When is flexibility precarious?
Precarity of income and self-understanding under flexicurity in the Netherlands
Master thesis Jacob Boult 11219165
jboult1311@hotmail.co.uk
July 6 2017
MSc Sociology: Comparative Organisation and Labour Studies Dr. Johan J. De Deken, Prof. Dr. Maarten J. Keune
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Table of contents
Abstract ... 4
Introduction ... 5
Part 1 – Flexibility, precarity and their relationship: developing sensitising concepts through a theoretical synthesis of existing research ... 7
Chapter 1 – Flexibility ... 8
1.1 The recommodification of labour ... 8
1.2 The distinction between employer-side and employee-side flexibility ... 9
1.3 Four types of employer-side flexibility ... 10
Chapter 2 – Flexicurity ... 12
2.1 Flexicurity policy in the Netherlands – the national context ... 12
2.2 Narrowing the gap between insiders and outsiders – taking the low road ... 13
2.3 Three recent trends in precarious employment in the Netherlands ... 15
2.4 Security policies in the Netherlands ... 16
2.4.1 Unemployment benefit – level, conditions and exclusions ... 16
2.4.2 Active labour market policies – rapid reform, outsourcing and fragmentation .. 17
2.4.3 A limitation of this thesis – an emphasis on unemployment benefits, over activation policy ... 18
Chapter 3 - Precarity ... 21
3.1 Precarity and work - a discussion of a field of concepts ... 21
3.1.1 Precariousness, precarity and précarité ... 21
3.1.2 Precarious employment and precarious work ... 23
3.1.3 Precarious workers and precarious lives ... 24
3.2 Precarious workers and precarious lives: the collective and individual consequences ... 25
3.2.1 Collective consequences: macro-economic risks... 25
3.2.2 Collective consequences: atomisation and undermined social cohesion ... 26
3.2.3 Individual consequences: precarity of income ... 26
3.2.4 Individual consequences: precarity of self-understanding ... 27
3.3 A summary of the most important concepts developed in part 1 ... 31
3.4 A preliminary theory of when flexibility is precarious ... 33
Figure 1 - Flow chart, based on preliminary theory of when flexibility is precarious ... 34
Figure 2 - Interview case selection schema, based on preliminary theory of when flexibility is precarious ... 35
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Part 2 – Toward a Grounded Theory of when flexibility is precarious ... 39
Chapter 4 – Methodology: a Straussian Grounded Theory approach ... 40
4.1 Summary of the research design ... 40
4.2 Grounded Theory ... 40
4.2.1 Glaserian Grounded Theory – “emergence vs. forcing” ... 42
4.2.2 Straussian Grounded Theory making use of sensitising concepts ... 42
4.3 Application of the Grounded Theory method to the inductive analysis in this thesis 43 4.4 Limitations of the approach taken ... 45
4.5 Interview strategy ... 46
4.5.1 Interview template ... 49
Chapter 5 – Experiences of precarity under flexibility ... 54
5.1 Aspects of employer-side flexible employment ... 54
5.1.1 Contract ... 54
5.1.2 Hours ... 57
5.1.3 Role stability ... 59
5.1.4 Wages ... 60
5.2 Precarity of income under employer-side flexible employment ... 62
5.2.1 Ways precarity of income is experienced ... 62
5.2.2 Ways precarity of income is buffered against ... 65
5.3 Precarity of self-understanding under employer-side flexible employment ... 72
5.3.1 Ways precarity of self-understanding is experienced ... 72
5.3.2 Ways precarity of self-understanding is buffered against ... 79
5.4 A Grounded Theory of when flexibility is precarious ... 84
5.4.1 From employer-side flexibility to precarious employment ... 84
5.4.2 The ways employer-side flexibility produces precarity of income ... 85
5.4.3 The private and collective ways precarity of income is buffered against ... 86
5.4.4 The ways employer-side flexibility produces precarity of self-understanding ... 89
5.4.5 The ways precarity of self-understanding is buffered against ... 90
5.4.6 The core argumentative claims of the Grounded Theory – a parsimonious summary ... 92
Chapter 6 – The potential for a precarious class... 94
6.1 A Bourdieusian conception of class ... 94
6.2 Theory and class making ... 95
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6.4 What subjective conditions pertain for a precarious class? ... 97
6.4.1 Precariat subjectivities amongst precarious workers ... 98
6.5 A precariat? Challenges and prospects ... 103
Conclusion – Beyond Fordism and flexibility ... 105
A rejection of Fordism ... 105
Challenges of organising under flexible precarity ... 107
Demand material security and meaningful work ... 109
References ... 112
Annexes ... 119
Annex 1 – List of figures ... 119
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Abstract
Flexibility of contract, hours, wages or role at employer discretion creates precarious employment. Without buffers against precarity workers bear the material and immaterial consequences of this as precarity of income and self-understanding. At the same time as producing precarious employment, flexicurity is shown to be inadequate as a labour market regime for buffering against precarity of income, and wholly inadequate for buffering against precarity of self-understanding. This thesis is presented in two parts corresponding to two methodological phases. The first part engages with existing research to develop a preliminary theory of how and for which workers flexibility may be precarious. In the second part, this preliminary understanding is refined and elaborated into a Grounded Theory through inductive analysis of interviews with workers. The ways precarity of income and self-understanding are experienced and buffered against are theorised. Attention then turns to a discussion of the potential for a precarious class, before concluding by asking what can be learnt by the precarious in reflecting on the movement from Fordism to flexibility.
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Introduction
Unable to rely on their income, left worrying about whether there will be enough money at the end of the month, putting off spending, and their home at risk. Often underemployed, drifting between jobs they are over qualified for. Freelancers isolated from colleagues. Those lucky enough to find decent work are caught between pursuing self-development and maintaining a pragmatic distance from insecure employment. These are the realities of work for many when their contract, wage, hours or role are flexible at employer discretion.
The remnants of the welfare state offer some collective respite. For some in the Netherlands unemployment benefit is a partial buffer against the financial risk of precarious employment, but no buffer at all for others. Freelancers, those reentering unemployment after only a short period, and those not legally resident are excluded. Without private buffers – savings, parental support, a well paid partner – more and more workers are vulnerable to experiencing material precarity. Some cope with precarious employment as a stop gap or while they study, they hope things will get better. Others abandon hope in paid employment as a meaning giving activity, and hitch their self-understanding to something else; be it travel, art, sport or gardening; partners, friends or parenthood.
