Precarious work

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Precarious work is a term that critics use to describe non-standard or temporary employment that may be poorly paid, insecure, unprotected, and unable to support a household. [1] From this perspective, globalization, the shift from the manufacturing sector to the service sector, and the spread of information technology have created a new economy which demands flexibility in the workplace, resulting in the decline of the standard employment relationship, particularly for women. [2] [3] The characterization of temporary work as "precarious" is disputed by some scholars and entrepreneurs who see these changes as positive for individual workers. [4] [5] Precarious work is ultimately a result of a profit driven capitalist organization of work in which employment is largely understood as a cost that needs to be reduced. [6] The social and political consequences vary greatly in terms of gender, age, race, and class and result in varying degrees of inequality and freedom. [7]

Contents

Contrast with regular and temporary employment

The term "precarious work" is frequently associated with the following types of employment: Part-time jobs, self-employment, fixed-term work, temporary work, on-call work, and remote workers. [1] [8] Scholars and critics who use the term "precarious work" contrast it with the "standard employment relationship", which is the term they use to describe full-time, continuous employment where the employee works on their employer's premises or under the employer's supervision, under an employment contract of indefinite duration, with standardized working hours/weeks and social benefits such as pensions, unemployment benefits, and medical coverage. [9] This "standard employment relationship" emerged after World War II, as men who completed their education would go on to work full-time for one employer their entire lives until their retirement at the age of 65. [1] It did not typically describe women in the same time period, who would only work temporarily until they got married and had children, at which time they would withdraw from the workforce. [2]

"We Can Do It!" US wartime poster We Can Do It! NARA 535413 - Restoration 2.jpg
"We Can Do It!" US wartime poster

While many different kinds of part-time or limited-term jobs can be temporary, critics use the term "precarious" strictly to describe work that is uncertain, unpredictable, or offers little to no control over working hours or conditions. [10] [11] This characterization has been challenged by scholars focused on the agency that temporary work affords individual workers. [4] However, many studies promoting individual agency focus on highly educated and skilled knowledge workers, rather than the full range of temporary workers. [5] [12]

Regulation

While increased flexibility in the marketplace and in employment relationships has created new opportunities for regulation, regulation intended explicitly to remediate precarious work often produces mixed results. [13] The International Labour Organization (ILO) has developed standards for atypical and precarious employment, including the 1994 Convention Concerning Part-time Work, the 1996 Convention Concerning Home Work, and the 1999 "Decent Work" initiative. [14]

See also

Related Research Articles

Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between employers and a group of employees aimed at agreements to regulate working salaries, working conditions, benefits, and other aspects of workers' compensation and rights for workers. The interests of the employees are commonly presented by representatives of a trade union to which the employees belong. A collective agreement reached by these negotiations functions as a labour contract between an employer and one or more unions, and typically establishes terms regarding wage scales, working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance mechanisms, and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs. Such agreements can also include 'productivity bargaining' in which workers agree to changes to working practices in return for higher pay or greater job security.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Temporary work</span> Type of employment

Temporary work or temporary employment refers to an employment situation where the working arrangement is limited to a certain period of time based on the needs of the employing organization. Temporary employees are sometimes called "contractual", "seasonal", "interim", "casual staff", "outsourcing", "freelance"; or the words may be shortened to "temps". In some instances, temporary, highly skilled professionals refer to themselves as consultants. Increasingly, executive-level positions are also filled with interim executives or fractional executives.

Freelance, freelancer, or freelance worker, are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance workers are sometimes represented by a company or a temporary agency that resells freelance labor to clients; others work independently or use professional associations or websites to get work.

Flextime is a flexible hours schedule that allows workers to alter their workday and adjust their start and finish times. In contrast to traditional work arrangements that require employees to work a standard 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. day, Flextime typically involves a "core" period of the day during which employees are required to be at work, and a "bandwidth" period within which all required hours must be worked. The working day outside of the core period is "flexible time", in which employees can choose when they work, subject to achieving total daily, weekly or monthly hours within the bandwidth period set by employers, and subject to the necessary work being done. The total working time required of employees on an approved Flextime schedule is much the same as those who work under traditional work schedule regimes.

