Eva Herman

Research Associate

Research into increasingly widespread precarious work in labour markets has been a particular focus within the Work and Equalities Institute (WEI) in recent years.

One ongoing project is being headed by Eva Herman who, thanks to a CASE studentship, has been looking at the care and hospitality sectors in the UK in order to better understand the causes and consequences of precarious work, and how it also affects men and women in different ways.

CASE studentships, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), provide an opportunity for PhD researchers to gain first-hand experience of work outside an academic environment, with the student working on a doctoral project supported by both expert academic supervisors and a co-supervisor from a non-higher education partner organisation.

During her study Eva has been co-supervised by Oxfam GB which has been conducting its own research into precarious work and low pay, and which has specifically built up a number of connections with academics at WEI to help inform its own policies and initiatives.

Precarious work

Eva says that in order to understand precarious work you have to understand the interactions between state policies, employer strategies, and the worker's own home life. "I specifically wanted to find out how employers shape certain types of work in different types of sectors, and deliberately chose care and hospitality as I had previously worked in both industries before going into academia. Also, while the care sector is dominated by women, in hospitality the gender split is much more even which enables us to look in-depth at gender issues too.

"After conducting interviews with employers, workers and volunteers our key finding was that in order to understand the shape that precarious work takes you need to explore how contracts, time and income interact with each other. Precarious work cannot be judged by looking at any one of these alone."

Strategies

Her research unearthed a number of different employer strategies which lead to precarious conditions. These included salaried workers doing unpaid overtime, those on zero-hour contracts working regular hours, shift workers working extra hours to make ends meet, and the use of volunteers to help reduce labour costs and maintain service operations.

The findings also showed how the worker's home environment was important.

"We found that the choice to work overtime is mediated by household income, caring responsibilities, and the employment of other household members. For example, women working night shifts often do so to ensure caring responsibilities are met, and an important aspect of precarious lives is the way families plan together and work out who is going to do what."

Decent work

Eva has an underlying passion for better understanding what makes decent work. As she adds: "I want my research to make a difference, to be meaningful, relevant and embedded in real-life experience. I am particularly interested in the ‘forgotten' workers who work behind the scenes and are not always visible on the front line. To have a good life you need good work, but having good work simply doesn't exist for so many people."

As she nears completion of her PhD she is now turning her attention towards her involvement in a major four-year WEI project looking at labour markets in different cities across the world. The project will compare six cities - Manchester, Bremen, Montreal, New York, Seoul and Buenos Aires – and explore how the type and quality of jobs on offer have direct and indirect effects on wider issues of inequality and social justice.

By combining high quality academic research outputs with ongoing impact and knowledge exchange activities, the project will provide both theoretical and practical answers to pressing global concerns around low pay, inequality and insecurity. Adds Eva: "For me personally this is a fantastic project for me to be involved with as it strikes to the heart of my academic passions and provides an excellent continuation of my PhD studies."

GM for Women

Eva is also very active in the Greater Manchester for Women Employment Action Group. Last year she was part of a team at WEI which produced a briefing note which laid bare the challenges for working women in the wake of the pandemic.

"Not only were women more likely to be in the frontline of key services such as health and social care during the pandemic, but they were also more at risk of redundancy and long-term furlough due to the high number of women who work in sectors such as retail and hospitality," she adds.