Jose Taberner Guasp

Bio: Jose Taberner Guasp is an academic researcher from University of Córdoba (Spain). The author has contributed to research in topics: Precariat. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 2 publications receiving 1585 citations.

A new model of social class : findings from the BBC's Great British Class Survey Experiment.

Abstract: The social scientific analysis of social class is attracting renewed interest given the accentuation of economic and social inequalities throughout the world. The most widely validated measure of social class, the Nuffield class schema, developed in the 1970s, was codified in the UK’s National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC) and places people in one of seven main classes according to their occupation and employment status. This principally distinguishes between people working in routine or semi-routine occupations employed on a ‘labour contract’ on the one hand, and those working in professional or managerial occupations employed on a ‘service contract’ on the other. However, this occupationally based class schema does not effectively capture the role of social and cultural processes in generating class divisions. We analyse the largest survey of social class ever conducted in the UK, the BBC’s 2011 Great British Class Survey, with 161,400 web respondents, as well as a nationally representative sample survey, which includes unusually detailed questions asked on social, cultural and economic capital. Using latent class analysis on these variables, we derive seven classes. We demonstrate the existence of an ‘elite’, whose wealth separates them from an established middle class, as well as a class of technical experts and a class of ‘new affluent’ workers. We also show that at the lower levels of the class structure, alongside an ageing traditional working class, there is a ‘precariat’ characterised by very low levels of capital, and a group of emergent service workers. We think that this new seven class model recognises both social polarisation in British society and class fragmentation in its middle layers, and will attract enormous interest from a wide social scientific community in offering an up-to-date multi-dimensional model of social class.

Human resource management and employee well-being: towards a new analytic framework

Abstract: The mutual gains model suggests that HRM should benefit both individuals and organisations. However, the dominant models within HRM theory and research continue to focus largely on ways to improve performance, with employee concerns very much a secondary consideration. Furthermore, pressures at work and in society more widely are creating an increasing threat to employee well-being. If employee concerns and the threats to well-being are to be taken seriously, a different analytic framework for HRM is required. The article sets out an alternative approach to HRM that gives priority to practices designed to enhance well-being and a positive employment relationship, proposing that both elements are essential. Evidence is presented to support the choice of practices and to argue that these also hold the potential to improve both individual and organisational performance. It therefore offers a different path to mutual gains. The research and policy implications of this approach are discussed.

Workers without employers: shadow corporations and the rise of the gig economy

Abstract: A growing number of American workers are no longer employed in 'jobs' with a long-term connection with a company but are hired for 'gigs' under 'flexible' arrangements as 'independent contractors' or 'consultants,' working only to complete a particular task or for defined time and with no more connection with their employer than there might be between a consumer and a particular brand of soap or potato chips. While the rise of this 'gig' economy is praised by some as a response to the wishes of a more entrepreneurial generation, it is more likely that it is driven by the concerns of businesses to lower wages and benefit costs during business down-turns while also reducing their vulnerability to unfair dismissal lawsuits. The rise of gig labor calls for new initiatives in social policy because it shifts more of the burden of economic risk onto workers even while removing gig workers from many of the employment-bound New-Deal-era social insurance programs.

Hyper-precarious lives: Migrants, work and forced labour in the Global North

Abstract: This paper unpacks the contested inter-connections between neoliberal work and welfare regimes, asylum and immigration controls, and the exploitation of migrant workers. The concept of precarity is...