The Political Behaviour of Temporary Workers

Paul Marx

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137394866
• eBook ISBN: 9781137394873
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Labour Economics
• Index: Social Sciences

Insecure temporary employment is growing in Europe, but we know little about how being in such jobs affects political preferences and behaviour. Combining insights from psychology, political science and labour market research, this book offers new theories and evidence on the political repercussions of temporary jobs.

1

Introduction

European labour markets are in a process of profound change. The decades following World War II witnessed the institutionalization of ‘secure’ employment. Against the background of high growth rates, labour market regulation and welfare states were expanded so that the risk of unemployment became less salient to a majority of workers. Stable careers, often within only one firm, became a social norm that governments and employers were expected to implement. At the core of political attempts to secure long-term employment was the establishment of rules restricting the managerial prerogative to dismiss workers at will. This was achieved either through individual labour law, for instance by restricting circumstances under which dismissals are allowed, or by granting representatives of the workforce a say in firms’ staffing policies.

Such legal changes reflected a fundamental reappraisal of how market risks should be distributed between capital and labour. In the 1970s at the very latest, it seemed to be the consensual view in most democratic societies that employers cannot treat workers as a commodity; that law should restrict involuntary job loss; that states should avert the risk of unemployment and the material hardship ensuing from it.

In that sense, the post-war years were a historical singularity. Secure employment, as defined in those years, was largely unknown hitherto. Shelter from economic fluctuation was a privilege confined to a small elite throughout history. Most pre-modern forms of labour were of course highly insecure or in other ways precarious, and this remained true for most forms of modern wage labour well into the 20th century. It was only when the lower classes had won equal political rights that the project of defining workers’ social rights could succeed (Marshall, 1950).

The process of institutionalizing job security did not progress in a continuous fashion, and there certainly was no automatism or functionalist logic at play. More often than not, advancements in dismissal regulation, collective bargaining, co-determination, and welfare-state expansion were met with fierce resistance by business (Korpi, 2006), even if political struggles were greatly attenuated by rapid economic growth and concerns about the legitimacy of the capitalist system. After World War II, the working class in Western countries had been strengthened and radicalized, while employers found themselves in a defensive position. Against the background of system competition, employers were eager to forestall demands for a socialist organization of the economy by agreeing to submit themselves to restrictions of their managerial freedoms. Hence, consenting to job security regulations can be seen as part of business’s effort ‘to extend and renew its social franchise’ (Streeck, 2014, p. 24). In hindsight, this period appears less as a pacification of the conflict over job security than as a short-lived truce. This became obvious during the strike waves of the late 1960s and the 1970s in which radicalized unions in many countries pushed for even stricter job security regulations and union influence in staffing policies. Although (or because) these attempts were at least partly successful (Emmenegger, 2014; Piore, 1980), they brought the ‘old’ antagonism between unions and management to the forefront. And so it does not come as a surprise that the seeming consensus built around the secure employment relationship did not last. As global business practices became oriented towards flexibility, institutionalized job security turned into (or was framed as) a competitive disadvantage. In virtually all countries with strict regulation of dismissals, political discourses started to turn around the question of whether and to what extent labour market institutions contribute to ‘structural’ unemployment. Allowing for more flexibility in employment relationships appeared as a natural solution (OECD, 1994).

Indeed, many academic contributions have argued that employment insecurity has grown over the past 20 or 30 years (Anderson and Pontusson, 2007; Beck, 2000; Blossfeld et al., 2011; Boeri and Garibaldi, 2009; Bosch et al., 2009; Breen, 1997; Guest et al., 2010; Hacker et al., 2013; Kalleberg, 2000, 2009).¹ The underlying reasons are manifold. Globalization and tougher international competition have increased insecurity among workers in exposed sectors and occupations (Buchholz et al., 2011; Scheve and Slaughter, 2004; Swank, 2002). Others argue that sectoral change has made the workforce on average more insecure, in particular workers with asset-specific skills in declining industries (Iversen and Cusack, 2000). This process is linked to technological changes that have contributed to eroding routine jobs in industry as well as in the middle of the occupational hierarchy. Automation (in industry) and computerization (in clerical service occupations) have made redundant many of the secure and relatively well-paid jobs that formed the backbone of the post-war employment model. It has been followed by a more polarized occupational structure. While skilled-biased technological change went along with a major ‘upskilling’ of the workforce (Oesch, 2015), in many countries it has also contributed to a growing relative importance of low-skilled personal services (Autor and Dorn, 2013; Goos and Manning, 2007; Goos et al., 2009). And this is precisely the occupational segment in which we find the bulk of insecure and otherwise precarious jobs (Bosch and Lehndorff, 2005; Esping-Andersen, 1999a; Eichhorst and Marx, 2012, 2015; Gautié and Schmitt, 2010; Iversen and Wren, 1998; Palier and Thelen, 2010).