In the Netherlands flexibility has been pursued at the level of national policy primarily through the normalisation of atypical work; including part-time, fixed-term contract, freelance, and informal. The country has been lauded by the European Commission and its national political and academic apostles as having achieved the holy grail; the concomitant pursuit of labour market flexibility and worker security, so called flexicurity. At the same time as producing precarious employment, flexicurity is shown to be inadequate as a labour market regime for buffering against precarity of income, and wholly inadequate for buffering against precarity of self-understanding.
This thesis is presented in two parts corresponding to two methodological phases. Part 1 engages with existing research to develop a preliminary theory of how and for which workers flexibility may be precarious. In part 2 this preliminary understanding is refined and elaborated into a Grounded Theory through analysis of interviews with workers, before a discussion of the potential for a precarious class.
In the first part, chapter 1 discusses the idea of flexibility at the level of the economy and in paid work. It is argued that flexibilisation is the process of making labour markets more market-like. This involves treating labour as if it were a commodity rather than the work of
6 the person performing it. A distinction is made between flexibility at employer and employee discretion, whether it be over contract, hours, wage or role. The second chapter turns to look at the particular shape flexibility has taken on in the Netherlands, where those interviewed for this thesis live and work. Both flexicurity as a concept and its particular Dutch iteration are discussed. Chapter 3 brings conceptual clarity to the field of concepts surrounding precarity, mapping the relations between precariousness and precarity, precarious employment and precarious workers. In discussing the consequences of precarity, collective and individual, a distinction is made between its material effects – precarity of income – and its immaterial effects, termed here as precarity of self-understanding. These aspects of precarity can be buffered against in various ways - some collective, others private. Drawing together the concepts developed in the first part, the third chapter concludes with a preliminary theory of when flexibility is precarious. The theory argues that flexibility at employer discretion creates precarious employment, and it is then a further question as to whether this produces precarious workers. This will depend on the worker’s access to buffers against precarity of income and buffers against precarity of self-understanding.
In the second part, a methodology chapter outlines the two phase approach undertaken for this research, broadly in line with Straussian rather than Glaserian Grounded Theory. Chapter 5 presents an analysis of interviews with workers in the Netherlands engaged in employer-side flexible employment. Both case selection and lines of questioning were shaped by the preliminary theory presented in part 1 and developed in the first phase of this research. The forms that flexibility at employer discretion took in the lives of the workers interviewed are discussed. Illustrated with detail from their lives, the ways precarity of income and self-understanding are experienced and buffered against are explored concretely. The chapter concludes with the presentation of a Grounded Theory of when flexibility is precarious, which serves as a formal synthesis of the work presented up until that point. Chapter 6 engages in an open discussion of the potential for a precarious class, the challenges it would face, who may be in it and what it might demand. The interviews are drawn on to discuss the prospect for and potential shape of precariat subjectivities. This thesis concludes by asking what can be learnt by the precarious in reflecting on the movement from Fordism to flexibility.
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Part 1 – Flexibility, precarity and their relationship: developing sensitising
concepts through a theoretical synthesis of existing research
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Chapter 1 – Flexibility
So called labour market deregulation, which has often rather meant reregulation, has seen the rise of flexible employment relations. In dominant discourses - in the media, from politicians, and employers - we hear frequent calls for greater flexibility in work and in the economy. But what this might amount to is often ambiguous such that flexibility has become one of the leading political and employment euphemisms of our time. This chapter identifies flexibility with the recommodification of labour as if it were a commodity, occurring when flexibility of contract, hours, role or wage are at employer rather than employee discretion.
1.1 The recommodification of labour
Those political, policy and academic discourses uncritically supporting flexibility often claim that multiple advances can be gained from the spread of flexible employment relations. Labour market deregulation is said to unshackle the market and unleash its dynamism, unlocking the full productive potential of the economy. In this discourse employment protection legislation is implicated as the cause of a range of social problems. It is said to create unemployment through the creation of downward wage rigidities. It is also accused of unfairly dividing the employed into labour market ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. This argument has been used as a justification for the normalisation of atypical work in the Netherlands, and is discussed in some detail in chapter 2. So the discourse goes, a new economy without these problems can be created if only the labour market is allowed to function freely. The choice, variety and responsiveness of the flexible labour market model is said to match our ‘modern lives’; we can all pursue a life of project work.
Labour market flexibilisation may be described as the process of making labour markets more market-like; that is treating labour as if it were a commodity. The commodification of labour stands in tension with Polanyi’s warning that labour can only ever be a fictitious commodity (Polanyi 2001 [1944], p. 76). This is for two reasons, first,
the alleged commodity ‘labour power’ cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without affecting also the human individual who happens to be the bearer of this peculiar commodity (Polanyi 2001 [1944], p. 76).
Secondly, and in contrast to other commodities, labour “is not produced for sale but for entirely different reasons” (Polanyi 2001 [1944], p. 75). Some economists have recognised this fictitious commodity status, describing the “backward-bending supply function” of
9 labour (Streeck 2005, p. 262). This describes how when wages go down, the supply of labour may increase, given that to meet their needs workers have a wage level they need to maintain. When wages go up, the supply of labour may decrease; as workers would need to work less to earn the same level of wage income. In economistic terms, this would express a preference for leisure over work (Streeck 2005, p. 262).
Owing to the inseparability of labour power from its human bearer (Polanyi 2001 [1944], p. 76), when treated as if it were a commodity labour faces an adverse power relation to employers purchasing it (Offe and Keane 1985, see pp. 17-20 for a discussion separating out four structural handicaps faced by labour relative to capital). Without measures to address the structural handicaps labour faces, particularly whilst individuals rely on selling their labour power for their material subsistence, labour is left open to exploitation (Offe and Keane 1985, p.20). Those measures impeding the proper functioning of labour markets in the flexibilisation discourse are precisely those measures designed to address labour’s adverse power relation to employers. Traditionally these have been employment protection legislation, the institutionalisation of collective labour and the provision of transfers and services through the welfare state. Labour market flexibilisation in dismantling these amounts to the recommodification of labour. This thesis goes on in later chapters to explore the ways in which precarity in work is experienced materially and immaterially. At root, worker’s experiences of precarity under labour market flexibilisation can be understood as the consequences of treating labour as if it were a commodity unattached to its human bearer.
