1 |
Precarity and precariousness : a study into the impact of low-pay, low-skill employment structures on the experiences of workers in the South West of BritainManolchev, Constantine Nicolov January 2016 (has links)
This is a study into the impact of precarious work, defined as low-skill and low-pay jobs, on workers in the South West of Britain. In it, I investigate the experiences of three broad groups of precarious workers: migrants, care assistants (adult and nursery) and employees working for ‘Cleanwell’, an international provider of cleaning and catering services. My approach identifies and occupies the central ground between two opposing perspectives. Along with Guy Standing (2014; 2011), I acknowledge the existence of employment structures which can be objectively described as lacking the security of meaningful pay, tenure, access to training and progression. However, I reject the reductive structural determinism, from structures of work towards working experiences, which he implies. With Kevin Doogan (2015; 2013), I recognise the opposing, ‘rising security’ argument which cautions against homogenous classifications of precarious workers. Nevertheless, I view it as incomplete, challenging only the extent of precarity conditions but not the inherently negative experiences associated with them. In my investigation, I distinguish between ‘precarity’, as the terms and conditions of low-pay and low-skill work and ‘precariousness’, conceptualised as the corresponding worker experiences. Grounding my study in a phenomenological paradigm of enquiry and adopting a ‘meaning condensation’ method of analysis (Kvale, 1996), I seek to understand whether workers can re-construct the negative impact of precarious contexts. As a result, I present precariousness as essentially relational and not absolute. Furthermore, the re-construction of the precarious experience draws on the support of social groups and can lead to fulfilling professional identities. Lastly, precariousness can be a pedagogic experience, both positive and developmental, through which workers can follow the example set by parents and grandparents, as well as serving as role-models themselves. In the study, I challenge assumptions that precarious work has a predominantly negative impact on workers, yet caution against arguments for worker collectivisation and resistance. I argue that precariousness is a phenomenon neither fully determined by low-skill, low-pay contexts, nor simply a psychological state manifested in isolation from precarious work. Rather, it is the phenomenological ‘intending’ (Sokolowski, 2000) of precarious structures, that is, the conscious engagement of precarious workers with low-pay and low-skill work through a range of attitudes, beliefs, views and opinions. Defining it in such a way is a departure from conventional approaches and through it, I show that precariousness offers a wider range of, both positive and negative experiences. It is a means through which even the employment context of precarious work can be re-constructed by individual workers who do not have allegiance to a precariat class, whether actual, or ‘in-the-making’ (Standing, 2011).
|
2 |
The unionisation of precarious workers : representations, problematisation and experiences in Swedish blue-collar unions in the construction and hotel-restaurant sectorsBANASIAK, Sophie January 2020 (has links)
From the Polanyian perspective on the double movement of labour commodification and self-protection of Society, the aim of this study was to examine how unionists perceive and problematise precarious employment and what are their practices for unionising and thereby securing precarious workers. A double case study was conducted in the hotel-restaurant and construction sectors in Sweden with the participation of blue-collar unionists with diverse backgrounds and experiences. The results show that precarious work is associated with labour market segmentation, subcontracting and fragmentation of economic organisations, deskilling of work, loss of autonomy and sometimes over-qualification of workers. Perceived difficulties for unionisation are fear, lack of knowledge of precarious workers about their rights, membership cost, status frustration and lack of interactions with other workers. Reported practices for unionising precarious workers consist of dealing with these barriers in order to build trustful relations and empowering workers through education and inclusion in leadership positions. Actions taken to protect and secure precarious workers are strongly interlinked with their unionisation and seem to rest mainly on negotiations. The main conclusions of the study are that precarious work means a loss of control by workers over their work life stemming from labour commodification and flexibilisation due to increased management control and lack of rights and protections surrounding work. The formation of solidarities needed for unionisation is hindered by the detachment of precarious workers from the work community and by inequality regimes. The domination of fear manifests the prevalence of emotions. Therefore, the care and emotional work of unionists is essential for making workers feel confidence. Unions practices tend to lean also, to some extent, towards organising and community building models. Thereby, union agency appears to be able to engage in an interplay with structures to exert some influence on employment and industrial relations.
|
3 |
La participation syndicale des travailleurs dans un contexte de précarité de l’emploiParinaud, Benjamin 12 1900 (has links)
No description available.
|
4 |
Distinguishing Employees and Independent Contractors for the Purposes of Employment Standards LegislationAdams, Lorrie M Unknown Date
No description available.
|
5 |
La construction sociale d'une économie d'insertion au Québec : le cas des entreprises d'insertion socialePierre, Alfred 12 1900 (has links)
Cette thèse analyse le processus par lequel les entreprises d’insertion tentent de neutraliser la situation d’exclusion des populations marginalisées. Il s’agit des individus souvent sans emploi, sans revenu et sans protection sociale qui se battent pour exister socialement. Ils sont diversement nommés et appréhendés par la théorie sociologique, soit en termes « d’inutiles au monde » ou de « désaffiliés », soit en termes de « personnes disqualifiées », de « rebuts humains » ou de « vaincus dans la lutte pour le capital symbolique », pour l’importance sociale.
En accordant leur intérêt exclusivement à ces exclus et en transformant le revenu d’assistance sociale en salaire de travail, les entreprises d’insertion jouent, depuis les années 1980, un rôle crucial dans leur lutte pour l’existence sociale et les placent dans la lisière du travailleur et de l’assisté social pour les transformer et les insérer dans le marché du travail. Nous saisissons l’encastrement social et l’émergence de ces entreprises comme un vecteur d’inclusion sociale en lien avec la dépossession sociale qui s’opère par la montée du travail atypique, l’obligation d’activation sociale et le recul de la protection sociale pour comprendre ce qui se joue réellement dans ces organismes. À savoir, en quoi et comment leurs interventions permettent-elles de réhabiliter et de réinsérer les vaincus postfordistes dans le marché du travail ? Quelle est leur mission véritable ? S’agit-il d’une mission d’adaptation des travailleurs aux besoins du marché du travail, d’activation des prestataires potentiels de l’assistance sociale, de requalification des exclus ou de lutte contre l’exclusion et la pauvreté ?
