1.
A. Venkataraman
– Assistant Professor (ob & Hr) Indian Institute Of Management, Kashipur
2.
L.r.k. Krishnan
– Assistant Professor (ob & Hr) Indian Institute Of Management, Kashipur
Abstract
We study here a specific class of
precarious workers viz. male restaurant
waiters by drawing upon 31
male waiters across 11 standalone
restaurants in leading cities in
Gujarat. The study involved extensive
participant observation and
interviews over fourteen months to
explore the workplace dynamics
and individual lived experiences of
male waiters in the age group 25-
50 before and during the pandemic.
We study different work settings, and
explore how the emotional labor
and economic hardship varyingly
shape his experience of precarity.
Our findings demonstrates the fluid
interplay of situational and longterm
precarity and interconnected
social relations inside and
outside their labor process by overwork,
casualization, unemployment
and underemployment with ineffective
labor laws.
