When flexibility diversity becomes socially acceptable: The case of the French hospital industry

Philippe Mossé, Philippe Méhaut, Anne-Marie Arborio and Lise Causse
Additional contact information
Philippe Mossé: Institute of Labour Economics and Industrial Sociology (LEST), CNRS, Aix-Marseille University, France, philippe.mosse@univmed.fr
Philippe Méhaut: Institute of Labour Economics and Industrial Sociology (LEST), CNRS, Aix-Marseille University, France
Anne-Marie Arborio: Institute of Labour Economics and Industrial Sociology (LEST), CNRS, Aix-Marseille University, France
Lise Causse: Centre d'études et de recherches sur les qualifications (CEREQ), France

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2011, vol. 32, issue 2, 181-197

Abstract: The aim of this article, which is mostly based on case studies of public and private French hospitals, is to analyse the employment of nurse assistants (NA) and unqualified health care workers ( agent des services hospitaliers or ASH), focusing particularly on questions of flexibility. First, the article shows that in French hospitals, the cleaning and basic health care tasks are performed by a relatively stable core group of employees and by a more flexible workforce. From the hospital perspective, the need for flexibility is related to the growing trend towards rationalization. But employees see the demands for flexibility from a different angle, depending on their professional histories. The article also shows that the nurse assistants and unqualified health care workers who work under these unstable conditions may see this situation as a transition period and as a gateway to permanent jobs. Consequently, and despite the difficult working conditions, the job opportunities offered by hospitals may be attractive to women with few or no qualifications.

Keywords: division of labour; flexibility; human resource management; quality of work life; temporary employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0143831X10373284 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:32:y:2011:i:2:p:181-197

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X10373284

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic and Industrial Democracy from Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().