In this volume we have studied the issue of worker security comparing two specific groups of workers: those holding contracts considered standard during the golden age of industrial capitalism, that is, dependent full-time open-ended ones; and those working with one of the many arrangements that most OECD countries have introduced during the last decades in order to make their labour markets more ‘flexible’. Such contracts are, indeed, identified by their deviation from one or more of the four main features of a standard contract: undefined duration, full-time schedule, identity of the employer with the user of the worker's services, and subordination to the employer. As we argued in Chapter 1, Italy provides an unparalleled observation deck for detecting processes and mechanisms linking labour market flexibility, attained through reforms that made it easier for employers to use non-standard work, and worker security.

Worker security is composed of three properties, or dimensions – employment security, wage security and social security – none of which is individually necessary and each of which can contribute to guaranteeing a worker's ability to secure an adequate standard of living, in combination with or as a replacement for the other dimensions. We thus approached the study of the Italian case through these analytical lenses, operationalising the three dimensions through employment continuity (ie the capability of a worker to remain employed across jobs and employers), the level of wages and eligibility to income-maintenance schemes in the case of non-employment. These dimensions also helped us to place Italy in comparative perspective, as we analysed them in three social-insurance countries that have undergone important changes in their labour markets in the past decades, witnessing substantial deregulation and the spread of non-standard work: Germany, Japan and Spain. Our results show that a security gap exists in Italy between standard and non-standard workers – to the detriment of the latter – and that the same also applies, although in varying degrees, to the other countries taken into account.

Focusing on employment continuity first, non-standard workers in Italy have shorter employment relationships than colleagues with standard contracts, and (at best) comparable job-to-job transition rates. Their unemployment spells are not short enough, nor are their transitions to full-time open-ended jobs frequent enough, to even out the disadvantage carried by more frequent transitions between employment and unemployment.