Abstract
Forms of insecure employment have been increasing all over Europe in recent decades. These developments have been welcomed by those who argued that these types of flexible employment would not only foster employment but could also help women, in particular, to positively combine work and family life. This vision was questioned by others who argued that flexible employment could have negative consequences for both occupational prospects and private and family life since it is often associated with greater insecurity and poorer working conditions. Relatively little research has been dedicated to the “social consequences” of insecure employment and its specific implications for work-life reconciliation issues. This paper contributes to this topic by linking research that addresses work-life conflict to the wider body of work dealing with job insecurity. It investigates the consequences of certain employment contracts on private and family life, taking into account information on current family life, future family plans and general well-being. It provides a series of test relating to the extent to which negative consequences in these areas might be attributable to the type of employment contract and how these vary between European countries. Analysis using ESS data from 2004 for western European countries confirms that insecure employment is accompanied by more problematic “social and family” situations. These negative consequences are partly shaped by the specific context provided by the country in question.
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Notes
In this paper “flexible” employment will be approached by looking at “external” flexibility, thus formal employment contracts. The scope is therefore limited to temporary employment in contrast to permanent one. The terms “temporary”, “fixed-term”, “non permanent” and “flexible” are used interchangeable and always refer to the kind of contract the dependent employee holds.
The term “consequences” does not necessarily imply a causal relationship, which - in the strict sense - could not be tested with the proposed analysis. Consequently, also the term “explanation” refers to statistical explanation only.
The evaluation of fixed-term employment depends, obviously, on the chosen contrast. While economists often compare it to non- or unemployment sociologists tend to compare it to permanent employment.
It should be noted, however, that the worst situation in terms of mental health is faced by those not working. In this context any job seems really to be better than no job.
It might be argued that the selected items are not ideal as they are basically time-related.
We should be aware that the weight of dependent employment within the national economies varies considerably between the countries.
In most cases data was collected in 2004 and early 2005, except Italy where it was collected in 2006.
Italy followed a different sampling strategy than the other countries, which for some analyses leads to relatively small sample sizes.
To restrict the analysis to persons not older than sixty avoids dealing with variation in retirement age in different countries or between men and women.
The use of “family” is ambiguous as it may refer to a role as parent or child.
Question: “My job is secure: not at all true, a little true, quite true, very true”.
Given the data structure, it would seem obvious to opt for a multilevel modelling strategy. However, detailed (multilevel) analysis (though it is difficult to assume normal distribution with only 16 cases) reveals that the phenomenon under study is very much micro-level driven in the sense that the variance on the country level is very low, in some case even nonexistent and just for two cases (overall satisfaction and subjective assessment of household income problems) accounts for almost 10% of the total variance. Further, the effects of fixed-term employment do not vary substantially between the different models and we hardly find significant results for random slopes—that are due to single countries.
It should be noted that this data is clearly not the most adequate one to create labour market statistics. The age selection (20–60) and the fact that the analysis refers to all employed, may partly explain deviations from official statistics.
The value for Switzerland is estimated by Germany. The values for Luxembourg on EPL and unemployment protection are estimated by Switzerland.
Obviously macro indicators are correlated with each other: the largest correlation exists between EPL and unemployment rate with .57, but no signs of multi-collinarity are found in the multivariate models.
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Acknowledgments
This paper was produced as part of the Economic Change, Quality of Life and Social Cohesion (EQUALSOC) Network of Excellence, funded by the European Commission (DG Research) as part of the Sixth Framework Programme. See editors’ introduction for further details. I would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers and the editors for their valuable comments.
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A more complete version of the paper is available here: http://portale.unitn.it/bpmapp-upload/download/fstore/7f0000016c9f2f72_789144_11e8cf589ef_2fa9/SocialConsequences_of_InsecureJobs.pdf.
Appendix
Appendix
1.1 Indicators used
Too tired to enjoy life: How often do you feel too tired after work to enjoy the things you would like to do at home? Never, hardly ever, sometimes, often always.
No time: How often do you find that your job prevents you from giving the time you want to your partner or family? Never, hardly ever, sometimes, often always.
Disagree with partner–index: “Couples sometimes disagree about household and family issues. Using this card, how often do you and your husband/wife/partner disagree about …how to divide house-work? …the amount of time spent on paid work?”
Plan child: Do you plan to have a child within the next 3 years? Definitely not, probably not, probably yes, definitely yes.
Satisfaction-index: All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole nowadays? Taking all things together, how happy would you say you are?” (scale from 0 to 10).
Health: How is your health in general? Would you say it is very good, good, fair, bad or very bad?
Household income problems: Which of the descriptions comes closest to how you feel about your household’s income nowadays? Living comfortably on present income, coping on present income, finding it difficult on present income, finding it very difficult on present income.
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Scherer, S. The Social Consequences of Insecure Jobs. Soc Indic Res 93, 527–547 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-008-9431-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-008-9431-4