The Double Bind of Precarious Work: Creating Need and Undermining Support

• In Event: Precarious and Non-Traditional Hour Work Schedules: Examining the Working Conditions, Social Support, and Long-Term Trajectories

Abstract

Historically, workplaces have been an important site for forming supportive social relationships, and employment has represented a form of status attainment that enhances social relationships outside of work as well. Yet, workplace conditions have evolved in ways that may undermine the ability of paid employment to help cultivate supportive social ties. The rise of remote work, the growing contingent workforce, and the splintering of work into on-demand micro tasks (Burrell and Fourcade) have each militated against work as an avenue for generating social capital and social ties. Alongside these developments, a growing body of research highlights temporal precarity at work (e.g., Lambert 2008; Schneider and Harknett 2019), evident in the unpredictability and instability of workers’ schedules. Part of a broader “risk shift” from employers to employees (Hacker 2019), firms increasingly rely on “just-in-time” scheduling practices (e.g., on-call shifts, last-minute timing changes) that pass on the market risks associated with fluctuating customer demand to workers. The resulting schedule instability has well-documented negative consequences for workers’ health, well-being, and economic security (Lambert, Haley-Lock, and Henly 2012; Lambert, Henly, and Kim 2019; Schneider and Harknett 2019, 2021).

Such precarious work schedules are also quite likely to have consequences for workers’ social networks and sources of social support. Yet, prior research has not explored the ways that precarious working conditions may undermine support at the same time as these conditions create the need for support, a “double bind” that we center in our paper. To investigate the connections between rising precarity in work and rising social isolation and disconnectedness, we consider how work shapes and is shaped by human relationships. We draw on prior research to theorize that precarious schedules may deplete social support; that, in turn, frayed networks may partially explain why precarious schedules are harmful for worker health and well-being; and finally that reserves of social support may also buffer workers against the negative effects of precarious scheduling on health and well-being.

Drawing on novel individual-level survey data from The Shift Project that include repeated cross-sectional surveys from a sample of 38,193 hourly workers and panel data collected from 9,993 workers, we investigate: 1) whether schedule instability conditions workers’ perceptions of the availability of social support; 2) whether perceived social support mediates the relationship between schedule instability and well-being; and 3) whether perceived social support moderates the relationship between schedule instability and well-being.

We find that greater exposure to schedule instability is associated with reduced perceptions of the availability of social support, offering evidence that highly unstable schedules have negative ramifications for workers’ ability to cultivate and maintain social support. We then show that social support mediates a significant percentage of the relationship between schedule instability and worker well-being. Finally, for those who maintain social support despite poor working conditions, we find evidence that social support can buffer the negative consequences of unstable and unpredictable schedules on well-being. As workers are exposed to increasingly unstable schedules, social support has a larger protective effect for their well-being, particularly psychological distress and happiness.

Author

• Daniel Schneider, Harvard University
  Presenting Author