scholarly journals Love vs. money: Understanding unique challenges in care workers’ labor organizing

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grace Flores-Robles ◽  
Ana P. Gantman
Keyword(s):  
Working Conditions ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Labor Organizing ◽  
Sacred Values ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Additional Challenge

Care work pays less than it should, given the characteristics of the jobs and the qualifications of its workers (England et al., 2002). Care workers also face unique challenges as they organize for better working conditions, including better pay, because they do not want to threaten to withhold care from those in their charge (England, 2005). We propose that care workers face an additional challenge in organizing because, for some observers, it highlights that care workers are paid to care. To investigate this question, we examine how people respond to the organizing efforts of care workers through the lens of the Sacred Values Protection Model (SVPM; Tetlock et al., 2000). According to the SVPM, there are certain values that people assume to be sacred and unquestionable (e.g., love, justice). When we are forced to consider pitting a sacred value, like love, against a secular one, like money, the tradeoff is seen as taboo. As a result, people react with outrage, and the desire to see those who have engaged in the taboo tradeoff reaffirm the sacred value. In this chapter, we will argue that people’s opposition to care workers’ labor organizing can be partly explained by how much they view engaging in care work as trading love for money. For some, care work may be perceived as a taboo tradeoff, blurring the divide between activities performed out of love and those performed for pay. We suggest that labor organizing can inadvertently highlight this tension.

Intersecting inequalities

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Adamson
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Migration Policy ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Income Class ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
And Migration

This chapter builds on Chapter 4 by analysing the intersection between childcare and migration policy. It illustrates how emphasis on a single policy area has implications for intersecting issues of gender, income/class and race/migration. These intersecting issues of gender, income/class and race/migration are experienced by families (mothers, parents and children) and by care workers. The analysis examines how policies addressing inequalities experienced by one social group can, in practice, have negative implications for other social groups involved. For example, policies designed to increase mothers’ workforce participation to address gender equality in the workplace often overshadow the working conditions and inequities experienced by women performing the care work. This issue is exacerbated for in-home childcare, as workers are often subject to few regulations and their work is largely invisible, in the private and informal domain.

(In)Decent work conditions and quality care: an issue for long-term care policy

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Ana Paula Gil
Keyword(s):  
Working Conditions ◽  
Quality Care ◽  
Work Conditions ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Decent Work ◽  
Physical And Mental Health ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Care Needs ◽  
Term Care ◽  
Care Workers

Abstract The availability of informal care will remain a key factor influencing future demand for formal services and the analysis cannot be dissociated from formal care. Based on the ‘unpaid care work–paid work–paid care work circle’, proposed by the International Labour Office, this paper focuses on the individual, interpersonal and organisational determinants that most influence quality care. This paper is based on 40 semi-structured interviews with care workers, in 16 Portuguese care homes, in one council in the metropolitan area of Lisbon. In spite of social change processes in the care worker profession in Portuguese nursing homes, in the last decade, in terms of numbers, age and education, the interviews allowed me to unveil qualitatively what the numbers hid: precarious working conditions, insufficient staffing, excessive workloads and long working hours, high rotation and insufficient skills. All these determinants have consequences not only on the quality of the care that these care workers can offer, but also on their physical and mental health, job satisfaction and work environment. The high demand of care needs due to the ageing of the population, calls for continued efforts in improving working conditions, and a national strategy to promote recruitment of a diverse, younger and more-qualified workforce. The professionalisation of care work must be integrated with migration and employment policies (improvement of job quality and working conditions).

Self-assessment by medical workers of the degree of influence of working conditions on the development of occupational diseases

2019 ◽  
pp. 463-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. N. Petrukhin ◽  
O. N. Andreenko ◽  
I. V. Boyko ◽  
S. V. Grebenkov
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Occupational Diseases ◽  
Health Workers ◽  
Medical Personnel ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Self Assessment ◽  
Medical Institutions ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
The Impact

