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Six - Working Lives
- Edited by Martin Parker
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- Book:
- Life After COVID-19
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 18 March 2021
- Print publication:
- 12 August 2020, pp 53-62
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- Chapter
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Summary
The COVID-19 crisis will have fundamental impacts on the future of working lives. Daily forecasts predict a depressing picture for the working-age population. This makes it difficult to identify positive outcomes from the crisis for work, life and welfare. Poor government planning and decision making concerning health and economic responses have further added to the problems, rather than resolving them. This is exemplified by the lack of clarity, speediness and sufficiency of many of the schemes devised to help employees, employers and those unemployed. Increases in sales and recruitment by tax-avoiding online marketplace Amazon (up 2.53% in the first quarter of 2020, according to according to financial information website MarketWatch) provide just one example of the economic and labour market effects of this crisis being unfairly distributed. While online sales and delivery companies, food production and supply organizations, internet service providers and TV and film streaming companies are likely to be among the big winners from the current crisis, there will also be many losers.
We begin this chapter by setting out the predicted outcomes regarding employment, unemployment and underemployment, exploring the effects of the pandemic on individuals’ working lives, and reflect on issues emanating from the crisis such as the contribution of key or essential workers, the rise in flexible working, and clear gender inequality as well as inequality experienced by Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups. We then switch our focus to highlight potential lessons learned from the crisis in order to achieve better work and life arrangements that will benefit individuals and society as a whole.
Winners and losers
As a result of COVID-19, the rise in unemployment globally has been predicted to be between 5.3 million and 24.7 million from a base level of 188 million in 2019, compared with the increase of 22 million during the global financial crisis of 2008–09. Similarly, already high under-employment rates are expected to increase, since previous crises have shown that a decrease in labour demand translates into wage and working-hours reductions. Current UK figures show that one third of firms that are still operating are doing so on reduced hours, with the majority of these reductions taking place in the accommodation and food services sectors.
The influence on carer wellbeing of motivations to care for older people and the relationship with the care recipient
- CLARE LYONETTE, LUCY YARDLEY
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- Journal:
- Ageing & Society / Volume 23 / Issue 4 / July 2003
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 25 June 2003, pp. 487-506
- Print publication:
- July 2003
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- Article
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This paper reports an analysis of the relative influence of work-related, care-related and personal factors on carer outcomes among 204 working female carers. To examine the importance of personal factors, the ‘Motivations in Elder Care Scale’ (MECS) and the ‘Relationships in Elder Care Scale’ (RECS) were developed. In a qualitative pilot study, interviews with working-age carers were drawn on to form the items for inclusion. The MECS included items for external pressures to care, e.g. guilt, the older person's expectation of care, and perceived disapproval of others, and for internal desires to adopt the caring role, e.g. carer's resistance to other forms of care, living up to one's principles and caring nature. Psychometric tests revealed that two subscales had greater reliability, the EXMECS (extrinsic motivations to care) and the INMECS (intrinsic motivations). The RECS included both positive items, e.g. respect, admiration for the older person, and lack of generational differences, and negative relationship items, e.g. struggle for power, and older person's resistance to caring efforts, and had good reliability. Measures of carer stress and carer satisfaction were included as outcome variables. Multiple regression analyses showed that the RECS and the MECS were the most significant predictors of carer outcomes. Greater extrinsic motivations to care and poorer quality of the relationship with the older person were the most significant predictors of carer stress. Better relationship quality and greater intrinsic motivations to care were the most significant predictors of carer satisfaction.