Musculoskeletal Symptoms in Professional Musicians: Do Self-employed and Employer-employed Musicians Differ?

Concerns have been raised for the health and wellbeing of self-employed workers. Musicians are the ‘original’ gig workers, and musicians have a high prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms (MSSs). Studies of musicians’ MSSs have typically focused on classical, employer-employed musicians; leaving self-employed musicians under-investigated. We investigated the prevalence of MSS outcomes in all types of professional musicians, and compared the MSS outcomes between self-employed and employer-employed musicians. We conducted a cross-sectional study of professional musicians. Given the large proportion of musicians who were both self-employed and employer-employed, three groups were compared: self-employed only (self-employed group), employer-employed only (employer-employed group), and both self-employed and employer-employed (both group) musicians. Multivariable regression analyses were conducted. A total of 225 professional musicians were included in the study, 87.9% of whom reported MSSs in the last 12 months. For MSSs that impaired musical activity, the 12-month prevalence was 43.2%. Musicians in the self-employed group reported a significantly higher 7-day prevalence of MSSs compared with those in the employer-employed group. Compared with musicians in the employer-employed group, musicians in the both group reported a higher 12-month prevalence of MSSs that impaired musical activity. A higher proportion of symptomatic musicians in the both group reported seeing a health professional for their MSSs, compared with the employer-employed group. Similarly, symptomatic musicians in the both group reported higher ratings of emotional impact from MSSs, compared with symptomatic musicians in the employer-employed group. The majority of musicians have experienced MSSs. Several significant differences were reported between the three groups of musicians, with musicians in the both group generally reporting poorer MSS outcomes, compared with musicians in the employer-employed group. There are several potential reasons for why musicians who are both self-employed and employer-employed appear to have poorer MSS outcomes, including the stress of balancing multiple demands. Further research is required into the risk factors for MSS outcomes in self-employed musicians, including those who are both self-employed and employer-employed, and interventions should be directed towards self-employed musicians to minimise the MSS burden.

Characterizing the Health and Safety Concerns of U.S. Rideshare Drivers: A Qualitative Pilot Study

BACKGROUND

Despite the growth and popularity of gig work, limited information exists about the occupational health and safety concerns faced by individuals who are employed through ridesharing online applications. In this qualitative study, we characterized the perceived health and safety concerns of drivers employed by rideshare companies.

METHODS

During September-October 2019, we requested car rides, using digital rideshare platforms. During the ride, drivers responded verbally to a brief closed-end sociodemographic and work characteristics survey. A semi-structured interview script was used to collect rideshare driver perceptions on health and safety risks.

FINDINGS

A total of 35 rideshare drivers of group mean age of 43.1 ± 11.2 years were interviewed, of whom 77.1% were male and 82.9% identified as Latino. Sixty percent of participants reported rideshare as their primary job, working an average of 47.9 ± 19.6 hours weekly (minimum = 6 hours, maximum = 84 hours). Drivers enjoyed job autonomy yet faced stressors such as passenger risky behavior, car accidents, and lack of policies that protect the driver. Rideshare drivers also raised concerns about their current health status, economic pressures, and worker safety.

CONCLUSION/APPLICATION TO PRACTICE

Drivers are forced to extend work hours to support themselves financially, exacerbating their current health concerns and safety risks as it means more time spent working in their sedentary job, compromising their mental and physical health as well as their safety. Occupational health and safety programs geared toward workers in the gig economy are needed.

Individualism and Collectivism at Work in an Era of Deindustrialization: Work Narratives of Food Delivery Couriers in the Platform Economy

Supposedly emblematic of digital capitalism, the rise of the gig economy is frequently taken as a cipher for the developing deindustrialisation of western societies. It is tempting to interpret the shift of manufacturing jobs to the global south and their replacement with service sector jobs as a one-way street, leading to the demise of decent work and the rise of work characterized by precarity, low pay, low skill and a non-unionized workforce. However, the reality is inevitably more complex. In the first place, pessimism may be attributed to a rose-tinted view of the experience of former industrial employment in the global north resulting from a questionable assumption about the nature of the jobs that occupied most people in former industrial societies. Certainly, deindustrialisation is not leading to "de-working," that is, working less for the same money. With respect to gig work, autonomy and flexibility are central to labor inducement and hence labor control. Yet at the same time, and linked to the latter, we need to explore another deep-rooted phenomenon: the persistence of workspace collectivism. Our evidence derives from qualitative interviews with gig workers in the food delivery sector in a number of European countries. We highlight the extent to which couriers profess a variety of understandings of the character of platform economy labor processes. A range of narratives emerge including platform work as leisure, as economic opportunity, and as collectivist labor. Moreover, individuation, attendant upon the character of the physical labor process, did not lead in any straightforward way to individualism in social labor processes-contrary to our expectations, we in fact witnessed forms of collectivism. Collectivism is to be distinguished from "types of solidarity" described by Morgan and Pulignano (2020) whereby neo-liberalism has transformed a range of institutional forms of labor solidarities. By contrast, we are concerned with the persistence of the collective worker within the changing sociological structure of work. This echoes the earlier finding by Stephenson and Stewart (2001) that collectivism endures even when behaviourally absent and indeed even in the context of individualized working-termed "whispering shadow." Thus, the objective of the paper is to explore the forms of actor individualism and collectivism identified in our research. Given platform apps' external control, the gig economy spatially separates workers while at the same time requiring cognition of colleagues' collective work and labor process. Notwithstanding structural processes separating workers-in-work, platforms also witness the instantiation of forms of collectivism. Deindustrialisation is neither the end to collectivism nor trade unionism. Rather than post-work, then, we explore the problematics of plus work and variant collectivisms.