Jill Rubery

Negociar en primera línea. ¿Cómo contribuyó la negociación colectiva a la protección o defensa de los intereses de los trabajadores de

This article investigates the intersection between precarious work and precarious lives through interviews with workers in the care, hospitality and art sectors. These revealed that workers experienced precarity as a double-edged sword of time and income uncertainty shaped by the context in which they were embedded – namely their employment, their household and their relations with state welfare and care systems. These three domains shaped both the constraints they faced and the buffers and resources available to them as they managed these time and income uncertainties. A dynamic work–life articulation framework is developed that embeds the strategies workers deploy to mitigate uncertainty within these three domains and their intersections. These strategies may still only result in the least bad and often far from sustainable outcome due to changing contexts and trade-offs between time and income uncertainty.

The ideal worker concept, typified by an unencumbered male, continues to influence workplace norms, despite a more gender-mixed workforce. This article examines whether this concept is being disrupted or reproduced as digitalisation becomes increasingly embedded in the workplace. Based on qualitative research in two professional services firms, the analysis shows how the ideal worker themes of work prioritisation and presenteeism have been maintained but adapted. Significantly, the study reveals how the novel dimension of connectedness is reshaping the ideal worker norm as enhanced digitalisation becomes interwoven in social relations. This has modified informal expectations about how, when and where work is performed, altering work organisation. This reconfiguration may in principle broaden scope for conformity with the ideal worker model, but in practice the heightened intrusion of work demands on personal time and into domestic space potentially works against gender equality.

Background: English primary care faces a reduction in GP supply and increased demand.Aim: To explore trends in GP working time and supply, accounting for factors influencing demand for services.Design and setting: Retrospective observational study in English primary care between 2015 and 2022.Method: Trends in median GP contracted time commitment were calculated using annual workforce datasets. Three measures of demand were calculated at practice-level: numbers of patients; numbers of older patients (≥65 years); and numbers of chronic conditions using 21 Quality and Outcomes Framework disease registers. Multi-level Poisson models were used to assess associations between GP supply and practice demand, adjusted for deprivation, region, and year.Results: Between 2015 and 2022, the median full-time equivalent (FTE) of a fully qualified GP decreased from 0.80 to 0.69.There was a 9% increase in registered population per GP FTE (incidence rate ratio [IRR] = 1.09; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.05 to 1.14). This increase was steeper using numbers of chronic conditions (32%, IRR = 1.32; 95% CI = 1.26 to 1.38). Practices in the most deprived decile had 17% more patients (IRR = 1.17; 95% CI = 1.08 to 1.27) and 19% more chronic conditions (IRR = 1.19; 95% CI = 1.06 to 1.33) per GP FTE, compared with the least deprived decile. These disparities persisted over time. All regions reported more chronic conditions per GP FTE than London.Conclusion: Population demand per GP has increased, particularly in terms of chronic conditions. This increase is driven by several factors, including a reduction in GP contracted time commitments. Persistent deprivation gradients in GP supply highlight the need to recruit and retain GPs more equitably.

During the Covid pandemic, women were found on the frontline both in the home and at work. They shouldered the burden of home schooling and extensive childcare while at work they were overrepresented among the ‘heroes’ of the pandemic, both in caring and in the provision of other vital services, such as food retail. This chapter draws on eight international case studies of women’s employment in two key sectors at the heart of the pandemic frontline - social care and food retail. It explores how government policy, social dialogue and collective bargaining responses acted to support or in some cases failed to support these key frontline women workers in their dual roles in the workplace and at home. The chapter reviews these issues across three dimensions: the insecurities they faced at work and whether any efforts, short or long term, were made to improve protections; whether frontline workers received support with their childcare needs and whether the public’s increased awareness of their contribution to society led to any significant efforts to revalue their labour. The findings are interpreted through a wider lens that identifies the constraints on both revaluing frontline workers and supporting social reproduction burdens in gender-unequal societies.