Introduction

The absence of stability creates inherently precarious and insecure conditions for many employed within the service economy. Workers report problems of instability in contractual arrangements, the use of overtime, just-in-time staffing models and progression into a steady career. The absence of an ethical obligation to the other within a negative culture of competitive individualism creates space for harmful subjectivities to emerge and deprive co-workers of material and emotional resources. This reinforces and bolsters the instability associated with insecure employment conditions and is further aggravated by an absence of protection. We return to systemic violence and an additional causative absence with significant harmful consequences for low-paid service economy employees. Inadequate protections negatively affect emotional and physical well-being.

Employees shorn of employment protection find the minimum statutory rights afforded by legal strictures can fail to materialise; service economy workers provide undervalued and free labour to employers. Legal protection is often absent too; workers unaware of their rights are exploited and adversely affected by employers who heap responsibility onto the employee and leave the worker to deal with the aftermath of negative outcomes. The absence of physical protections in the intense struggle to meet targets and deadlines also has a harmful impact on the individual through inadequate health and safety restrictions (Tombs and Whyte, 2007). Absent protections in relation to redundancy also ensure negative outcomes for the employee. When the creative destruction of the market accounts for the demise of an organisation, its employees face harmful consequences. This chapter emphasises the continuum of legal and illegal practices that constitute much of the social harm agenda; some absent protections are legal, other forms of harm employ illegal means to exploit absent protections yet both forms of harm stem from the same imperative to remain competitive and generate profit (Scott, 2017). The fundamental absence of protection for employees raises serious implications around the mental health and well-being of workers trapped in low-paid, insecure and flexible forms of work.

Employees desire a future satisfaction that often appears unmanageable while the present remains the constant struggle to pay immediate bills and feed families.

Working for free

Harvey (2010) describes ‘accumulation by dispossession’ as a routine process within capitalist economies whereby the capitalist class earn leverage, advantage, assets and capital.