International Differences in Perceptions 1
International Differences in Perceptions of Temporary Work:
The Role of Relativity*
Lindsey M. King
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Word count = 7022
*Full paper submitted to the International Labour Process Conference, March 15 – 17, 2010, Rutgers, NJ
Direct all correspondence to Lindsey M. King, Department of Sociology, CB #3210 Hamilton Hall,University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-3210 ().
Abstract
This research project explores the relative desirability of unemployment and temporary work to understand how workers evaluate their career options. The decision-making process is proposed to be influenced by welfare state and labor market structures: employment protection legislation (EPL), prevalence of temporary employment, passive labor market policies (LMP), and the unemployment rate. The first set of analyses test whether individual welfare state components hold greater explanatory power than clusters of characteristics as described by welfare regimes. Using data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), country-level explanations are tested against the predictive power of individual work values and job characteristics of currently-employed workers. Overall, the valuation of job security significantly predicts workers’ willingness to accept temporary employment, although the strength of the relationship varies between countries. Perceptions of job security and employability reduce the likelihood that workers will choose temporary work over unemployment, while the presence and valuation of interesting work increases the likelihood. The preference for temporary work over unemployment is explained somewhat by welfare regimes, but it appears that workers’ values and perceptions of their current jobs hold far more explanatory power.
International Differences in Perceptions of Temporary Work:
The Role of Relativity
The rise of precarious employment means that workers must often face an unpleasant reality of choosing between less-than-ideal employment options. If “[b]eing employed on a fixed term contract at some point in the course of a career is…the rule rather than the exception” (Auer & Cazes 2003b: 46), understanding how workers perceive temporary jobs as an employment option is of critical importance. If temporary jobs areviewed as (1) a “trap”—part of an inescapable cycle of precarious employment—rather than a bridge to permanent work (Booth, Francesconi, & Frank 2002), (2) “bad” jobsin comparison to permanent employment (Kalleberg, Reskin & Hudson 2000), or (3) an employment situation workers choose out of necessity rather than a desire for flexibility (Feldman, Doerpinghaus, & Turnley 1995), workers may evaluate these jobs unfavorably.
To comprehend how workers evaluate their options, decisions must be analyzed with consideration of their relative attractiveness to workers (Gallie & Alm 2000).Generally, unemployment is cast as the ultimate undesirable employment outcome, yet for some workers the drawbacks of temporary work may outweigh the drawbacks of unemployment. In unemployment, there exists a strong possibility for skill degradation which increases exponentially as the length of unemployment increases (Gangl 2006). Yet many countries offer unemployment benefits with a fairly high replacement rate, reducing at least the wage-loss aspect of unemployment. Workers may underestimate the length of time they will be unemployed, believing they will move quickly into a new job and therefore believing the risks of unemployment to be minimal (Feinberg 1977). Thus, many workers may opt for unemployment if they lose their current job, believing a temporary job to be an disagreeable and unnecessary step.
Although precarious forms of employment have undoubtedly gained a larger share of the labor force since the 1980s (Booth, Dolado, & Frank 2002a), nations have developed vastly different responses to precarity and risk. As Beck states, “All Western countries are similarly affected by the informalization and individualization of paid work. But this epochal change is perceived and valued differently in different cultures.” (2000: 111). How nations handle the risks inherent in labor markets is central to understanding how workers evaluate their employment trajectories.
In this paper, I explore how currently-employed workers weigh the relative desirability of unemployment and temporary work. When forced to select one or the other, which will workers choose? The extent to which workers view temporary work as a riskier prospect than unemployment indicates the degree to which temporary jobs are viewed as “bad.” The decision-making process is proposed to be influenced by welfare state and labor market structures: unemployment insurance, legal protections for temporary workers, and the like. The explanatory value of welfare state structures will be tested against the predictive power of individual value systems and current job characteristics.
Welfare State as Risk Mitigator
Welfare states frame labor markets: Employment trajectories are strongly determined by the legal and political framework in which labor markets are embedded. Allocation of people to jobs can be facilitated or hindered by the institutional structures, and workers move through labor markets bounded to various degrees by systems of rules governing their mobility. The interconnectedness of welfare states and labor markets means that labor markets can only be understood in terms of the overarching political agenda (Esping-Andersen 1990).
The welfare state is, at its core, a system of risk management for its citizens. Edwards and Glover (2001) provide a succinct summary of the function of the welfare state:
The traditional model for extensive or developed welfare states is an institutional nation-state response to coping with unforeseen but broadly predictable consequences, based on actuarial principles and collectively shared rights and responsibilities. It is founded on a solidaristic and state-centered response to the meeting of risks encountered within a typical lifecourse on the basis of broad social obligation as part of citizenship, together with the creation of mutual security. (P. 3)
In this conceptualization, strong welfare states make ample provisions for the risks people are likely to encounter during the course of their lives. For workers, some of these risks include unemployment, involuntary job loss, skill obsolescence, insufficient wages, or insufficient work. Weak welfare states leave risk management to individuals or employers; concertive responses to labor market failures or fluctuations are minimal.
