Can labour contract differences in health and work-related attitudes be explained by quality of working life and job insecurity?

Study Aim: We hypothesise that due to a lower quality of working life and higher job insecurity, the health and work-related attitudes of temporary workers may be less positive compared to permanent workers. Therefore, we aimed to (1) examine differences between contract groups (i.e. permanent contract, temporary contract with prospect of permanent work, fixed-term contract, temporary agency contract and on-call contract) in the quality of working life, job insecurity, health and work-related attitudes and (2) investigate whether these latter contract group differences in health and work-related attitudes can be explained by differences in the quality of working life and/or job insecurity.

Methods: Data were collected from the Netherlands Working Conditions Survey 2008 (N = 21,639), and Hypotheses were tested using analysis of variance and cross-table analysis.

Results: Temporary work was associated with fewer task demands and lower autonomy and was more often passive or high-strain work, while permanent work was more often active work. Except for on-call work, temporary work was more insecure and associated with worse health and work-related attitude scores than permanent work. Finally, the quality of working life and job insecurity partly accounted for most contract differences in work-related attitudes but not in health.

Conclusions: Especially agency workers have a lower health status and worse work-related attitudes. Job redesign measures regarding their quality of working life and job insecurity are recommended.