Work as Crisis Resource or Restraint: What Job Qualities Reduced Pandemic Powerlessness?


Alexander Wilson, University of Toronto

Research into work has uncovered many job qualities—lack of schedule control, little discretion, unmeetable demands, unjust pay—that increase a worker’s powerlessness over stressors within and outside the workplace. Confronted with destabilizing contexts such as COVID-19, however, the inverse side of that question has become just as important to answer: Can work qualities reduce perceived powerlessness over stressors experienced outside the workplace? This research investigates that question in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. Building on theories of powerlessness, stratification, and work qualities, this study develops and tests a conceptual model of socio-structural positon and control before and amidst crisis. Using fixed effects regressions on nine waves of a nationally representative cohort of workers sampled before the pandemic in September 2019 to April 2021 (baseline, N = 4,990; nine pooled waves, n = 44,910), this paper analyzes the effect of work resources and restraints on individual changes in perceived powerlessness over the pandemic. The findings reveal that while the pandemic generally increased levels of powerlessness, work qualities like creative work, job autonomy, and schedule control are significantly associated with reduced powerlessness. Work constraints, on the other hand, like job insecurity, job pressure, and lack of schedule control, were associated with increases in powerlessness. The findings support the persisting relevance of work resources in mediating growth in powerlessness, even amidst the pandemic (Schieman and Narisada 2014). The temporal relationship between these work resources shows that powerlessness is a contingent process based on a combination of past status ascriptions and current socio-structural positions (Pearlin et al. 1997; Mirowsky and Ross 2013). Resourceful work, above and beyond education, appeared to serve as an environment where the worker retained and improved a sense of control despite the degrading effects of the pandemic. This finding exemplifies longitudinally Schieman and Narisada’s (2014:348) “resource hypothesis prediction" outside the workplace . Their hypothesis stipulates that job qualities such as autonomy, schedule control, creative work, and authority are associated with higher levels of control. Each of these job qualities operate as a resource that helps individuals ameliorate job demands, maintaining a sense of control as job demands grow. This studys findings, particularly the significance of creative work for reduced powerlessness, provides further evidence for the profound relationship between engaging work and the sense of control beyond the workplace, over and above adverse circumstances. The increase or decline of powerlessness by socio-structural position means that a corollary to the stress process was taking place throughout the pandemic–an unequal powerlessness process that occurs through pyschological resources. Much like a rope tethers a boat to the harbour, the “cognitive link” between environment and agency which powerlessness represents can be unwound by the storm. The findings from this study suggest that resourceful work may be a key chain in that link, providing the buffering capacity to cope with threatening events. The results prompt more exploration into work resources that improve or maintain the sense of control during distressing contexts outside of work. In particular, it remains unclear whether work operates as a buffering mechanism or active coping mechanism to environmental threats. Future research could disentangle this through analysis of interactive effects between specific pandemic stressors, work qualities, and powerlessness.  

This paper will be presented at the following session: