Employment

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    Pervasive effects of precarious work

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    Employment in Ireland is often spoken about in terms of the economic recovery and falling unemployment rates. However, the real issue that needs to be addressed is job quality and the types of jobs that are being created. There has been increasing recognition that for many workers in Ireland and Europe employment has become insecure, with temporary and casual work increasing. The FEPS-TASC Report, ‘Living with uncertainty: the social implications of precarious work’, sets out to map precarious work in Ireland, and the impact this type of work has on precarious workers’ lives. This research involved 40 in-depth interviews with men and women living in Ireland, aged between 18 and 40, who work or had worked in temporary employment, were employed on a part-time basis with irregular hours and/or were hired on a self-employed basis. There are many definitions of precarious work, as no agreed definition exists. However, for the purpose of this report, we are focusing on employment that is contractually insecure, which includes part-time with variable numbers of highly skilled people are now being locked into insecure employment. A number of sectors of the Irish labour market have a disproportionate share of precarious work. Eight sectors scored higher than the national average. Transportation had high levels of solo self-employment, human health was characterised by a high level of part-time work, and education had a high level of temporary work. The remaining sectors (construction, wholesale and retail, accommodation and administration and support) had two or more dimensions of precarious work at relatively high levels. “Other NACE sectors”, which include occupations such as hairdressers, sports facilities workers and artists, scored high on all three dimensions. To understand the effects of precarious work, we need to look at life outside of the workplace, like the house-hold situation and access to social supports and services. We need to examine the consequences of precarious work for quality of life because, even though the basis of contractually precarious work might be similar in different countries, the experiences differ as a consequence of the availability of public services and state subsidies – for example, universal healthcare or child-care. The following are our main findings in the report. Precarious workers did not choose to be precarious First, the report found that none of our participants chose to be in temporary and “part-time with variable hour” employment. Much of solo self-employment was also not entered by choice but interviewees were forced into this arrangement as a condition for their employment. Importantly, we discovered that many people are unaware that they are working precariously; there are many workers who are working without a contract, or who assume a rolling contract to mean permanency. This finding points to the need for employers to be up-front about contractual status. Precarious workers cannot afford to be sick The report found that precarious working conditions can have a negative effect on physical and mental health. On top of that, the majority of participants cannot afford to be ill. The burden of expense is felt in two ways: through no paid sick leave, and as well as the expenses of paying to see a GP and for medication, tests and follow-up appointments. This lack of support can result in having to make hard decisions such as whether to first buy food, or pay bills or rent. Medical cards and GP cards are means-tested and most precarious workers do not fit the eligibility criteria to obtain them even though they are not able to afford primary care services. Precarious workers have difficulty finding stable housing The housing crisis in Ireland affects families and individuals with very different backgrounds. However, the difficulties that people in non-standard employment encounter are even more pronounced, as they lack economic stability. Precarious workers are not left with any other choice but to rent, or if the option was available to them, to live in the family home. With tightening mortgage regulations, (which followed the economic crash), and soaring property prices, people working in non-standard employment are unlikely to be approved by any lending bank. At the same time, renting in the private market has become prohibitively expensive in the last number of years. This has resulted in bouts of ‘hidden homelessness’ for many of our participants, situations during which they have nowhere to live and are forced to sleep on friends’ couches or stay with their parents. Precarious workers postpone having families It emerged from our interviews that having children was often challenging for precarious workers. While some decided to have children regardless, the majority of our participants continued to postpone childbearing. Postponement of childrearing amongst precarious workers is often not a choice based on individual preference. Instead, while precarious workers want to have children, their financial insecurity, directly related to their contractual insecurity, prevents them from becoming parents. For those who already had children, maternity leave and childcare are the most important issues that they face. It became clear through the interviews that maternity leave is challenging for women in precarious employment, especially for those who are on temporary contracts. First of all, the contract may be shorter than the actual leave. Likewise, for those who were on temporary contracts, maternity leave is a possible obstacle for the continuity of their employment. Formal childcare is too expensive for participants who have insecure incomes and thus alternative arrangements are often necessary. In the most extreme cases, one of the parents has no other choice but to quit their job. Such a decision is usually not based on traditional gender roles, but on employment status. Based on the interviews, precarious work does not appear conducive to having a family. Precarious work leads to insecure lives Contract insecurity and wage unpredictability lead to workplace insecurity and create insecure and unpredictable lives. The lack of independence that precarious work entails often creates a situation in which many people must live with their parents and thus are unable to develop independent lives. Public benefits and support services, such as state access to free primary care services, accommodation,

