Precarity, Power, and Abuse: Understanding Violence Against Contractual Workers in Public Institutions

1430 Journal for Current Sign Online ISSN (3006-1504) Print ISSN (3006-1490) Precarity, Power, and Abuse: Understanding Violence Against Contractual Workers in Public Institutions https://currentsignreview.com Saira Sajjad Farwa Hadayat Ullah Khansa Afzal Vol. 3 No. 4 (2025) 1431 Journal for Current Sign Online ISSN (3006-1504) Print ISSN (3006-1490) Precarity, Power, and Abuse: Understanding Violence Against Contractual Workers in Public Institutions Contractual employees in Pakistani state institutions were structurally disadvantaged employees whose positions lacked job security and were characterized by hierarchical power and little institutional safeguards. This qualitative research investigated the presence of power imbalance in the relationships between and among members of organizational structures of the government in terms of their daily waged and contractual employees and the experiences of verbal, psychological, and emotional violence. Based on the results of the in-depth interviews with sixteen contractual workers in various governmental institutions, the study examined the lived experiences of abuse, fear, and silence and the organizational circumstances under which such practices were condoned. Thematic analysis also demonstrated that precarious employment served as a disciplinary power that allowed the supervisors to dominate their employees through threats of loss of contract, humiliation, and discretionary power. Bureaucratic cultures were often normalized in violence and disguised as discipline or managerial power, which discouraged opposition and reporting. Organizational silence was also supported by the lack of available grievance systems and intimidation and fear of repercussions, which resulted in a continuation of abusive practices in the organizations. According to participants, the mental impact was profound in the form of anxiety, emotional burnout, and internalized blame, with the process of embedding structural inequality into everyday life being marked. Placing the findings in the context of the sociological theories of precarity, symbolic violence, and disciplinary power, the study revealed that workplace violence was institutionalized and not ethnographic. The study found that the Pakistani state apparatuses reproduced labor disparities through their dependency on the insecure employment regimes that emphasized control over dignity. The work demanded structural changes to enhance labor rights, curb discretion, and shift the employment of the state in the sphere of the economy to rights-based and humane employment. Keywords: Contractual Employees, Organizational Structures, Humiliation, Violence, Emotional Burnout, Structural Inequality. Saira Sajjad Lecturer, Department of Sociology, GC Women University, Sialkot Email: [email protected] Farwa Hadayat Ullah* Lecturer, Department of Sociology, GC Women University, Sialkot Khansa Afzal Lecturer, Department of Sociology, GC Women University, Sialkot Shanza Qaiser MS Scholar at Department of Sociology, GC women university Sialkot Abstract 1432 Journal for Current Sign Online ISSN (3006-1504) Print ISSN (3006-1490) INTRODUCTION Across the world, the character of work has been radically changed with the growth of precarious forms of employment such as contractual, temporary, and daily wage labor. These shifts are frequently rationalized in the name of efficiency, flexibility, and fiscal discipline, especially in public institutions. However, sociological scholarship has been growing to show how such arrangements create new forms of vulnerability, inequality, and violence at work (Standing, 2011; Kalleberg, 2009). Contractual workers, being placed outside the permanent protections offered by employment, are often faced with insecurity, dependency, and asymmetrical relationships of power that determine their daily interactions in organizational hierarchies. Violence against these workers, whether verbal, psychological, or physical, is often the result not of an isolated occurrence but of structural consequences of precarious labor regimes. Traditionally, the issue of workplace violence has been analyzed on the individualistic or behavioral level because it is interrelated with the conflict of people, stress, or deviant behavior. Recent sociological approaches, however, lay emphasis on the contribution made by structural power relations, institutional cultures and labour market stratification towards creating violent workplaces (Hearn and Parkin, 2001; Hoel and Cooper, 2000). In this view, violence is not merely something that someone does to another, but a social action that occurs in the scenario of unequal employment relationships, organizational practices and bureaucracy. Such structural violence is particularly prone to contractual workers, who have no job security and no form of grievance redress, and this state of affairs is usually normalized, unreported, and invisible. In Pakistan, the spread of contractual work in public institutions has been growing in the last two decades. Government departments, public hospitals, educational institutions, municipal bodies, and semi-autonomous authorities have depended greatly on daily-wage and contract-based workers to handle budgetary restrictions and administrative needs. While such