Introduction. The activities of health workers are associated with the impact of many harmful factors that lead to loss of health. Compared with other professional groups, health care workers are ill longer and harder, which may be due to polymorbidity pathology.The aim of the study based on the survey data to study the representation of health workers about working conditions and to identify their impact on the formation of occupational diseases.Materials and methods. In order to get a real idea of the attitude of medical workers to their working conditions in 2018, an anonymous survey was conducted of 1129 doctors and 776 employees of secondary and junior medical personnel working in health care institutions in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Krasnoyarsk, Vologda and Orel.Results. Research of working conditions and health of physicians allowed to establish that work in medical institutions imposes considerable requirements to an organism of working, its physical condition and endurance, volume of operational and long-term memory, ability to resist to mental, moral and ethical overloads.Conclusions: The most important method of combating the development of occupational diseases is their prevention. Organizational and preventive measures should be aimed primarily at monitoring the working conditions and health of medical staff .

scholarly journals Professionalisation of early childhood education and care practitioners: Working conditions in Ireland

2021 ◽  
pp. 146394912110101
Author(s):  
Geraldine Mooney Simmie ◽  
Dawn Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Women Workers ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Performance Management ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
The State ◽  
Developmental Needs ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Education And Care

The last decade has revealed a global (re)configuring of the relationships between the state, society and educational settings in the direction of systems of performance management. In this article, the authors conduct a critical feminist inquiry into this changing relationship in relation to the professionalisation of early childhood education and care practitioners in Ireland, with a focus on dilemmatic contradictions between the policy reform ensemble and practitioners’ reported working conditions in a doctoral study. The critique draws from the politics of power and education, and gendered and classed subjectivities, and allows the authors to theorise early childhood education and care professionalisation in alternative emancipatory ways for democratic pedagogy rather than a limited performativity. The findings reveal the state (re)configured as a central command centre with an over-reliance on surveillance, alongside deficits of responsibility for public interest values in relation to the working conditions of early childhood education and care workers, who are mostly part-time ‘pink-collar’ women workers in precarious roles. The study has implications that go beyond Ireland for the professionalisation of early childhood education and care workers and meeting the early developmental needs of young children.

Academic Labor: Who Cares?

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen M. Cardozo
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Disparate Impact ◽  
Contingent Labor ◽  
Tenure System ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Academic Labor ◽  
Diversity Issues ◽  
Labor Issues ◽  
Predominantly Female

This article analyzes the neoliberal turn to contingent labor in academe, specifically the development of a ‘teaching-only’ sector, through the lens of feminist, interdisciplinary and intersectional studies of care work. Integrating discourses on faculty contingency and diversity with care scholarship reveals that the construction of a casualized and predominantly female teaching class in higher education follows longstanding patterns of devaluing socially reproductive work under capitalism. The devaluation of care may also have a disparate impact on the advancement of women within the tenure system. In short, academic labor issues are also diversity issues. To re-value those who care, intersectional alliances must be forged not only between faculty sectors, but also among faculty, care workers in other industries, and members of society who benefit from caring labor.

Care-Arbeit und Care-Berufe

2021 ◽  
Vol 81 (6) ◽  
pp. 452-458
Author(s):  
Martin Werding
Keyword(s):  
Wage Gap ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Charitable Organizations ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Private Households ◽  
A Value ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Professional Care

Abstract Care work can be provided in various forms and in differing institutional settings, ranging from private households over social networks and charitable organizations to public or private entities employing professional care persons. All these forms of care work create a value-added, but are subject to very different economic conditions. Focusing on professional care and building on German micro-data, the article shows preliminary evidence that there might be a »care wage-gap«, i.e., a systematic disadvantage of care workers compared to other professions in terms of their remuneration. It points out how this presumption could be thoroughly scrutinized and suggests possible reasons - among other things, the existence of informal care - that could be tested in subsequent steps.

