The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered significant changes at all levels of society and, consequently, generated an increase in social inequalities and precarious work situations. During the pandemic, it has become customary in Spain, for example, to read dramatic headlines about how job insecurity has doubled since the crisis started, and has affected more than two million households. However, some sectors have experienced the problem more intensely than others: for example, several groups, such as "riders" or temporary workers whose activities are not sufficiently regulated, could not benefit from the economic measures carried out by the government to compensate for workers’ losses of income. "Job precariousness doubled during the health crisis…the number–of those affected–is huge, in a state with a large working population," Padrosa pointed out. 

For Eva Padrosa, professor and researcher at the Escola Superior d'Infermeria del Mar (Barcelona), the healthcare crisis has triggered a very particular kind of economic crisis because, for the first time in a long time, it is not a crisis of economic origin, which means that it has not been a process that has been gradually escalating; on the contrary, it was a very abrupt change. Economic activity was reduced in a way unprecedented since the Spanish civil war.

This translated into a sudden increase in unemployment at the start of the pandemic: while unemployment rates did not reach the same levels as during the 2008 crisis, there was a significant increase, and it has not happened equitably. For example, women, young people, people with low-skilled jobs and people working part-time, among others, have suffered the most from the crisis. 

"The pandemic did not fall at a time of stability, it fell at a time when labor markets, at least in Western countries, were undergoing unprecedented changes. We were undergoing globalization processes, which were blurring the boundaries of employment regulations, we were also seeing the digitalization of the economy, an increase in digital economy jobs," Padrosa emphasized. 

Consequently, one of the main points of Padrosa’s presentation revolved around the question: What are the implications of the fact that we were experiencing these kinds of transformations in the labor market when the pandemic hit? According to Padrosa, these transformations led to the fact that labor market regulations were not being applied to all workers uniformly between and within European countries; that is, people were having ever-more atypical jobs and falling outside the social protection structure and market regulations. "All of these people (such as riders and self-employed workers), when COVID arrived, which came abruptly, were left out of all these structures that allowed people some protection." This reality highlights the need for progressive and evidence-based policymaking in terms of labor rights, which responds to the rapidly-changing labor market in European countries.

To conclude, Padrosa presented some alternatives to face this crisis from a public policy perspective. For her, the most important thing is to give working people a voice again, bearing in mind that the reconfiguration of labor relations has taken place in very different ways across European societies. It is necessary to understand their needs and experiences, and provide nuanced policy responses to the diversity of labor forms that have been generated in recent years.     

Following the presentation, Mariana Gutiérrez-Zamora Navarro, researcher in the GREDS-EMCONET research group, opened a debate in which various questions were discussed in more depth, such as: which methods could be used to give a voice to workers? Are there studies on why women experience unemployment more than men?How do other axes of social inequality intersect - such as ethnicity, class, sexuality and social systems? What lessons could we learn from this about informal employment? and which policies could be implemented to tackle the current situation?

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