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AbstractIn the past four decades, high-income countries have seen a thorough socio-economic restructuring with important implications for the jobs of many workers, including health- and safety-related aspects. Much attention has been paid to psychosocial risks related to intrinsic features of contemporary work tasks, while the occupational health and safety consequences of 'new' conditions and relations of employment have remained neglected. This relative neglect is unjustified given the disrupting nature of many contemporary forms of employment. In this commentary, I introduce the concept of 'employment quality' as a novel approach towards measuring employment-related OHS risks. Employment quality involves a 'typological approach' towards employment arrangements, identifying five employment types in European labour markets, showing a distinct profile in terms of health-related employment characteristics. Moreover, these types align with segmented labour market theory, have a clear socio-economic profile, and show strong associations with workers' self-reported health.

Social epidemiology, is a predominantly empirically-oriented discipline, that is mainly centred towards the identification of unequally distributed risk factors in explaining socio-economic health inequalities (SEHI). This article first presents an overview of the different empirical causes of SEHI. Then it is argued that the very convincing empirical results are in contrast with a poor social scientific operationalisation of the social mechanisms causing SEHI. In this paper the concept of fundamental social causes of disease, introduced by Link and Phelan (1995), is provided of a stronger social-theoretical framework. One point of special concern is the position of the fundamental causes within the "structure and agency-problem" of sociology. Next, the fundamental causes are described more accurately as "relational systems of means allocation". It is our central argument that a careful conceptualisation of fundamental social causes is needed in order to be able to identify them. This is illustrated with two examples.

Objectives: according to the Neo-Marxist Social Class (NMSC) Theory, social inequalities can be partly explained by positions of authority. Higher positions of authority imply higher rewards conceptualized as 'loyalty rent'. In contemporary workplaces a reduced need for loyalty and therefore also rewards can be expected. We investigate how the interaction between positions of authority and Effort-Reward Imbalance (ERI) is related to mental health. Methods: from the 6th wave of the European Working Conditions Survey, we selected workers aged 15 to 64 from 28 European Member States. ERI was measured with 18 proxies for the ERI Questionnaire. For mental health, the WHO-5 well-being index was used. Relationships were analyzed using linear regression models. Results: we found a relationship between ERI and mental health for European employees. We did not find worse mental health for middle managers, but we did for higher managers. The vulnerability for ERI is higher in positions of authority with the expectation of loyalty rent attached to leadership roles. The mental health of female middle managers appears more vulnerable to ERI than men's. Conclusions: our findings show that mental health risks of middle and higher managers become apparent especially in situations where rewards do not match the status expectations of the position.

This study explores why temporary agency workers are disadvantaged compared to regular workers regarding their employment-related and social rights in Belgium despite extensive equal rights regulation. Fifteen in-depth interviews among temporary agency workers were analysed thematically. The enforceability of rights poses the main problem in temporary agency workers' disadvantaged position. The following manifestations of a lack of enforceability are discussed: (1) lack of enforceability due to ignorance and indifference about rights; (2) vulnerability hindering enforceability; and (3) lack of enforceability due to misuse by employers and cutting corners. It is argued that this problem of enforceability is mainly caused by a lack of a clear allocation of responsibilities as to who should ensure the rights of temporary agency workers.

In recent decades, labor markets of high-income countries such as Belgium, have been subject to a process of de-standardization. This meant that the number of people with standard, full-time jobs was decreasing while at the same time there was an increase in de-standardized jobs. De-standardized jobs are often associated with adverse health and well-being outcomes. The notion of 'precariousness', which pays attention to the quality of the working situation, tries to capture the consequences of de-standardization. Nevertheless, an approach that focuses exclusively on work-related aspects, risks losing sight of the broader social context in which workers are embedded. This study therefore investigated how the social context determines the impact of precarious jobs on well-being. More specifically, we investigated the role of the household context through subjective material deprivation and work-life balance. Regression analyses were conducted on the recently collected (2019) EPRES-be dataset (n = 2.707) with the aim of examining precarious employment in Belgium. The results showed a positive association between precarious employment and low well-being. The household context proved important in explaining that relationship. The effect of precarious employment on well-being was partly explained by subjective material deprivation and the work-life balance.

Although many governments actively stimulate self-employment, their work-related mental well-being remains understudied. The aim of current study is to investigate the mental well-being of different types of self-employed, testing whether mental well-being differences among self-employed are explained by the presence of work characteristics that are in accordance with the ideal-typical image of the "successful entrepreneur" (e.g. creativity, willingness to take risks, innovativeness, high intrinsic motivation, skilfulness and the ability of recognizing opportunities). Moreover, we investigate the relation of country-level "entrepreneurial climate" and the individual mental well-being of self-employed. For this purpose, data from the European Working Conditions Survey, round 6 (2015) was analysed, including 5448 cases, originating from the 28 EU-member states. Multilevel random intercepts modelling was used to investigate associations of both individual- and country-level characteristics with mental well-being. We found that motivation, the ability to recognize opportunities, and finding it easy to be self-employed positively influences the mental well-being of self-employed. Respondents with these characteristics are often medium-big employers, while farmers, dependent freelancers and own account workers generally have less of these features and tend to have lower levels of mental well-being. At the country-level, positive entrepreneurship perception relates to more advantageous mental health scores in self-employed. These results implicate that policies promoting self-employment should be (more) concerned with the work-related characteristics of (future) self-employed.

Background: Precarious employment is becoming an increasingly important social determinant of health inequalities among workers. The way in which contemporary employment arrangements and their health consequences are addressed in empirical research is mostly based on the contract-related or employment instability dimension. A broader conceptual approach including various important characteristics of the degrading of employment conditions and relations is needed. Objective: The general objective of this paper is to empirically test a new multidimensional construct for measuring precarious employment in an existing database. Special focus is on the social distribution of precarious employment. Methods: A subsample of 21,415 participants in the EU-27 from the Fourth European Working Conditions Survey-2005 was analysed. A cross-sectional study of the social distribution of precarious employment was conducted through the analysis of proportional differences according to gender, social class and credentials for the European Union as a whole and within each country. The 8 dimensions of the Employment Precariousness Construct were represented by 11 indicators. Results: In general, women, workers without supervisory authority, those with fewer credentials, and those living in Eastern and Southern European countries suffer the highest levels of precarious employment. Exceptionally, men, workers with supervisory authority and those with the highest credentials suffer the highest levels of long working hours, schedule unpredictability and uncompensated flexible working times. Conclusions: This article offers the first validation for an innovative multidimensional conceptualisation of employment precariousness applied to the analysis of existing survey data, showing the unequal distribution of precarious employment across the European labour force. This set of indicators can be useful for exposure surveillance of precarious employment.