Precarious Work Research Articles

Carregando vidas e mortes: o cotidiano de trabalho de maqueiros hospitalares no contexto da COVID-19

Abstract This article aims to analyze the daily work of stretcher bearers in a Federal Teaching and Research Hospital in the context of COVID-19, exploring the subjective aspects related to working in constant contact with death and the invisibility to which these workers are subjected. The proposed discussion stems from a more comprehensive qualitative investigation. The main methodological resource of the empirical research was the direct observation in the daily work that allowed one to capture nuances of the work in a dialectical analysis with the workers. The data obtained were analyzed from the perspective of Social Psychology of Work. Transience and invisibility were identified as important categories of analysis of this daily work, where the process of becoming a stretcher-bearer was marked by aspects of precariousness of work and vulnerability of the worker. Working in contact with death was also understood as a factor of invisibility, where the creation of bonds and humor appeared as a collective strategy to face the harshness of work. This article concluded by examining the importance of looking at the subjective aspects of the work carried out by stretcher bearers, as well as the expansion of research on the subject.

A precarização jurídica das relações de trabalho como fator de sofrimento das(os) trabalhadoras(es) no setor da saúde durante a pandemia de COVID-19

Abstract The present article analyzed the process of precarious work relations in the health sector, demonstrating how this situation generated illness and suffering among workers. The text sought to register how the institutional adoption of neoliberal economic conceptions, of the reduction of State social policies, coupled with a history of cultural rejection of labor rights, provided the attraction of mechanisms of precarious work for the public sector, notably, the outsourcing of labor and the provision of services. In a second moment, the text points out the legal improprieties committed, presenting the consequences of the weakening of the legal bond in the working conditions of these workers, mainly regarding working hours and remuneration, also highlighting how much the dissemination of these links represented a factor of a general reduction in wages and labor and social security rights in the sector. Data from Fiocruz surveys on working conditions during the pandemic were also presented. The article concludes by showing the urgency of rescuing the legal labor institutes that were abandoned in the historical path studied in order to guide the public health policies in a new direction.

Trabalho e riscos de adoecimento na Atenção Psicossocial Territorial: implicações para a gestão do cuidado em saúde mental

ABSTRACT The study aims to analyze precarious work due to working conditions that influence the management of mental health care and occupational health. This single case mixed study was conducted in six Psychosocial Care Centers (CAPS) in a Decentralized Health Sector. The Work and Illness Risks Inventory was applied to a total purposeful sample of 35 workers, 15 of whom participated in the projective interview. Data were processed in SPSS 26.0.0.0 as measures of central tendency and dispersion. The interviews were categorized based on the evaluation axes proposed by the inventory, contextualized, and discussed from Edgar Morin’s Complex Thought. The result is critical for most predictors that evaluated the context, human cost, pleasure, distress, and harm related to work in the CAPS. Data illustrated by the workers’ narratives describe the precarious work conditions. Local Unified Health System managers quickly incorporated neoliberalism’s productivist principles, perpetuating substandard work conditions. Mental health care management processes, funding, and legal occupational and contractual conditions must be reviewed to align with Territorial Psychosocial Care (APT).

The legal precariousness of work relations in the health sector during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a factor of worker suffering.

The present article analyzed the process of precarious work relations in the health sector, demonstrating how this situation generated illness and suffering among workers. The text sought to register how the institutional adoption of neoliberal economic conceptions, of the reduction of State social policies, coupled with a history of cultural rejection of labor rights, provided the attraction of mechanisms of precarious work for the public sector, notably, the outsourcing of labor and the provision of services. In a second moment, the text points out the legal improprieties committed, presenting the consequences of the weakening of the legal bond in the working conditions of these workers, mainly regarding working hours and remuneration, also highlighting how much the dissemination of these links represented a factor of a general reduction in wages and labor and social security rights in the sector. Data from Fiocruz surveys on working conditions during the pandemic were also presented. The article concludes by showing the urgency of rescuing the legal labor institutes that were abandoned in the historical path studied in order to guide the public health policies in a new direction.

Negotiating Multiple Risks: Health, safety, and well-being among internal migrant sex workers in Brazil during COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic, experts called attention to the fact that the pandemic was disproportionately affecting socially vulnerable groups. Research suggested that structural inequalities resulted in unequal access to healthcare and that infection prevention measures increased precarious working conditions in illegal, informal, or unregulated sectors, such as the sex industry. This article reports on research findings that examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the lives and working conditions of 25 women internal migrant sex workers in the city of Ribeirão Preto, Brazil. It demonstrates that the pandemic and measures to control it severely impacted the lives of internal migrant sex workers, their affective and work relationships, as well as their income, safety, and physical and mental health. Furthermore, sex workers suffered from disturbing levels of violence and precariousness as well as a lack of effective policies aimed at protecting their health and well-being. This was exacerbated by the stigma, lack of labour rights, and the fact that they were migrants, which impacted them financially and emotionally during movement restrictions.

