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Since at least the 1980s in Western countries and since 1989 in the Central and Eastern European countries, with the transition from the Fordist to post-Fordist model of economy, new forms of work began to appear. These mainly consisted in increasing the flexibility of employment and adapting production models to changing patterns of increasingly individualised consumption. These processes were amplified by the technological revolution that started shortly afterwards. The proliferation of computers and mobile devices, with their interconnectivity through the Internet, have resulted in new models of work developing in direct proportion to technological changes. Following these changes, against the backdrop of the development of monetarism and the spread of "Washington Consensus", labour law reforms introducing atypical forms of work were pushed through in European countries. They provided a regulatory basis for organising work in a new, previously unknown, non-standard way. These changes have also been accompanied by changes in, or rather corrosion of, industrial relations and institutions involved in negotiating the shape of the labour market, i.e. trade unions, employers' organisations and bodies of social dialogue across Europe. It is highly probable that this process is far from complete, and in the future, perhaps not too distant one, we will witness further, hitherto unknown forms of work.
The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) proposed in 2015 a classification of the most recent forms of work that have emerged in the 21st century. Based on a review of labour markets across the European Union, it describes nine, previously unknown forms of work. These include:

•    employee sharing

•    job sharing

•    interim management

•    casual work

•    ICT-mobile work

•    voucher-based work

•    portfolio work

•    crowd employment

•    collaborative employment

This report contains conclusions from a broad study on new forms of work in Poland, based on a representative nationwide survey and in-depth qualitative research. The report was created as part of an international project entitled "The Adaptation of Industrial Relation towards the New Forms of Work".

This publication was produced for the project „The Adaptation of Industrial Relation towards the New Forms of Work”, which received funding under the call for proposals VP/2017/004 of the DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion of the European Commission.