Research on precarious work and the working conditions of lowwage workers often stresses the role of the labour market or state institutions in either creating or exacerbating already precarious working conditions. However, it often ignores their organisational aspects. At the same time, in organisation studies there is a large body of literature that focuses on internal organisational structures but disregards working conditions. This article is based on a case study of supermarket cashiers and deals with the flexibilisation of their work. Firms use two forms of flexibility as a cost-cutting strategy: numerical and functional flexibility. Numerical flexibility divides workers into different groups according to their work contract. This enables firms to employ as much labour as they need at a particular point in time. In effect firms reduce the number of employees while intensifying the work of the employees they retain. In the case of functional flexibility the duties and responsibilities attached to a job are redefined. In this respect, I show that the duties of the cashiers in my case study are increased beyond the scope of tasks traditionally attached to this occupation and head towards the model of a universal worker. This shift leads to a decline in qualifications that, combined with technological changes, results in the degradation of work. As a result, flexibilisation processes deepen existing asymmetries in employer-employee relationships and thereby enable firms to transfer a significant amount of market risk onto the shoulders of workers. Moreover, the negotiating position of workers remains weak and their wages low.
This article focuses on the relationship between young adults’ cognitive abilities and individual partner preferences. We worked with the Preference NSZ 2017 data set, which contains data on partner preferences and the results of the National Comparative Secondary-School Exams of Czech high school graduates, and our analyses, using logistic regression, confirmed a tendency towards homophily on the level of cognitive abilities and university education. Young people with above-average results place more importance on agreement in political opinions, but do not regard the partner’s homemaking abilities or financial situation as too important. The results further show that partner preferences differ according to the education capital of the background family and according to preferred partnership arrangement. We also find significant differences in the partner preferences of men and women that reflect ideas about traditional gender roles. Women favour characteristics that relate to status, and men assign more importance to physical looks.