High Cost of On-Call Employees’ Flexibility
Since the 1990s, more and more people in Sweden have had fixed-term employment. Among these employees, there has been a marked increase in those called in when the employer identifies a short-term need. However, on-call employees pay a high price for the employer’s desire for flexibility. They find it difficult to plan their lives, and many of them experience financial stress. This is shown by a thesis from the University of Gothenburg.
Johan Alfonsson’s dissertation investigates why more and more young people are working as on-demand and hourly workers, and how their employment affects their lives.
He links the emergence of on-demand employment to changes in the Swedish and global economy since the crises of the 1970s, pointing out that a growing share of the economy is based in highly mobile sectors such as the financial and service sectors.
- Production is carried out on a just-in-time basis, and operations are adapted according to the exact amount of labour needed at that moment, he explains. For this to work, a flexible, mobile workforce is required that is willing to jump in and work when needed.
Production is carried out on a just-in-time basis, and operations are adapted according to the exact amount of labour needed at that moment.
His results show that this development was made possible by two factors.
- Sweden has undergone an incredible transformation over the past 30 years. First, employment protection has been progressively weakened. In the early 1990s, we had some of the toughest regulations for using temporary workers. Today, we have some of the weakest in the EU. Second, unemployment has increased dramatically and the pressure on the unemployed to apply for more jobs has increased the supply of labour that will accept these conditions.
A lack of predictability creates stress
Johan Alfonsson has also investigated how on-call employees are affected by the form of employment, and shows that it shifts from being primarily positive to being insecure and distressing. The differences are due to employment being designed in different ways, different people having different financial circumstances, and whether the person is employed voluntarily or involuntarily.
The thesis identifies three different types of need-based employment: nomadic employee, permanent substitute and informal deputy. They range from the most insecure to less insecure variants.
- Those who rarely know when or where they will work are the ones who experience the most financial stress and uncertainty. Because of this financial insecurity, they have to plan their time when they are not working as if they could get work. This leads to difficulties planning life outside work, and social life can be adversely affected. Those who know more often when and where they will work, experience these problems to a lesser extent.
Those who rarely know when or where they will work are the ones who experience the most financial stress and uncertainty.
According to Johan Alfonsson, there is a strong ideal in our society that we should be able to control our own lives and exercise self-determination.
- It is hard for on-call employees to live up to this self-determination. Many of them feel that they have limited control over their own lives, and that they are denied the opportunity to plan their leisure time and cultivate social relationships.
It is this lack of predictability that causes problems.
- It is this lack of predictability that causes problems, he concludes. To address this, the number of on-call jobs needs to be limited, and this group needs easier access to unemployment benefits.
A summary of the thesis “Alienation and Work. The Condition of Young On-Call Employees in Flexible Capitalism” has been published digitally by the University of Gothenburg: http://hdl.handle.net/2077/63302