2007 PrecariousEmploymentandHealthDe
- (Benach & Muntaner, 2007) ⇒ Joan Benach, and Carles Muntaner. (2007). “Precarious Employment and Health: Developing a Research Agenda.” In: Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 61(4).
Subject Headings: Precarious Work.
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Abstract
New types of work arrangements can be as dangerous as traditional unemployment for workers' health
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Since at least the late 1970s, “flexible production” has commonly been considered as a positive and necessary innovation to ensure sustainable economic growth. 1,2 The need to be “flexible” has been proposed for workplace technical systems, schedules and salaries, and “flexibility” has even been recognised as a positive feature of a worker's personality. Increasing labour flexibility means reducing the constraints on the movement of workers into and out of jobs previously constrained by labour laws, union agreements, training systems or labour markets that protect workers' income and job security.3
Within this context, one of the best‐known outcomes of labour market flexibility has been the growth of “atypical” forms of employment and the decline of the “standard” full‐time, permanent jobs. Thus, the standard full‐time permanent job with benefits is now often replaced with different forms of non‐standard work arrangements such as contingent, part‐time contract, unregulated underground work or home‐based work, many of which are characterised by variable work schedules, reduced job security, lower wages, hazards at the workplace and stressful psychosocial working conditions.4
There are a number of reasons why public health researchers should be concerned about the growth of non‐standard employment relationships.5 Workers in flexible jobs share many labour market characteristics (eg, lower credentials, low income, women, immigrant and non‐white) with the unemployed, while themselves experiencing bouts of unemployment, a factor strongly associated with adverse health outcomes.6,7 In addition, evidence suggests that these new types of work arrangements can be as dangerous as traditional unemployment for workers' health.8,9
In the last decade, the main focus in the study of flexible work has been job insecurity, 10 a concept defined as “the discrepancy between the level of job security a person experiences and the level she might prefer”.11 Studies of self‐reported job insecurity after plant closings present consistent evidence that job insecurity can have significant adverse effects on self‐reported physical and mental health.12 For example, results show that relative to workers who remained in secure employment, self‐reported morbidity was higher among workers reporting insecurity in their jobs. Workers exposed to chronic job insecurity had the highest self‐reported morbidity, indicating that job insecurity might act as a chronic stressor. Despite these findings, knowledge on the health effects of flexible work is still scarce and many questions remain unanswered. In fact, more research on subjective job insecurity and other perceptions of the psychosocial work environment only provide a partial picture of these new employment relationships and is insufficient to explain how new work arrangements affect the health of the flexible workforce. For example, self‐perceived job insecurity may not be able to capture the effect of workplace structural determinants (eg, lack of unionisation, benefits or domination) on workers' health.13
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References
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| Author | volume | Date Value | title | type | journal | titleUrl | doi | note | year | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 PrecariousEmploymentandHealthDe | Joan Benach Carles Muntaner | Precarious Employment and Health: Developing a Research Agenda | 2007 |