Role of Blended Learning in Higher Education: Students’ “First Steps” to Precarious Work and Social Life

Introduction. The discussion of the challenges and consequences of permanent crises for university life from the point of view of students is centered around the problem of quality of higher education. The author proposes to measure it in the context of the transition of Russian universities to the model of blended learning through the indicator of perception of learning formats. The aim of the article is to determine the parameters of positive and negative attitudes of potential students to higher education with online elements, to highlight its advantages and disadvantages. Materials and Methods. The answers to these questions are based on empirical research data: the results of an online survey conducted in 2021–2022 among full-time undergraduate and graduate applicants to one of the largest Russian universities; additional surveys conducted by the authors in 2015 (using a similar methodology); semi-structured interviews conducted at the end of the academic year with first-year students from among those surveyed in the quantitative study in 2021, university graduates (using a similar methodology); semi-structured interviews conducted at the end of the academic year with first-year students from among those surveyed in the quantitative research in 2021, university graduates working in the digital sphere in 2021. Results. The results of the study showed that studentsʼ positive attitudes towards blended and online learning are constantly increasing, with this result being characteristic of undergraduate students. Flexible learning is gradually becoming a more natural process of higher education in studentsʼ perception. The interviews provide insights into studentsʼ greater engagement in a blended learning educational environment. Such experiences increase their adaptability to changing work content. The limitations of the blended learning model are related to the fact that conservative students (“pro” traditional education) have more stable orientations for self-realization in the specialty. Discussion and Conclusion. The conclusions made by the author contribute to the development of scientific ideas about the relationship between the labor market and higher education, where the preparation of young people for unstable employment and social life becomes a key task. An important role in blended learning is the development of elements of studentsʼ agency through mastering digital skills, ability to plan in response to the challenges of instability of future work and social life.

What's Talent Got to Do with It? The Collective Labourer and the Rise of Barcelona's Digital Economy

AbstractThis article explains the recent rise to prominence of Barcelona's digital economy, and, specifically, the role played by the city's “talent”. After developing a Marxian approach, we show how Barcelona's success rests upon a good supply of low‐cost, appropriately skilled labour fit for insertion into labour processes that can generally not be described as innovative or of high‐knowledge, high‐skill intensity. There is, in fact, a dearth of highly skilled labour‐power in the city, and inflows of foreign labour and outflows of freshly trained “talent” from the city's bootcamps are only swelling the ranks of a lower‐paid, moderately skilled knowledge workforce—many of whom work in low‐quality jobs. Finally, we show how leading startups in the digital economy are contributing to the expansion of “non‐standard” forms of precarious work. We conclude by highlighting the limits to the development and realisation of human productive subjectivity or talent under capital today, even in a widely hyped technopole such as Barcelona.

PHYSICIAN’S CHALLENGES IN THE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE PATIENT AND HIS WORK

Doctors and other health professionals have gained wide prominence in society since the dawn of civilization. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic, the whole society has noticed the wide importance of the work of doctors, nurses and other health professionals. In this aspect, it is valuable to discuss the relationship between physician and patient and the aspects that impact on this issue. Thus, the general objective of this work is to analyze the variables and considerable aspects existing in the relationship between physician and patient and the existing challenges. The research methodology used was qualitative research. Thus, data collection was performed with bibliographic research in national databases. This work concludes with the premise that there are several challenges in the relationship between doctor and patient, among these as the patients and difficult families, the long working hours and precarious working conditions, the disregard of the humanity of the doctor and his consideration as a kind of machine and not as a professional who is, above all, a human being.

Enforcement of fundamental principles and rights at work in the face of the spread of non-standard forms of employment

