Precarious work increases depression-based disability among male employees.

BACKGROUND: Precarious employment is a potent occupational health risk, but little is known about its association with work-related disability and its causes. This study analyzes whether employment precariousness is associated with receiving disability pension (DP) due to depression and whether this differs according to gender. METHODS: Statistics Finland's Quality of Work Life Surveys (1997, 2003, 2008 and 2013) were merged with register-based DP data obtained from the Finnish Centre for Pensions. The survey material was used to measure employment precariousness using five variables: fear of job loss, poor employability prospects, previous unemployment, low earnings and temporary contracts. We followed 20-60-year-old employees until 2016 and studied Cox proportional hazard ratios (HRs) for receiving DP among women and men, adjusting for sociodemographic covariates, working conditions and health at baseline. RESULTS: The overall risk of receiving DP tended to increase as precarious job features accumulated. Among men, a higher risk of receiving DP due to depression was associated with previous unemployment [HR 2.2, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.1-4.2] and poor employability (HR 2.4, 95% CI 1.3-4.7), whereas no corresponding association was found among women. CONCLUSIONS: Employment precariousness may reflect a psychological stress mechanism that predisposes the individual to mental health problems, predicting future disability. Work disability risk shows gendered differences depending on the cause of DP. Promoting employability at workplace and policy levels could offset the health risks associated with precariousness.

Precarious work and the risk of receiving a disability pension.

AIMS: Precarious employment is an emerging determinant of occupational health, but its association with work-related disability remains little understood. We operationalised precarious work as a multidimensional construct and examined how the accumulation of precarious job features predicts the incidence of receiving a disability pension (DP). METHODS: The study comprised 13,228 employees aged 20-54 who had been interviewed for the Finnish Quality of Work Life Surveys in 1984, 1990, 1997, or 2003. We measured precarious work with five variables that reflect both subjective and objective job insecurity: the threat of dismissal/unemployment; poor employability; low earnings; previous unemployment; and temporary contract. An eight-year follow-up was merged with the pooled cross-sectional data, and Cox proportional hazard ratios (HR) for receiving a DP were compared between the insecurity measures, controlling for sociodemographic covariates, job characteristics and health at the baseline with a step-wise procedure. RESULTS: Precarious employees had an elevated risk of receiving a DP (all covariates adjusted for). The risk of receiving a DP was associated with subjective job insecurity, with the strongest indicator being poor employability. The association between the threat of unemployment and receiving a DP was weak before controlling for health. Among objective insecurity measures, low earnings and earlier unemployment were weakly connected to receiving a DP before controlling for sociodemographic covariates, job characteristics and health. CONCLUSIONS: We recommend the evaluation of several precarious job features in future studies. The risk of receiving a DP could potentially be offset by improving individuals' employability.

Relational justice, economic fluctuations, and long-term sickness absence: a multi-cohort study.

Objectives Previous studies mainly based on the public sector show that organizational justice is associated with a lower risk of sickness absence (SA). The purpose of this study is to analyze this association with multi-cohort data from different employment sectors and to discover whether the association varies according to the general economic context or financial situation of the workplace. Methods Cross-sectional Finnish Quality of Work Life surveys from 1997, 2003, and 2008 were combined with data on long-term SA obtained from the Finnish Social Security Institution. The associations between SA periods in the three years following each survey and perceived relational justice, general economic context, and the perceived financial situation of the workplace were analyzed with negative binomial regression. Results Higher level of relational justice was statistically significantly associated with lower rate of SA after controlling for baseline health, but not after controlling for job control and job demands. An interaction was found with relational justice and the financial situation of the workplace. Higher level of relational justice was related to a lower risk of SA when the financial situation of the workplace was stable, but there was a higher risk of SA when the financial situation was insecure. Conclusions The association between relational justice and a lower risk of SA is in line with previous studies when the financial situation of the workplace is stable. In unstable economic conditions, employees may have the courage to take sick leave when they are ill if they are fairly treated by their supervisor.

Mobile knowledge workers and traditional mobile workers: Assessing the prevalence of multi-locational work in Europe.

This article contributes to the discussion on flexible working by assessing empirically the prevalence of mobile, multi-locational work in Europe (EU-28, Norway and Switzerland). Drawing on data from the Sixth European Working Conditions Survey, the prevalence of multi-locational work across Europe is examined in terms of the knowledge intensity of the work. Knowledge-intensive occupations are characterised by a high level of individual skills, typically acquired through tertiary-level education, and a high degree of autonomy combined with frequent use of ICT. According to the results, working on mobile sites - a practice that augments working in the primary workplace - is most common in northern European countries, where the proportion of knowledge-intensive occupations is high. However, even in the Nordic region, knowledge workers predominantly work at their employers' premises. This finding is in marked contrast with the hyperbole and expectations which assume that ICT allows knowledge workers to work free from the constraints of time and space. Agriculture, construction and transport workers still represent the largest proportion of the mobile workforce. Knowledge-intensive job features, however, predict the adoption of working at home. The analysis adds to the literature on flexible working by taking into account both traditional and knowledge-intensive forms of multi-locational work as well as providing a cross-national comparison.