Probably the most intuitive explanation for the increase in insecurity is linked to the macro economy. Unsurprisingly, workers feel insecure when the economy is going badly, in particular when unemployment is high (Chung and van Oorschot, 2011; Cusack et al., 2006; Erlinghagen, 2008). The growth (or return) of mass unemployment in the 1970s and the 1980s meant a profound break with the booming post-war years and is likely to have contributed to growing feelings of insecurity. Whether or not declining welfare-state generosity has facilitated this trend is more difficult to show empirically.

Whatever its underlying reasons are, one notable characteristic of this increase in employment insecurity is its asymmetry. Insecurity and flexibility are far from being universal characteristics. When asked directly, most European workers, in fact, still feel rather confident about the stability of their jobs and about their general employment prospects (Marx, 2014a), and the traditional ‘standard’ employment relationship has not disappeared (Auer and Cazes, 2003; Eichhorst and Marx, 2015). Also, a look at institutional developments suggests that there are hardly cases of advanced capitalist countries that have ‘turned back the clock’ by dismantling job security regulations for the entire labour market (see Chapter 2). Neither have many firms ceased to rely on a stable core of highly skilled workers. Rather, policymakers and firms have chosen a strategy ‘of “dumping” the uncertainty burden on different sections of the population’ (Crouch and Keune, 2012, p. 49), so that the ‘protection offered to privileged groups, or, more generally, to insiders is partly dependent on outsiders bearing the brunt of any difficulty encountered in maintaining the stability guarantee given major market fluctuations’ (idem, p. 60). In many European countries, this strategy has been based on the deregulation and utilization of workers with temporary employment contracts (Barbieri, 2009; Berton et al., 2012; DiPrete et al., 2006; Emmenegger et al., 2012; Guest et al., 2010; Kalleberg, 2009; Rueda, 2007). It is this group of workers the present book is concerned with.

More precisely, this book is an attempt to better understand how the experience of insecure temporary employment affects political preferences and behaviour. Although there is a vast literature in labour economics and labour market sociology on the determinants and socio-economic consequences of holding temporary contracts (which will be reviewed in Chapter 2), there is surprisingly less research about the repercussions on political behaviour. This is all the more surprising as academic and public discourses frequently point to the possibility that labour market exclusion might go hand in hand with political disenchantment or radicalization among the young in crisis-stricken countries. A recent quote from the New York Times captures these concerns:

many in the troubled south are carving out a simple existence for themselves in a new European reality. They must decide whether to stay home, with the protection of family but a dearth of jobs. Or they can travel to Europe’s north, where work is possible to find but where they are likely to be treated as outsiders. There, young people say, they compete for low-paying, temporary jobs but are sometimes excluded from the cocoon of full employment.

For the European Union, addressing the issue has become a political as well as an economic challenge at a time of expanding populist discontent with the leadership in Brussels and national capitals.²

(my emphasis)

The Observer takes the same line by diagnosing a growing ‘anarchic radicalism’ expressed, for instance, in the Italian Five Star Movement, the Spanish Indignados, or the Occupy protests, movements that thrive on a feeling of anger that is ‘representative of a generation of young Europeans who face lower living standards than their parents and little chance of finding a meaningful job’.³ And the Guardian adds: ‘Sporadically, this overwhelming frustration boils over into anger on the streets [ … ]. But in between times, young people are just as likely to respond to their predicament with a mixture of gloom and resignation.’⁴

What these commentaries suggest is that the trend towards insecure employment might have negative repercussions for European democracies – in the form of lower participation and legitimacy and growing alienation from politics. In the academic literature, equally gloomy scenarios abound. In his Brave New World of Work, Ulrich Beck (2000, pp. 116–118) warns that:

In the ‘circle of informal and insecure work’ [ … ], which compels those affected to work more for less, there is no time or air left for democracy. [ … ] The ‘Fordist deal’, which promised increasing prosperity for all, has been turned around into a policy for the break-up of the middle layers. The centre of society is being crushed to bits. The ‘social capital’ which alone makes economic and democratic actions possible is falling apart.

King and Rueda (2008, pp. 292–293) argue along similar lines:

One significant conjecture is that the structure of the labor market might be expected to turn those in the most marginally nonstandard categories away from democracy by eroding its legitimacy as a mechanism associated with economic protection, declining income inequality, and political inclusion. [ … ] We might call this the political alienation problem posed by the expansion of nonstandard cheap labor.

Standing (2011) even sees temporary workers as part of a new ‘precariat’ or ‘dangerous class’, a ‘growing mass of people [ … ] in situations that can only be described as alienated, anomic, anxious and prone to anger. The warning sign is political disengagement’ (p. 24).

