guy Ryder, director general of the International Labour Organisation, a UN agency. “But these emerging trends are also a reflection of the widespread insecurity that’s affecting many workers worldwide today.”

Worry about contract renewal

Muhammed, who is 29, has been working in a call centre in Dublin for eight years. He says he’s surrounded by workers on 11-month contracts who worry about whether they’ll be renewed. “It means they don’t have to increase your pay or they can let you go and you don’t get redundancy – even if your contract has been renewed on a number of occasions. Some have been here for four years or so.”

In many ways he feels lucky. Thanks to a glitch in the renewal of his contract his emplyer ended up taking him on full time. But he believes that temporary contracts are used to suit employers rather than employees; they also lower expectations about pay. His company’s hourly rates, which range from €10 to €15 an hour, have hardly budged since he joined. The last increase was more than five years ago, when the rate went up by 50c an hour. The high churn of staff means there’s not much focus on progression, he says, although he has a third-level degree in information systems and a master’s degree in computer forensics. “I feel like we’re kind of written off,” he says.

Muireann, a Dunnes Stores employee, says she loves her job and her colleagues but doesn’t feel valued by her employer. Although she’s guaranteed between 15 and 39 hours a week, the hours can fluctuate. It means her take-home pay can vary by up to €100 a week. She is married with three children – ranging in age from young teens to early 20s – and every penny counts. Her husband lost his job, and they have had trouble paying their mortgage in the past. She’d like to take a second job but needs to be available for her maximum hours at Dunnes if the work arises. “I love my job,” she says. “But the insecurity of not knowing if you have enough to pay the bills or to go on a holiday is difficult.”

The precariat, in the vocabulary of analysts such as Prof Guy Standing, are all of these workers at the sharp end of the modern workplace: people on low hours or low pay, who have few of the benefits won by organised labour in the last century.

They are concerns shared by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, which says Ireland has a weak legal framework for workers seeking to assert these rights. “To ensure this right is vindicated, a national charter of workplace ethics must be developed and put in place,” says Esther Lynch, Ictu’s campaigns director.

She fears that younger workers are being conditioned to expect insecurity, unpaid internships and casual work. “If you look at how students are being taught, and what’s being celebrated, the flexible freelancer is held up as the ideal,” she says. “There’s nobody celebrating the idea of a diligent worker who’s making a contribution to the company, who’s loyal and has a say in how the organisation is run.”

But the image of flexible and insecure work as a scourge of of the modern workplace is one that the employers’ group Ibec finds hard to recognise. If anything, says Danny McCoy, its chief executive, it’s time to reset the narrative that flexible-hours or part-time working is poorly paid, undesirable or precarious. “Many workers actively choose to work in sectors where flexible hours are available, in order to achieve the work-life equilibrium they require or desire.”

He says the workplace is changing faster than many realise. Current estimates suggest that students currently in the education system will have held an average of 10-12 jobs by the time they turn 38. More than 60 per cent of children today will work in jobs that currently do not exist.

“Our understanding of work and of employees’ expectations is evolving continually. We are moving away from lifetime careers with collectively bargained or universal terms and conditions,” he says.

“Our millennials already have multiple careers, in more complex employment structures, with greater demand for flexibility, autonomy and direct engagement on their terms of employment.”

Work is increasingly going to be more specialised and more remote, with profound consequences for the modern workplace. “We need to be ambitious and brave in designing work and workplaces that will excite and attract the talent and skills to work in hyperconnected, constantly evolving, digital workplaces,” McCoy says.

Recruitment

It’s a point shared by Richard Eardley, managing director of the recruitment firm Hays, which has seen a job surge in areas such as construction, financial services and technology. “We see a lot people out of college, early in their careers. They’re not talking about finding an organisation to keep them employed until they’re retired, or even an employer to give them a good career for 10 years,” he says.

“They see careers in terms of building blocks. Once they have one piece of the foundation in place they move on to the next stage . . . They’re not looking for old-style permanence.”

The 20th-century ideas of labour protection – constructed around the sepia-tinted image of the firm, fixed workplaces and fixed working days – seem, then, to apply to fewer and fewer people. So is the search for job security outmoded?

Joan Burton, Tánaiste and leader of the Labour Party, doesn’t think so. Workers may seek flexibility, but they still want to feel a solid foundation under their feet. “Security is very important in people’s lives,” she says. “Almost every parent wants their child to be able to do as well, and possibly better, than they did economically.

“What’s happened in terms of the meltdown of the banking system . . . has been to introduce – even for middle-class people – a level or precariousness which wasn’t there 20 years before.”

The challenge for policymakers, she says, is how to provide both security and flexibility for workers. “Very few young people say, ‘I want to have one job for the whole of my life.’ An awful lot of young people want an opportunity to experience different jobs and roles, at times being an employee, at times being a contractor or subcontractor.”

She says it’s one reason why the Government is providing in law for collective bargaining and reinstating registered employment agreements in hospitality, the construction industry and other areas. The recently established Low Pay Commission, whose report is due shortly, will also advise on issues such as whether the minimum wage needs to be increased.