Problem setting. For many years, in Ukraine, as in many other countries, standard labour relations prevailed in the field of labour and employment, characterised by stability and duration, subordination and control of the employee to the employer, as well as the availability of social guarantees for employees. However, socio-economic changes, globalisation, the post-industrial revolution, and the development of information technologies that allow the use of labour, in particular, through digital platforms, have led to the formation and spread of non-standard labour relations characterised by instability and the lack of an adequate level of labour guarantees and working conditions, primarily in the areas of remuneration, working hours and rest periods, occupational safety and health, etc. analysis of recent researches and publications. In their studies, labour scholars have drawn attention to the need to consolidate non-standard forms of employment in Ukraine and to comprehensively reform labour legislation: S.V. Venediktov, S.V. Vyshnovetska, L.P. Garashchenko, V.P. Kokhan, Y.I. Svichkariova, O.G. Sereda, Y.V. Simutina, M.M. Shumylo, A.M.Yushko and others. In recent years, several monographic studies have been published on the problems of reforming and improving labour legislation with due regard to the need to ensure proper protection of social and labour rights in the realities of the digital era. At the same time, little or no attention has been paid to the challenges posed by the spread of such employment to the implementation and protection of fundamental labour rights proclaimed by the International Labour Organization, including freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining; the effective abolition of child labour; the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation; and a safe and healthy working environment. Purpose of the research is to identify and characterise the challenges and threats of non-standard employment through the prism of basic principles and rights at work that are part of universally recognised human rights. article’s main body. Despite the fact that most of the attention in the world today is probably paid to the issues of access to labour rights and guarantees for so-called gig workers engaged in online platforms, who often face the inability to enjoy these rights, the problems of implementing internationally recognised fundamental labour rights go far beyond platform employment and extend to a much wider area of work that does not fall under the category of standard indefinite full-time employment. For example, in cases of concluding an employment contract with non-fixed working hours, the probability of employees’ “voluntary” refusal to exercise their fundamental rights and respond to possible abuses by the employer is very high and significantly increases the employer’s managerial powers. One of the most acute challenges of the digitalisation of the economy in Ukraine is the development of an adequate mechanism for the exercise by precarious workers, primarily those who work through online platforms, of one of their fundamental rights – the right to associate for the collective protection of their socio-economic interests. conclusions and prospects for the development. The development of the digital economy and the rise of nonstandard employment have led to a broad debate on the scope of labour law, while little attention has been paid to a comprehensive understanding of how these forms of employment affect the enjoyment of fundamental principles and rights at work. Yet, such an understanding is extremely necessary in view of the international community’s recognition of fundamental labour rights as human rights. Non-standard employment, especially when combined with precariousness or precariousness, can make it difficult or even impossible to ensure and implement fundamental ILO principles and rights at work, including freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining; effective prohibition of child labour; nondiscrimination in respect of employment and occupation; and a safe and healthy working environment. In view of this, proper enforcement of these rights as human rights requires systemic actions by governments and businesses aimed at both limiting the use of non-standard employment and further improving the mechanisms for the implementation and protection of labour rights regardless of employment status.

The Southern Model Revisited: The Intersection of Race, Ethnicity, Immigration, and Health and Safety in Poultry Processing

This research combines a sociology of agrifood conceptual framework with a commodity systems analysis methodology to investigate the nexus of race, ethnicity, immigration, and health and safety in the US poultry processing industry. The poultry industry was the first agricultural sector to industrialize. Through vertical and horizontal integration, the industry is dominated by a few powerful firms. The industry has been criticized for multiple ethical failures regarding contract growers, processing plant workers, and communities. Meat and poultry processing is one of the most dangerous manufacturing jobs in the United States. Poultry processing is especially reliant on a non-union, minority, and immigrant labor force. This “Southern Model” is the preferred model of agrifood globalization. The COVID pandemic brought renewed attention to precarious work in poultry processing and exposed the lack of resilience in the agrifood system in general, and the poultry industry in particular.

Social and digital media monitoring for nonviolence: a distributed cognition perspective of the precariousness of peace work

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the technologization of peace work through “remote support monitors” that use social and digital media technologies like social media to alert local violence prevention actors to potentially violent situations during demonstrations.Design/methodology/approachUsing a distributed cognition lens, the authors explore the information processing of monitors within peace organizations. The authors adopt a qualitative thematic analysis methodology composed of interviews with monitors and documents from their shared communication and discussion channels. The authors’ analysis seeks to highlight how information is transformed between social and technical actors through the process of monitoring.FindingsThe authors’ analysis identifies that the technologization of monitoring for violence prevention to assist nonviolent activists produces two principal and related forms of transformation: appropriation and hidden attributes. Monitors “appropriate” information from sources to fit new ends and modes of representation throughout the process of detection, verification and dissemination. The verification and dissemination processes likewise render latent supporting informational elements, hiding the aggregative nature of information flow in monitoring. The authors connect the ideas of appropriation and hidden attributes to broader discourses in surveillance and trust that challenge monitoring and its place in peace work going forward.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to focus on the communicative and information processes of remote support monitors. The authors demonstrate that adoption of social and digital media information of incipient violence and response processes for its mitigation suggests both a social and technical precarity for the role of monitoring.

