从双重灵活性到双重不稳定性:家政平台用工模式对家政服务员工作和生活的影响

From Dual Flexibility to Dual Precarity: The Impact of Domestic-Service Platform Employment Models on Domestic Workers' Work and Lives

  • 摘要: 随着对家政服务需求的增加,大量家政企业兴起,家政行业蓬勃发展,各种家政平台涌现。由4家平台公司的调研资料研究发现,家政平台的用工模式存在双重灵活性的特点,从而给劳动者带来了工作和生活的双重稳定性,具体表现在:第一,在盈利性和中介性的驱动下,平台采用灵活用工模式来减少用工成本,而其推动的灵活用工模式又与家庭性别角色影响下家政服务员对于灵活就业安排的倾向相耦合,从而固化了家政平台的灵活用工模式,形成双重灵活性;第二,以减少用工成本为导向的灵活用工模式催生了家政服务员的工作不稳定性,表现为家政服务员不断下降的时薪、缺失的劳动保障和逐渐式微的谈判能力;第三,灵活用工模式与灵活就业安排合一,造成了家政服务员的社会关系不稳定,使她们愈发陷入单一的社会支持网络和隔绝的生活世界;第四,工作不稳定性和社会关系不稳定性相互作用和彼此加强,形成了工作领域和生活领域的双重不稳定性。“双重灵活性—双重不稳定性”生成机制的提出,打破了过去家政平台研究的“技术中心论”,将平台的中介性和盈利性特征带回考察的中心,厘清了灵活性与不稳定性之间的关系,且二者都构成了将家政服务员牢牢拴在家政平台上的枷锁。

     

    Abstract: As demand for domestic services has increased, large numbers of domestic service firms have emerged, the domestic-service industry has flourished, and various domestic-service platforms have gradually appeared. Based on empirical materials from four platform companies, this article finds that domestic-service platforms are characterized by a model of "dual flexibility, " which in turn produces "dual precarity" in workers' work and lives. This is manifested in four ways. First, driven by their "profitability" and "intermediary" functions, platforms adopt flexible labor-use arrangements to reduce labor costs. These arrangements are coupled with domestic workers' preference for flexible employment under the influence of gendered family roles, thereby consolidating the flexible labor-use model of domestic-service platforms and forming "dual flexibility." Second, flexible labor-use arrangements oriented toward reducing labor costs generate work-related precarity among domestic workers, reflected in declining hourly wages, the absence of labor protections, and the gradual weakening of bargaining power. Third, the convergence of flexible labor use and flexible employment arrangements produces instability in domestic workers' social relations, pushing them further into a single-stranded support network and an isolated lifeworld. Fourth, work precarity and instability in social relations interact with and reinforce one another, giving rise to dual precarity across the domains of work and life. By proposing the generative mechanism of "dual flexibility-dual precarity, " this article moves beyond the "technology-centered" approach that has dominated previous research on domestic-service platforms. It recenters the intermediary and profit-oriented features of platforms, clarifies the relationship between flexibility and precarity, and shows that both operate as shackles that bind domestic workers tightly to domestic-service platforms.

     

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