1.2 The distinction between employer-side and employee-side flexibility
Making use of the distinction made by Rubery et al. between employer-oriented and worker-oriented flexibility (2016, p. 247), this thesis focuses on increasing employer-side flexibility and its effects on workers lives. The rhetoric around flexibility espoused by its proponents often “glosses over” this distinction (Rubery et al. 2016, p.247), and discusses labour market deregulation as if it were only or even primarily about giving workers more discretion and control over their working lives. In reality, for many workers, far from grasping greater control over their working lives, increasing flexibilisation has meant a drastically unequal say over their employment relationship. It most often means increasing the ease with which employers can act unilaterally to change the terms on which workers are employed. Specifically, workers experience it as insecure working contracts, little control over when they work and how many hours they work each week, little control over their job role and
10 how it changes, and little control over their remuneration and how it changes. Uncertainty and employer imposition – these are the realities of work under employer-side flexibility. Proponents of flexibilisation will highlight benefits for workers; increasing variety, control and a better work-life balance under flexible employment relations. This may be true for a withering ‘labour aristocracy’ with real market power - the high paid senior executives who have individual bargaining power over the terms of their employment and their remuneration. It may be true for some of the self-employed, but far from being experienced as control over their working lives flexibility for many freelancers is experienced at the discretion of their clients. The focus of this thesis will be on those workers who experience flexibility as a loss of control to their employer, and hence as increasing insecurity. This study is concerned with how and for which workers flexibility is precarious, and we are most likely to find this under conditions of employer-side flexibility.
1.3 Four types of employer-side flexibility
To paint a detailed picture of employer-side flexibility it is useful to distinguish different types of flexibility; here I make use of the well established schema first developed by Atkinson (1984) (see also, for example, Streeck 1987; and Wilthagen and Tros 2004). For use in this thesis, four forms of employer-side flexibility are distinguished: external-numerical, internal-numerical, functional and wage. Each of these enable employers to vary the amount of labour power they deploy.
First, external-numerical flexibility refers to the ease with which employers can hire and fire workers, either through the use of temporary-contracts or by dismissing workers on open-ended contracts. The core feature that distinguishes this type of flexibility is that the labour power an employer uses is varied by changing the number of workers taken on from, or released to, the external labour market. At the policy level, this can be facilitated by decreasing employment protection legislation, or the weakening of collectively bargained protections through the dismantling of organised labour. This is often what policy makers have in mind when they “laud flexibility for creating jobs,” rather than realising greater control for workers over their working lives (Rubery et al. 2016, p. 236). Secondly, internal-numerical flexibility refers to the ease with which employers can vary the hours worked by their existing employees. This is characterised as internal as the variation in labour power comes from greater or lesser utilisation of workers within a firm – an internal labour market. Unilateral employer discretion over this leaves workers uncertain of the amount and timing of
11 their hours each week, and if paid at an hourly rate, also their pay. Thirdly, functional flexibility refers to the ease with which employers can change the job role of their employees. Clearly, if employers have the unilateral ability to demand that workers vary the tasks they perform, this diminishes worker’s control over their working lives and undermines the notion of self-realisation through work. Fourthly, wage flexibility refers to the ease with which employers are able to vary the wage of their employees. This may be used by employers to purchase more labour power for the same wage cost. The ability of employers to unilaterally alter wages depends on the absence of collectively bargained wage agreements, or other forms of collective labour power which may resist downward adjustments. At the lower end of the wage scale across the whole labour market, minimum wage legislation limits the ability of employers to employ wage flexibility below a certain minimum. Where wage flexibility increases, workers suffer from a greater uncertainty over their wage income and an increased risk of actually low wages as, by implication, regulatory or collectively bargained protection is weak or absent. In sum, employer-side flexibility can take a number of forms manifest in the ease with which employers can hire and fire (external-numerical flexibility), vary worker’s hours (internal-numerical flexibility), vary worker’s job role (functional flexibility), or vary worker’s wages (wage flexibility). Each form of employer-side flexibility will be greatest when employers can engage in any of these unilaterally.
This chapter has outlined the various ways in which flexibility, when at employer rather than employee discretion, can leave workers lacking control and certainty over their employment relationship. The next chapter turns to a discussion of the specific national context in the Netherlands, where flexibility has been promoted as flexicurity rather than what we might describe as naked flexibility.
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Chapter 2 – Flexicurity
2.1 Flexicurity policy in the Netherlands – the national context
As Vosko et al. highlight, for the study of precarious work “[t]he national level is an important level for analysis” (2009, p. 3). This is because of the influence specific national institutions have on the development of precarious employment (Vosko et al. 2009, p. 3). In the Netherlands, the specific national institutions relevant to the development and character of precarious employment can be understood in relation to the flexibility and security sides of the flexicurity paradigm. Promoted vigorously by the European Commission, flexicurity is put forward by its proponents as a labour market model that lets policy makers and national political-economies have it both ways. The approach is said to combine policies designed, on the one hand, to deliver a deregulated flexible labour market, and on the other ensure security for workers. It can be summarised in the belief that self-regulating markets and human security can be pursued concomitantly. Streeck highlights how flexicurity is an approach to labour market policy and social security that seeks to “embrace rather than prevent more intensive commodification of labour” (Streeck 2009, p. 9). Flexibilisation is put forward as a means to produce a labour market and economy that is ‘dynamic’ and productive, where employers are ‘set free’ to react to changes in demand and to maximise returns to labour. Security policies are said to insulate workers from the uncertainties of the deregulated labour market. Flexicurity may, then, be described as:
a set of public policies designed to replace employment security with job security – guaranteeing workers not a given job in a given place of employment, but some job in some place of employment, and if necessary, a rapid succession of jobs (Streeck 2009, p. 9).
Flexicurity in the Netherlands has meant the promotion of employer-side flexibility through increasingly prevalent contract insecurity, or as is the same thing the promotion of the use of atypical work. Atypical work describes employment relationships other than permanent full-time employment, including part-full-time, fixed-term contract, freelance or self-employment, and work in the informal economy. At the same time, so the discourse goes, security policies have sought to mitigate against the consequent insecurity for workers. Unemployment benefits act against income insecurity, while activation policies – including job search support and retraining - facilitate entry into the labour market and ease job to job transitions.
13 It is worth highlighting here how flexicurity has been shown to be a highly ambiguous policy discourse, with a very wide range of views amongst European-level actors as to how the concept should manifest in policy (Keune and Serrano 2014, p. 11). For example, both the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and the lobby group BusinessEurope have expressed support for flexicurity. However the actual policy content of their positions reveals not only contrasting but opposing positions which end up reflecting the traditional interests of their respective constituents – labour and capital (Keune 2008, Keune and Serrano 2014, pp. 11-14). Keune and Serrano conclude that “almost any empirical reality can be described as fitting the flexicurity discourse in one way or another” (2014, p. 11).
