The crisis has brought some effects on working inequalities in different areas like employment, wages, working conditions and social dialogue. These inequalities hit some categories of workers more than others. One source of inequality that was opened by the crisis was all the temporary workers that lost their jobs at first. Evidences from France, Spain and Sweden, for example, showed how temporary workers functioned as a sort of employment buffer in the crisis. For instance, 90% of the employment losses in Spain have been temporary workers.
Moreover has the young Europeans been hit by the rapid growth of youth unemployment. The countries most suffer from this inequality are the Baltic countries, Ireland and Spain. Regarding that research the crisis had most impact in the fields of construction and manufacturing. These are areas which traditionally are male-dominated, and that’s probably one reason why males have been more affected by job losses in the crisis than women. This should not mean that women have not been hit by the crisis, they also appear to have experienced more wage cuts than men and it’s also said that women working in male-dominated sectors have often been the first to be dismissed.
Another rise of inequality in the crisis is the wages and incomes. During the crisis many companies cut the wages of their employees in order not to have to release employees, but this was in my opinion also often just an easy way for companies to save money. And also after the crisis wages have been hold down from the firms and as a result the wage differentials between those at the top and those at the bottom of salary scale is increasing more and more.
Furthermore would it be very important to monitor these effects of inequality in the long run, because some impacts for instance effects on health, demographics and society only show up after some years of the crisis.