As expressed in the newspaper articles cited above, the ongoing labour market crisis in many European countries lends some face validity to the conjectured link between labour market exclusion and insecurity on the one hand and political protest or disengagement on the other. It appears quite plausible that the 2008 Great Recession has reinforced the ‘populist challenge’ (Kriesi, 2014), namely the growth of anti-establishment parties (on the right and the left), growing popular resentment of established party systems, and the emergence of more or less radical protest movements. These trends certainly reflect complex changes in the social structure and political culture, but it is not far-fetched to also relate them to economic frustration: those who lose out in the competition for good jobs in a global economy (the ‘losers of globalization’) are arguably particularly susceptible to populism (idem).

Hence, if there is a link between labour market disadvantage and political alienation, radicalization, or apathy, Europe’s persistent labour market crisis gives reason to worry. It should be added that, although these concerns are somewhat speculative, they do build on a long tradition in political sociology to connect labour market experiences with political behaviour. For instance, there is a prominent literature showing that unemployment depresses social and political participation (Anderson, 2001; Jahoda et al., 1972; Rosenstone, 1982; Verba et al., 1995). Conversely, employment is seen as an important site of socialization in which civic skills are practised and political preferences are formed (Kitschelt and Rehm, 2014; Pateman, 1970; Sobel, 1993). Exclusion from stable employment might undermine this socialization process.

In sum, it is fair to say that temporary employment, along with the higher unemployment risk it engenders, has turned into a major societal concern and that this concern is shared by prominent academic observers of European labour markets and politics. Particularly given its prevalence among young citizens (Emmenegger et al., 2012), potential repercussions such as political disenchantment or radicalization are causes for concern. So far, these potential consequences have rather been assumed than shown to exist empirically. One goal of this book is to fill this lacuna.

However, the alienation hypothesis is not the only possible perspective on the political behaviour of temporary workers and maybe not even the most prominent one. There is a growing literature in political economy that interprets employment risks in a rational-choice framework and, by doing so, arrives at less-pessimistic predictions. In this literature, employment insecurity is seen as something affected workers respond to pragmatically. As Cusack and colleagues (2006, p. 366) explain:

Job loss and the risk of job loss have important effects. The first is that such exposure reduces income and adds to the ranks of those at the bottom end of the income distribution, who have a self-interest in redistribution. Second, it raises the demand for redistribution among employed workers, since redistributive spending serves as an insurance against the risk of future income loss.

Put more simply, if ‘a person expects to be poor in the future (i.e. that person’s risk exposure is high), that person should support policies and parties for the poor’ (Rehm, 2011b, p. 366). Instead of abstaining or supporting radical parties, the economically instrumental insecure worker then votes for parties that offer the best remedies against insecurity.⁵ This argument invites the question of which parties offer such remedies. While the political economy literature typically assumes that these are left parties in general, Rueda (2005) has forcefully rejected this notion. He argues that social democratic parties do exactly the opposite: they erect mobility barriers between labour market segments to protect their core voters (industrial workers) from competition and unemployment risk. This comes at the expense of ‘outsiders’, who are excluded from stable employment and thus circulate between unemployment and temporary jobs. This insider–outsider model ‘flips the power-resource theory on its head’ (Thelen, 2012, p. 149): social democratic parties and unions do not fight inequality – they create it. Accordingly, the distinction between insiders and outsiders is said to have fundamentally changed politics in advanced capitalist countries, so that the conflict line now does not run between capital and labour anymore, but through the working class. And as insiders are backed by unions and social democratic parties and as they can form powerful coalitions with their employers (Hassel, 2014; Palier and Thelen, 2010; Thelen, 2012, 2014), it is rather unclear which political actors are left to effectively represent outsiders. As Emmenegger and colleagues (2012, p. 14) note, ‘the precise links between lacking integration in the labor market, insufficient social rights, and the political articulation of the insider–outsider divide have yet to be explored’.

Hence, the seemingly simple question of how temporary workers can be expected to behave at the ballot box is fraught with theoretical ambiguity. In Chapter 3, I will try to disentangle the partly contradictory theories and add my own arguments about how temporary employment contracts influence party support and voting decisions. As will become clear from this discussion, the question ultimately has to be treated as an empirical one. This is why a large (but hopefully not too tedious) part of this book is dedicated to reporting findings from survey data analyses. I have tried to compile and collect sufficient data to allow for a meaningful analysis of the political preferences and behaviour of temporary workers. Without doubt, these data sets have considerable gaps and limitations. This concerns the depend...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Labour Market Change in Europe: Determinants and Effects of Temporary Employment Contracts
• 3. Theoretical Perspectives on the Political Behaviour of Temporary Workers
• 4. The Policy Preferences of Temporary Workers
• 5. The Party Preferences of Temporary Workers
• 6. The Voting Behaviour of Temporary Workers
• 7. Are Temporary Workers Politically Alienated?
• 8. Conclusions
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Notes
• References
• Index