It remains the case, nonetheless, that the Netherlands is held up by the European Commission and its national political and academic disciples as a paradigmatic flexicurity country alongside Denmark. It will be important, then, to look at the ways in which flexicurity operates differently in the Netherlands to what we might call naked flexibility. To do so will be to explore the extent to which the security policies of flexicurity mitigate against the effects of increasing employer-side flexibility on the material and immaterial security of workers. Indeed, if security policies in fact leave workers exposed to the precarity produced through labour market flexibilisation, this would undermine one of the core claims of the flexicurity paradigm. It is a claim of this thesis that flexicurity in the Netherlands produces precarity of income and of self-understanding, and that in so doing it partially and only for some mitigates against the former, but fails to appreciate or ameliorate the latter. This argument is developed toward the end of chapter 5 which presents a Grounded Theory of when flexibility is precarious. This current chapter will proceed with a discussion of the development and current contours of flexicurity in the Netherlands.
2.2 Narrowing the gap between insiders and outsiders – taking the low road
The origins of a flexicurity approach in the Netherlands can be identified with the introduction of the flexibility and security law in 1999. At the time of its introduction the law was promoted as a means to narrow the gap between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ in the Dutch labour market – the former being those in employment under open-ended contracts and often covered by collective agreements, the latter being the unemployed and those in employment under temporary contracts. This logic was presented in a 1997 memorandum issued by the Dutch Minister of Social Affairs and Employment which became the basis for the 1999 law. The memorandum stated, “flexibilisation will take place in a ‘responsible and balanced
14 manner for both parties [insiders and outsiders]’ (MvT 1997, p. 1, translated)”, so to produce both “‘an economically competitive and socially responsible labour market’ (MvT 1997, p. 1, translated)” (Houwing 2010, p. 22).
Conceptually, we may divide ways to lower the gap between labour market insiders and outsiders into two approaches, the high road and the low road. The high road would be to improve the position of outsiders toward the position of insiders – a lifting up approach. The low road would be to undermine the protections enjoyed by the insiders, bringing them down to the position of outsiders – a levelling down approach. One way to take a lifting up approach might be to expand employment protection legislation and improve the position of institutionalised collective labour to cover more and more workers. The most favourable way to understand the approach taken in the Netherlands from the flexibility and security law onwards would be a strategy of easing labour market entry by promoting atypical employment, so to enable workers to transition into permanent employment. The neoclassical economic logic underlying this approach effectively runs as follows. Atypical employment facilitates labour market entry as employers are more inclined to take workers on if they know it will be easy to fire them.
Research has challenged the effectiveness of this strategy in the Netherlands, showing low rates of transition from temporary to open ended employment (Muffels and Wilthagen 2011, in Tros 2012, p.8). In the period 2011-2012, fewer than 15 percent of temporary employees in the Netherlands transitioned to permanent contracts, the second lowest rate of all EU member states; only France lagged behind (Vacas-Soriano 2015, p. 67). Perhaps this comes as no surprise given that one of the reactions of the Dutch government to the 2008 financial crisis was to amend the flexibility and security law to increase the number of times, from three to four, that an employer can repeatedly renew a temporary contract before a worker must be employed on a permanent basis (Tros 2012, p. 8 and Nardo and Rossetti 2013, p. 23). Promoting atypical work, then, has not been an effective policy strategy in the Netherlands for improving the labour market position of outsiders toward the position of insiders. The labour market deregulation underlying this approach can be understood more accurately as the low road to narrowing the gap between the two groups; a levelling down rather than lifting up approach.
15 2.3 Three recent trends in precarious employment in the Netherlands
Precarious employment exists most acutely at the margins of the economy. Broughton et al. (2016) have identified three groups in the Netherlands that have been growing in recent years and which are engaged in particularly precarious employment with limited employment and social protections: those in quasi self-employment, on zero-hour contracts, and posted migrant workers. These workers operate at the extremes of employer-side flexibility. The number of people in suspected quasi self-employment has been on the rise in the Netherlands. Quasi self-employment is defined by Broughton et al. as “a situation in which an individual is nominally self-employed but in reality works for much of the time for one employer in a relationship that is, in all but name, a dependent employment relationship” (2016, p. 94). This is effectively extremely flexible employment, where the employer has the unilateral ability to stop using a quasi self-employed worker’s services at any time. This amounts to terminating what is in reality an employment relationship. Quasi self-employment, then, is precarious employment. Of further concern, is that quasi self-employed workers are excluded from workplace pensions and in case of sickness and unemployment, the social security protections that are available to employees. Given these exclusions, this form of precarious employment is particularly likely to produce precarious workers. It is hard to measure the extent of quasi self-employment, but one proxy measure – the number of self-employed workers without personnel – indicates it is rising (Broughton et al. 2016, p. 48). At the same time, they are often low paid; more than 50 per cent of self-employed workers in the Netherlands without personnel earn an hourly wage below 130 per cent of the legal minimum (in Broughton et al. 2016, p. 54, source Statistics Netherlands). Several freelancers have been interviewed for this thesis, some were unequivocally and genuinely self-employed but one freelance language teacher in particular discussed experiencing a client making demands on her as if she were an employee. In one instance she was threatened with legal action, without any basis, on declining to teach a course she had been offered.
Another form of extremely flexible employment relation is the zero hour contract, where workers are not guaranteed any hours of work per week but who often must be available on very short notice. There has been an increase in the number of people employed on this type of contract over recent years in the Netherlands, rising from 164,000 people in 2010 to 228,000 in 2014 (Broughton et al. 2016, p. 54). Given the often low and always uncertain pay associated with these contracts, this is a particularly precarious form of employment. In the Netherlands, zero hour contracts are particularly prevalent in the retail, hotel and catering
16 sectors, and in outsourced cleaning and security services (Broughton et al. 2016, p. 54). Employed on a zero hour contract, two cycle couriers for an online food delivery company were interviewed for this thesis, one who had been working at the company for a few months and another just about to start.
Although not interviewed for this thesis, posted migrant workers have also been identified as being at particular risk of precarious employment. They will typically have short-term contracts, and there is a concern over abuse of posted migrant workers’ rights facilitated in part by their lack of knowledge about their rights in the Netherlands. In some instances, housing is provided by the employer and paid for out of wages. This makes these workers even more acutely dependent on their employer (Broughton et al. 2016, p. 54). In the Netherlands, posted migrant workers are concentrated in the construction, horticulture (flower and vegetable farming), catering and road haulage sectors (Berkhout et al. 2014, in Broughton et al. 2016, p. 54).