Welfare Regimes
Welfare regimes categorize countries according to the level of decommodification—the extent to which citizens are reliant on paid employment for their material well-being—and stratification experienced by its citizens (Arts 2002). Esping-Andersen’s (1990) original conceptualization of welfare regimes contained three categories: liberal, social democratic, and conservative. Liberal regimes contain deregulated labor markets and high citizen commodification: Limited social protection means that citizens are reliant on an uninterrupted career of paid employment for income maintenance. Social-democratic regimes emphasize decommodification and equality. Labor market protections are enjoyed by a broad spectrum of workers who are not exclusively dependent on employers for income. Benefits are universal and redistribution high. Conservative regimes offer moderate decommodification, but benefits are tightly linked to occupational status (Arts 2002). Workers with an occupational affiliation receive strong protections, andconservative regimes provide ample income security to cushion the impact of labor market turbulence.
The limited scope of Esping-Andersen’s original formulation omits many countries; repeated attempts have been made to expand the typology’s purview beyond three worlds of welfare capitalism. Other countries that show distinct similarities can be grouped into the Mediterranean, post-communist, and productivist regimes. Characterized by strong worker protections and moderate-to-high decommodification, Mediterranean regimes display high labor market stratification. Certain classes of workers receive extremely high protection, lessening their reliance on the state for income provision, but other workers are effectively shut out of the labor market and depend on social welfare programs for income (Dolado, García-Serrano, & Jimeno 2002).
Still left with the residue of a centrally-planned economy, post-communist welfare regimes have historically contained labor markets entirely dominated by the state: “[U]nder the full employment policy it was the responsibility of the state to provide employment to all able-bodied persons of working age” (Cazes & Nesporova 2003: 7). Employment protection has since been softened, although economic limitations prevent the state from being able to supplement increased labor market turbulence with income protection. The lingering effects of communism mean that low stratification remains a priority.
In productivist regimes,the company takes over functions usually performedby the state. Holliday (2000) describes the focus and welfare strategy of productivist regimes:
Here, social policy is strictly subordinate to the overriding policy objective of economic growth. Everything else flows from this: minimal social rights with extensions linked to productive activity, reinforcement of the position of productive elements in society, and state-market-family relationships directed towards growth. (P. 708)
Decommodification is therefore low and stratification high. Those without access to the social safety nets offered by employers have little recourse for income maintenance. Full-time, tenured employment is therefore highly desirable as citizen welfare depends on employer magnanimity. Social structure is shaped more by norms than legislation, a feature unique to the productivist regime type (Passet 2003).
Having outlined the major regime types under analysis, I shall now elaborate on the structure of temporary work and unemployment in each regime.
Temporary work and the welfare state
Employment protection legislation (EPL) governs the conditions under which employers may fire individual workers, lay off groups of workers, or employ temporary workers. “The primary task of EPL is to give more employment and income security to workers, both in their current jobs and in the case of redundancy” (Cazes & Nesporova 2003: 3), but legislation may have unintended effects. Strong EPL for permanent workersmay cause employers to rely more heavily on temporary employees as a means of circumventing strict restrictions on the hiring and firing of permanent employees. If permanent workers cannot be easily fired when employers desire or require flexibility, the converse implication is that employers will be reluctant to hire permanent workers, preferring instead to deploy temporary workers (Employment in Europe 2006).
The most notable instance of this perverse effect of EPL is Spain. Although temporary work was originally implemented to reduce high unemployment rates, EPL for permanent workers remained high. Creating flexibility in one arena while maintaining rigidity in another resulted in over-reliance on temporary workers: Over one-third of Spain’s labor force is currently on a temporary contract (Polavieja 2003). Despite attempts to reduce the disparity, Spain retains a two-tier labor market in which the market for permanent work is difficult to penetrate (Polavieja 2003).
Figure 1 summarizes the proportion of temporary workers in the labor force as a function of employment protection legislation. Liberal regimes (represented by the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Ireland) cluster in the lower-left corner of the scale, indicating that this regime type tends to be low on both EPL and temporary work. Mediterranean regimes (Spain and Portugal) exhibit the opposite pattern: EPL is extremely high, as is the proportion of temporary workers. The social democratic regimes (Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark) are centrally located on the scale, although their use of temporary workers is generally lower than their levels of EPL would suggest. Post-communist regimes (Hungary and the Czech Republic) are moderate to low on EPL and display a correspondingly low incidence of temporary work. Although productivist regimes (Japan and South Korea) have moderate employment protection legislation, the prevalence of temporary work is higher than expected. In South Korea, for example, a massive 36% of workers are on fixed-term contracts. Conservative regimes (Germany, France, Belgium, and Switzerland) offer moderate to high levels of employment protection, and the incidence of temporary work is similarlymoderate to high.
Figure 1. Strength of Employment Protection Legislation and the Proportion of Temporary Workers in the Labor Force, 2005
Notes: Data come from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Employment protection legislation is a weighted average of regulations covering regular workers, temporary workers, and collective dismissals. The scale ranges from 0 (least restrictive) to 6 (most restrictive).
