“There’s always an underlying feeling of anxiety, whether that’s saying to your boss I can’t make it in today, but just being really anxious about making that call six hours before your shift, and the repercussions that might have for you.”

This is life in precarious work, as described by a Unite hospitality worker in Scotland. The issue has become an increasingly mainstream topic in our politics, and with movies like Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You it is reaching beyond politics too. 

While many focus on the issue of low pay, the problems of precarity run much deeper. Time pressure and the loss of control over working and family life can be just as impactful for many workers.

Last week, the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) launched our research report, ‘Time, Control, Trust: Collectivising in Precarious Work.’ Speaking to a snapshot of workers from hospitality, retail, creative industries, and distribution, the report details how far precarious work has penetrated daily life in Scotland and aims to be a wakeup call to those who have become complacent in the face of this exploitation.

The report shows the work done by trade unions to both organise and mobilise precarious workers in recent years, looking at the successes and limitations experienced in confronting this new challenge in the labour market.

One example is the Better than Zero campaign, which launched four years ago. The STUC resourced the campaign which focussed, initially, on Scotland’s largest hospitality firm. Campaigning over zero hours, and staff being treated with zero rights and zero respect, activists used creative tactics like flash mobs and stunts to spotlight on the impact these conditions had on precarious workers. 

In a non-unionised industry with a predominantly young workforce, the campaign highlighted just how much trade unions would have to adapt to reach precarious workers — which continue to be a growing part of the workforce.

The lack of a secure and stable contract is often seen as the main identifier of precarity for workers by trade unions. However, non-standard contracts and erratic schedules do not automatically result in participants identifying as precarious — which is crucial for trade unions to understand.

The STUC report found that identity as a precarious worker resonated most strongly with the majority of those working in hospitality or retail, but not with those who were ‘self-employed’ (often under bogus conditions) from the distribution sector. It was not until the themes around lack of time, lack of control, and limited trust were explored that the workers began to realise the term precarious applied to them.

Workers often expressed a strong desire to address the negative impacts of using the term ‘precarious work’, perhaps as a way to reclaim some power from the ‘victimhood’ which the term can denote. This was particularly true where workers’ identity is strongly intertwined with their profession, for example in the creative industries, an area where precarity is normalised. 

This isn’t an argument to abandon the term — which remains useful in describing a sense of imbalanced power relations and instability that goes beyond that of the normal employer-employee relationship. But it does indicate the pitfalls of approaching trade union organising with narratives about victimhood rather than workers’ own experience.

The first theme of workers’ experience of precarity identified in the report is the lack of time to socialise, rest, or do anything other than think about working. This is particularly acute when coupled with low-paid work, as people spend unpaid time looking for another job or taking on more hours or second jobs.  

A recent TUC report on gig work pointed out that the increase in ‘platform work’ is used to supplement other forms of income, reflecting the reality that workers in the UK are increasingly likely to patch together a living from multiple sources rather than being permanent and full-time. In this sense, it is time itself which is being commodified by new sectors like the gig economy.

The STUC report argues that workers’ time has to be further up the collective bargaining agenda. Whether that means taking action over a four-day week, or using technology agreements to ensure automation supports more leisure time for workers, time, and how to get more of it, is a first order issue for workers.

Throughout the research workers also raised the theme of control over their working lives. In one interaction with GMB members and distribution couriers recorded just a week before their company signed a national agreement with the union, the workers described it this way:

“If you do anything wrong they’re [the field manager] is straight on the phone and they get you, but if you try and get them for anything? No chance.”

A clear feature of precarious work is the sense of powerlessness it pervades through the workforce. Although this can be the case for all workers to a degree, those in precarious work are very conscious of how out of control their lives can be. 

Some ways workers feel this control are overt, like workplace sanctions. Others are more insidious, such as lack of transparency or accountability in the workplace, while still others are systemic due to the pervasive nature of precarity across sectors. 

In gig work, and increasingly in other forms of work such as home care, management is faceless when technology is involved or when management structures are obscure. This leads to a sense that it is the technology which is in control of workers lives, distancing them from management decisions.

The report argues that new models of member participation and engagement are important in redressing the balance of power in the workplace, and putting control back into the hands of workers. Virtual engagement and collective learning environments are important for precarious workers, rather than an emphasis on just bringing them in to a pre-existing branch structure. 

The question is often asked, ‘if precarious conditions are so bad, why don’t workers simply move on.’ It is, of course, not easy to find stable or well-paid jobs in the current market, but there are reasons beyond this too. As one Unite hospitality member put it:

“I don’t know about the rest of you but I’ve stayed in hospitality for this long because of the community around it, like, all my friends work in hospitality. If I had a Saturday night off I’d have nobody to hang out with, so there’s no point in leaving.”

This sense of community is a potentially strong tool for organisers and, so, employers often attempt to foster an atmosphere of mistrust and competition between workers. This, in itself, is a form of control which is used to perpetuate forms of precarious work. Social differences and schisms have often been intentionally imposed to divide workers because employers are aware of the potential source of workers’ power.

However, an atmosphere of camaraderie and friendship is also possible in precarious settings; particularly when working hours and conditions are antisocial or there is a need to network, because people rely on colleagues ‘in the same boat’. Facilitating this camaraderie is an essential foundation needed to create strong trade unions and build a union identity. 

Precarious work isn’t inevitable. While every worker experiences a degree of being at the mercy of their employer in terms of control and spending their time, the key thing about precarity is the conscious and active decision which the employer takes in making the workplace terms and conditions precarious.

Ultimately, it is only the unglamorous grassroots work of trade union organising that will ensure we do not consign a generation of workers to low wages, intensified work with faceless management, and high levels of exhaustion. Precarity is a threat to everyone’s living standards. The fight against it is a fight for all workers in our economy.