Precarious Employment Relations as a Factor of Social Pollution

Abstract

The paper discusses the assessment of precarious employment relations as one of the systemic factors of social pollution. The social pollution phenomenon in employment relations is caused by employers who use a strategy for the reduction of labour costs and toxic practices of human resource management. This paper presents the intermediate outcomes of a longitudinal study based on the methods of survey, involving workers of Russian companies in different sectors of economy. In 2014, authors conducted a pilot study in order to test the methodological tools for assessing social pollution in employment relations, which included assessing the degree of precarization. This pilot study also allowed the authors to verify the hypotheses of their research and to improve the tools for further application in the survey which was conducted in 2015 among the staff members of enterprises in the Sverdlovsk region. Thus, the authors have managed to identify the precarization-related toxic elements of employment relations in these enterprises, which damaged the physical health and psychosocial well-being of the employees. This study has also brought to light a number of current trends in the employment relations in the region. Although the research results are somewhat limited due to the fact that such observations should be made repeatedly over a long period of time, intermediary conclusions might also be of interest and could be used to search for ways of dealing with problems caused by the growing precarization on the level of individual enterprises as well as on the level of the whole region.