Pub Date : 2025-07-23DOI: 10.1177/09500170251336938
Daniel Evans, Karl Jones
This article presents the experiences of ‘Karl’, a veteran postal worker and trade union organiser. Karl’s story outlines the impact of the myriad changes that have happened to the postal service and to the working life of postal workers since the privatisation of the Royal Mail in 2013. Karl highlights how new technologies – typically associated with the ‘gig economy’ – have permeated a formerly ‘low tech’, ‘traditional’ sector and have been used to intensify the labour process and discipline the workforce. Karl outlines the profound impact these changes have had on the postal workforce: eroding their autonomy, destroying their ‘leisure in work’ and affecting their physical and mental health. Karl’s story also demonstrates the persistence of the ‘public service ethos’ in the Royal Mail despite privatisation. Workers argued that the ‘modernisation’ of the postal service had in fact led to the neglect of the universal mail service and the attendant erosion of the historic community function and status of the postal worker.
{"title":"Change and Resistance in the Royal Mail: Dispatches from the 2022/2023 Postal Workers’ Strike","authors":"Daniel Evans, Karl Jones","doi":"10.1177/09500170251336938","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251336938","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents the experiences of ‘Karl’, a veteran postal worker and trade union organiser. Karl’s story outlines the impact of the myriad changes that have happened to the postal service and to the working life of postal workers since the privatisation of the Royal Mail in 2013. Karl highlights how new technologies – typically associated with the ‘gig economy’ – have permeated a formerly ‘low tech’, ‘traditional’ sector and have been used to intensify the labour process and discipline the workforce. Karl outlines the profound impact these changes have had on the postal workforce: eroding their autonomy, destroying their ‘leisure in work’ and affecting their physical and mental health. Karl’s story also demonstrates the persistence of the ‘public service ethos’ in the Royal Mail despite privatisation. Workers argued that the ‘modernisation’ of the postal service had in fact led to the neglect of the universal mail service and the attendant erosion of the historic community function and status of the postal worker.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144693951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-07-19DOI: 10.1177/09500170251359134
Ian Greer
{"title":"Book Review: Roland Erne, Sabina Stan, Darragh Golden, Imre Szabó and Vincenzo Maccarrone, Politicising Commodification: European Governance and Labour Politics from the Financial Crisis to the Covid Emergency ErneRolandStanSabinaGoldenDarraghSzabóImreMaccarroneVincenzoPoliticising Commodification: European Governance and Labour Politics from the Financial Crisis to the Covid EmergencyCambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024, $39.99 pbk, (ISBN: 9781009054362), 411 pp.","authors":"Ian Greer","doi":"10.1177/09500170251359134","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251359134","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144677246","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-07-13DOI: 10.1177/09500170251350070
Bishnuprasad Mohapatra
{"title":"Book Review: Alan Middleton, The Informal Sector in Ecuador: Artisans, Entrepreneurs and Precarious Family Firms MiddletonAlanThe Informal Sector in Ecuador: Artisans, Entrepreneurs and Precarious Family FirmsNew York: Routledge, 2023, £42.99 pbk, (ISBN: 9781032570723), 308 pp.","authors":"Bishnuprasad Mohapatra","doi":"10.1177/09500170251350070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251350070","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"706 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144612864","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-30DOI: 10.1177/09500170251325774
Chris Warhurst, Angela Knox, Sally Wright
The UK government is concerned about job quality. However the lack of scientific consensus about measuring job quality hampers policy efforts to improve the quality of jobs. To address this problem, a standard measure was developed and adopted to report job quality by the UK’s Office for National Statistics. This article outlines a replication study using a new dataset to assess the reliability and validity of this standard measure. The dataset comprises 75 empirical studies that examine job quality in the UK and elsewhere. Using this dataset, the standard measure is confirmed, encompassing six dimensions of job quality. Subsequently, this study establishes both the reproducibility of the measure and the replicability of the methods used to develop that measure. In doing so, the findings will facilitate improved research and policy development along with greater conceptual clarity regarding job quality, long called for by social scientists.