2.4 Security policies in the Netherlands
Consistent with the understanding of flexibility set out in chapter 1, labour market deregulation tends to increase employer-side flexibility, which in turn tends to increase instances of precarious employment. At the same time, the security side of flexicurity policy can be understood as offering a set of buffers against precarious employment producing precarious workers. In particular, unemployment benefit can be usefully conceptualised as a buffer against precarity of income. Conceptually, the role of buffers in the contingency of the relationship between precarious employment and precarious workers is discussed in chapter 3. The extent to which unemployment benefit functions as a buffer against precarity of income will depend on the level at which it is set, and the conditions that are attached to it. This chapter proceeds with a discussion of the security policies of flexicurity – unemployment benefit and activation policies - which can be usefully conceptualised as buffers against precarity.
2.4.1 Unemployment benefit – level, conditions and exclusions
In the Netherlands unemployment benefit is available according to the following conditions. One must be (i) involuntarily unemployed either completely or partially (having lost at least five working hours per week or half of the working hours per week if working less than 10 hours); (ii) be capable for work; (iii) available for work; (iv) below the legal retirement age
17 (65 in 2017); (v) seeking employment; and (vi) legally resident in the Netherlands (MISSOC 2016).
In addition, to qualify for three months of benefits, a person must have been in paid employment for at least 26 of the last 36 weeks. Benefits are paid from the 4th month, up to the 38th month for each month they have been in employment, so long as the person has received wages for at least 208 hours in four of the five preceding years. The maximum length of unemployment benefit is being reduced to 24 months by April 2019. Benefits are paid at 75 per cent of the last daily wage (maximum reference wage of €203.85) during the first two months, and 70 per cent thereafter (MISSOC 2016).
In summary, unemployment benefits are a significant but partial buffer against precarity of income in the Netherlands for those eligible, while others are excluded. If engaged in precarious employment, those who are excluded are at a high risk of bearing the financial consequences of precarity. Those excluded notably include: the self-employed or freelancers, people not legally resident, and those entering unemployment again after only a short period of employment. The latter may not have been employed for enough time in the preceding period to qualify. Secondly, for those eligible, who have no other alternative sources of income, the 75 per cent replacement rate may still leave them experiencing a precarity of income. For people without spare income, a 25 per cent drop in income from wages on being made unemployed may leave them unable to cover essential outgoings – both the risk and actuality of this would constitute a precarity of income.
2.4.2 Active labour market policies – rapid reform, outsourcing and fragmentation
Alongside unemployment benefit, active labour market policies make up the security side of flexicurity policy. These are those policies designed to ‘activate’ worker’s labour market participation, by facilitating potential workers entry into the labour market and in the case of unemployment by easing job to job transitions. Concretely, activation policy can take a number of different forms, these include: the provision of training or retraining, sometimes alongside employment; job search support; and wage-cost subsidies for employers taking on ‘hard to place’ workers (Blommesteijn et al. 2012, p. 622). Since the early 2000s, the provision of activation services in the Netherlands has been decentralised and marketised. Municipal, rather than national, agencies are responsible for providing support to the unemployed, and they can provide services directly or outsource them (van Berkel and de Graaf 2011, p. 137; Lindsay and McQuaid 2009, p. 454). The 2009 investment in young
18 people act was for a time an exception. Under the act a national guarantee was made that unemployed people under 27 would be given either a job offer, or an offer of vocational training (van Berkel and de Graaf 2011, p. 137). However in 2012, the act was withdrawn (Tros 2012, p. 12). As a result, “[n]owadays, national activation programmes are completely non-existent” (van Berkel and de Graaf 2011, p. 137). Activation policy in the Netherlands, then, is highly fragmented; provision is determined at the municipal level and there is no national set of practices to be described.
2.4.3 A limitation of this thesis – an emphasis on unemployment benefits, over activation policy
Activation policy in the Netherlands has been subject to rapid and almost continual reform since the early 2000s. Perhaps owing to the usual lag-time between policy changes and academic research, there has not yet been research published on changes over the last few years (the papers from 2011 and 2012 referenced in the preceding paragraph are the most recent published detailing reforms to activation policy in the Netherlands). Due to reasons of feasibility, primarily time-constraints, it is beyond the scope of this thesis to conduct additional primary research to paint a detailed picture of the locally variable provision of activation services in the Netherlands. Further research into the variety of activation provision, and unemployed people’s experience of interaction with these services, would be necessary to comprehensively incorporate activation policy into the theory presented in this thesis of when flexibility, under conditions of flexicurity in the Netherlands, is precarious. It would be an aim of such further research to fully incorporate activation services into the framework presented of the various buffers against precarious employment producing precarious workers. This may be done in at least the following ways. First, activation services may decrease the buffering effect unemployment benefits have against precarity of income. This would depend on the extent to which activation services threaten benefit sanctions against the unemployed, or decrease the level of benefits as an ‘incentive’ to finding employment. Activation services may be experienced by the unemployed as a bureaucratic and invasive nightmare, compounding the precarity of unemployment with humiliation and discipline; as depicted in the 2016 film, I, Daniel Blake. On the other hand, to the extent that job search support and retraining are meaningful and supportive interventions that help unemployed people to find suitable work, they may act as buffers against precarity. If they help people to find appropriate work quickly, by decreasing the likelihood of medium or
19 long-term unemployment, they buffer against the precarity of income this would otherwise entail. At the same time these services could buffer against precarity of self-understanding1 if instead of people experiencing a chain of short-term jobs as a lack of self-authorship and being disposable, they experience this as meaningful variety in work with supported transitions.
