Association of contractual and subjective job insecurity with sickness presenteeism among public sector employees.
OBJECTIVE
We examined the associations of contractual job insecurity (fixed-term vs permanent employment contract) and subjectively assessed job insecurity with sickness presenteeism among those who had no sickness absences during the study year.


METHODS
Survey data from a sample of 18,454 Public sector employees were gathered in 2004 (the Finnish Public Sector study).


RESULTS
Fixed-term employees were less likely to report working while ill (odds ratio = 0.88, 95% confidence interval = 0.77 to 0.99) than permanent employees. Subjective insecurity was associated with higher levels of working while ill, and this association was stronger among older employees. These results remained after adjustments for demographics, health-related variables, and optimism.


CONCLUSIONS
Our results suggest that subjective job insecurity might be even more important than contractual insecurity when a public sector employee makes the decision to go to work despite feeling ill.
Heponiemi
Tarja
T
Service System Research Unit, National Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland. tarja.heponiemi@thl.fi
Elovainio
Marko
M
Pentti
Jaana
J
Virtanen
Marianna
M
Westerlund
Hugo
H
Virtanen
Pekka
P
Oksanen
Tuula
T
Kivimäki
Mika
M
Vahtera
Jussi
J
D000041:Absenteeism; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001290:Attitude; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004651:Employment; D005178:Faculty; D005260:Female; D005387:Finland; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009726:Nurses; D016272:Occupational Health; D010559:Personnel Management / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D017150:Public Sector / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D055815:Young Adult