英国政府关注的是就业质量。然而，缺乏衡量工作质量的科学共识阻碍了提高工作质量的政策努力。为了解决这个问题，英国国家统计局（Office for National Statistics）制定并采用了一项标准措施来报告工作质量。本文概述了一项使用新数据集的复制研究，以评估该标准测量的可靠性和有效性。该数据集包括75项实证研究，考察了英国和其他地方的工作质量。使用这个数据集，标准措施得到确认，包括六个方面的工作质量。随后，本研究建立了测量的可重复性和用于开发该测量的方法的可重复性。在这样做的过程中，这些发现将有助于改进研究和政策制定，并使社会科学家长期以来所呼吁的关于工作质量的概念更加清晰。
{"title":"Developing a Standard Measure of Job Quality","authors":"Chris Warhurst, Angela Knox, Sally Wright","doi":"10.1177/09500170251325774","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251325774","url":null,"abstract":"The UK government is concerned about job quality. However the lack of scientific consensus about measuring job quality hampers policy efforts to improve the quality of jobs. To address this problem, a standard measure was developed and adopted to report job quality by the UK’s Office for National Statistics. This article outlines a replication study using a new dataset to assess the reliability and validity of this standard measure. The dataset comprises 75 empirical studies that examine job quality in the UK and elsewhere. Using this dataset, the standard measure is confirmed, encompassing six dimensions of job quality. Subsequently, this study establishes both the reproducibility of the measure and the replicability of the methods used to develop that measure. In doing so, the findings will facilitate improved research and policy development along with greater conceptual clarity regarding job quality, long called for by social scientists.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144515327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-24DOI: 10.1177/09500170251336933
Jennifer Whillans
When do women work? Which women work when? Much of our understanding of the temporal organisation of women’s paid work relies on oversimplified stylised estimates of duration and categorical indicators of work timing. Using United Kingdom Time Use Survey 2014–2015 workweek grid data and innovative sequence analysis, this research provides new empirical evidence by identifying a typology of women’s work schedules , including variants of and departures from the standard workweek. Furthermore, sociodemographic and job characteristics are found to be associated with different work schedules. A feminist evaluation of findings highlights the insufficiency of the standard/nonstandard dichotomy and presents new ways of describing worktime that better capture the complex and diverse experiences of women. It concludes that, while the standard workweek is not strictly identifiable as a type of schedule, it acts as an organising principle of worktime among contemporary working women.
{"title":"Women and the Standard Workweek: Developing a Typology of Work Schedules in the UK","authors":"Jennifer Whillans","doi":"10.1177/09500170251336933","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251336933","url":null,"abstract":"When do women work? Which women work when? Much of our understanding of the temporal organisation of women’s paid work relies on oversimplified stylised estimates of duration and categorical indicators of work timing. Using <jats:italic>United Kingdom Time Use Survey 2014–2015</jats:italic> workweek grid data and innovative sequence analysis, this research provides new empirical evidence by identifying a typology of women’s work <jats:italic>schedules</jats:italic> , including variants of and departures from the standard workweek. Furthermore, sociodemographic and job characteristics are found to be associated with different work schedules. A feminist evaluation of findings highlights the insufficiency of the standard/nonstandard dichotomy and presents new ways of describing worktime that better capture the complex and diverse experiences of women. It concludes that, while the standard workweek is not strictly identifiable as a <jats:italic>type</jats:italic> of schedule, it acts as an organising <jats:italic>principle</jats:italic> of worktime among contemporary working women.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144479168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-21DOI: 10.1177/09500170251343277
Kaveri Medappa
This article examines how speculative investments in platform businesses generate acute financial risks and the threat of downward social mobility for platform-based cab drivers and food delivery workers in Bengaluru, India. Informed by ethnographic research, this article departs from predominant understandings of platform workers’ experiences at ‘the point of production’ and investigates ‘gig’ workers’ social and financial lives as mediated by platform capital. The concept of ‘lived capitalisation’ demonstrates how debt-fuelled platform business models produce worker dependency on platforms, drive workers to make unsustainable financial and social investments and result in income declines for workers, thus adversely impacting the social reproduction of worker households. This concept foregrounds the concrete – and gendered – effects of financialised business models that deepen workers’ dependence on debt, financial products and subjectivities to sustain everyday social reproduction. This article also advances understandings of ‘capitalisation’ and ‘assetisation’ by centring workers’ experiences of these financial logics.