“We live in a globalised economy,” Burton says, “but a high level of vigilance is required. The European social contract should not be undermined by employers gouging out terms and conditions.”

But there are still key gaps in workplace rights in the eyes of many. The sudden closure of Clerys last month, when 400 workers had barely half an hour’s notice that the locks on the doors were being changed, was regarded by politicians of all hues as an aggressive new strain of “vulture capitalism”.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said the treatment of workers was “grossly insensitive and appalling”, but he gave no firm commitment to prevent such an event happening again. Does his catchcry of making Ireland the “best small country in the world to do business in” mean we’re powerless to stop the force of the markets?

Burton says it is possible to combine a strong economy with a decent workplace. “I always say Ireland should be the best country in the world to live in,” she says. “We want an economy that’s efficient and competitive . . . Equally, we have core values which emphasise decency in terms of standards – and thresholds of decency are very important to the quality of life of everyone in the country.”

Rite of passage

Sinéad Pembroke, who is 31, used to think that precarious work was a brief rite of passage for academics in the early stages of their careers. Now, she says, she realises that it is her career. After more than a decade at third level she has measured out her time working in academia in the form of tutoring hours, one-year contracts and other short-term arrangements.

“It means I can’t plan for my future,” she says. “I can’t think about buying a house or starting a family – I don’t have the security or the finance. It’s the source of a lot of anxiety. Many others in the same boat are constantly thinking about applying for the next job.”

If areas like call centres and technology have long been areas where short-term contracts are common, the same can’t be said of the public sector. A combination of a recruitment embargo and funding cuts means there is an ever-increasing reliance on short-term staff. Staff numbers in many university departments have fallen significantly since the downturn, with a much greater reliance on hourly-paid staff or short-term contracts. The pattern is repeated at institutes of technology and other colleges.

The campaign group Third Level Workplace Watch has been highlighting its concern at what it says is the increasingly precarious nature of academic work. Research indicates that up to 80 per cent of researchers in higher education are on temporary contracts; the campaign group estimates about 40 per cent of teaching hours are given by part-timers.

Unions, too, are concerned. The Teachers Union of Ireland, which represents institute of technology lecturers, says the jobs advertised nowadays are invariably for one- or two-year contracts.

It is a similar story in parts of the health and social sector, where there is a growing reliance on agency staff to plug gaps. Elizabeth Cloherty is one of them. A care assistant, she loves her work and has little complaint about her pay. But life still feels precarious. “I know there’s a lot of controversy about zero-hours contracts,” she says, “In my case I don’t even have a contract.”

For nearly three years she has been employed by an agency that provides care staff for people with intellectual disabilities who live in a residential centre. It’s demanding work: it requires building up trust with residents, learning their likes and dislikes, and having the patience to help them fulfil their potential. But it’s also insecure. The last employee to get a contract at her place of work was a few years ago, she says.

“It means that I can’t apply for a mortgage. At least I’m just 25 years of age, so it’s not a major concern right now. But there are older people with kids that don’t have the security of a contract.”

In charting a way forward, there are, unsurprisingly, divergent views. Given the pace of change in the workplace, Danny McCoy of Ibec says it is vital that we avoid putting in place the kind of restrictions that could end up damaging growth.

“We shouldn’t rush to legislate without carefully considering what the future looks like and what regulation will be appropriate in circumstances where the pace of technological change is constantly accelerating,” he says.

Enhanced rights

The trade-union movement, on the other hand, is campaigning to sign up politicians to a new charter outlining enhanced rights for workers ahead of the next general election. Ictu’s charter covers pay, hours of work, representation rights and respect in the workplace. It says that in order to earn a living income from full-time work – taking account of taxes and welfare – it would be necessary for a single adult to earn a “living wage” of at least €11.45 per hour.

Joan Burton sees the answer as a mixture of Government action to protect workers and employer movement to respect their workers. She says, for example, that businesses paying decent wages and providing good conditions benefit from increased job retention, lower recruitment costs and decreased absenteeism.

“As the economy recovers there needs to be an emphasis on sustainable work which also benefits employers. It’s a win-win situation,” she says.

The International Labour Organisation warns that an income gap between permanent and temporary workers has increased over the past decade, with consequences for rising inequality in developed countries such as Ireland.

In Ireland the gap between those at the bottom and the top rose over the past decade; the incidence of low pay also grew over the same period. A decade ago Ireland was close to the OECD average; it is now the third highest, with more than 20 per cent of workers officially classified as being on low pay.

For workers like Muhammed, who feel rooted in low pay and an insecure working environment, change can’t come quickly enough. Once he didn’t worry much about contracts and conditions. But as a father heading into his 30s he regards these issues as more important than ever.

Employers are the ones in control, he says. “They can use temporary workers to keep pay down. There’s always the threat that your job will be outsourced or, for others, that their 11-month contract won’t be renewed. The company seems to hold all the cards.”