Richard Freeman, Xiaoying Li
The growth of insecure or precarious work has been well-documented, and the OECD notes that “the rights and protections of vulnerable workers falling outside the traditional remit of labour law and social protection should be strengthened” (OECD 2019: 15). Some commentators also note that trade unions play a useful role in reducing worker exploitation and counteracting the monopoly power of the firm (McNicholas et al. 2020).
While examples of precarious work can be found all over the globe, a particularly interesting example is provided by Chinese rural-urban migrants. Over the past few decades, China’s rapid industrialisation has been accompanied by mass migration as workers move from rural areas to cities in search of better pay. But in this large-scale rural-urban migration, the rights of migrants have not kept pace with those of urban workers. Migrants have been essentially treated as guest workers with few rights and limited access to social