However, the experience of the other flagship flexicurity country Denmark, presents caution against this more hopeful understanding of activation policy. Jorgensen (2009) details the shift that has occurred in Danish activation policy since the mid-2000s, where there has been a new emphasis on sanctioning over retraining, and the imposition of stringent monitoring and contact rules (Jorgensen 2009, pp. 350-352, fig.1). Unemployment benefits have become conditional on taking “paid work irrespective of the quality of job offers” (Jorgensen 2009, p. 357), and on demonstrating having sent at least four job applications each week (Jorgensen 2009, p. 352). Under this approach, unemployment is understood as an individual responsibility rather than a structural condition. By this logic unemployment becomes a problem to be addressed by activation policies which constitute “a new behavioural policy... to counter the [supposed] motivational deficits of the unemployed person” (Jorgensen 2009, p.356). To the extent that there’s a logic of activation policy under flexicurity this may indicate the direction being taken in the Netherlands. However the possibility of national variation must be taken seriously. It is beyond the scope of this thesis to conduct systematic primary research into people’s experiences of activation services in the Netherlands. This research would be required to concretely and comprehensively establish the bearing Dutch activation policy has on the way precarity is experienced under flexicurity in the Netherlands. This thesis takes forward a focus on the unemployment benefit aspect of security policy. This is conceptualised as a buffer against precarity of income. However, while a comprehensive exploration is not feasible, attempts have been made in this thesis to research the bearing activation policies have on the production of precarious workers under conditions of employer-side flexibility. Interview subjects - workers in employer-side flexible employment - have been asked about any experiences they have had applying for unemployment or social benefits. They have also been asked if receiving benefits was conditional on engaging in any activation programmes, and if so what their experience of this was like. These responses are discussed in chapter 5 where the interviews are presented and analysed. Benefit sanctions
20 associated with activation policy, which can be imposed by Dutch municipalities if the unemployed do not cooperate with the employment services (MISSOC 2016), are conceptualised as an exclusion from unemployment benefit. The threat of this, or its actuality, decreases the buffering effect of unemployment benefits against precarity of income.
21
Chapter 3 - Precarity
3.1 Precarity and work - a discussion of a field of concepts
Precarity is an increasingly influential concept in sociological debates about the changing nature of work (most notably: Pitrou 1978a; 1978b; Rodgers 1989; Clement et al. 2009; Vosko et al. 2009; Vosko 2010; Campbell and Price 2016; Standing 2016). Precarity has also been the subject of recent policy research commissioned by the European Commission and Parliament (McKay et al. 2012; Broughton et al. 2016). At the same time, conceptualisations in the literature have been varied, often lacking clarity. Debates have given rise to a range of concepts and terms: precariousness, precarity (précarité), precarious employment, precarious workers and precarious lives. More or less appropriately, these terms are often used interchangeably. I seek to bring some conceptual clarity to these terms here, map the relations between them and reach settled definitions for use in this thesis. This will aid in the formation of an initial theory of when flexibility is precarious, before refinement or revision following analysis of interview data.
3.1.1 Precariousness, precarity and précarité
As used in ordinary everyday language, the Oxford English dictionary defines precariousness as “[t]he state or condition of being precarious (in various senses); esp. insecurity, uncertainty, instability” (Precariousness, 2007). In defining precarious, it also emphasises being “exposed to risk” (Precarious, 2007).
This ordinary language usage permeates the conception of precariousness developed by Butler (Butler 2004; 2017; Butler et. al 2016). Butler argues that human ontology - the facts of human existence related to our embodied being and corresponding needs that must be fulfilled to persist, to survive – gives rise to a universal human vulnerability. What is more we have an interdependence of needs – in that we have social needs, and that we rely on each other through economic and political relations for the fulfilment of our material needs. This universal embodied vulnerability and our interdependence mean that no one is invulnerable; we are always reliant on the ongoing fulfilment our needs to persist, and certainly to live a good life. To this extent, “everyone is precarious” (Butler in Puar et al. 2012, p. 170). This is the “unself-sufficiency of the embodied subject” (Butler 2017). As Berlant writes, precariousness is
22 an existential problem (we are all contingent beings, and life proceeds without guarantees, just with more or less reliable infrastructures of continuity) (Berlant in Puar et al. 2012, p. 166).
Precariousness, then, may be used to describe a universal vulnerability in the human condition. We can, following Butler, usefully distinguish precarity from precariousness. Precarity is a specific rather universal human condition that is “differentially distributed,” reflecting the “unequal distribution of conditions required for continued life” (Butler in Puar et al. 2012, p. 169). We can understand precarity as the actuality of a universal human potentiality described by precariousness, so precarity is the imminent threat or actual experience of unfulfilled needs. What is more, the differential distribution of precarity is produced socially in that in that our individual
precarity is to a large extent dependent upon the organisation of economic and social relationships, the presence or absence of sustaining infrastructures and social and political institutions (Butler in Puar et al. 2012, p. 170).
In this thesis “sustaining infrastructures” in people’s lives will be understood as various buffers against experiencing precarity. The sociologist Pitrou (1978a, 1978b) was among the first to use the term précarité during the 1970s, as part of French debates about precarious families (Clement et al. 2009, p. 240). The concept encompassed the insecurity of their social position, instability of their networks and their vulnerability. The term précarité (like precariousness and precarity), then, describes a broad condition of insecurity and uncertainty, extending beyond just the employment relationship (Clement et al. 2009, p. 240-241).
In his discussion of worker insecurity, Crouch (2015) makes a distinction between objective and subjective security. Objective economic security might be variously measured by the extent to which labour law offers employment protection, or social policy offers generous unemployment benefits, or a flourishing economy provides job opportunities (Crouch 2015, p. 23). Subjective economic security would be easily measured by asking people if they feel secure. At the level of the economy feelings are important because people may behave in a way that would indicate insecurity, even if by objective measures they are not. Such behaviour might include restricted spending habits. On the other hand, for example, people may exhibit spending habits indicating security when objectively they are not economically secure; perhaps their consumption is fuelled by risky debt (Crouch 2015, p. 23). Security, and
23 insecurity, then, can be determined both objectively and subjectively – and both will be important to the functioning of an economy, and more broadly to people’s lived experience. This thesis will use the term precarity to describe a specific condition, whereby people experience the consequences of their exposure to precariousness. Specifically, the thesis in part deals with the relationship between precarious employment and precarious workers, and is discussed at some length below. For now, let us say that precarious employment can be understood to mirror a Butlerian conception of precariousness as a vulnerability to experience precarity. In other words, those engaged in precarious employment are vulnerable to becoming precarious workers. Precarious workers are those actually bearing the consequences of precarity.