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    Dumb greens and unions

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    One of the things historians may dwell on is how the key December 2017 and February 2018 eu drafts of the Brexit agreement came to take the forms they did. It is all the more important since the inept UK Government of Theresa May failed to produce its own draft, though it might have been expected to do just that. Of course that suggests a lack of seriousness on the UK’s part about the agreement and perhaps that the EU Drafts may not go as far as we, and the EU, think, but that is a separate matter. In particular it is interesting that the drafts – the first a draft political agreement, the second a draft legal agreement with the same substance enshrine the EU’s rules for the customs union and single market but not its rules for multifarious other spheres of eu activity that bind the UK while it remains a member of the EU: most notably on the environment, labour and consumer affairs. The body politic and commentators have missed the following: the UK could become the trading neighbour from hell by ignoring EU environmental, health, labour etc standards – exploiting the competitive advantage over the eu you’d expect from a country saving money by keeping these standards low. It is interesting is that so many dogs have failed to bark. One might have expected the British trade unions to be shocked at the potential dangers to workers’ rights if EU standards are abolished and they become subject to the whims of a hawkish Tory party. But they didn’t because, like the British Labour party of course, they can only think of the superior standards Jeremy Corbyn will bring to the sphere. This is self- absorbedly naïve. Corbyn will not be in power for ever and the Tories won’t be going anywhere. When they return they will not have to observe the comfort blanket that EU standards provide. We know well the frustrations of the Tory party over the years with what used to be known as the EU’s ‘Social Chapter’. Nothing is as certain as that they will not observe its prescripts on issues like maternity and overtime if they return to power in some post-Brexit outturn. There are occasional insights into this thinking but mostly the protagonists remain mute. Surprising too that the Irish unions have made so little noise about it but then the Irish Congress of Trades Unions and SIPTU are both challenged by having members and remits both North and South of the border. You’d think they’d be on the warpath. Environmentalists and Green parties have said little perhaps because typically they languish far from the vehicles of power and tend not to be as forensic or aggressive as the circumstances here demand. Village tried to provoke the establishment media, most of RTÉ’s and the Irish Times’ Europe, Northern Ireland and Environment correspondents etc (by twitter) into recognising their failure to cover this issue but – to a man – they’re too complacent, and probably too immersed in politics and economics, to think about social and environmental rights and rules. The issue is clouded as terms like “a common regulatory area on the island of Ireland” and “a single regulatory space on the island of Ireland…” in themselves don’t do justice to the fact that there are important areas that will no longer be regulated by the EU. It’s also a bit difficult for many people to get their heads around as “regulatory alignment” of Northern Ireland with the EU is only envisaged as a ‘backstop’ if the UK can’t strike a more wide- ranging deal with Ireland and if a technological border solution proves impossible. Of course with only a year left to Brexit it’s looking increasingly like neither of the two contingencies will come to pass. The easiest way to avoid the backstop is for the UK as a whole to remain in the customs union and the single market. But the UK government insists this will not happen. Because the contingencies are uncertain they were left out of the draft Withdrawal Agreement which is a strictly legalistic document, thought they had appeared in the December political draft – and they remain politically possible. It’s complicating too that the Tories and Brexiteers so vociferously think the common regulatory area described in the EU draft goes too far rather than not far enough – though of course they are referring essentially to economic matters, not to environmental and social matters about which they may care little. It is clouded because it may well be that no deal is possible. It is important to note that, despite occasional diplomatic pleasantries, there has been little progress on the central conundrum of the negotiations: if the UK leaves the EU trading bloc, then a customs border is needed either on the island of Ireland or in the Irish Sea. One is ruled out by the EU drafts, the other by the UK. Theresa May asked Brussels if Britain could stay in the bits of the single market that she likes and exit the bits that she does not. The EU doesn’t have to, and won’t, run with that – no matter how self-righteous Brexiteers fume. On this basis it is very possible the EU’s draft terms form no element of the (WTO) arrangement that the UK falls back on. And it is clouded because confusingly the Draft Withdrawal Agreement refers, in its Article 12, to the Environment. Most people (not you dear reader) glaze over a little when contemplating the diktats of a customs union and single market. The customs union is an agreement among members to charge the same import duties as each other and usually to allow free trade between themselves. The single market guarantees the free movement of goods, capital, services, and labour – the “four freedoms” – within the European Union. You couldn’t for example have goods which comprise some material, imported into Britain on the basis of a tariff-free agreement between Britain

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