209 THIRTEEN Working conditions Introduction Many correctional officers (COs) are unhappy with their jobs. This is largely because of perceived and actual poor working conditions and the low status accorded to their profession by the wider public. Most people do not plan to pursue careers in corrections (Gibbons and de Katzenbach, 2006: 65–75). They start working in jails and prisons for various reasons, including having long stretches of unemployment, having poorly paid service jobs, and their unions going on strike with no hope in the immediate future that
Introduction Home care workers experience some of the worst working conditions among the care sector workforce, which can lead to poorer quality of care ( Hayes, 2017 ; Addati et al, 2018 ; Hudson, 2021 ). In recent decades, marketisation reforms and New Public Management doctrines, along with cost-containment measures, have been associated with deteriorating working conditions in the home care sector in a number of countries ( Carbonnier and Morel, 2015 ; Christensen and Pilling, 2018 ). The nature and consequences of those reforms vary by institutional
excessive workloads, job stress, burnout, a lack of flexibility in their work, health and safety issues, physical and mental health problems, and an increase in violence and threats made in the workplace ( Trydegård, 2012 ; Kröger et al, 2018 ; Vehko et al, 2018 ; OECD, 2020 ; Ruotsalainen et al, 2020 ). The working conditions of care employees affect not only their own work–life balance (for example, job stress and job dissatisfaction) but also the quality of care received by older people. A Finnish national report found that time pressures and staff shortages have
213 ELEVEN Working conditions, health and well-being among the scavenger community Vimal Kumar Introduction India has the second largest scavenging population in the world after China. Although the exact number of manual scavengers remains disputed, the 2011 census showed that between 800,000 to 1,000,000 people are engaged in manual scavenging in India (The New Indian Express, 2013). Scavenger communities are known by the different names in the India: Bhangi, Hadi, Thotti, Mehter, Dhanuk, Valmiki, Chuhra1 and Balmiki (Haryana). Whatever they are called
PART TWO The quality of working conditions and part-time work
citizens in different phases of life. These different stakeholders – care recipient, care worker and informal carer – are hugely influenced in their everyday life by changing legislation, care policies and reorganisations. To state an example, care workers need adequate working conditions to have a good work life and be able to give care recipients the care they need and are entitled to. Further, informal carers need to trust the quality of public care to be able to share the care burden with professionals (the welfare state) and/or be able to have full-time work. An
The rapid economic growth of the past few decades has radically transformed India’s labour market, bringing millions of former agricultural workers into manufacturing industries, and, more recently, the expanding service industries, such as call centres and IT companies.
Alongside this employment shift has come a change in health and health problems, as communicable diseases have become less common, while non-communicable diseases, like cardiovascular problems, and mental health issues such as stress, have increased.
This interdisciplinary work connects those two trends to offer an analysis of the impact of working conditions on the health of Indian workers that is unprecedented in scope and depth.
As the percentage of people working in the service economy continues to rise, there is a need to examine workplace harm within low-paid, insecure, flexible and short-term forms of ‘affective labour’. This is the first book to discuss harm through an ultra-realist lens and examines the connection between individuals, their working conditions and management culture.
Using data from a long-term ethnographic study of the service economy, it investigates the reorganisation of labour markets and the shift from security to flexibility, a central function of consumer capitalism. It highlights working conditions and organisational practices which employees experience as normal and routine but within which multiple harms occur.
Challenging current thinking within sociology and policy analysis, it reconnects ideology and political economy with workplace studies and uses examples of legal and illegal activity to demonstrate the multiple harms within the service economy.
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence
This ground breaking book presents the first evidence of forced labour among displaced migrants who seek refuge in the UK.
Through a critical engagement with contemporary debates about precarity, unfreedom and socio-legal status, the book explores how asylum and forced labour are linked, and enmeshed in a broader picture of modern slavery produced through globalised working conditions.
Drawing on original evidence generated in fieldwork with refugees and asylum seekers, this is important reading for students and academics in social policy, social geography, sociology, politics, refugee, labour and migration studies, and policy makers and practitioners working to support migrants and tackle forced labour.
Spanning the United Kingdom, United States and Australia, this comparative study brings maternal workers’ politicized voices to the centre of contemporary debates on childcare, work and gender.
The book illustrates how maternal workers continue to organize against low pay, exploitative working conditions and state retrenchment and provides a unique theorization of feminist divisions and solidarities.
Bringing together social reproduction with maternal studies, this is a resonating call to build a cross-sectoral, intersectional movement around childcare. Maud Perrier shows why social reproduction needs to be at the centre of a critical theory of work, care and mothering for post-pandemic times.
