The Role of Domestic Employment Policies in Shaping Precarious Work

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 286-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merita Jokela
Author(s):  
Marina Batista Chaves Azevedo de Souza ◽  
Viviane Fonseca Santos ◽  
Daniela Da Silva Rodrigues

A arte desenhada sobre papel simboliza os trabalhadores e as trabalhadoras, e suas constantes lutas sociais pela manutenção dos direitos trabalhistas no Brasil, conquistados na década de 1943, com a Consolidação das Leis Trabalhistas (CLT). Trata-se de um estatuto de Normas Regulamentadoras - NR de relações individuais e coletivas de trabalho para aqueles contratados formalmente com vínculo empregatício. Em 2017, o Governo aprova a Lei nº 13.467, reconhecida como Reforma Trabalhista, a qual exclui mais de cem artigos da CLT, reduz direitos e o papel do Estado em relação à proteção da dignidade do trabalhador. Posteriormente, a classe trabalhadora sofreu novo impacto em 2019, momento em que o Governo Federal promoveu a extinção do Ministério do Trabalho e Emprego (MTE), órgão responsável pela fiscalização e regulamentação das relações de trabalho no país. Isso gerou o fracionamento das atribuições das Leis de trabalho em três pastas ministeriais, fragilizando ainda mais as normas trabalhistas, dificultando a interlocução entre o trabalhador e empregadores e formalizando a precarização do trabalho. Nesse sentido, a imagem representa os desmontes que o trabalhador vem sofrendo, ao longo dos anos, em relação à legislação e aos direitos trabalhistas, mas também à saúde e à previdência social. A flexibilização das relações no ambiente laboral revela uma nova configuração do mundo do trabalho, uma realidade ainda mais perversa, pautada em um discurso neoliberalista de "menos direitos e mais liberdade para o trabalhador", porém, que carrega como consequências a redução do emprego digno, de saúde e segurança para os trabalhadores brasileiros. AbstractThe art drawn on paper symbolizes the workers and their constant social struggles for the maintenance of labor rights in Brazil, conquered in the 1943s by the Consolidation of Labor Laws (CLT). The CLT is a statute of the Regulatory Norms - NR about individual and collective labor relations for those formally hired with an employment relationship. In the year of 2017, the Government approved the Law 13.467 that implemented a Labor Reform, which excludes more than one hundred articles from CLT reducing many workers rights and the role of the State regarding the protection and dignity of the workers. Subsequently, the working class suffered a new impact in the year of 2019, when the Federal Government extinguished the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE), the institution responsible to monitor and regulate labor relations in Brazil. This fact caused a division of the attributions of the Labor Laws into Three Ministerial Portfolios, further weakening labor standards making it more difficult for workers and employers to communicate with each other, formalizing precarious work. Thus, this image represents the problems workers has been suffering, over the years, due to the lack of labor rights, health and social security. The flexibilization of labor relations reveals a new configuration for the labor society and provides an even more perverse reality based on a neoliberalist discourse that propagates the idea of "less rights and more freedom for the workers", reducing decent employment, health and safety for Brazilian workers.Keywords: Labor Legislation; Occupational Health; Occupational Therapy; Precarious Employment; Work. ResumenEl arte dibujado en papel simboliza a los trabajadores masculinos y femeninos, y sus constantes luchas sociales para el mantenimiento de los derechos laborales en Brasil, logrados en la década de 1943, con la Consolidación de las Leyes Laborales (CLT). Este es un estatuto de Normas Reguladoras - NR de relaciones trabajo individual y colectivo para aquellos formalmente contratados. En 2017, el Gobierno aprobó la Ley 13.467, reconocida como Reforma Laboral, que excluye más de cien artículos del CLT, reduce los derechos y el papel del Estado en relación con la protección de la dignidad de los trabajadores. Posteriormente, la clase trabajadora sufrió un nuevo impacto en 2019, cuando el Gobierno Federal promovió la extinción del Ministerio de Trabajo y Empleo (MTE), el organismo responsable de la inspección y regulación de las relaciones laborales en el país. Esto condujo a la división de las atribuciones de las leyes laborales en tres carteras ministeriales, debilitando aún más las normas laborales, dificultando la comunicación entre trabajadores y empleadores y formalizando el trabajo precario. En este sentido, la imagen representa el desmantelamiento que el trabajador ha estado sufriendo, a lo largo de los años, en relación con la legislación y los derechos laborales, pero también con la salud y la seguridad social. La flexibilización de las relaciones en el entorno laboral revela una nueva configuración del mundo del trabajo, una realidad aún más perversa, basada en un discurso neoliberalista de "menos derechos y más libertad para el trabajador", pero con la consecuencia de reducir el empleo decente, salud y seguridad para los trabajadores brasileños.Palabras clave: Empleo Precario; Legislación Laboral; Salud Laboral; Terapia Ocupacional; Trabajo.      


2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 507-521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deirdre McCann

AbstractPrecarious work is a crucial impediment to substantive equality. This paper examines the regulation of precariousness in the light of two recent trends: the casualisation of employment in the wake of the crisis, and global efforts to regulate domestic work (e.g. ILO Domestic Workers Convention (No 189)). It takes these developments as an opportunity to explore the effective regulation of contemporary labour markets, and in particular the role of the Standard Employment Relationship (SER). The paper returns to two prominent accounts of the SER: Vosko's critique of SER-centrism in non-standard work regulation and Bosch's notion of the flexible-SER. It argues that the domestic work debates confirm the value of a modernised SER in its temporal dimensions. Yet the literature on precarious work tends to focus on regulatory settings in which the standard model remains dominant. The key contemporary challenge is to identify strategies that will embed this model in settings in which it is in decline or was never deep-rooted. Drawing on the notion of ‘reconstructive labour law’, the paper argues for innovative legal mechanisms that prompt the construction of flexibilised SER-type relationships. It concludes, however, that for these strategies to be effective, casualisation must be identified not only in contractual arrangements but also in working-time practices.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Selim Reza