Job security is the probability that an individual will keep their job; a job with a high level of security is such that a person with the job would have a small chance of losing it. Many factors threaten job security: globalization, outsourcing, downsizing, recession, and new technology, to name a few.

Flexicurity is a welfare state model with a pro-active labour market policy. The term was first coined by the social democratic Prime Minister of Denmark Poul Nyrup Rasmussen in the 1990s.

Contingent work, casual work, or contract work, is an employment relationship with limited job security, payment on a piece work basis, typically part-time that is considered non-permanent. Although there is less job security, freelancers often report incomes higher than their former traditional jobs.

Community unionism, also known as reciprocal unionism, refers to the formation of alliances between unions and non-labour groups in order to achieve common goals. These unions seek to organize the employed, unemployed, and underemployed. They press for change in the workplace and beyond, organizing around issues such as welfare reform, health care, jobs, housing, and immigration. Individual issues at work are seen as being a part of broader societal problems which they seek to address. Unlike trade unions, community union membership is not based on the workplace- it is based on common identities and issues. Alliances forged between unions and other groups may have a primary identity based on affiliations of religion, ethnic group, gender, disability, environmentalism, neighborhood residence, or sexuality.

The degree of labour market flexibility is the speed with which labour markets adapt to fluctuations and changes in society, the economy or production. This entails enabling labour markets to reach a continuous equilibrium determined by the intersection of the demand and supply curves.

Employment protection legislation (EPL) includes all types of employment protection measures, whether grounded primarily in legislation, court rulings, collectively bargained conditions of employment, or customary practice. The term is common among circles of economists. Employment protection refers both to regulations concerning hiring and firing.

Economic restructuring is used to indicate changes in the constituent parts of an economy in a very general sense. In the western world, it is usually used to refer to the phenomenon of urban areas shifting from a manufacturing to a service sector economic base. It has profound implications for productive capacities and competitiveness of cities and regions. This transformation has affected demographics including income distribution, employment, and social hierarchy; institutional arrangements including the growth of the corporate complex, specialized producer services, capital mobility, informal economy, nonstandard work, and public outlays; as well as geographic spacing including the rise of world cities, spatial mismatch, and metropolitan growth differentials.

Precarity is a precarious existence, lacking in predictability, job security, material or psychological welfare. The social class defined by this condition has been termed the precariat.

Global workforce refers to the international labor pool of workers, including those employed by multinational companies and connected through a global system of networking and production, foreign workers, transient migrant workers, remote workers, those in export-oriented employment, contingent workforce or other precarious work. As of 2012, the global labor pool consisted of approximately 3 billion workers, around 200 million unemployed.

In sociology and economics, the precariat is a neologism for a social class formed by people suffering from precarity, which means existing without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare. The term is a portmanteau merging precarious with proletariat.

Marginal employment, also called a mini job or €520 job, is an employment relationship with a low absolute level of earnings or of short duration.

Brendan J Burchell is a professor at the Faculty of Human, Social, and Political Science at the University of Cambridge and a professorial fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was a director of graduate education in sociology 2008–2012 and head of the department of sociology from October 2012 to October 2014. Burchell is the current director of studies in politics and sociology for Magdalene College and was the director of the Cambridge Undergraduate Quantitative Methods Centre (CUQM) between 2014 and 2018.

Arne Lindeman Kalleberg is a Kenan Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center. He is also an adjunct professor in the Kenan-Flagler Business School, the Department of Public Policy, and the Curriculum in Global Studies. Kalleberg served as the secretary of the American Sociological Association from 2001 to 2004 and as its president from 2007 to 2008. He has been the editor-in-chief of Social Forces, an international journal of social research for over ten years. He was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in 2024.

