Most people around the world are not employed in a standard work relationship. Instead, they are employed precariously. The term precarity is borrowed from French. It might be translated into a more common English idiom as “insecurity or instability of work.” But the difficulties of translating this term into English are not merely linguistic. In the United States, almost all workers are employed at will. They are protected against discrimination based on sex, race, or ability; technically, it is also illegal to fire workers in America for unionizing, although firms do so regularly. Beyond that, American workers can be fired at any time, for any reason. In other countries, workers hired on standard contracts are accorded a much greater degree of protection against arbitrary dismissal. After passing through a trial period, they gain a kind of “tenure” not unlike that afforded to professors in American academia. Workers employed on...
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