The Mobility–Immobility Dynamic and the ‘Fixing’ of Migrants’ Labour Power

Low-wage labour migration from lower- to higher-income economies has become a precondition for capital accumulation. As a part of this, neoliberal actors (businesses and states) strive to actively produce migrants with a strong work ethic. They do this in numerous ways. In this paper, we draw upon labour process theory to argue that a ‘mobility–immobility dynamic’ is a major way capital now controls precarious workers. The mobility–immobility dynamic relates to low-wage workers’ need to move (and often circulate) internationally but, once they have moved, a desire by businesses and states to keep them in place. The fixing of migrants both across space (through transnational mobility) and in place (through immobility) underlines the importance of a multi-scalar approach to understanding the control of the transnational working-class. We draw on evidence from European horticulture – 36 in-depth interviews with migrant workers, employers and community stakeholders in Norway and the United Kingdom – to highlight the mobility–immobility dynamic in practice.

Resisting state-sanctioned precarity: social reproduction and anti-austerity organizing in Berlin

ABSTRACT This article explores the consequences of changes in social reproduction for anticapitalist social movements, specifically in the context of a neoliberalizing welfare state. I build on ethnographic fieldwork with the anticapitalist activist group Basta!, based in Berlin, which organizes unemployed people and precarious workers. I argue that the Agenda 2010 labor market reforms in Germany have created a crisis of care by threatening social reproduction, resulting in the emphasis on care practices in these activist groups. I position the work of the movement in the general social reproduction of an increasingly precarious society, highlighting the resilience that a focus on care practices can offer. However, I also discuss the potential risk of reinforcing the status quo through this strategy. Theoretically, the article contributes to a feminist elaboration of the political economy approach by examining how macrostructural developments shape everyday social practices that sustain movements. I note a macro bias and a production bias in the literature, which has resulted in gendered blind spots. Thus, the focus on social movements’ approach to the care crisis reveals ways of combining the political economy approach with those in the literature on gender and social movements. Overall, the article offers insights into the ways in which anticapitalist movements organize around reproduction in the context of neoliberal reforms and highlights the importance of care practices in sustaining resistance to precarity.

Expropriation of Rights, Dependent Capitalism and Transfer of Income: Reflections on the Effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic

The text focuses on taking stock of income transfer programs in Brazil in order to bring subsidies to analyze these initiatives during the COVID-19 pandemic. The result of a bibliographical review and documentary research, the article points out that monetary aid was the main form of protection against pauperization in the capitalist periphery during the health crisis, but ensuring the maintenance of the neoliberal fiscal and economic austerity agenda. The conclusions show that income transfer programs in dependent countries, where the relationship between expropriation and overexploitation prevails, were enlarged with the COVID-19 pandemic, thus helping to ensure the expanded reproduction of dependency conditions by maintaining the stagnant relative overpopulation in informality and precarious work that increased during the health crisis.

Working with Passion: Digital Media Specialist as Precarious Worker in the Digital Age

This paper addresses issues the global concern of uncertainties of digital creative workers, emphasizing Indonesian case. This paper argues creative digital workers in digital media industry deal with uncertainty in "atypical," "contingent," "temporary," "informal," and, in particular, "precarious" settings. This research will provide arguments about new forms of labour exploitation in the era of “user-generated content” and “prosumption”. This paper's primary theoretical contribution is to clarify the precarious nature of labor for digital labor in communication and media organizations, with a focus on creative workers in Yogyakarta and Jakarta. Additionally, this study will demonstrate how staff members in various communication and media companies routinely work under deadline pressure, work remotely, have short-term contracts, and participate in hustle cult practices. This study used qualitative and in-depth interview studies to look ten people at the lives of digital content officers in a social media specialist (as new media professionals) who produce digital content in social media, managing content for influencers, internet celebrities, and corporations. This research took place between January and June 2022, and it raised fundamental concerns regarding how these industries develop the rhetoric of flexibility, autonomy, and informality.

Zombie Apocalypse and the Crisis of Global Capitalism: Class, Precarious Work, and Environment

Zombies have always represented sharp criticisms of state and capital. From their roots in slavery in the Caribbean colonies to George Romero’s zombie films, which can be read as criticisms of racism and consumerism, this article proposes that zombies have embodied both the “mindless” labourer deprived of soul and forced to work eternally as well as the fetishised consumer in a capitalist world. By the end of the first decade of the current century, zombies began to appear in films which were neither Hollywood-style nor, indeed, American at all. This article argues that these non-American zombie films portray the zombie apocalypse as a crisis of contemporary global capitalism. It will closely examine four international zombie films, Backpacker (Thailand, 2009), Seoul Station (South Korea, 2016), Cargo (Australia, 2017), and Little Monsters (Australia, 2019). The zombies in these international films reveal several aspects of capitalism such as illegal migration, the precariat or disposable workers, and the ecological crisis. Moreover, these films also reflect the way out of the zombie/capitalist dystopia which touches upon not only revolutionary but also indigenous and generational politics.