Formal and informal long term care work: policy conflict in a liberal welfare state

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 134-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Murphy ◽  
Thomas Turner
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Informal Care ◽  
Long Term Care ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Formal Care ◽  
Term Care ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Informal Carers

Purpose The undervaluing of care work, whether conducted informally or formally, has long been subject to debate. While much discussion, and indeed reform has centred on childcare, there is a growing need, particularly in countries with ageing populations, to examine how long-term care (LTC) work is valued. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the way in which employment policies (female labour market participation, retirement age, and precarious work) and social policies (care entitlements and benefits/leave for carers) affect both informal carers and formal care workers in a liberal welfare state with a rapidly ageing population. Design/methodology/approach Drawing the adult worker model the authors use the existing literature on ageing care and employment to examine the approach of a liberal welfare state to care work focusing on both supports for informal carers and job quality in the formal care sector. Findings The research suggests that employment policies advocating increased labour participation, delaying retirement and treating informal care as a form of welfare are at odds with LTC strategies which encourage informal care. Furthermore, the latter policy acts to devalue formal care roles in an economic sense and potentially discourages workers from entering the formal care sector. Originality/value To date research investigating the interplay between employment and LTC policies has focused on either informal or formal care workers. In combining both aspects, we view informal and formal care workers as complementary, interdependent agents in the care process. This underlines the need to develop social policy regarding care and employment which encompasses the needs of each group concurrently.

scholarly journals ‘It’s a real fine balancing act’: directly employed care workers’ experiences of engaging with health services

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Wilcock ◽  
Jill Manthorpe ◽  
Jo Moriarty ◽  
Steve Iliffe
Keyword(s):  
Health Services ◽  
Healthcare Professionals ◽  
Healthcare Providers ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Health And Well Being

Little is known of the experiences of directly employed care workers communicating with healthcare providers about the situations of their employers. We report findings from 30 in-depth semi-structured interviews with directly employed care workers in England undertaken in 2018–19. Findings relate to role content, communication with healthcare professionals and their own well-being. Directly employed care workers need to be flexible about the tasks they perform and the changing needs of those whom they support. Having to take on health liaison roles can be problematic, and the impact of care work on directly employed workers’ own health and well-being needs further investigation.

scholarly journals Gendered Articulations of Control and Care on Social Media During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Hungary

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katinka Linnamäki
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Care Workers ◽  
Elderly Population ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
System Of Care ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Unpaid Care ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
The Government

The purpose of this paper is to examine the Hungarian Fidesz-KDNP government´s discursive practices of control and care during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper researches the Hungarian government’s communication on the official Hungarian COVID-19 Facebook page during the first wave of the pandemic. Its aim is to answer the question how the Hungarian government articulated control and care to reinforce sedimented gendered division of care work and institutions of control to tackle the potential disruption of the system of care before the widespread vaccination of the elderly population was available in the country. The paper argues that the pandemic has allowed the government to exert control in areas, such as the crisis in the workforce market and health care system, as well as in the destabilized system of care work. The main finding is that in the material the government performs control over care work, whose intensified discussion during the pandemic could lead to a potential disruption within the illiberal logic on two different levels. First, physical care work related to immediate physical needs, like hunger, clothing, pain enacted by female shoppers, female health care workers and female social workers, is newly defined during the pandemic as local, family-bound and a naturally female task. Second, the government articulates care work, either as potentially harmful (for the elderly population and thus indirectly to the government’s familialist politics), or as vulnerable and in need of protection from outside influences (portrayed through the interaction of health care workers and “hospital commanders”). This enables the government to perform full state control over care workers through the mobilization of police and military masculinity and to strengthen and re-naturalize the already existing hierarchies between traditional gender roles from a new perspective during the pandemic. This state of affairs highlights the vulnerability both of the elderly population, on whom its familialism builds, and of the system of informal care work, which builds on the unpaid care work of female citizens, who paradoxically are also articulated as potential harm for the elderly and for the system.

Culture, institution and diverse approaches to care and care work in East Asia

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 643-659 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ito Peng
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
Institutional History ◽  
Family Responsibility ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
The Family ◽  
Private Market ◽  
Care Economy ◽  
Policy Incentives

This article describes two broad approaches to care and care work within a spectrum of approaches that are evident in East Asia: one that accepts care as a core public policy agenda, and tries to leverage it as a potential engine to activate the incipient care economy; and the other, that sees care as strictly private family responsibility, and hence opts to partially underwrite the familial care with a mix of tax and policy incentives through the private market – including creating channels for families to outsource care to foreign migrant care workers. The author uses elder care policies to illustrate ways in which socio-cultural ideas and institutional history shape national policies, and how these policies in turn shape ways in which care is delivered, and care work organized within the family and in the market.

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