3.1.2 Precarious employment and precarious work
Precarious employment is paid work exhibiting objective job characteristics involving insecurity, and is a multi-dimensional concept (Campbell and Price 2016, p. 315; Vosko et al. 2009, p. 2). In detailing a precise definition of this multi-dimensional concept a range of job characteristics that involve insecurity must be specified. These may include a short employment contract or high risk of termination; low wages; a low level of worker control over working conditions, wages, work intensity and hours; and a low level of regulatory and collectively bargained protection in employment (Rodgers 1989, p. 3; Vosko et al. 2009, p. 7; Campbell and Price 2016, p. 315). On this understanding, precarious employment is a continuum rather than a binary or dichotomous concept; a particular job may be more or less precarious (Vosko et al. 2009, p.7). This lies in contrast to a one-dimensional understanding of precarious employment that might equate it solely with temporary or fixed contracts, and secure employment with permanent or open-ended contracts. While contract type is one dimension of precarious employment it is not the only one, a richer conception would include some of the other job characteristics listed above. Indeed, precarious employment can be found in both temporary and permanent jobs (Rodgers 1989, p. 1, 3). For example, a permanent job - with an open ended contract - that is nonetheless low paid, with a low level of worker control over working conditions may still accurately be considered precarious. Following a slightly modified version of the definition used by Campbell and Price (2016, p. 320), itself based on that developed by Vosko (2010, p. 2) following Rodgers (1989, p. 3), I define precarious employment as follows. Precarious employment is a continuum found most completely in paid work with the following characteristics: (i) short employment contract or
24 high risk of termination, (ii) low wages, (iii) a low level of worker control over working conditions, wages, work intensity and hours, (iv) and a low level of regulatory and collectively bargained protection in employment.
The relationship between flexibility and precarious employment can be understood as follows: when employer-side flexibility is a feature of paid work it is precarious employment. Employer-side flexibility pertains when an employer has any of the following unilateral abilities: (i) to fire workers (external-numerical flexibility); (ii) to vary worker’s hours (internal-numerical flexibility); (iii) to vary worker’s job role (functional flexibility); or (iv) to vary worker’s wages (wage flexibility). When one or more of these pertain a job can accurately be described as precarious on the definition of precarious employment set out above. Specifically, the unilateral ability of the employer to terminate contracts of employment or freelance relations entails a high risk of termination. When an employer can unilaterally change a worker’s hours or job role, workers will have a low level of control over their working lives. When employers can unilaterally change worker’s wages, this leaves them at risk of a reduction in their income. All of these abilities are facilitated by low levels of regulatory and collectively bargained protection in employment which may otherwise prevent employers from being able to do these things unilaterally.
The term precarious work is also used in the literature often interchangeably with precarious employment. Precarious employment is preferred here, given the intended reference specifically to paid work rather than the broader Marxian conception of work in general as “purposive interaction with the world” around us (Dean 2014, p. 155). Indeed, for Marx work may involve a range of activities, outside of paid employment, from hunting, fishing and rearing cattle to social criticism (Marx 1845). Precarious work, then, would imply a broader category than precarious paid work. Precarious employment is also imperfect as a term, given that it might be taken to refer only to those carrying out precarious paid work in a formal employment relation, however the intention here is also to refer to precarious freelancers. Nonetheless a choice must be made, and precarious employment is taken forward for use in this thesis, and refers to all workers performing precarious paid work, whether freelance or formally employed.
3.1.3 Precarious workers and precarious lives
Precarious workers are those not only engaged in precarious employment, but also bearing the consequences of precarity (Campbell and Price 2016, p. 315). Precarious employment is
25 variously experienced by different individuals depending on features of their lives such as where and with whom they live, the prevailing welfare state policy, their social network and labour market prospects. Clement et al. have expressed this as the contingent rather than deterministic relationship between precarious employment and precarious lives (2009, p. 244). The contingency of this relationship can be understood in terms of various “buffers” against bearing the consequences of precarity (Clement et. al 2009, p. 242). Deploying Butler’s distinction between precariousness and precarity (discussed above), buffers may be understood as those features of the lives of workers engaged in precarious employment that prevent them bearing the consequences of the vulnerability this entails as precarity. Without buffers, precarious employment produces precarious workers, leading precarious lives. Engaging in precarious employment, then, is a necessary but not sufficient condition for being a precarious worker. It is also worth noting that other people, besides workers may also lead precarious lives. Indeed, those not in paid work are often at the greatest risk of leading a precarious life. To describe those people excluded from paid employment and from social security, Clement et al. have coined the term “precarious unemployment” (2009, p. 243). Precarious employment, then, is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for leading a precarious life. Whilst accepting that there are other ways precarity can arise than through work, this thesis is concerned with the ways in which flexibility creates precarious employment, and when this does or does not create precarious workers.
3.2 Precarious workers and precarious lives: the collective and individual consequences As has been argued so far, when labour market flexibilisation increases employer-side flexibility, the instance and intensity of precarious employment is increased. This section discusses the individual and collective risks arising as a consequence.
3.2.1 Collective consequences: macro-economic risks
At the level of the political-economy widespread precarity entails the risk that the labour market fails to provide for the “means of its own existence,” on these terms insecurity can be conceived of as a market failure (Crouch 2015, p.8). If workers receive insufficient wages, or alternative social provision in lieu of wages, this will result in inadequate demand for goods and services produced in the economy, as “workers are unable to buy what they produce” (Kalleberg 2009, p.8). Inadequate demand may also arise from mere uncertainty – the (perceived) threat of insufficient income. In other words, uncertainty in employment can undermine consumer confidence (Crouch 2015, p. 8). In the first instance inadequate demand
26 may arise from employment that is precarious due to actually low wages. In the second instance, owing to employment that is precarious due to contract insecurity (external-numerical flexibility) or uncertainty over hours of work (internal-(external-numerical flexibility) or wages (wage flexibility).
More fundamentally if taken to the extreme, without sufficient subsistence under conditions of widespread precarity there is a risk that individuals are unable to support themselves and any dependents including children. In short, through its immiseration there is a risk that under widespread acute precarity the workforce is not reproduced (Polanyi 2001 [1944], p.76). It is worth noting that this is a capitalist phenomena, relying on the commodification of land as well as labour; a failure to reproduce the workforce is reliant on individuals and families being unable to provide for their subsistence directly without having to purchase goods on the market. As Esping-Andersen notes, few people depended on wage labour for their survival in pre-capitalist societies (1990, p. 21). Indeed, “[i]t is as markets become universal and hegemonic that the welfare of individuals comes to depend entirely on the cash nexus” (Esping-Andersen 1990, p. 21).
3.2.2 Collective consequences: atomisation and undermined social cohesion
Drawing on Putnam’s (2000) study of community cohesion across the US, Kalleberg argues that precarious work may undermine community cohesion as those moving into an area may be less likely to “set down roots” owing to job insecurity or unpredictability of work hours (Kalleberg 2009, p. 10). As well as isolation from their communities outside of work, some forms of precarious employment see workers isolated from each other including those working in similar jobs, even for the same company. A number of freelancers interviewed for this thesis discussed the loneliness of their work and their lack of interaction with co-workers; these findings are presented in chapter 5. The implication for the potential of a precarious class is developed in chapter 6.