arrangements ease the long-term state obligation, they are also intended to create a dual labor structure within public institutions, splitting workers into permanent staff, who have legal rights, and contractual staff, who have limited rights (Haque, 2019). This division institutionalizes inequality and promotes unequal power relations that influence relations in the workplace. Research on sociology in Pakistan has revealed that contractual employees experience job insecurity, late payment, none of the benefits, and are excluded in the decision-making processes (Saeed and Waseem, 2020). Little, however, has been done to demonstrate how these circumstances are expressed in the everyday experiences of violence and abuse in the institutions of the society. Informally, verbal humiliation, psychological intimidation, heavy workloads, lack of leave and threats of termination by contract are common but have few academic studies. These are the types of violence which are somewhat subtle, routine and justified in the name of bureaucratic power and therefore difficult to question. These experiences can be analyzed with the help of the concept of precarity as an analytical tool. According to Standing (2011), precarious workers are considered as the ones that cannot be said to have employment security, stable income and occupational identity, and are consequently prone to exploitation and coercion. Regarding the public sector, strict hierarchies, arbitrary power, and a compliance culture are causing the aggravation of the experience of precarity. The workers hired on a contractual basis are often anticipated to demonstrate loyalty and obedience beyond what the job demands since they can only be employed at the realistic pleasure of the 1433 Journal for Current Sign Online ISSN (3006-1504) Print ISSN (3006-1490) managers. This reliance results in conditions whereby abuse is easily practiced without much responsibility. Bureaucratic organizations are characterized as having hierarchical authority with rule-oriented behavior in a Weberian perspective. Nevertheless, with selective or ambiguous application of rules as often happens with contractual employees, bureaucracy is an instrument of domination and not rational administration (Weber, 1978). The role of contractual employees in the Pakistani public institutions has been a legal and administrative gray area where the contractual employee is on paper, but practically none of the protections are available. This gray area provides the discretionary authority of the supervisors and one manner in which that can resolve itself is by verbal abuse, intimidation, or assignment of punitive tasks. The normalization of violence within such settings may also be explained in terms of Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence, whereby domination is exercised in understated ways through everyday practices, language, and expectations which appear legitimate and natural (Bourdieu, 1991). Contractual workers tend to internalize abuse as part of their occupational reality and consider the experience of humiliation or harsh treatment as the "cost" of the job. This internalization is one of the factors that contribute to silence, resignation, and self-blame, which further contribute to unequal relations of power. Gender and class intersect greatly in the experiences of these. In Pakistan, a vast majority of the contractual workers are from lower socioeconomic strata and are engaged in the roles of sanitation staff, clerks, attendants, security guards, and support staff. Female contractual workers, in particular, are put at compounded risk because of patriarchal norms, gendered expectations, and moral scrutiny in the public office (Naz & Awan, 2018). All forms of verbal harassment, moral policing, and psychological intimidation are not reported due to fear of being retaliated against or stigmatized. These dynamics give an intersectional study of workplace violence. Although the type of contractual labor is prevalent, today, we have policy frameworks that exist within Pakistan, which offers some form of protection against workplace violence on temporary workers. The system has been found to discriminate permanent employees as opposed to grievance redress in relation to contract employees who are given no opportunity to access the redress by the labor laws. The precarious workers are even more vulnerable due to the absence of unions or the collective bargaining structures that they lack. Consequently, rather than violence being tolerated, it is enabled institutionally through institutional neglect. There is also a strong correlation between precarious employment and the exposure to workplace abuse, bullying, and psychological distress found in the international studies (Benach et al., 2014; Quinlan et al., 2001). According to the research carried out not only in the Global North but also in the South, the temporary workers tend to report violence less frequently because of the fear of job loss and the absence of institutional support. Nevertheless, local social-cultural influences on such violence perception and its influence exist. Also, the bureaucratic culture of Pakistan comprises respect of authority, fear of being fired, and economic dependence, which are other factors that reinforce silence and obedience. This paper falls within the discipline of critical labor