When school ‘stayed home’. A sociology of work approach on the remote work of teachers during the lockdown for the COVID-19 pandemic: the case of Italy

ABSTRACT

To contrast the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, ‘home-schooling’ was adopted in most countries and the issue was studied in considering the effects of the crisis on educational and digital inequalities, and on families and gender relations. Nevertheless, very few studies have looked at the working conditions of teachers in this very atypical framework. This paper presents results from a survey with the aim of investigating these conditions, following the sociology of work approach. The survey was promoted by FLC-CGIL (the federation of knowledge workers of the main trade union in Italy), realised by a research group composed of researchers from Fondazione Giuseppe Di Vittorio, Università di Roma ‘La Sapienza’, Università Guglielmo Marconi, and Università di Teramo and was carried out in Italy using the CAWI technique during the first national lockdown (between April and May 2020). We present results about two specific issues: (1) the ways the new pandemic framework was organised, and (2) its consequences on the quality of work and living conditions of workers. Regarding the first issue, we found variations in accordance with different management styles and decision-making approaches. On the second issue, we found worsening working time, workloads and work-life balance given the absence of a clear regulation.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19 pandemic
• remote work
• teachers
• quality of work
• participation
• Italy

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the anonymous referees of the review for helping us improve the exposure of our results.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 FLC-CGIL (Federazione dei lavoratori della conoscenza – Federation of Knowledge Workers) is one of the two more representative unions of the educational sector.

2 For data on the Italian teachers’ universe see https://dati.istruzione.it/opendata/opendata/catalogo/elements1/?area=Personale%20Scuola.

3 A wider analysis of the data collected is in Di Nunzio et al., 2020.

4 It is possible that in the universe the situations were worse, given that the CAWI technique probably selected a preferential sample for technologies and competences.

5 As we will see further (see Discussion and conclusions), the question of workload has also emerged in other research as one of the more relevant consequences of the specific emergency phase and of home-working, specifically when it’s adopted without a system of rules. In this way, it becomes one of the most relevant themes in future bargaining on home-schooling, and remote working in general.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Fabrizio Pirro

Fabrizio Pirro is Professore associato at Università degli studi di Roma «La Sapienza» in Roma, in the Dipartimento di Scienze sociali ed economiche. His research interests are related to work organisation, quality of work and labour conflict.

Emanuele Toscano

Emanuele Toscano is Professore associato at Università degli studi Guglielmo Marconi in Roma, in the Dipartimento di Scienze umane. His research interests are related to the study of subjectivation processes, social movements and far right movements.

Daniele Di Nunzio

Daniele Di Nunzio is Research Area Manager at Fondazione Di Vittorio in Roma. His research interests are related to work organisation, working conditions and trade union actions.

Marcello Pedaci

Marcello Pedaci is Professore associato at Università degli studi di Teramo in Teramo, in the Dipartimento di Scienze della comunicazione. His research interests are related to union strategies, working conditions and precarious work.