Is atypical typical? – atypical employment in Central Eastern European countries

Abstract

This paper presents the employment situation, in general, and atypical employment, in particular, in the Central Eastern European (CEE) countries, which joined the European Union in 2004 (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia). This group of countries is called, somewhat imprecisely in geographical terms, the Central Eastern European region. I hypothesise that: the employment position of CEE countries is not satisfactory according to the standards of the European Union; these countries’ human resource positions are weak; the level of atypical employment, which is influenced by several factors, is low; and the main of applicable legal means is not satisfactory. This paper focuses on the major forms of atypical employment relations and examines their significance in the CEE countries. The three research questions the article attempts to answer are: (1) Is there divergence or convergence between the CEE countries in the prevalence of atypical employment forms? (2) What are the differences between the major atypical employment forms? (3) Could the world economic crisis be solved by atypical employment forms.