sociology and organizational power theory to examine the violence against the contractual workers in the Pakistani state officials. Instead of thinking of violence as a product of individuals as a consequence of wrongdoing, the research treats violence as a product of structure, which is associated with precarious forms of 1434 Journal for Current Sign Online ISSN (3006-1504) Print ISSN (3006-1490) employment, the bureaucratic atmosphere of hierarchies, and the protection of labor. The research tries to put into the foreground the forms of violence that usually go unnoticed in order to make them visible through the voices of the contractual workers. The research will be based on qualitative in-depth interviews to investigate the insights, experiences, and responses to violence among the workplaces of contractual workers. It examines how there is justification form of abuse, the coping and resistance mechanisms by the workers themselves, and the institutional obstacles that will avoid accountability. By doing so, the study contributes to the precarity and violence studies in the workplace, and labor relations in the public sector, both in Pakistan and globally. And in the end, according to this study, the notion that violence to contractual workers is a byproduct of organizational dysfunction is not a coincidence but an expected product of labor regimes that believe in flexibility rather than dignity. Any response to such violence must involve not only disciplinary actions to respond to individual workers who have committed such violence but also structural responses that oppose precarious employment policies, enhance labor laws, and insist on fair workplace cultures in government institutions. Objectives of the Study To explore the lived experiences of contractual and daily-wage workers in Pakistani public institutions to understand how such experiences are shaped by precarious employment conditions. To examine how hierarchical bureaucratic structures, supervisory discretion, and institutional cultures contribute to power imbalances and the normalization of abusive practices against contractual workers. To analyze how contractual workers respond to workplace violence, including their strategies of silence, compliance, or resistance, and how factors such as job insecurity, class, and gender influence these responses. Research Questions How do contractual and daily-wage workers in public institutions describe and interpret their experiences of workplace violence? In what ways do precarious employment arrangements and bureaucratic power relations shape the occurrence and normalization of violence against contractual workers? How do contractual workers negotiate, cope with, or resist workplace violence within contexts of job insecurity, limited institutional protection, and social inequality? LITERATURE REVIEW The study of violence in the workplace has increased considerably in the past couple of decades, from a narrow view of physical abuse to a broader one that incorporates verbal abuse, psychological intimidation, humiliation, and coercive organizational practices. Early research conceptualized workplace violence mainly as individual ill will or interpersonal conflict, but contemporary sociological scholarship now focuses on structural and institutional explanations of workplace violence by placing violence in the context of power relations, labor arrangements, and organizational cultures (Hoel & Cooper, 2000; Hearn & Parkin, 2001). This shift is 1435 Journal for Current Sign Online ISSN (3006-1504) Print ISSN (3006-1490) especially important when considering violence against contractual and daily-wage workers who, because of their precarious position of employment, are especially vulnerable to abuse within hierarchies of power within institutions. The concept of precarity has become prominent in labor sociology and critical political economy. Standing (2011) defines precarious workers as workers who lack employment security, income stability, occupational identity, and representation and thus are in a structurally subordinate position. Precarity is not a condition of employment, but a social relation of dependence, uncertainty, and vulnerability. Scholars have argued that precarious labor arrangements provide fertile ground for exploitation and violence because workers fear for their jobs and, as a result, do not want to resist or report (Kalleberg, 2009). In the field of public institutions, marked by rigid hierarchical power structures and a high degree of bureaucratic discretion, precarity exacerbates power imbalances of permanent staff and contractual workers. From a Weberian perspective, the concept of bureaucracy would be to function based on rationallegal authority, procedures of rule-bound and impersonal relations (Weber, 1978). However, when rules are applied unevenly or selectively enforced, as is the case with contractual workers, the bureaucracies become the mechanisms of domination. Lipsky's (1980) theory of street-level bureaucracy also explains the ability of frontline supervisors to use discretionary power in the face of limited resources and unclear policies. For contractual workers, this discretion often takes the form of verbal aggression, overloading, arbitrary discipline, threats of loss of contract, and forms of organizational violence. Another valuable insight on the aggression towards