ABSTRACT

The concept of decommodification serves to capture the degree to which an individual commands the means to satisfy his or her social and familial needs independently of the cash nexus. To the socialists, the abolition of wage labor was, initially, the only realistic precondition for a community of solidarity and rights; their program, therefore, advocated complete decommodification. Within normal working life, it is paid work-absence programs that are the most problematic from the point of view of the incentive and decommodification effect. The chapter examines absenteeism in relation to a set of economic and “objective” factors most likely to influence absence. It explores the relationship between sickness absence and variations in industrywide health risks. The only industry in which there is a consistent rise of sickness absence is in health, education, and welfare. The relationship between absenteeism and the disciplinary effects of the economy; if recessions and unemployment do not affect absenteeism, one might, again, speak of a certain decommodification.