Inequalities among remote workers in Europe.

Abstract

Technological innovations related to digitization, automation and globalization are favouring more workers to work from multiple locations. This expansion of teleworking, further stimulated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is altering not only workspaces and work schedules, but also labour relations and working conditions. Our objective is to explore the reconfiguring of inequalities among different types of teleworkers according to the intensity and place of use of ICT. This empirical study draws on data from more than twenty thousand workers in the EU-15 from the 6th European Survey of Working Conditions to analyse, using multinomial logistic regression models, the different profiles of teleworkers. The analysis shows the tendency to an increased heterogeneity in teleworker profiles and to growing inequalities between them. There are great differences between the different types of teleworkers depending on the occupation, the activity sector and the country. Women are mostly in the most precarious group of teleworkers and with the worst working conditions.