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Between Normalisation and Resistance. Life Strategies of Young Precarious Workers

100%
Karolak M.
Warsaw Forum of Economic Sociology
|
2017
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vol. 8
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issue 15
7-32
EN
In recent years, the experience of precarious employment and uncertain employment conditions has become the subject of an increasing amount of sociological studies, both in Poland and worldwide. The research places a particularly strong emphasis on young people who, more than other social categories, tend to be excluded from stable segments of the labour market. However, the conclusions drawn from the analyses are ambivalent – on the one hand, we observe a process of normalisation of precariousness which may create framework conditions for the emergence of some expected professional career models; on the other hand, we also notice the process of contestation demonstrated by the precariat, the ‘classin-the-making’. In this article we discuss the problems of precarious work by analysing a range of life strategies of young Poles. The empirical basis for the study was provided by the Beethoven PREWORK project funded by the Polish National Science Centre (NCN) and its qualitative part which consisted of biographical narrative interviews with groups of individuals aged 30 or younger, employed on fixedterm contracts, working as unpaid interns or temporarily outside the labour market, from the three large cities and four small towns of Lower Silesia, Mazovia and Łódzkie regions. In this article we present a preliminary typology of life strategies reconstructed in the course of the analysis of the collected data. In each of the four distinguished types we can notice a tension between the normalisation and the contestation of precarity, which adds dynamism to the career choices made by the individuals and – at least in some of the cases – may contribute to the development of diverse forms of resistance to precarious employment.
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Práce za pokladnou : flexibilní organizace v supermarketech a prekarizace práce

100%
Bek T.
Sociologický časopis. Czech Sociological Review
|
2019
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vol. 55
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issue 1
61-86
EN
Research on precarious work and the working conditions of lowwage workers often stresses the role of the labour market or state institutions in either creating or exacerbating already precarious working conditions. However, it often ignores their organisational aspects. At the same time, in organisation studies there is a large body of literature that focuses on internal organisational structures but disregards working conditions. This article is based on a case study of supermarket cashiers and deals with the flexibilisation of their work. Firms use two forms of flexibility as a cost-cutting strategy: numerical and functional flexibility. Numerical flexibility divides workers into different groups according to their work contract. This enables firms to employ as much labour as they need at a particular point in time. In effect firms reduce the number of employees while intensifying the work of the employees they retain. In the case of functional flexibility the duties and responsibilities attached to a job are redefined. In this respect, I show that the duties of the cashiers in my case study are increased beyond the scope of tasks traditionally attached to this occupation and head towards the model of a universal worker. This shift leads to a decline in qualifications that, combined with technological changes, results in the degradation of work. As a result, flexibilisation processes deepen existing asymmetries in employer-employee relationships and thereby enable firms to transfer a significant amount of market risk onto the shoulders of workers. Moreover, the negotiating position of workers remains weak and their wages low.
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