Let us just consider some facts:

1. Labor regulation in Europe has resulted in a two-class society. Some workers have the privilege of a permanent contract, and their risk of redundancy is low, meanwhile other workers are living off zero-hours contracts, or 6-month contracts which are rolled-over at most 1 month before their termination. It is my hypothesis that with every month there is an increase in the percentage of European workers who are not creditworthy enough to be granted a credit card. I do not have the figures, but a PhD student should be researching this subject.

2. Lower-paid State employees in Europe are increasingly privileged over higher-paid private sector employees. Most State employees are given permanent contracts and are not expected to work overtime, meanwhile in the private sector, employees are increasingly only given term contracts, and everyone is expected to work 10-hour days. Again, this is an issue that needs to be studied. It would be interesting to know the difference in suicide rates between State employees and private sector employees, and between workers with permanent contracts and workers with term contracts which are subject to being rolled-over.

3. There is massive labor regulation arbitrage going on across Europe. Multinationals (e.g. IBM) sack highly experienced consultants and executives in those countries where it is easiest (Switzerland, UK, Ireland), and replace the sacked consultants and executives with transfers from those countries where it is more difficult to sack employees (France, Italy, Spain, Germany). Again, this is an issue that is not being studied, but it is happening.

3. The 1% v.s 99% wealth inequality is not a myth, but it is far more than 1% who are doing quite nicely in what amounts to nothing less than the most severe Europe economic recession since the 1930s. Anyone who has a State job is doing well, likewise anyone who has a permanent contract is doing well, plus many pensioners are doing well. And the wealthy are doing exceedingly well: property and stock prices are at all-time highs. And the partners, and children (often a single child), of those who are doing well are themselves doing well. So it could be anything up to 50% of the population who are doing well. And all the members of all parliaments, national and European, are doing exceptionally well.

4. Increasingly in Europe there are huge inequalities opening up between, on the one hand, households where both partners are in precarious work situations, and, on the other hand, households where both partners have permanent contracts. This kind of household inequality needs to be studied in depth.

Conclusion: All these inequalities with regard to labour contracts must be addressed head-on. What is needed is the economic equivalent of comparative literature. In other words, a discipline that studies the comparative situations of different kinds of workers (EU civil servants vs. EU member-State civil servants vs. private-sector workers), and the increasingly complex private-sector arbitrages (fiscal, labour, pension, insurance) between EU member-countries. Radical changes need to be made. Too many workers have too few labour rights, and those workers with generous labour rights (e.g. State employees with permanent contracts) must transfer some of their rights to those with no labour rights. The fight has to be as much between different labour categories, and not just between capital and labour.