Uncertain Time: Precarious Schedules and Job Turnover in the US Service Sector

The authors develop a model of cumulative disadvantage relating three axes of disadvantage for hourly workers in the US retail and food service sectors: schedule instability, turnover, and earnings. In this model, exposure to unstable work schedules disrupts workers’ family and economic lives, straining the employment relation and increasing the likelihood of turnover, which can then lead to earnings losses. Drawing on new panel data from 1,827 hourly workers in retail and food service collected as part of the Shift Project, the authors demonstrate that exposure to schedule instability is a strong, robust predictor of turnover for workers with relatively unstable schedules (about one-third of the sample). Slightly less than half of this relationship is mediated by job satisfaction and another quarter by work–family conflict. Job turnover is generally associated with earnings losses due to unemployment, but workers leaving jobs with moderately unstable schedules experience earnings growth upon re-employment.

Initiatives addressing precarious employment and its effects on workers’ health and well-being: a protocol for a systematic review

Background Precarious employment is a significant determinant of population health and health inequities and has complex public health consequences both for a given nation and internationally. Precarious employment is conceptualized as a multi-dimensional construct including but not limited to employment insecurity, income inadequacy, and lack of rights and protection in the employment relation, which could affect both informal and formal workers. The purpose of this review is to identify, appraise, and synthesize existing research on the effectiveness of initiatives aiming to or having the potential to eliminate, reduce, or mitigate workers’ exposure to precarious employment conditions and its effects on the health and well-being of workers and their families. Methods The electronic databases searched (from January 2000 onwards) are Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, and PubMed, along with three institutional databases as sources of grey literature. We will include any study (e.g. quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods design) evaluating the effects of initiatives that aim to or have the potential to address workers’ exposure to precarious employment or its effects on the health and well-being of workers and their families, whether or not such initiatives were designed specifically to address precarious employment. The primary outcomes will be changes in (i) the prevalence of precarious employment and workers’ exposure to precarious employment and (ii) the health and well-being of precariously employed workers and their families. No secondary outcomes will be included. Given the large body of evidence screened, the initial screening of each study will be done by one reviewer, after implementing several strategies to ensure decision-making consistency across reviewers. The screening of full-text articles, data extraction, and critical appraisal will be done independently by two reviewers. Potential conflicts will be resolved through discussion. Established checklists will be used to assess a study’s methodological quality or bias. A narrative synthesis will be employed to describe and summarize the included studies’ characteristics and findings and to explore relationships both within and between the included studies. Discussion We expect that this review’s findings will provide stakeholders interested in tackling precarious employment and its harmful health effects with evidence on effectiveness of solutions that have been implemented to inform considerations for adaptation of these to their unique contexts. In addition, the review will increase our understanding of existing research gaps and enable us to make recommendations to address them. Our work aligns with the sustainable development agenda to protect workers, promote decent work and economic growth, eliminate poverty, and reduce inequalities. Systematic review registration PROSPERO CRD42020187544.

Legal Considerations for Determination of Employment Relation and Employment Contract

The determination of employment relation is a complex legal issue, especially in the context that the newly adopted Labor Code 2019 extends its personal scope to worker working without employment relation. Also, the article on employment contract is supplemented in the way to consider all agreements on a work to be done, wage, management and supervision of one party to be employment contract, regardless of its name. These regulations are expected to better protect legitimate rights of employees, however, in practice, the implementation of such articles might be controversial because these above characteristics are not clear and based on the concept of employment relation which is not clear neither. This article will analyze some legal considerations which have been applied in the UK and European common law for determiningemployment relations and then provide some proposals for clarifying this concept.

The Palimpsest of Welfarism: Enduring Layers of Paternalism in a New Zealand Industry Town

This paper explores the enduring impression made by industry and its representatives on the workforces, communities and locations in which it resides. This oral history study is based on a New Zealand single industry town developed in the post-World War II era and founded on the principles of industrial welfarism and paternalism. The study reveals that the employment relation practices of the town’s symbolic “founding father” have had an enduring effect on shared community identification long after the withdrawal of these practices, and the subsequent downsizing of the primary industry. Thus, the predominant memory was both shaped by principles of industrial paternalism and entwined with stories of recent events of downsizing and redundancy. Drawing on the metaphor of palimpsest, we consider how present accounts of downsizing and redundancy simultaneously overlay, dismantle and rewrite historical accounts of paternalistic interaction in the community. This paper highlights the enduring politics of industrial history, and the continued legacy of industrial strategies on the way in which we live, work and organise.

