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16 US-China L. Rev. 1 (2019)

handle is hein.journals/uschinalrw16 and id is 1 raw text is: US-China Law Review, January 2019, Vol.16, No. 1, 1-11 doi: 10.17265/1548-6605/2019.01.001 -UBISHINS Zero-Hours and Other Very Atypical Forms of Employment Contracts in European and International Regulation Vincenzo Ferrante Catholic University of Milan, Milan, Italy In the effort to develop a comprehensive approach to better and good jobs, it is a topic of hot debate as to whether the introduction (temporarily or on a permanent basis) of statutory legislation-different from the general law applying to subordinate workers-may encourage employers and employees to operate within the formal economy and in the context of regular contracts of employment. The essay analyzes from a comparative point of view not the traditional forms of non-standard employment, but those special working arrangements, that may involve very short hours (marginal part time: generally, fewer than 15 hours per week) or no predictable fixed hours, and those according to which the employer has no obligation to provide a set number of hours of work. The conclusion is that extremely atypical forms of work appear to give an answer to the challenges of the market labor of the urban economies of the 21st century, but that special legal provisions are needed to guarantee individual right to fair wages and to protect personal life of employees. Keywords: shadow economy, undeclared work, informal employment, work on a casual basis, part-time workers job on-call, equal treatment, mini-jobs Zero-Hours and Very Atypical Forms of Employment Contracts Worldwide Diffusion Since the latest years of the 20th century, the labour market has experimented across the countries very atypical forms of employment and other special working arrangements that may involve very short hours (marginal part time: generally, fewer than 15 hours per week) or no predictable fixed hours. These latter arrangements, known as on-call work , according to which the employer has no obligation to provide a set number of hours of work, come under different contractual forms depending on the country and include so-called zero-hours contracts. Of course, the hours actually worked can in fact be equal to those of full-time workers, or even be higher. Other cases, largely widespread in the internal labour market of many countries, can be labelled as voucher-based work, when the employer acquires a voucher from a third party to be used as a payment for a service from a worker, rather than cash. In this sense, particular attention has been paid not only to German mini-jobs allowing a monthly individual net income up to E450, and considered as a form of part-time (now without a working time limit on weekly basis), but also to the French CESU (cheque employ service universel), a voucher system which seems to have targeted the result to an important shift from undeclared to legal work. Vincenzo Ferrante, full professor of Labour Law, Catholic University of Milan, Milan, Italy.