Leah F. Vosko is a professor of political science and Canada Research Chair at York University. Her research interests are focused on political economy, labour rights, gender studies, migration, and citizenship. In 2015, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gig worker</span> Independent on-demand temporary workers

Gig workers are independent contractors, online platform workers, contract firm workers, on-call workers, and temporary workers. Gig workers enter into formal agreements with on-demand companies to provide services to the company's clients.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andranik Tangian</span> Soviet-German polymath (born 1952)

Andranik Semovich Tangian (Melik-Tangyan) ; born March 29, 1952) is a Soviet Armenian-German mathematician, political economist and music theorist. He is professor of the Institute for Economics (ECON) of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Fudge, Judy; Owens, Rosemary (2006). Fudge, Judy; Owens, Rosemary (eds.). Precarious work, women and the new economy: the challenge to legal norms. Onati International Series in Law and Society. Oxford: Hart Publishing. pp. 3–28. ISBN   9781841136165.
  2. 1 2 Volsko, Leah F. (2011). Managing the Margins: Gender, Citizenship and the International Regulation of Precarious Employment. Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780191614521.
  3. ↑ Arne L. Kalleberg (2011). Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Rise of Polarized and Precarious Employment Systems in the United States, 1970s-2000s. Russell Sage Foundation. ISBN   978-1-61044-747-8. Archived from the original on 2015-02-05. Retrieved 2015-02-05.
  4. 1 2 Arthur, Michael B.; Rousseau, Denise M., eds. (2001). The Boundaryless Career: A New Employment Principle for a New Organizational Era. Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780199762118.
  5. 1 2 Vallas, Steven; Prener, Christopher (November 1, 2012). "Dualism, Job Polarization, and the Social Construction of Precarious Work". Work and Occupations. 39 (4): 331–353. doi:10.1177/0730888412456027. S2CID   144983251.
  6. ↑ Ebert, Norbert (2022). "Society, Work and Precarity". Encyclopedia. 2 (3): 1384–1394. doi: 10.3390/encyclopedia2030093 . ISSN   2673-8392.
  7. ↑ Wilson, Shaun; Ebert, Norbert (2013). "Precarious work: Economic, sociological and political perspectives". The Economic and Labour Relations Review. 24 (3): 263–278. doi:10.1177/1035304613500434. ISSN   1035-3046.
  8. ↑ International Metalworkers' Federation, Central Committee 2007 (2007). "Global action against precarious work". Metal World (1). Global Union Research Network - GURN: 18–21. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-06-10.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  9. ↑ Kalleberg, Arne L.; Reskin, Barbara F.; Hudson, Ken (2000). "Bad jobs in America: Standard and nonstandard employment relations and job quality in the United States". American Sociological Review . 65 (2): 256–278. doi:10.2307/2657440. JSTOR   2657440.
  10. ↑ Kalleberg, Arne L. (February 1, 2009). "Precarious Work, Insecure Workers: Employment Relations in Transition". American Sociological Review. 74 (1): 1–22. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.1030.231 . doi:10.1177/000312240907400101. S2CID   29915373.
  11. ↑ Cassells, Rebecca; Duncan, Alan; Mavisakalyan, Astghik; Phillimore, John; Tarverdi, Yashar (April 12, 2018). "Precarious employment is rising rapidly among men: new research". The Conversation. Archived from the original on July 2, 2018. Retrieved July 2, 2018.
  12. ↑ Barley, Stephen R.; Kunda, Gideon (2011). Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy. Princeton University Press. ISBN   9781400841271.
  13. ↑ Campbell, Iain; Price, Robin (September 1, 2016). "Precarious work and precarious workers: Towards an improved conceptualisation". The Economic and Labour Relations Review. 27 (3): 314–322. doi:10.1177/1035304616652074. S2CID   156775527..
  14. ↑ Vosko, Leah F. (2006). "Gender, precarious work, and the international labour code: the ghost in the ILO closet". In Fudge, Judy; Owens, Rosemary (eds.). Precarious work, women and the new economy: the challenge to legal norms. Onati International Series in Law and Society. Oxford: Hart Publishing. pp. 53–76. ISBN   9781841136165.

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