Supplemental home care and topping‐up: A shift from service universalism towards a new and privatised public service model?

How does a public service model based on service universalism react to the introduction of market principles of topping up? In a recent so‐called Free Municipality Scheme (an experimental scheme that allowed for greater operational autonomy locally in an effort to reduce state bureaucracy), a number of Danish municipalities were for the first time ever allowed to compete with for‐profit providers of home care in selling supplemental home care services paid entirely by the user. The take‐home message from this experience is that the introduction of supplemental home care entails challenges and eventually wider implications for the public service model, on an economic, organisational and cultural level. Supplemental services represent a new and potentially powerful combination of market and state logics that eventually redirects away from the universalist welfare state and towards a new and increasingly privatised public service model – a model where the service level is determined by the user's capacity to purchase and pay for services. The introduction of such services therefore implies a change of the potential of the Nordic welfare state to ensure equal access regardless of class and income.     

Pathways from workplace flexibility to turnover intention: Role of work–family conflict,family–work conflict,and job satisfaction

This study examined the prevalence of workplace flexibility and the mechanisms that allow workplace flexibility to influence turnover intentions through work–family and family–work conflicts and job satisfaction among low‐wage workers in South Korea. Participants included 250 low‐wage workers whose monthly salary was less than 2 million Korean won (approx. $1,900). The study results indicate that low‐wage workers have limited access to workplace flexibility and that workplace flexibility plays a significant protective role in reducing their turnover intention, indirectly by decreasing work–family conflicts and enhancing job satisfaction. This article also discusses the implications of these findings for labor policy and social work practice.     

Engagement with sustainability at the International Labour Organization and wider implications for collective worker voice

Sustainability objectives have been recognized by the ILO primarily in terms of the impact of environmental protection in the form of “just transition” and “green job” initiatives. Arguably, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) now offer richer scope for ILO engagement with social sustainability. This can be attributed to the prominent recognition of “decent work” in SDG 8 and the need for “responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels” in SDG target 16.7. This article examines how the ILO could further promote collective worker voice in the context of debates over a sustainable “future of work”, particularly considering to whom voice is given and how it is exercised.     

中国农民工问题及其解决对策的探讨

农民工是改革开放后新形成的一个阶层,他们工作、生活在城市,但家和户口在农村,由此引发和衍生出工资常被克扣和拖欠、享受公共服务少、子女入托入学困难和缺乏基本社会保障等“农民工问题”。构建和谐社会,就是要使各方面利益关系得到有效协调,其中很重要的一个方面就是解决农民工问题,各级政府和全社会应把它作为一项重大的社会工程去完成。     

Predatory purchasing practices in global apparel supply chains and the employment relations squeeze in the Indian garment export industry

While the literature has long acknowledged worker rights abuses in global apparel supply chains, less attention has been paid to the recent worsening of certain decent work deficits and its causes, which this article links to predatory purchasing practices arising from growing power asymmetries. These practices, illustrated here by the garment export industry in India, exert downward pressure on wages and incite non‐standard forms of employment and greater verbal and physical abuse as productivity demands rise. They can be addressed through pricing mechanisms that cover the cost of decent work, appropriate State regulation and worker involvement.     

Que faut‐il voir dans les écarts de rémunération entre les travailleurs immigrés des pays du Golfe: l'effet d'a priori patronaux ou la simple conséquence de coûts d'opportunité différents?

Les auteurs s'intéressent aux disparités salariales entre les différents groupes de migrants qualifiés qui travaillent en grand nombre pour le secteur privé dans les États du Conseil de coopération du Golfe. Ils se demandent notamment si la prime salariale des Occidentaux (par rapport aux travailleurs venus d'Asie ou d'autres États arabes) découle d'éventuels a priori des employeurs. L'analyse, qui repose sur des données de 2012–2014 et sur deux méthodes de décomposition classiques, infirme l'hypothèse: les caractéristiques observables relatives à la productivité expliquent entre un tiers et trois quarts des écarts; le coût d'opportunité de la migration, supérieur pour les Occidentaux, explique la portion restante.     

Crafting social change: former global factory workers negotiating new identities in Sri Lanka’s villages

This article explores how former factory workers negotiate new identities in villages, as new brides, mothers and daughters-in-law, after 5–6 years of employment in an urban Free Trade Zone. I argue that their performances of self-discipline and disavowal of transgressive knowledges allow them to make use of the limited social, economic and political spaces available while gradually reshaping local understandings about the good daughter-in-law. Former workers’ strategic deployment of social conformity represents the foundation on which their entry into village social, economic, political spaces is based on. Although individual social conformity would conventionally be identified as everyday politics, I argue that former workers’ performance of self-discipline and social conformity is strategic and leads to changes in gender norms and village social hierarchies and thus represents a form of politics that is in between everyday and transformative politics – politics that creates conditions of possibility for social transformations.     

Hypothesis Testing of CNA Perceptions of Organizational Culture in Long Term Care

This commentary for the special issue on research that went wrong describes a study that explored factors that contribute to variability within Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs) on organizational safety culture. We know from previous research that CNAs provide most direct care in nursing homes and that direct care workers often experience agency culture differently from agency management (Wolf et al., 2014). We were looking for factors that nursing homes could alter to improve the culture for CNAs, and thus, residents. We conducted a secondary analysis of data collected via a multi-component paper survey of CNAs employed in long term care. We used results from the Nursing Home Survey on Patient Safety Culture and primary shift, type of unit, and years as a CNA to identify modifiable characteristics that would explain variability in the perceptions of patient safety culture. The final sample included n = 106 from three nursing homes. Dimension scores were compared using bivariate tests appropriate to the scale and ordinal logistic regression. Despite support in the literature for the hypothesis, we found few significant differences on the total scale within groups. Differences in perceptions have implications for quality of care and the experiences of residents within nursing homes.     

A phenomenological case study on immigrant workers' gambling addiction in Korea

This study explores the experiences that have led some of Korea's immigrant workers into gambling addiction and examines possible social welfare services that could support treatment. Immigrant workers' gambling experience as aliens in Korea was analyzed through the methodology of a phenomenological case study. The participants, who voluntarily consented to the study, were five immigrant workers addicted to gambling. Data were collected through one‐on‐one, in‐depth interviews over 6 months, starting in July 2018. The essential themes that emerged in the interviews were “changing strategies for survival,” “forgetting oneself without any sense of responsibility or shame,” “gambling as routine daily life,” “obsession with making a fortune in one go,” and “no home to return to.” Based on its results, this study makes suggestions for the prevention of gambling addiction in immigrant workers. Further, future research needs to be broadened to analyze nationwide cases of immigrant workers with more diverse demographic backgrounds.     

Work-related factors associated with psychological distress among social workers

The current study assesses the association between several work-related factors and psychological distress among social workers (SWs) in Israel. The data were collected through structured questionnaires, administered to a sample of 494 SWs. The findings suggest that most of the examined work-related factors (namely, years of professional experience, personal work-related subjection to violence, burnout, compassion fatigue, and sense of coherence), with the exception of compassion satisfaction, significantly predicted psychological distress among SWs. The conclusion is that it is important to embed within the social work practice strategies for reducing sources of psychological distress (job demands) and increasing material, professional, and personal resources. Reducing the levels of psychological distress experienced by SWs will benefit not only themselves, but also their families and colleagues, as well as their clients. Moreover, this has potential benefits for the social work profession and for the general community.