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Time precarity at work: nonstandard forms of employment and everyday life

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Abstract

In the last three decades, the expansion of nonstandard forms of employment has involved a shift in two dimensions related to time: working time arrangements and temporary contracts, which are grouped under the umbrella term time precarity at work. Previous research has explored how atypical scheduling practices and a weak tie to the labor market affect worker’s health, well-being, family fit, and self-assessments of work-nonwork interference. However, much less is known about which specific dimensions of everyday life are affected and how these two features of time precarity interact with each other. This study analyzes how different schedule arrangements and temporary contracts associate with leisure and social time. Using data from Italy (2013–2014) and latent class analysis, four types of schedule arrangements are identified: standard, short, extended, and shift. Results from the regression analysis show that extended or shift work predicts reductions in leisure time, especially on weekends, and there is suggestive evidence that the reduction is even larger for workers with a temporary contract. Regarding social participation, extended or shift work predicts less time spent with others, and having a temporary contract or a shift schedule reduces the probability of participating in community activities.

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Data

The dataset analyzed during the current study is publicly available here: https://www.istat.it/it/archivio/216733.

Notes

  1. Between 2014 and 2016, in a context of increasing unemployment, an additional round of labor reforms – under the name “Jobs Act” – took place with the purpose of making the labor market even more flexible. The main innovation was the introduction of a unique labor contract for new hires with guarantees that increase over time, allowing the termination of contracts without “just cause” with a severance payment of up to 24 months, depending on tenure and size of firm. Even though these Jobs Act reforms took place after the period of analysis (2013–2014), the findings may still be relevant given that the reforms further intensify the dualism in the Italian labor market and that, as Fig. 1 shows, the use of temporary contracts gained an additional push after 2014.

  2. The focus is on the main job. This should not introduce a significative error given that only 3% of respondents report having a secondary job.

  3. No measure of teleworking is included given that only 1.6% of respondents report working under this modality.

  4. Respondents were also asked if they were doing anything else at the same time, but these “secondary activities” are not used in the analyses.

  5. The variable “involvement in social activities” shares some similarities with the previous indicator of time workers spend with their family and other nonfamily members. However, they differ in some respects. First, the dichotomous variable does not necessarily correspond to level of involvement. People who participate in several social activities do not automatically invest more time with others than someone who participates in fewer social activities. Second, the indicator of “involvement in social activities” is more specific to the workers’ abilities to maintain weaker types of social connections (Cornwell and Warburton, 2014) and, therefore, provide a better approximation at community participation.

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Funding

The initial research on this project was supported by the Graduate School, part of the Office of Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with funding from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and the UW-Madison.

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  1. Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1180 Observatory Drive, 53706, Madison, WI, USA

    Daniela Campos Ugaz

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Campos Ugaz, D. Time precarity at work: nonstandard forms of employment and everyday life. Soc Indic Res 164, 969–991 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-022-02954-1

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