precarious workers is proposed by Bourdieu and his concept of symbolic violence. Symbolic violence is how domination is normalized, subtle and embedded in normal practice which is internalized by those who experience domination (Bourdieu, 1991). Workers who are on contract are able to condone humiliation, yelling, or intimidation as part of the job and therefore condone themselves being subordinated. This internalization creates the silence and obedience in such a way that it allows the abusive practices to be ongoing without being blatantly resisted. The discussion of power and discipline by Foucault extends to explain how control operates in the context of surveillance, normalization and self-regulation (Foucault, 1977). Surveillance in workplaces may either be through active monitoring or through evaluation of performance or unofficial reports to the superiors. The latter are often intensified among the contractual workers due to an insecure status, which leads to anxiety and self-policing behavior. This is not the actual violence but a kind of violence that is through intimidation, expectation, and torture of the mind. There is a substantial amount of global literature indicating that there is a high relationship between precarious employment and exposure to workplace violence. In Europe, North America, and Asia, all studies indicate that temporary and non-permanent employees are more prone to verbal abuse, bullying, and psychological distress as compared to permanent employees (Benach et al., 2014; Quinlan et al., 2001). Such types of violence are normally institutionalized in organizations as management tools and not as practices identified as evil. Surveys on bullying in the workplace confirm the argument that organizational structures and competitive work places enable abusive supervision. Hoel & Cooper (2000) argue that bullying is often founded on power imbalance and less on personality differences. On the same note, Einarsen et al. (2011) point out that victims of workplace bullying are usually individuals who 1436 Journal for Current Sign Online ISSN (3006-1504) Print ISSN (3006-1490) have minimal organizational power including temporary workers, migrants, and women. These conclusions make it clear that workplace violence is structural. With respect to state organizations, the researchers have demonstrated how austerity, outsourcing and contraction have altered the relationships among labor, resulting to rise in workload and a fall in job security (Peters, 2011). According to Phelps (2020) and Kalleberg (2018), such transformations result in the environment where abuse will be more perpetuated, as employees struggle to keep their jobs, and managers use coercive measures to make their employees productive. The contractual employees of the public sector are very much in uncertain positions and since they are carrying out a significant role, they do not receive the guarantees provided to permanent employees. Gender-conscious studies have also unveiled the fact that precarious work aggravates gender violence at the workplace. Temporary women are more likely to be verbally abused, morally policed, and psychologically intimidated, particularly in an organization dominated by men or hierarchies (McLaughlin et al., 2012). Intersectional studies are used to say that class, sex, and race overlap and assign divergent experiences of violence, and marginalized populations experience compounded vulnerabilities (Crenshaw, 1991). Such patterns are supported by studies in Global South situations, though local peculiarities are emphasized. Indian, Bangladesh, and Sri Lankan studies indicate that contractual workers in public and semi-public organizations are frequently mistreated by their supervisors and regular employees, and rarely can find a way to respond (Breman, 2013). Such violence is an inevitable aspect of work which is generally accepted due to economic dependency and surplus labor, to lack of proper labor enforcement mechanisms. One of the themes that are common to the literature is the role played by the organizational culture in normalizing violence. Organizational cultures which focus on obedience, efficiency and authority can forbid dissent and reporting (Ashforth, 1994). The socialization of contractual workers is especially through informal warnings, peer counseling and witnessing the repercussions of the punishment to others who speak up. According to Morrison and Milliken (2000), this phenomenon is what they term as organizational silence where the employees do not communicate the concerns out of the fear and feeling of futility. The fear of retribution is a significant factor that defines reporting behaviors. Research indicates that precarious employees are significantly less prone to file official grievances, lest they may not have their contract renewed or terminated (Benach et al., 2014). This silence presents the abusive practices with a possibility to be institutionalized and routinized. Gradually, violence is integrated into the daily life and is infused as injustice. Psychology also focuses on the emotional impact of permanent exposure to workplace violence, including anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem (Nielsen and Einarsen, 2012). But, as far as sociology is concerned, it should be realized that such consequences are not to be observed as personal failures, but