Precarious Work

Abstract

Chapter 6 discusses labor politics in Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia. The emphasis is on responses by labor, civil society, and governments to precarious work, inequality, and poverty. In Japan the political dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party and a union focus on regular workers has made it difficult for unions to press for labor laws and social protections that better support nonregular workers. Civil society activism regarding workers has been limited. Greater competition among political parties in South Korea has enabled unions and civil society organizations to ally themselves with unions and some political parties to push for labor reforms. In Indonesia organized labor, sometimes working with civil society organizations, made some important gains through democratization after 1998. Labor also pushed for the expansion of welfare but has been weakened in recent years and has become ineffectual in pressuring governments.

“Meat and Three”: Business Ownership as an Alternative Form of Work

“…Graeber (2019) suggests that so many people have meaningless, “bullshit” jobs, and are fully aware of it, that their discontent is inevitable. Work has conceptually transformed from a stable and secure facet of adult self‐sufficiency to the unstable and precarious form it takes today (Kalleberg and Vallas 2018); that could have something to do with widespread dissatisfaction with employment. There are so many bad jobs that demand so much time and energy, while offering very little in the way of compensation of any kind (Ehrenreich 2001).…”

Normalizing and Resisting the New Precarity: A Case Study of the Indonesian Gig Economy

“…The formal sector is conventionally associated with stable work, protected by employment regulations, especially in comparison to informal and agricultural work (Tjandraningsih, 2013: 213). Yet, in Southeast Asia, industrialization transpired under neoliberalism ‘in a context of international competition in global production chains and the enormous expansion of the service sectors both requiring flexible forms of employment’ (Kalleberg and Hewison, 2015: 22). Formal sector workers have historically been exposed to precarity, as a consequence.…”

“…The expansion of the gig economy in Indonesia demonstrates how the uncertainty, instability, and insecurity in the pervasive informal sector, especially in urban settings, provide the conditions for the extensive use of precarious employment in the modern industrial and service sectors (Kalleberg and Hewison, 2015: 22). The Indonesian case depicts the distinct trajectory of the normalization of the new form of precarious work in Southeast Asian economies, where precarity-in-work and in life (Parfitt & Barnes, 2020), has never been interrupted.…”

Squeezed out: Experienced precariousness of self‐employed care workers in residential long‐term care, from an intersectional perspective

“…Self‐employment is increasingly becoming relatively common in the Netherlands, compared to other European countries (Central Bureau for Statistics, n.d.) and this growth affects almost all sectors of the labour market (CBS, 2020). The Dutch situation does not stand alone, as the flexibilization of labour markets is a worldwide phenomenon (Kalleberg & Vallas, 2017), but particularly profound in countries that have fostered neoliberal policies in the last decades (Stanford, 2017).…”

“…In the field of health research, much scholarship revolves around precarious employment and whether or not self‐employment is precarious work (Conen & Schippers, 2019; Kalleberg & Vallas, 2017; Kreshpaj et al, 2020). Precarious employment is defined as a combination of employment insecurity, income (in)adequacy and lack of rights and protection (Kreshpaj et al, 2020).…”