Indirect recruitment through individual recruiters triggers specific areas of precarious employment in the construction sector of Bangladesh. This paper critically examines the navigating role of individual recruiters in determining precarious work conditions for the rural-urban migrant labourers. It unpacks the inter-connections between recruitment practices, rural-urban labour migration and precarious employment in the construction sector of Bangladesh. Taking the case study of migrant construction labourers in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, it draws on surveys and in-depth interviews to examine specific conditions of individualized recruitment practices and employment relations that contribute to various pressures and insecurities amongst migrant construction labourers. Examining labour recruitment through the lens of precarious work, this paper argues that neoliberal practices have led to indirect recruitment practices where the pronounced existence of individual recruiters as the key actors underpins  the precariousness of construction labour in Bangladesh.


Author(s):  
Katharina Zimmermann

In the context of an ‘activation turn’ in many European welfare states, the local level gained increasing relevance in the last decades and brought local social policies and national employment policies more closely together. At the same time, at the European level the European Social Fund (ESF) made a career from an unconditional simple financing instrument towards a complex governance tool; meant to back up European social and employment policies in close combination with tools such as reporting or benchmarking. Greater coordination of domestic policies in social and employment policies, where the EU had no regulative competences, was sought to be achieved via ‘bypass strategies’ which directly focused on the subnational implementation systems of the member states. Against the backdrop of these scenarios, the book is interested in the actual role of the ESF in local activation policies. It wants to know how local social and employment policy fields react to the ESF, what shapes their reactions, and what the effects of these reactions are in terms of change in local policy fields. By drawing on both sociologists’ and political scientists’ literature, the book develops a unique perspective on the role of supranational money at the local level. By comparing comprehensive qualitative data from 18 local case studies in six European countries (Sweden, France, Poland, UK, Italy, and Germany) and deploying an innovative mixed-method approach, the book provides rich insights into a field where so far comparative qualitative research is missing.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
Joan Miquel Verd Pericás ◽  
Joan Rodríguez-Soler ◽  
Alejandro González Heras

Author(s):  
Christopher Brennan

Research on volunteers in the tourism field often deals with the motivations of such persons as well as their effects on host locales, while research on the work conditions of tourism workers often focuses solely on paid employees. However, such research has not focused on the workplace condi- tions for volunteer working tourists in the tourism arena whose motivation, among other reasons, for seeking unpaid work opportunities is a dual role of tourism consumer.As volunteers are not for- mally employed, they are not entitled to legal workplace standards.This article examines, through netnographic research methods and thematic analysis, the workplace experiences of several vol- unteer working tourists in Finnish Lapland, considering how similar to precarious employment their situation is, to some extent enabled by their tourism mindset. This raises curious questions about the use of such labor, suggesting their future inclusion within discussions of precarious work


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Arif Jetha ◽  
Kathleen A. Martin Ginis ◽  
Selahadin Ibrahim ◽  
Monique A. M. Gignac

Abstract Background Precarious work is an increasingly common characteristic of industrialized labor markets that can widen health inequities, especially among disadvantaged workforce segments. Study objectives are to compare precarious employment in workers with and without disabilities, and to examine the modifying effect of disability in the relationships between age, job tenure and precarious work. Methods Employed Canadians with (n = 901) and without disabilities (n = 901) were surveyed on exposure to precarious working conditions. Information on age and job tenure were collected from respondents along with sociodemographic, health and work context details. Multivariable logistic models examined the association between disability and precarious work. Also, multigroup probit models examined precarious work for young (18-35 yrs), middle-aged (36-50 yrs) and older adults (> 50 yrs) and job tenure and was stratified by participants with and without disabilities. Results Almost equal proportions of young, middle-aged and older participants were recruited. Mean job tenure of participants was 9.5 years (SD = 9.0). Close to one-third of participants reported working precariously. At the multivariable level, a disability was not associated with working precariously. However, multigroup modelling indicated that disability was a significant effect-modifier. Older adults with a disability had a 1.88 times greater odds of reporting precarious work when compared to young adults (OR = 1.88, 95%CI 1.19, 2.98). When reporting a disability, longer job tenure was related to a 0.95 times lower odds of precarious work (OR = 0.95 95%CI 0.93, 0.98). The relationship between age and job tenure was not significant for those not reporting a disability. Discussion Precarious work has the potential to affect workers with and without disabilities. For those with a disability, being an older adult and/or a new worker can contribute to a greater likelihood of being employed precariously. Policies and programs can be recommended to address precarious working conditions and related health inequities for people with disabilities based on life and career phase.


Journalism ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146488492110331
Author(s):  
Maria Norbäck

This article adds to our knowledge of precarious journalist work in advanced welfare states. By drawing on the literature on neoliberal governmentality, it explores how entrepreneurial subjects are constituted, and the particular role of freelance work in this process. The article is based on interviews with 52 freelance journalists in Sweden. The study illustrates how the impermanent and marketized forms of freelance work enforces an entrepreneurial subjectivity onto the individuals who engage in it – a subject position which in turn seems to be necessary when it comes to making it in a fierce freelance market. In this way, the neoliberal discourse of entrepreneurship has a performative effect in that it helps to produce the kind of entrepreneurial subjects needed in order for a competitive precarious labour market to function. At the end of the article, I discuss how the particular role of the Swedish setting, that is, an advanced welfare state with strong worker protection, paradoxically seems to amplify the precarious work done by some professionals as it only protects those on the ‘inside’ of traditional employment, while leaving increasing groups of outsiders, such as freelance journalists, exposed to precarization.


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