No Choice but to Be Essential: Expanding Dimensions of Precarity During COVID-19
2021, Sociological Perspectives
6 Views19 Pages
1 File ▾
Under COVID-19, low-wage service sector workers found themselves as essential workers vulnerable to intensified precarity. Based on in-depth interviews with a sample of 52 low-wage service workers interviewed first in Summer 2019 and then in the last two weeks of April 2020, we argue that COVID-19 has created new and heightened dimensions of precarity for low-wage workers. They experience (1) moments of what we call precarious stability, in which an increase in hours and predictable schedules is accompanied by unpredictability in the tasks workers are assigned, (2) increased threats to bodily integrity, and (3) experiences of fear and anxiety as background conditions of work and intensified emotional labor. The impacts of COVID-19 on workers' lives warrant an expanded conceptualization of precarity that captures the dynamic and shifting nature of precarious stability and must incorporate workers' limited control over their bodily integrity and emotions as core components of precarious working conditions.
Essential work, disposable workers
2021, Labor Education and Research Center
0 Views22 Pages
2 Files ▾
This report provides a close picture of food processing workers' experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic both at their worksites and in their attempts to access direct assistance. Based on interviews with immigrants and refugee workers in this key industry living and working in rural Washington, this report finds that there was a slow response to establish safety protocols and the ongoing variations in practices have meant that workers continue to experience varying degrees of exposure and risk. Shifting governmental guidelines and technological and language barriers also contributed to challenges accessing direct assistance and relief. Finally, workers expressed a lack of policies that attend to the medium and long term financial, emotional, and physical well-being consequences of working in sites of some of the biggest COVID-19 outbreaks in the United States.
No comments:
Post a Comment