What are some critical conditions of free or under-paid media labor and what can we learn by thinking about these conditions in relations to each other?
Introduction
Recently, significant changes have occurred in the world of work because of technology advancement or digitization, increased globalization, demographic changes among other aspects. Media and journalism professions are among the sectors that have experienced these rapid changes which have caused them to alter their employment conditions so that they can adapt or rather keep up with the trends. For instance, technology advancements and information developments have critically changed the industry. Information access has become easier and autonomous thus attracting more media audiences. The change of journalistic stories and formats has improved through digital tools (Tiziana, pp 16). Nevertheless, the industry is highly focusing on these constant changes and to some extent forgetting to define their management strategies and required financial resources. Media firms offer massive jobs in the labor market both low-level and high-profiling. Majority of people who join the industry for work earn a decent living although there is still a growing number of minorities who cannot manage a decent life because of the defined labor conditions (Laura and Schulz, pp 1). The states have declined as a result of the industry increasing precarious work. Therefore, this essay discusses the critical conditions of precarious or rather free or underpaid media labor and the lessons learnt regarding these conditions in relation to each other.
Conditions of free or underpaid media labor
To start, free or underpaid labors are those jobs that are offered without pay or are minimally paid. They relate to precarious work which is a condition at which employees are denied their permanent labor rights. The media industry is characterized by such labors. According to Miaoju and Liu ( pp 527), the industry is constantly outsourcing its work to freelancers, contract workers, interns, and part-timers mainly because it wishes to have control over the terms and conditions of their work due to the nature of the jobs, social, political and economic systems in their workplaces and labor market.
The first condition of free or underpaid media labor is temporality.
Temporal condition falls into four main categories which relate to each other and include casual, seasonal, urgency and contract (Miaoju and Liu, pp 534). Although the categories vary from one firm to another as well as the place of location, many media firms have the four of them in place. Casual employment is the work that is not attended regularly. That is, there is no regular schedule. Casual workers only appear to their workplaces depending on the agreed time or days. It is a work type that is common in many media companies.
Nevertheless, workers with this kind of labor do not enjoy full employment rights and benefits such as annual leaves and full-monthly salary as those employed full-time. Seasonal work is the employment that an employee goes to work at a particular time of the year. For example in media fraternity, a journalist may work with his or her employer seasonally depending on the occurrence of events such as tourism or agricultural occasions. The work stability of a seasonal employee depends on the employer, but in most cases, they do not receive full employee package like the permanent ones. Contract employment is the work in which the final date is specified (Nicole, pp 520). It is a labor form that is prevalent in many media companies.
In some cases, an employee with this type of work may access all the rights and benefits offered, but they end immediately after the contract terminates or they may not get them depending on the employer-employee agreement. Urgency is an on-call work where a person is called to work on an urgent job. In media, a journalist may be contacted to work on an immediate assignment that is not within his or her schedule. The involved parties make agreements about payments and other terms, but mostly urgent workers do not receive a full monthly salary and benefits.
The second form of precarious media labor is organizational aspects.
This is a state in which workers do not have individual control over the working time, working conditions, health and safety, pay and work intensity (Arne L, pp 15). Working time depends on whether an employee works full-time or part-time. It is dependent on the number of hours a worker labors per week. Different media firms have different time specification depending on where they are located. For example, a news freelancer may freelance on part-time basis for a particular media house which means the person will be paid according to the time worked and work done.
Work conditions refer to the environment that an employee is working in. Since precarious jobs are not permanent, employees mostly work under poor conditions because they will not be in the company forever. The pay is not usually much because of the high job competition and the temporal nature of work (Fuchs, 304). The work intensity is mostly a lot because an employee must complete all the tasks within the agreed terms and conditions in order to be paid. Healthy and safety is not the main issue to media firms for precarious workers because they are there for a time hence do not need to be covered to receive health and safety benefits.
Also, economic factors serve as conditions of free or underpaid media labor. Such factors include poor pay and salary delay (Tiziana, pp 58). Precarious jobs are characterized by hourly pay hence the amount paid is not sufficient. Such jobs are insecure and do not allow workers to support their households fully. There is a possibility of poverty increase to the underpaid employees because the amount they earn after working cannot sustain them and their families. Some media firms outsource some of their jobs to part-timers or freelancers and pay them based on the hours they labor and the amount of work done. In most cases, the pay for the outsourced jobs is not enough for the workers (Miaoju and Liu, pp 533). As mentioned earlier, precarious jobs are insecure such that workers do not only receive low pay but they also do not get other benefits such as health cover or pensions since their salaries cannot partly pay for such things.
