As COVID-19 has been disrupting the world economy, global efforts were directed in supporting health care as well as businesses in an effort to minimise the surge in unemployment rates. Nonetheless, even in those cases where the financial support measures were deemed successful, the emerging conditions have created a stressful situation for the more vulnerable members of the workforce: with economic activity declining in almost every single sector, people have little chance to improve their position in the labour relations and in many cases even maintain it.
The Precarious Work Research (PWR), a research project on non-standard and precarious employment, has outlined the dangers accompanying precarious working relations, which spread from the risk of unemployment or a deterioration in working conditions, to mental or public health issues (Matilla-Santander et al. 2021). Despite the evident dangers, a worldwide shift to precarious employment has been observed, with a significant rise of fixed-term and part-time contracts, as well as other forms of atypical employment (Torreset al. 2021). In order to address that and especially in pandemic conditions, companies are expected to take measures primarily to ensure their employees’ and the general public’s health, but also to alleviate covid-anxiety which harms both the individual and the organisation (Saxen and Gautam 2020).
Regardless of the two pandemic years, there are still not enough studies evaluating the practical responses of the corporate world. One can imagine (or through personal and relatives’ experience) that there are companies that have not reacted with the proper responsibility. But at the same time, even in cases where companies have seemingly been willing to “do it right”, a peculiar situation has emerged. Even in those cases, the pandemic has exacerbated the problems posed by precarious labour relations for the employees.
An illustrative example comes from a, yet unpublished, study on the Greek branch of a multinational corporation, employing more than a hundred people (Boniatis 2021). The personal experience of the author confirms the thorough application of all legally required and suggested safety measures. The image of safety, however, varies from the viewpoint of the studied employees.
Permanent employees were given the choice of remote work with scheduled visits to the office whenever they felt they would like a break from the home-based routine; of course, this official policy has been appreciated. This was not the case however for the fixed-term employees. Katya, a woman in her early thirties, working for the company for two years with three successive 9 months contracts, had a different experience. She was allowed to work remotely only after her supervisor managed to find her a corporate laptop she could use -permanent employees were already equipped with one. Katya praised her supervisor’s attitude and considered that their prior trusting relationship was crucial for this positive development. Nevertheless, many of the fixed-term employees in other departments did not find this kind of support. For Katya, this situation is considered as a kind of discrimination towards fixed-term employees.
“About the other guys who are on fixed term contracts, I think that this is not right. The company justified it, saying that ‘since most people work from home, and each one of you would have a desk, why wouldn’t you come’ “.
In any case, one needs to take into consideration that many employees had to use public transport; while the ‘’one person, one desk’’ rule is only a guideline and far from being a “health guarantee”.
Nevertheless, at the core of the issue under discussion, one cannot help but wonder whether the corporate justification is legitimate. An entrepreneurial policy that treats fixed-term and permanent employees differently perhaps bears some financial rationale. It is unquestionable, though, that it widens substantially the fixed-term employees’ insecurity; from the precarious personal finance to their health. Living and working in stressful conditions like that, the fixed-term employee’s mental health is expectedly affected. What is more interesting and more important at the same time, is the diminishing trust towards the company’s higher administration. This is only partially an intra-corporate issue. Precariousness has always been affecting trust towards the system of labour relations. Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, evidently, that trust has deteriorated further.
In this framework, the Cowork4YOUTH project aims to approach medium and long-term trends in the Labour Markets especially in reference to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bibliography
Boniatis, E. (2021) A comparative study on the effects of organizational covid-19 safety policy and remote work implementation on Psychological Contract Sensemaking. University of Bolton. [Unpublished dissertation]
Matilla-Santander N., Ahonen E., Albin M, et al.(2021).COVID-19 and Precarious Employment: Consequences of the Evolving Crisis. International Journal of Health Services. 51(2):226-228. doi:10.1177/0020731420986694
Saxen, A. and Gautam, S.S. (2020). Employee mental well-being amidst Covid-19: Major stressors and distress. Journal of Public Affairs. Vol2552. doi: 10.1002/pa.2552.
Torres L., Warren T., Veeken A and the UK Women’s Budget Group. (2021). How has the risk of precarious work evolved in the COVID-19 UK? Research Summary 2. Nottingham: Nottingham University Business School.
Author:
Manolis Boniatis, Rhodes Centre for History and Social Research