Uber Global Wealth Chains

Information asymmetries between regulators, suppliers, and clients in Global Wealth Chains (GWCs) are animated by conceptual uncertainty and legal indeterminacy. This chapter explores the impact of this uncertainty and indeterminacy in the digital economy where a concept-regulation-corporate form (C-R-C) gap obstructs tax traction. Firms such as Amazon, Airbnb, Facebook, Google, and Uber host services on digital platforms enabling consumers and businesses to connect and exchange. The chapter examines the C-R-C gap as the platform business model intersects with urban transport to impact fiscal sustainability. The immediate fiscal impact arises from a growth strategy that systematically generates tax assets, a mode of service delivery that circumvents the sales tax and an employment relation that removes social security obligations for the platform based multinational company.

Job Referrals in the Global South

Most sociological studies of job searching are from higher-income, industrialized countries, often referred to as the Global North. Much less is understood about job search behavior in the lower-income countries of the Global South, where there are fewer labor market institutions, weaker social safety nets, higher underemployment, more informality, and more precarity. In this environment of deprivation and insecurity, low-wage workers in the Global South turn to their personal networks for the resources that markets and states cannot provide. While job referrals allow workers to earn a living, however, they also extend employer surveillance and control beyond the bounds of the employment relation.

Varieties of Uberization: How technology and institutions change the organization(s) of late capitalism

Organization theory faces challenges on all sides, yet it is uniquely suited to help understand and guide our current economic transition. In order to make good on this promise, however, organization theory needs to adopt a rigorously comparative approach and to jettison “America first.” Those who organize firms require ingredients that often include capital, labor, supplies, and a rule-bound market for selling. These ingredients in turn bear the imprint of national economies and the institutions that govern and support them. We argue that innovations in information and communication technologies (ICTs) combine with national institutions to guide what firms will look like by shaping what ingredients are available; ultimately, ICTs can fundamentally reorganize institutions such as capital and labor markets. We illustrate this argument with a comparison of how the ridehailing industry (such as Uber and Lyft in the United States) is organized in the US, Sweden, Germany, India, Indonesia, China, and Nigeria. The same basic innovation—a platform that allows riders and drivers to match via smartphone—produces substantially different organizational forms depending on domestic institutions. Moreover, in the US “Uberization” is challenging fundamental aspects of labor markets and the employment relation in industries well beyond ridehailing. The “varieties of Uberization” across national contexts exemplify the kinds of phenomena that organization theorists should be examining right now, if we aim to inform a more humane future.

Managing Development of Creative City System: Coworking

The advancements in new technologies during the last decades and the change in the nature of work, which has become more dependent on knowledge and creativity, have reshaped the world of work and led to the decline of classical employment relation. Creative city system understood as the practice of working individually and independently but in the presence of others in a shared environment, became a solution in managing development of urban areas, when more and more people tend to work from remote locations the aim of this paper is to present a concept of creative city system, to examine the current state of coworking spaces, and to discuss the role of managing its further development.

Employment relations and perceived organizational performance: the moderating role of technological intensity

PurposeThe purpose of the study is to examine the relationship of different dimensions of employment relation (ER) with perceived organizational performance. The study also attempts to analyze the role of technological intensity in determining the employment approaches adopted by the firm.Design/methodology/approachData were gathered through the survey method and in-depth personal interviews were conducted in Indian manufacturing firms based in the National Capital Region (NCR).FindingsThe findings confirm that all dimensions of employment relation have profound and significant relationship with perceived organizational performance. It also revealed that technology intensity of the industry determines the way people are managed in the organization.Originality/valueThe study has contributed to the existing body of knowledge by understanding the impact of unique framework of ER (industrial relations and HRM) on organizational performance. The study represents the one of the fewest attempts to measure technology intensity as moderating variable in ER & Performance.

[WITHDRAWN—Administrative Duplicate Publication] Synergistic Use of Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice, Queer Theories, and Employment Relation Theories: A Perspective for Sustainable Transgender Inclusion at Workplace

Mehta, N. K. K. (2020). Synergistic Use of Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice, Queer Theories, and Employment Relation Theories: A Perspective for Sustainable Transgender Inclusion at Workplace. Business Perspectives and Research, 1-20. Ahead of Print article withdrawn by publisher Due to an administrative error, this article was accidentally published twice Online First with different DOIs. The correct and citable version of the article remains: Mehta, N. K. K. (2021). Synergistic Use of Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice, Queer Theories, and Employment Relation Theories: A Perspective for Sustainable Transgender Inclusion at the Workplace. Business Perspectives and Research, 9(1), 11-30. DOI: 10.1177/2278533720910849