Additionally, social dimensions act as conditions of precarious media labor. These dimensions include discrimination, social protection, and bad working practices (Fuchs, pp 304). Mostly, individuals who do precarious jobs are discriminated against because of the nature of their work. They are not valued as full-time workers since they are working under terms and conditions which they must meet to be regarded competitive. Actually, there exists no clear employer-employee relationship.
Precarious workers may not report at their workplaces daily, therefore, they often do not look very familiar to others thus may be treated as strangers which are a form of discrimination. Again, they can be discriminated because of their origin, gender or color. Some media houses are known to discriminate some of their employees because of their traits. This demoralizes most of these laborers making them not accomplish their journalistic assignments accordingly thus end up losing their jobs or are not paid.
Concerning social protection, those working for free or are under-paid in media labor mostly do not access social security benefits such as pensions, accident and health covers or unemployment insurance. Precarious employment is usually not regulated. Therefore, those with such jobs are not unionized (Arne L, pp 18). Their nature of work disallows them to join unions yet unions offer job protection and fight for higher pay and benefits. They do not as well get covered to obtain benefits such as maternal and parental coverage because these covers require employees to have worked at a certain period. In media, such employees include seasonal journalists who only get to work when certain events arise. Besides, free or underpaid employment is associated with bad working practices. Employees do not receive enough training for their jobs because they are temporal thus end up doing non-standardized work which they may get penalized from their little pay.
Lessons Learnt
When one thinks about these conditions and their relation to each other, a person realizes that there are unjust conditions in free or underpaid labor, especially in media industries. Although it is difficult to enter such industries without performing such jobs at some point in order to gain experience, it is not right to implement work conditions that will lower employee motivation instead of enhancing it. There is some element of exploitation in precarious labor which employee experience and companies such as media should avoid. Employees should receive good pay as well as necessary benefits without considering the duration they have worked for the industry. This is because these workers will spend some of their time working for the company and be lowly paid or work under poor conditions yet they have huge bills to pay despite the conditions.
The other lesson to learn is that as a journalist, it is recommendable to be unionized before joining media work fields as this will enable one to receive necessary employment rights and benefits. A person's job becomes protected thus will not be exploited through low payments, be overworked or even work in a un-conducive environment. There will also be collective-bargaining done by the union thus no chances of unfair treatment. More so, one is given the mandate to claim his or her job rights. In addition, one learns it is essential to be communicative while entering into precarious employment. This is because honest and realistic communication during the time of work enables an individual to avoid un-welcoming attitudes that he or she may face while working. Also, having a good interpersonal relationship with others and providing social support can help one to confidently deal with aspects of job insecurity.
Conclusion
To conclude, free or underpaid media labor is associated with minimum wages, job insecurities and poor working conditions. Those who take precarious jobs mostly cannot afford a decent living. There are conditions related to these kinds of media labor which include temporal, organizational, social and economic factors. All of them define various work forms that a precarious employee experience during the time of work. As a person, there are lessons that one learns from such conditions which include the importance of being unionized, communicating during work as well as the unjust conditions in precarious employment.
Works Cited
Cohen, Nicole S. "Entrepreneurial journalism and the precarious state of media work." South Atlantic Quarterly114.3 (2015): 513-533.
Fuchs Christian. “Web 2.0, presumption, and surveillance.” Surveillance and Society. 8.3(2010): 208-309.
Jian, Miaoju, and chang-de Liu. “Democratic Entertainment’ Commodity and npaid labor of realityTv:A preliminary analysis of China’s supergirl.” Inter Asia Cultural Studies 10, n0.4(2009):524-543.
Kalleberg, Arne L. "Precarious work, insecure workers: Employment relations in transition." American sociological review 74.1 (2009): 1-22.
Robinson, Laura, and Jeremy Schulz. "Venture Labor, Media Work, and the Communicative Construction of Economic Value: Agendas for the Field and Critical Commentary." (2017):1-2
Terranova, Tiziana. “Free Labor.” In Digital Labor: The internet as factory" playground. Trebor Schooltz. New York: Routledge(2013):42-60.