as the reaction of the structure. In the case of contractual workers, the emotional distress is normally coupled with financial insecurity and social exclusion. The culture of outsourcing employees to sign contracts within the governmental institutions has increased significantly in the Pakistani workplace, primarily since the turn of the 2000s. Government organizations, public colleges, hospitals, and municipalities are hiring more contractual workers in order to reduce their expenditures and eliminate the necessity to pay for 1437 Journal for Current Sign Online ISSN (3006-1504) Print ISSN (3006-1490) years of work (Haque, 2019). The result of this change is a dual form of labor market which is marked by drastic imbalances between permanent and contractual employees. The economic vulnerabilities of the contractual workers have been documented in Pakistani studies, and they include low wages, delayed payments, no benefits, and no job security (Saeed & Waseem, 2020). Nevertheless, there is little research on workplace violence in this group. According to existing studies, verbal abuse, intimidation, and overworking of the contractual worker by the supervisor are some of the common occurrences but this is not usually discussed in the context of violence as part of the institutional discourse. Naz and Awan (2018) note the gendered power relations of oppression in the public offices, a phenomenon that exposes female contractual workers to the moral policing practice, harassment, and psychological pressure. One of the incentives against reporting is the fear of being damaged reputation-wise, and being fired. On the same note, according to Khan and Raza (2022), the contractual sanitation workers and support staff are humiliated and disrespected on a regular basis, which is reminiscent of a hierarchical system based on classes that are embedded within Pakistani society. To these issues are institutional weaknesses. Labor laws in Pakistan generally address the employees who are working on permanent basis but the employees who work on contractual basis are often not served by any viable act. The public institutions might have no or weak redress mechanism of the temporary staff, which supports the sense of powerlessness (Haque, 2019). The unions or collective representation of the contract workers do not exist and that is why the workers are unable to challenge abuse. Cultural norms that espouse respect for authority, as well as acceptance of hardship, are also a factor in normalizing violence. In bureaucratic organizations, rights are often valued less than obedience, and questioning those higher up in the hierarchy is seen as insubordination. These norms are consistent with Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence that domination is mistakenly taken as legitimate authority. Despite the building body of knowledge at an international level about precarious labor and violence in the workplace, there are still major gaps in the Pakistani context. Most current research deals with economic circumstances, rather than the lived experiences of violence and abuse. There is not much qualitative research in which the voice of workers is foregrounded, and the process of violence production, justification, and internalization within public institutions is explored. Furthermore, there is virtually no literature that synthesizes theoretical views regarding power, bureaucracy and symbolic domination to sociologically examine such experiences. This paper eliminates these shortcomings by adopting a qualitative methodology that places the stories of the contractual workers at the center and interprets their experiences in the context of greater structural and cultural constructs. Offering the links between the personal narratives and the ways people think about precarity or power and the organizational violence, the research assists us to get closer to the more sophisticated view on how the public institutions produce the labor inequalities. The literature reviewed demonstrates that violence against contractual workers is a worldwide phenomenon which is grounded in precarious employment, organizational hierarchies and unequal power relations. According to international and Pakistani research, the concept of abuse is normalized and made invisible due to the institutional practices and cultural norms. 1438 Journal for Current Sign Online ISSN (3006-1504) Print ISSN (3006-1490) Nevertheless, the Pakistani situation possesses certain peculiarities which are conditioned with the bureaucratic culture, weak labor protection and socio-cultural values of obedience and silence. It builds on the existing literature and examines violence not as an individual deviance, but as a structural outcome of precarious regimes of work in the public institutions. MATERIALS AND METHODS The research design that was used in this study is qualitative research design because the research was aimed at understanding the experience of violence on the contractual and the dailywage workers working in the public institutions. It was believed that a qualitative design was suitable because it enabled the researcher to gain a deeper insight into the lived, perceived, and conceived sense of violence by employees in hierarchical organizations. The research was inclined towards interpretivist paradigm and the research is concerned with the social