3.2.3 Individual consequences: precarity of income
Precarity of income can be experienced as pervasive uncertainty over having a total income sufficient to meet basic needs, or total income actually insufficient to do so. Total income is understood as income from all sources which may include wages alongside private supplementary income and collective supplementary income. These forms of supplementary income are specified below as buffers against precarity.
27 Uncertainty over income from work can have a high human cost even if it isn’t actually realised in a significant loss of income. For example, uncertainty about the future affects couple’s decisions about marriage and when if to have children (Coontz 2005, in Kalleberg 2009, p. 9). The negative impact of job insecurity on psychological health has been well documented in work-place psychology studies (see, De Witte 1999). The psychological consequences of job insecurity demonstrated in De Witte’s meta-study were heightened stress, anxiety, depression and exhaustion (De Witte 1999, pp. 156-157). The study also collects evidence of negative effects on physical health, such as physical strains, higher blood pressure, and higher risk of heart disease (De Witte 1999, pp. 157-158).
Buffers against precarity of income. Buffers against precarity (Clement et. al 2009, p. 242) in general are defined here as those features of worker’s lives which prevent them bearing (all) the consequences of precarious employment. Buffers against precarity of income are sources of income supplementary to wages which prevent workers engaged in precarious employment experiencing precarity of income. These may be divided into collective supplementary income and private supplementary income. Collective supplementary income is state income support – including unemployment benefits, childcare and student grants. Private supplementary income includes familial income from a partner, parent or child, income from drawing on savings or other wealth, and student loans. Various buffers against precarity of income are explored with detail from interview subject’s lives in chapter 5.
3.2.4 Individual consequences: precarity of self-understanding
In his book, The Corrosion of Character, Sennett (1998) writes about the challenges of sustaining personal character under flexible capitalism. He identifies how flexibility requires workers to bear more risk, rely less on regulation, and to be responsive to change on short notice (Sennett 1998, p. 9). Adopting one of the euphemisms of employers in this present regime, Sennett writes, “[workers] are asked to behave nimbly” (Sennett 1998, p. 9). When flexibility operates at employer discretion, creating precarious employment, workers may experience the consequences of this as precarity of income, but they may also experience the consequences immaterially.
Under pervasive labour market flexibility “[t]he system radiates indifference,” such that in the ordinary course of employment “people are treated as disposable” (Sennett 1998, p. 146). Normalising atypical employment is the declared intent of the Dutch state, which in practice means the spread of precarious employment. In demanding and enacting flexibility, firms and
28 the state “brutally diminish the sense of mattering as a person, of being necessary to others” (Sennett 1998, p. 146). While under a system of flexicurity the Dutch state offers some security of income in unemployment to some workers, partially mitigating the insecurity promoting effects of policies promoting employer-side flexibility, other concerns still remain. This section is concerned with discussing the immaterial consequences of precarity, described in this thesis as precarity of self-understanding. As a feature of the lives of precarious workers, this aspect of precarity is left completely underappreciated and unaddressed by the security policies of the flexicurity paradigm. In his writings, Sennett’s concern is over how in a work world of employee-borne risk and discontinuity, we can decide on what is of lasting value in ourselves, which long-term goals we should pursue accordingly, and which communities and institutions will be supportive (Sennett 1998, p. 10).
When job insecurity forces workers into patterns of episodic employment, and especially when reacting demands that they relocate, the “world does not offer much, either economically or socially, in the way of narrative” (Sennett 1998, p. 30). Fragmented employment, at employer discretion rather than through worker choice, undermines our ability to make sense of our lives in a way which is consistent with self-authorship. We are unable to articulate reasons satisfying to ourselves for the chronicle of events in our lives (Sennett 1998, p. 30). Under these conditions our ability to select and affirm in action such long-term oriented character traits as “loyalty, commitment, purpose, and resolution” is undermined (Sennett 1998, p. 30).
Sennett develops and exemplifies this argument through a comparison of father and son, Enrico and Rico (Sennett 1998, chpt 1, pp. 15-31). It is worth recounting this comparison here in developing some of the non-financial, immaterial, risks of precarity under pervasive conditions of employer-side flexibility. Enrico, a caretaker, is typical of that post-World War Two generation of workers in the US and Western Europe, engaged in a single or small number of long-term stable full-time jobs over the course of their working life. Along with union, employment legislation and pension coverage, we may describe this as the standard employment relationship. Enrico knew when he would retire and how much his pension would be. The family was able to make gradual improvements to their home over time, based on predictably accumulated savings.
[Enrico] carved out a clear story for himself in which his experience accumulated materially and psychically; his life made sense to him as a linear narrative... The
29 janitor felt he became the author of his life..., this narrative provided him with a sense of self-respect (Sennett 1998, p. 16).
The son, Rico, an MBA graduate, started his career as a technology adviser to a venture capital firm before setting up his own consulting firm. Contrary to his hopes, Rico did not gain control over his working life after starting his own firm. Instead, he found himself at the beck and call of clients and potential clients; he became “subservient to the schedules of people... in no way obliged to respond to him” (Sennett 1998, p. 19). He later returned to corporate employment, moving between jobs across the US a number of times, more than once due to redundancy after his company ‘downsized’. Rico experienced anomie, in particular alienation from the character traits he wanted to demonstrate, due to their contrast with the practice of his life. In one example, Sennett records Rico lamenting this disjuncture and his consequent inability to embody the values he wanted to teach his children, “‘[y]ou can’t imagine how stupid I feel when I talk to my kids about commitment. It’s an abstract virtue to them; they don’t see it anywhere’” (Sennett 1998, p. 25).
Through the comparison of theoretically relevant exemplary cases2, Sennett demonstrates the corrosive consequences of involuntary episodic employment on our ability to form a coherent narrative of our lives with relation to our employment, and to settle on and practice character traits which require long-term and stable relations, including employment relations. This holds even for the relative winners of the flexible economy; Rico’s pay is in the top five per cent of the US wage scale (Sennett 1998, p. 18). Employment is a dominant influence on how we spend our time, the life we lead outside of it, where we live and how we identify ourselves. As a result, the consequences for the way we understand ourselves through paid work are not contained in that sphere but translate to our lives in general. An (involuntary) change of employment, or becoming unemployed, may mean a change of housing, if this involves moving to a new area it may involve a complete shift in our daily practice as we no longer see the same friends, engage in the same clubs and societies, and stop regularly visiting the places and doing the things we did before. The picture is further complicated when workers have dependents - relocation can involve children changing schools and at the same time caring for elderly dependents becomes more difficult.
2
In this thesis interview case selection takes a comparable approach of theoretical sampling, as discussed in chapter 4.
