2021 EISS Conference in Zagreb, Croatia:
“Tackling New Forms of Work in Social Security”

After the postponed edition of 2020, the European Institute of Social Security celebrated its annual conference with the University of Zagreb as local host in Zagreb. The conference was held from 23-24 September on the topic of new forms of work. Our gratitude goes to Professor Vukorepa and her team for their efforts in putting together a very interesting programme and an excellent conference.

Conference materials can be found here.

Registration and Programme

All practical information can be found at the conference website by clicking here.

Registration is now closed.

Final Programme

Background

Labour markets are changing across Europe. Flexible labour forms, such as casual work, freelance work, platform work, ... are increasingly in demand by employers. Persons working on the basis of these  alternative work forms can be swiftly hired and fired by employers and  can be more easily integrated in modern production processes. Hence, due to their flexible character they have become an important element in entrepreneurial strategies to save production costs and help enterprises to face the growing competition in the globalised economy.

However, apart from labour law challenges, flexible work forms also create a number of challenges for the organisation and financing of social security schemes. These schemes have often been designed with the standard worker in mind, i.e. the full-time employee working in a subordinated relationship on the basis of an open ended labour contract. New forms of work deviate from standard work in many aspects: work is contracted part-time and/or definite in duration; the income of the non-standard worker is not coming from one employer or client, yet can be generated across a variety of commissioned (short-term) work assignments; ... . 

New forms of work are growing in size, amounting now to approximately 40% of the workforce in the EU. Social security systems consequently need to be reshaped in order to keep the new work forms on board.

With this conference we have the ambition to highlight the challenges that new forms of work generate for traditional social security systems.