Kim Bosmans

How does employment quality relate to health and job satisfaction in Europe? A typological approach

The changing nature of employment in recent decades, due to an increased emphasis on flexibility and competitiveness in European labour markets, compels the need to assess the consequences of contemporary employment situations for workers. This article aims to study the relation between the quality of employment and the health and well-being of European workers, using data from the 2010 European Working Conditions Survey. A typology of employment arrangements, mapping out employment quality in the European labour force, is constructed by means of a Latent Class Cluster Analysis. This innovative approach shows that it is possible to condense multiple factors characterising the employment situation into five job types: Standard Employment Relationship-like (SER-like), instrumental, precarious unsustainable, precarious intensive and portfolio jobs. Binary logistic regression analyses show that, controlling for other work quality characteristics, this employment quality typology is related to self-perceived job satisfaction, general health and mental health. Precarious intensive jobs are associated with the worst and SER-like jobs with the best health and well-being situation. The findings presented in this study indicate that, among European wage workers, flexible and de-standardised employment tends to be related to lower job satisfaction, general health and mental health. The quality of employment is thus identified as an important social determinant of health (inequalities) in Europe.

Precarious Employment and Quality of Employment in Relation to Health and Well-being in Europe:

This article presents an overview of the recent work on precarious employment and employment quality in relation to workers’ health and well-being. More specifically, the article mainly reviews the work performed in the E.U. 7th Framework project, SOPHIE. First, we present our overarching conceptual framework. Then, we provide a compiled overview of the evidence on the sociodemographic and European cross-country distribution of employment quality and employment precariousness. Subsequently, we provide the current evidence regarding the relations with health and broader worker well-being indicators. A final section summarizes current insights on the pathways relating precarious employment and health and well-being. The article concludes with a plea for further data collection and research into the longitudinal effects of employment precariousness among emerging groups of workers. Based on the evidence compiled in this article, policymakers should be convinced of the harmful health and well-being effects of employment precariousness and (further) labor market flexibilization.

The Quality of Work in the Belgian Service Voucher System.

Several European countries implemented initiatives to boost the growth of the domestic cleaning sector. Few studies investigated the quality of work in these initiatives, although effects on workers’ health and on social health inequalities can be expected. This study contributes to the scant research on this subject, by investigating the quality of work in the Belgian service voucher system – a subsidized system for domestic work. The applied research methodology includes a qualitative content analysis of parliamentary debates, legislation and previous research about the service voucher system and of 40 in-depth interviews with service voucher workers. The study shows that the legal framework that regulates the system must be further enhanced in order to improve the quality of work in the service voucher system. In addition, the actors involved must be better controlled, and sanctioned in case of non-compliance with legislation.

Temporary agency workers as outsiders: an application of the established-outsider theory on the social relations between temporary agency and permanent workers

Temporary agency workers are often portrayed as peripheral workers in organisations. Hence, they present a compelling illustration of the established-outsider theory of Elias and Scotson. According to this theory, differences in social cohesion, group charisma, and power of the members of subgroups within social entities can lead to an established-outsider figuration between these subgroups, which is maintained by processes of stigmatisation and exclusion. Applying a narrative approach, we focus on social relations between temporary agency and permanent workers along three routes. First, we show how and why social cohesion, group charisma, and power possession in the established group of permanent workers shape an established-outsider figuration. Second, we discuss how mechanisms such as stigmatisation and exclusion maintain this figuration. Third, we illustrate why temporary agency workers have the feeling of being stuck in their outsider situation. To accomplish our aims, we conducted in-depth interviews with temporary agency workers in Belgium. Our analyses are focused on temporary agency workers who encountered mainly negative experiences regarding temporary agency employment.

The experience of employment strain and activation among temporary agency workers in Canada

ABSTRACT This article integrates the employment strain model with the social stress model in order to reveal the mechanisms that explain the relation between precarious employment and mental well-being. This model is applied to the case of temporary agency employment by analysing 41 in-depth interviews with temporary agency workers from Canada. The results show how temporary agency workers perceive employment-related uncertainties and efforts mainly as negative and to a lesser extent as positive experiences, respectively evoking strain or activation. Further, it is revealed how uncertainties and efforts mutually reinforce each other, which increases strain, and how support can serve as a buffer.