Unemployment and the welfare state
“While unemployment is not the only risk temporary workers face…temporary workers are also exposed to repeat spells of temporary work,…unemployment remains a clear indicator of temporary work’s inability to integrate workers” (Gash 2008: 651). To the extent that temporary work becomes a “trap” of endless spells of temporary contracts and unemployment rather than a “bridge” into permanent work (Booth et al. 2002), workers will avoid temporary jobs. Workers’ ability to search for alternate employment depends heavily on their ability to maintain an income during spells of unemployment. For this reason, the amount of state spending on passive labor market protections (LMP),such as unemployment benefits and early retirement, is associated with high unemployment rates partly because workers have the luxury of seeking a job that fits their skills and expectations (Gangl 2008; Nickell 1997). In countries with weak passive LMP, unemployment is a highly undesirable prospect for workersdue to the high likelihood of poverty (Gallie & Paugam 2000). Low replacement rates encourage workers to find new employment quickly, regardless of how well the new job matches their skill set.
Figure2 compares passive labor market policies to the unemployment rate. With the exception of Switzerland, conservative regimes provide strong unemployment protection to workers and unemployment rates in these countries are among the highest of all regime types. Mediterranean regimes also tend to have high unemployment rates, although their spending on passive labor market policies is slightly less than that of conservative regimes. Social democratic regimes vary widely in their spending on passive labor market policies, from the substantial expenditures of Denmark to the more modest spending levels of Norway. Unemployment is similarly varied: Norway and Demark enjoy extremely low unemployment rates, while the unemployment rates of Finland and Sweden are higher than expected. Liberal regimes, once again, cluster at the low end of both scales: expenditures on passive labor market policies are exceedingly low and are
Figure 2. Passive Labor Market Policies and the Unemployment Rate, 2005
Notes: Data come from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Passive labor market policies measure government expenditures as a percent of GDP spent on unemployment income maintenance and early retirement schemes.
matched with correspondingly low unemployment. Productivist regimes resemble liberal regimes in their minimal spending on passive benefits such as unemployment insurance. Productivist regimes also parallel liberal regimes in exhibiting low levels of unemployment. Spending on passive labor market policies in post-communist regimes compares to levels in liberal and productivist regimes but unemployment is much higher than other regimes with similar spending levels.
Hypotheses
From the outline of welfare regimes and welfare state structures described above, two competing hypotheses are presented. The first hypothesis proposes that the aforementioned components of labor markets—employment protection legislation, temporary workers as a proportion of the labor force, passive labor market policies, and the unemployment rate—individually affect workers’ willingness to accept temporary employment. The competing hypothesis proposes that clusters of labor market characteristics, as embodied by welfare regime typologies, are better able to predict workers’ acceptance of temporary employment.
WORK VALUES AND PERCEIVED JOB CHARACTERISTICS
Work Values: The importance of job security
Work values encapsulate the desired characteristics of a work situation (Judge & Bretz 1992; Kalleberg 1977). As defined by Kalleberg and Reynolds (2003), work values encompass:
1) the extent to which people are involved in work, or the centrality of work to their lives; 2) the importance people place on various job facets, or their ‘conceptions of the desirable’ with regard to their work activity; and 3) the extent to which people work in the particular arrangement voluntarily or involuntarily.” (P. 425)
The “conceptions of the desirable” pertain to workers’ attraction to or revulsion from temporary work: to the extent that temporary employment matches desired work characteristics, workers should seek out, or at least not actively avoid, this type of employment arrangement. To the degree that the precarious nature of temporary work fails to fit workers’ ideals, these types of jobs should be avoided when possible.
Work values are hypothesized to affect the willingness to accept temporary work thusly: Workers who value the extrinsic rewards of work—“ rewards provided by the organization for the purpose of facilitating or motivating task performance” (Mottaz 1985: 366) such as job security, promotion prospects, and pay—should show an aversion to temporary work. Conversely, workers who value the intrinsic rewards of work—rewards “ derived from the content of the task itself” (Mottaz 1985: 366) should prefer temporary work over no job at all because work itself is seen as a rewarding undertaking.
The relationship between work values and willingness to accept temporary work may differ across countries. Specifically, the relationship between job security valuation, an extrinsic work reward, and willingness to accept temporary employment may vary. Denmark, for instance, is well known for its system of “flexicurity:” flexible work combined with high levels of social protection (Madsen 2008). The combination removes the uncertainty usually associated with temporary work, giving rise to labor markets characterized by high flexibility. Because job security in Denmark is not associated with “good” jobs, the link between job security valuation and willingness to accept temporary work may be weak.
Conversely and as previously noted, Spain exhibits a two-tier labor market in which it is difficult for temporary workers to transition into permanent work (Polavieja 2003). A similar scene unfolds in Japan: Permanent workers enjoy a host of protections provided by their employers, while temporary and other non-standard workers are relatively deprived (Passet 2003). The divide between “good” and “bad” jobs being determined by permanent or temporary employment status, it seems that job security valuation would exhibit a strong relationship with amenability to temporary work in these cases.