Freedom, domination and the gig economy

ABSTRACT Employment practices in the gig economy have routinely been defended through the language of individual freedom. Indeed, this particular model of on-demand employment is often presented as removing constraints on the freedom to choose when, where and how to sell one’s labour, enabling individuals to exercise greater self-authorship over their working lives. In this article, however, I show how the particular conception of freedom that underpins this pro-gig work discourse functions to obscure significant threats to the liberty of gig workers. An alternative perspective, inspired by the republican tradition of political thought, reveals instead how the structural vulnerability of gig workers exposes them to extraordinary forms of domination, compromising their freedom. Relative to typical employees in advanced capitalist labour markets, the precarious legal and economic status of gig workers leaves them less free, with fewer institutionalised resources to disarm the multiple forms of dominating, arbitrary power to which they are vulnerable. To maximise freedom within existing capitalist labour markets, on this republican view, we should seek to (re)build the rights and protections available to workers, rather than promote the further normalisation of under-regulated and precarious gig work.

UNDERSTANDING THE INFORMAL ECONOMY: INSIGHTS FROM AZERBAIJAN AND ITS NEIGHBORS

Topicality. Informal employment, a critical facet of global labor markets, is characterized by jobs lacking legal or social protection and is often synonymous with precarious working conditions and inadequate earnings.Aim and tasks: The primary aim of this study is to explore and better understand the dynamics of informal employment in various economies. The focus is to gain a comprehensive understanding of its causes, impacts, and the socio economic conditions of workers engaged in informal employment. This understanding is pivotal in formulating effective and inclusive labor policies that can contribute towards reducing informality and promoting decent work conditions.Materials and methods. Literature review, data collection, qualitative and quantitative method, comparative analysis, theoretical approach were used in the study. Studied scientific articles, books, reports and studies that address this issue. This will help to understand current views and research related to the informal economy in the region.Various data sources such as statistical reports, surveys, interviews or observations are used to obtain information on the extent and characteristics of the informal economy in the region. Differences and similarities in the structure, characteristics and influence of the informal economy on socio--economic development in the region are compared.Research results. The investigation into informal employment in Azerbaijan and surrounding nations unveiled its substantial presence in these economies, highlighting the sector's importance in the regional labor markets. Key factors contributing to this prevalence include insufficient formal job opportunities and inadequate labor protections. The research suggests that comprehensive policy interventions, such as bolstering labor laws and social protection measures, could aid in reducing informality and fostering more formalized and decent working conditions.Conclusion. The substantial role of informal employment in Azerbaijan and its neighboring countries underscores a significant economic challenge. Addressing this issue effectively calls for comprehensive policy measures that promote the transition towards formal employment, enhance workers' rights, and provide adequate social protection.

Does work have a future? The need for new meanings and new valuings of work

This introduction to the special section “Does Work Have a Future?” begins by reviewing the main ways work stands at the crossroads today. We identify three core disputes with the potential to disrupt the future of work but which also harbor resources for affirmative futures of work: the precariousness of work and lives under existing economic arrangements; the emergence of care work as a source of social and environmental value; and technological change. We then consider the demands for new meanings and new valuings that the manifold disputed status of work formulates. Finally, we highlight the contributions the four pieces making up this special section give to that momentous question of whether work has a future.

Reconstructing gendered narratives through digital platforms and inclusive chatbots

This article examines how women in the Global South are (re)imagining, challenging and reconstructing gendered narratives through digital platforms and meaningful access through inclusive chatbots. While technologies have historically been biased in their design, creation and access, this article argues that technology and gender are mutually constitutive and draws from recent research and related literature intersecting gender, technology, power and language to discuss gendered narratives and agency of women as technology drivers in the Global South. The article further discusses gender obscurities and invisibilities in Global South media. It draws from examples of mobile technological innovations to illustrate how women in the Global South are appropriating social media and mobile technologies to create visibility through reframing and disrupting gender normativity. It discusses how despite technologies being Anglocentric and patriarchal, women are increasingly drivers of technologies even in cases where their labour remains hidden, such as the case of Kenyan women subjected to precarious working conditions to filter out harmful content from ChatGPT.