Nous inscrivant dans la continuité de Pierre Bourdieu pour qui « le monde social, armé de ce savoir, peut défaire ce que le monde social a fait », cette thèse interroge la mission de ces entreprises en rapport avec le mandat reçu d’Emploi-Québec dans la perspective de la théorie des champs de l’auteur. Laquelle perspective définit l’exclusion et l’insertion sociales comme la position occupée dans l’espace social, résultant du rapport des espèces de capital possédé à ses habitus, les dispositions sociales héritées de sa trajectoire sociale. Ce faisant, l’exclusion sociale reste et demeure un processus de dépossession sociale, c’est-à-dire de décapitalisation, la carence de ressources et pouvoirs nécessaires et indispensables à l’occupation et au maintien d’une position sociale donnée dans un champ. Dès lors, renverser l’exclusion sociale est bien possible et correspond à la mise en œuvre d’un processus de repossession sociale, c’est-à-dire de capitalisation ou de recapitalisation, entendue comme la dotation des exclus en ressources et pouvoirs nécessaires pour payer leurs droits d’entrée dans le champ, s’y investir et jouer le jeu.
Nous considérons cet objet d’analyse en mettant en œuvre un double dispositif méthodologique. D’une part, nous avons donné la parole à des dirigeants et intervenants d’entreprises d’insertion qui ont accepté volontiers de nous parler de leurs récits de pratique, c’est-à-dire de ce qu’ils ont fait et font ordinairement avec les bénéficiaires. Ce qui permet de retracer les formes d’interventions pour comprendre ce qui se fait et se défait dans les entreprises afin de doter les bénéficiaires en capitaux nécessaires à leur insertion dans le marché du travail. D’autre part, nous avons donné la parole à des participants afin de comprendre les faits structurants de trois moments de leurs trajectoires sociale et professionnelle, les moments ante-parcours, in-parcours et post-parcours d’insertion. À partir d’un matériau de 69 entretiens en profondeur (36 avec des membres dirigeants et intervenants et 33 avec des participants et participantes), nous analysons la formation des travailleurs et travailleuses précaires et polyvalents, dotés d’un méta-capital. C’est le capital spécifique de ce sous-champ d’insertion, la production des habitus professionnels, devant fonctionner comme un capital à caractère général et universalisant, appelé « les compétences transférables ». Les portraits-types de bénéficiaires permettent ainsi de révéler en quoi le parcours d’insertion est propice pour l’évolution de leur trajectoire. / Abstract
This thesis analyzes the process by which integration enterprises try to neutralize the exclusion of marginalized populations. These are individuals who are often unemployed, without income and without social protection who struggle to exist socially. They are variously named and understood by sociological theory, either in terms of "useless in the world" or "disaffiliated", or in terms of "disqualified persons", "human rejects" or "vanquished in the struggle for the world".
By giving their interest exclusively to those excluded and by transforming the income from social assistance into working wages, integration enterprises have, since the 1980s, played a crucial role in their struggle for social existence and placed them on the fringes of society. We understand the social embeddedness and the emergence of these companies as a vector of social inclusion in connection with social dispossession which takes place through the rise of atypical work, the obligation of social activation and the decline in social protection to understand what is really going on in these organizations. Namely, how do their interventions make it possible to rehabilitate and reintegrate the defeated post-Fordists into the labor market? What is their real mission? Is it a mission of adapting workers to the needs of the labor market, activating potential social assistance providers, re-qualification of the excluded or the fight against exclusion and poverty?
In line with Pierre Bourdieu for whom “the social world, armed with this knowledge, can undo what the social world has done”, this thesis questions the mission of these companies in relation to the mandate received from Emploi-Québec from the perspective of the author's field theory. This perspective defines social exclusion and inclusion as the position occupied in social space, resulting from the relationship of the capital possessed to its habits, the social arrangements inherited from its social trajectory. In doing so, social exclusion remains a process of social dispossession, that is to say of decapitalization, the lack of resources and powers necessary and essential to the occupation and maintenance of a given social position in a field. Therefore, reversing social exclusion is quite possible and corresponds to the implementation of a process of social repossession, that is to say of capitalization or recapitalization, understood as the endowment of the excluded with the necessary resources and powers to pay their entry fees to the field, invest in it and play the game.
We demonstrate here this object of analysis by implementing a double methodological device. On the one hand, we gave the floor to managers and workers in integration enterprises who willingly agree to talk about their practices. This makes it possible to trace the forms of intervention in order to understand what is done and what is undone in companies in order to provide the beneficiaries with the capital necessary for their integration into the labor market. On the other hand, we gave the floor to participants to understand the structuring facts of three moments in their social and professional trajectories, the pre-journey, in-journey and post-integration moments. Using material from 69 in-depth interviews (36 with executive members and speakers and 33 with participants), we analyze the fabric of precarious and versatile workers, endowed with a meta-capital. It is the specific capital of this insertion sub-field, the production of professional habits, to function as a general and universalizing capital, called "transferable skills". The typical portraits of beneficiaries thus make it possible to reveal the opportunity of the integration process for the development of their trajectories.
|
Page generated in 0.0842 seconds