{"title":"‘Lived Capitalisation’: How Speculative Finance Shapes the Social and Financial Lives of ‘Gig’ Workers in Bengaluru, India","authors":"Kaveri Medappa","doi":"10.1177/09500170251343277","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251343277","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how speculative investments in platform businesses generate acute financial risks and the threat of downward social mobility for platform-based cab drivers and food delivery workers in Bengaluru, India. Informed by ethnographic research, this article departs from predominant understandings of platform workers’ experiences at ‘the point of production’ and investigates ‘gig’ workers’ social and financial lives as mediated by platform capital. The concept of ‘lived capitalisation’ demonstrates how debt-fuelled platform business models produce worker dependency on platforms, drive workers to make unsustainable financial and social investments and result in income declines for workers, thus adversely impacting the social reproduction of worker households. This concept foregrounds the concrete – and gendered – effects of financialised business models that deepen workers’ dependence on debt, financial products and subjectivities to sustain everyday social reproduction. This article also advances understandings of ‘capitalisation’ and ‘assetisation’ by centring workers’ experiences of these financial logics.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"178 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144334898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-20DOI: 10.1177/09500170251343275
Elisabeth Bethge
This study applies Hirschman’s Exit, Voice and Loyalty framework to examine the dynamics of employee voice in the gig economy, emphasizing the role of digital platforms. Using an exploratory mixed-methods approach, the research analyses Glassdoor data to compare the voice of gig workers to that of traditional employees in the United Kingdom transportation industry. The findings reveal that gig workers’ voices reflect a nuanced balance between autonomy and flexibility, juxtaposed with financial insecurity and precarious working conditions. Conversely, traditional employees often voice dissatisfaction with rigid management and limited flexibility. The study contributes three key insights. First, it proposes viewing Exit, Voice and Loyalty as a continuum, reflecting gig workers’ dynamic decision-making. Second, it identifies digital platforms as critical arenas for employee voice, shifting expressions from internal to public discourse. Third, it demonstrates the value of mixed methods, integrating social evaluation techniques to understand employee voice across different employment models.
{"title":"Voices Beyond the Road: Comparison of Online Employee Voice in Traditional Transport and the Ride-Sharing Industry","authors":"Elisabeth Bethge","doi":"10.1177/09500170251343275","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251343275","url":null,"abstract":"This study applies Hirschman’s Exit, Voice and Loyalty framework to examine the dynamics of employee voice in the gig economy, emphasizing the role of digital platforms. Using an exploratory mixed-methods approach, the research analyses Glassdoor data to compare the voice of gig workers to that of traditional employees in the United Kingdom transportation industry. The findings reveal that gig workers’ voices reflect a nuanced balance between autonomy and flexibility, juxtaposed with financial insecurity and precarious working conditions. Conversely, traditional employees often voice dissatisfaction with rigid management and limited flexibility. The study contributes three key insights. First, it proposes viewing Exit, Voice and Loyalty as a continuum, reflecting gig workers’ dynamic decision-making. Second, it identifies digital platforms as critical arenas for employee voice, shifting expressions from internal to public discourse. Third, it demonstrates the value of mixed methods, integrating social evaluation techniques to understand employee voice across different employment models.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"590 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144328855","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-14DOI: 10.1177/09500170251337682
Camille Allard
This article investigates how working carers – workers with care responsibilities for a long-term ill, ageing or disabled relative – negotiate their care responsibilities when employed in a ‘carer-friendly’ job with access to paid carer’s leave. Based on narrative interviews with 17 working carers in the UK, the article explores how the availability of carer’s leave influences carers’ perception and legitimisation of their roles as ‘carers’ within their families. By drawing on, and extending Acker’s concept of ‘inequality regimes’, the article uncovers the organisational processes, discourses of legitimisation and normative pressures that shape carers’ roles both in their workplaces and at home. It argues that having a job supported by a ‘carer-friendly’ employer – but without a right to statutory paid carer’s leave – can reinforce the normative perceptions of ‘who’ should be a carer at home.
