Especially, the large share of temporary workers having (1) high-strain jobs and those having (2) passive jobs may be at risk of entrapment in precarious employment, and even unemployment. High-strain work may lead to health and well-being problems (Karasek 1979; Häusser et al. 2010), whereas passive workers may have fewer learning opportunities (Van der Doef and Maes 1999), which may lower their employability. Therefore, measures aimed at improving the quality of working life are needed. In combination GSK-3 inhibitor with measures targeting

job insecurity, they may be effective in reducing contract differences in work-related attitudes. In order to improve the quality of working life among temporary workers, the latter could better

be treated as primary segment workers (e.g. in terms of salary, career opportunities, work–time control and fringe benefits). Especially since 70% of the Dutch employers report small to large differences in the way they treat their temporary versus their permanent personnel, which often means better career and training opportunities among the latter (Isaksson et al. 2010). Furthermore, a longitudinal study showed a reduction in job insecurity after acquiring permanent, and thus job secure work (Virtanen et al. 2003). Similar results may be obtained by offering temporary workers better work security guarantees (Bryson et al. 2009). Strengths and limitations The most important limitation of the current study is its cross-sectional design, meaning that no causal inferences concerning the associations between employment contracts and the quality of click here working life, job insecurity, health Opaganib mw and work-related attitudes can be drawn. It should be noted that the causal direction of the associations among employment contract, health and work-related attitudes may well be reversed, as it is unlikely that employees with (chronic) health and well-being problems will easily find permanent employment. Secondly, we only measured task demands and autonomy to assess the quality of working life, whereas other job characteristics, such as social support, may also be of importance

(Kompier 2003). Finally, this study employed a sample of Dutch employees only. In some respects, there are large differences within the European Union, for example with regard to the number of temporary workers, employment protection legislation with regard to permanent and temporary contracts, job quality and job insecurity (European Commission 2008; Leschke and Watt 2008). Therefore, the degree to which our findings can be generalised to other countries is unknown. The strongest point of the current study is its large and representative national sample. This allowed us to differentiate among four types of temporary work, including agency and on-call work, which are not always systematically separated (e.g. Kompier et al. 2009).