Downloaded Work, Sideloaded Work, and Financial Circumstances: The Contemporary Worker's Experience of Equity and Need Principles.

People value being paid appropriately for their work-but national surveys indicate that many working adults report a discrepancy between what they actually earn and what they think they should justly earn. This evidence provides an impetus for examining the factors that shape workers' justice perceptions of earnings. The present study elaborates on two key distributive justice principles-equity and need-that guide people's ideas about their just reward. We ask: How do contemporary workers experience and understand the nature of work effort and need? We employ a mixed methods research design to answer this question. First, we analyze focus group interviews among workers in Toronto, Ontario (N = 22), and generate two novel hypotheses about the factors that shape workers' expectation for greater rewards: "downloaded" and "sideloaded" extra work that induce feelings of overwork, and rising cost of living and the associated financial strain. Second, drawing upon focus group narratives, we operationalize these concepts and test our hypotheses with a 2019 nationally representative sample of Canadian workers (N = 2,111). The results show that downloaded and sideloaded extra work shape greater reward expectations partly through the sense of overload, and rising cost of living and the associated financial strain also shape reward expectations. Furthermore, financial strain amplifies the link between extra work and greater reward expectations. We situate these findings within a broader discussion of the nature of effort and need among contemporary workers and its implications for justice perceptions.

A less objectionable greed? Work-life conflict and unjust pay during a pandemic.

Perceptions of unjust pay represent a central feature in research on distributive justice. Prior studies document that work-life conflict (WLC) is a strong predictor of unjustly low pay. We extend that work by asking: Did the social and economic changes associated with the coronavirus pandemic 2019 (COVID-19) modify the relationship between WLC and perceptions of unjust pay? In September 2019, we collected data from a nationally representative sample of workers to profile the quality of work and economic life. Then, during a critical period of widespread economic and social shockwaves, we re-interviewed these same study participants in May 2020 to evaluate change. We observe that the strong positive association between WLC and unjustly low pay decreased overall in the population-but the strength and direction of that association differed significantly across several dimensions of social stratification. Specifically, we found a weaker relationship among visible minorities, younger workers, and individuals with lower socioeconomic status. We interpret these patterns as suggesting that-at least among more vulnerable groups-the "greed" represented in the process of work interfering with non-work was unevenly experienced during peak period of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In control or fatalistically ruled? The sense of mastery among working Canadians.

Using data from a 2011 nationally representative sample of Canadian workers (N = 5,576), the present study evaluates the social-structural determinants of the sense of mastery. Three main contributions emerge. First, we document that each of the main components of socioeconomic status--education, income, occupation, and economic hardship--have distinct total, indirect, and net associations with mastery. The well-educated report more mastery because of their higher earnings--but exposure to more role blurring and work-family conflict offset what would otherwise be their even higher levels of mastery. Second, job-related demands and resources have largely independent associations with mastery, but our analyses also reveal some key areas of overlap. Third, role-blurring activities--and their connections with work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict--offer unique expansions to the overall narrative of mastery, with unexpected explanatory and suppression effects. We interpret each of these observations in an effort to advance recent theoretical perspectives about mastery.