Time control, job execution and information access: work/family strategies in the context of low-wage work and 24/7 schedules

ABSTRACT

Low-wage work and rigid atypical schedules reduce workers’ leeway to manage their work/family interface, resulting in high levels of work/family conflict and in health issues. Faced with these inflexible conditions and a lack of formal work/family measures, workers rely primarily on informal practices where relational dynamics with coworkers and managers play an important role. However, low-wage workers with little schedule control are underrepresented in the work/family literature and little is known about how they deal with work/family issues in their workplaces. What role is played by workplace relationships in strategies used by workers to manage their work/family interface in the face of imposed, extended and variable schedules? Using an interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological framework combining communication and ergonomic work activity analysis, we analyzed data collected through direct and participant observations, semi-structured interviews, interaction diaries and administrative documents. This community-initiated ethnographic case study helped us identify three main types of work/family strategies related to (1) work time; (2) work execution and (3) access to relational resources. We also discuss how these strategies are embedded in the work activity and relational context, including gender dynamics, and are entangled with individual, team and organizational considerations. Some potential solutions are presented.

RÉSUMÉ

Un bas salaire et des horaires rigides et atypiques réduisent la marge de manœuvre pour gérer l’interface entre le travail et la famille, ce qui génère des niveaux élevés de conflit travail/famille et des problèmes de santé. Le recours aux dynamiques relationnelles avec les collègues et les gestionnaires face à des conditions inflexibles et en l’absence de mesures organisationnelles prend alors toute son importance au regard des stratégies pour concilier travail et famille (CTF). Les enjeux de CTF et la manière d’y faire face dans ces types d’emplois sont sous-représentés dans les écrits. Quel est le rôle des relations interpersonnelles dans les stratégies pour gérer l’interface travail-famille face à des horaires imposés, étendus et variables? Cette étude de cas développée à la demande d’un partenaire syndical repose sur un cadre théorique et méthodologique combinant la communication et l'ergonomie pour comprendre l’activité de CTF. L’analyse de données recueillies par des observations ethnographiques, des entretiens semi-dirigés, des journaux de bord d'interactions et des documents administratifs nous a permis d'identifier trois principaux types de stratégies de CTF impliquant 1) le temps de travail; 2) l’exécution du travail; 3) l'accès aux ressources relationnelles. Nous discutons de la façon dont ces stratégies sont intégrées dans l'activité de travail; des considérations individuelles, collectives et organisationnelles qu’elles comportent; et, de leur imbrication dans un contexte relationnel, incluant des dynamiques de genre. Des pistes de solutions sont proposées.

KEYWORDS:

• Work/family strategies
• work activity analysis
• relational dynamics
• atypical schedules
• low-wage
• gender

MOTS CLÉS:

• stratégies
• articulation travail-famille
• analyse du travail
• dynamiques relationnelles
• horaires atypiques
• faible salaire
• genre

Acknowledgements

We thank two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. We also thank the research participants, the local shop committee, the employer, the Quebec Federation of Labour and its Status of Women Service Director Carole Gingras, as well as our university's community outreach service.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Mélanie Lefrançois, MA, is a Ph.D. candidate in the Health & Society Interdisciplinary Ph.D. program (communication and work analysis) at UQAM. Her work focuses on relational dynamics, work organization and operational leeway related to the experience of work/family in low-wage, low-prestige and low-schedule control occupations.

Karen Messing, Ph.D., is professor emerita of ergonomics (work analysis) at the CINBIOSE Research Center, UQAM. Her work focuses on women’s occupational health, including work/family issues, especially in the low-wage service sector. She wrote One-eyed science: Occupational health and working women (Temple, Philadelphia, 1998) and Pain and prejudice: What science can learn about work from the people who do it (BTL, Toronto, 2014). She received the 2014 Yant Award from the American Industrial Hygiene Association for her contribution to industrial hygiene

Johanne Saint-Charles, Ph.D., is a social network, and ecosystemic approaches to health specialist. She is an active member of the International Social Network Association (INSNA) and a full professor of social and public communication at UQAM. She has developed expertise in transdisciplinary collaborations and in gendered power dynamics in social networks and sociosemantic networks.

ORCID

Mélanie Lefrançois http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9553-8695

Karen Messing http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6657-0725

Johanne Saint-Charles http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7029-9672

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Joseph-Armand Bombardier Doctoral Scholarship).