Comparing three alternative types of employment with permanent full-time work: How do employment contract and perceived job conditions relate to health complaints?

Previous research has found that alternative employment arrangements are associated with both impaired and improved well-being. Since such inconsistencies are likely to derive from the type of employment contract as well as the characteristics of the job, this paper compares permanent full-time work with forms of alternative employment (permanent part-time, fixed-term and on-call work) in order to investigate how different employment contracts and perceptions of job conditions relate to individual well-being. This study contributes to the literature by addressing several questions. Different forms of alternative employment are distinguished and individual background characteristics that might be intertwined with the employment contract are controlled for. Moreover, the scope of this study extends to the effects of perceived job conditions, and possible interactive effects with type of employment are tested. Analyses of questionnaire data from 954 Swedish healthcare workers show that perceptions of the job (job insecurity, job control and demands), but not the type of employment contract, predicted health complaints. However, type of employment interacted with perceptions of job insecurity, in that insecurity was associated with impaired well-being among permanent full-time workers, while no relationship was found for on-call or core part-time employees. Despite the absence of interactions between employment contract and job demands or job control, it can be concluded that knowledge about the relationship between alternative employment arrangements and the well-being of workers can be enhanced when the combined effects of employment contract and job conditions are studied.