Fixed-term workers: entitled to (un)fair and (un)predictable working conditions?

Sammanfattning: The balance between increasingly flexible working methods and sufficiently strong social protection for workers within the EU is a complex balancing act that exposes legislators at EU level to major challenges, especially in light of the EU's limited competence in labor law. In recent years, however, the focus on the most modern forms of precarious employment forms has overshadowed other forms of atypical employment, which nevertheless runs the risk of being exposed to unfair working conditions. This essay thus intends to examine the protection of fixed-term employees against unfair working conditions. Through an EU legal perspective, this essay examines how working conditions are defined at EU level and to what extent fixed-term employees can rely on rights to fair working conditions. The term working conditions is not defined in EU legal sources or practice and a study of the terminology shows that despite the attempts to strengthen the right to fair working conditions conducted through various legal instruments, there is still a lack of clarity about what the terminology principally means, which consequently affects opportunity to invoke the right to fair working conditions. Particularly in relation to fixed-term employees, the results of the thesis also shed light on the vague difference between the term working conditions and employment conditions, which risks of compromising the protection of fixed-term employees as remains it is unclear to what extent fixed-term employees can rely on the right to fair working conditions.