{"title":"How Care Inequalities are Reproduced in ‘Carer-Friendly’ Jobs: The Case of Employer-Led Carer’s Leave","authors":"Camille Allard","doi":"10.1177/09500170251337682","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251337682","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates how working carers – workers with care responsibilities for a long-term ill, ageing or disabled relative – negotiate their care responsibilities when employed in a ‘carer-friendly’ job with access to paid carer’s leave. Based on narrative interviews with 17 working carers in the UK, the article explores how the availability of carer’s leave influences carers’ perception and legitimisation of their roles as ‘carers’ within their families. By drawing on, and extending Acker’s concept of ‘inequality regimes’, the article uncovers the organisational processes, discourses of legitimisation and normative pressures that shape carers’ roles both in their workplaces and at home. It argues that having a job supported by a ‘carer-friendly’ employer – but without a right to statutory paid carer’s leave – can reinforce the normative perceptions of ‘who’ should be a carer at home.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"102 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144290122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-14DOI: 10.1177/09500170251343280
Yue Qin
Drawing on Bourdieu’s theories of field and capital, this article proposes the concept of security capital for a better understanding of precarity in the field of work. Three indicators are put forward to characterise the level of precarity – employment-based security capital, citizenship-based security capital and embodied security capital. Additionally, the notion of security capital stresses the reproduction of precarity, an important case of precarisation, and this article provides two important mechanisms underlying this process – the embodiment of precarity and the conversion between security capital and other forms of capital. Moreover, the Bourdieuian perspective on the state and its relations with security capital sheds light on how people can mobilise the state to shift neoliberal policymaking and safeguard labour security.
{"title":"Security Capital in the Field of Work: A Bourdieuian Perspective on Precarity and Social Inequality","authors":"Yue Qin","doi":"10.1177/09500170251343280","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251343280","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on Bourdieu’s theories of field and capital, this article proposes the concept of security capital for a better understanding of precarity in the field of work. Three indicators are put forward to characterise the level of precarity – employment-based security capital, citizenship-based security capital and embodied security capital. Additionally, the notion of security capital stresses the reproduction of precarity, an important case of precarisation, and this article provides two important mechanisms underlying this process – the embodiment of precarity and the conversion between security capital and other forms of capital. Moreover, the Bourdieuian perspective on the state and its relations with security capital sheds light on how people can mobilise the state to shift neoliberal policymaking and safeguard labour security.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"65 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144290131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-13DOI: 10.1177/09500170251343276
Cara Reed, Helen C Williams, Katrina Pritchard
This article addresses current limitations in theorisations of fun, introducing Turner’s liminoid/liminal distinction of play and work. This suggests engaging in play – liminoid phenomena – releases individuals from everyday societal structures, like age-based identity memberships. Featuring participant data from a large UK-based insurance firm, the research highlights how play activities are underpinned by age-related assumptions. The study makes three contributions. First, conceptualising the ‘pseudo-liminoid’ – a space between work and play where the potential for play to be freeing is curtailed. Second, it problematises common positive attributes of organisational play, suggesting play can reproduce social norms, thus undermining why it was introduced to the organisation. Finally, it highlights how play and fun can be ‘aged’, with implications for how organisations conceive of play’s role in creating an inclusive workplace.
{"title":"Young is Fun: Examining the Inter-Relations of Play and Age at Work","authors":"Cara Reed, Helen C Williams, Katrina Pritchard","doi":"10.1177/09500170251343276","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251343276","url":null,"abstract":"This article addresses current limitations in theorisations of fun, introducing Turner’s liminoid/liminal distinction of play and work. This suggests engaging in play – liminoid phenomena – releases individuals from everyday societal structures, like age-based identity memberships. Featuring participant data from a large UK-based insurance firm, the research highlights how play activities are underpinned by age-related assumptions. The study makes three contributions. First, conceptualising the ‘pseudo-liminoid’ – a space between work and play where the potential for play to be freeing is curtailed. Second, it problematises common positive attributes of organisational play, suggesting play can reproduce social norms, thus undermining why it was introduced to the organisation. Finally, it highlights how play and fun can be ‘aged’, with implications for how organisations conceive of play’s role in creating an inclusive workplace.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144290164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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