construction of meanings of abuse, power and insecurity as it occurs when people interact everyday within the institutions. The information was gathered among the contractual and daily wage laborers in the Lahore District institutions of the Pakistani public sector. The snowball sampling was the primary method of sampling, owing to the sensitive nature of the issue, and the precarious situation of the participants with regard to their jobs. The first participants were determined through the informal professional circles and contact in the community, and the latter through participant referrals. The snowball sampling specifically was particularly suitable as it made it possible to reach a population that is difficult to approach due to fear of retribution and the low trust in formal research procedures, an issue that has been much talked about in the literature on precarious labor (Benach et al., 2014). The respondents used in the study were 16 and they represented various government institutions like the government offices, government hospitals, educational institutions, and departments across various municipalities. The eligibility was to be on a contractual basis or a daily wages basis of work and at least six months of working experience in the institution. This was to make sure that the participants were well exposed to organizational practices and supervisory interactions that were aligned with the objectives of the research. The data were collected in semi-structured and in-depth interviews, and this gave the participants an opportunity to narrate their story in their own words and the researcher gained an opportunity to investigate issues of interest, including workplace violence, power dynamics, and employment insecurity. The interviews were done in Urdu language, some in Punjabi and were then of 45 to 90 minutes. Interviews were conducted in the locations chosen by the study participants to make them feel free, in private and secret. Informed consent was obtained and the interviews were audio-taped and transcribed verbatim to enable analysis. The thematic analysis was the method used to analyze the data; this method is based on the sixstep framework conceptualized by Braun and Clarke (2006). The first reading and re-reading of the transcripts were done to form the familiarity, which was followed by coding to identify the recurrent patterns being associated with abuse, fear, authority, silence, and precarity. These codes were further combined into larger themes which manifested structural and institutional levels of violence. During the process of analysis, coherence and depth of interpretation were achieved through constant comparison. 1445 Journal for Current Sign Online ISSN (3006-1504) Print ISSN (3006-1490) characterized as a structural phenomenon, as one that is produced through employment relations, organizational cultures as well as power imbalances, and not through pathological individuals. With it, the study fulfills the gap between the global theory and the regionalized empiricism, contributing to the enhanced applicability of the sociological conceptualization in the South Asian labor settings. Conclusion and Recommendations for Policies This paper analyzed the sociological aspects of violence against contractual and daily-waged workers in state institutions in Pakistan such that the violence is not an accident, but pyramidal structures that are inherent in precarious relations of employment, in hierarchical bureaucracies and in unequal power relationships. According to the qualitative accounts, employment insecurity, supervisor discretion, organizational silence and symbolic domination are the causes of the naturalization of verbal, psychological and emotional violence. Such conclusions render individualistic accounts of workplace abuses dangerous and place violence as a natural outcome of labor precarity in state agencies. The research is a contribution to the sociology of labor in Pakistan because it places the commentary of the contractual workers into the limelight, a poorly studied but increasingly large portion of the population-sector workforce. It reveals how coloniality and neoliberality reinstate inequality and legitimize abuse when they are conjoined together through administrative and employment relations respectively. Instead of being neutral places of governance, the public institutions turn into the places of weaponizing insecurity and rendering it discipline and silence. This kind of dynamic undermines the dignity of workers, undermines the trust of institutions and is against the intention of the state to respect the rights of workers. It is against these findings that some policy recommendations are recommended. To begin with, there is a pressing necessity of the reformation of the employment structures, in the form of contracts, within the state institutions of uniform contracts, employment security and definite terms of alteration. This would limit the fear-driven compliance and abuse that would be introduced by the supervisory discretion that would be unchecked. Second, the independent and confidential grievance redressal systems must be created not only with respect to the immediate hierarchy of supervision, but also to the contractual workers so that safe reporting can be provided without fear of retaliation. Third, there should be compulsory training on workplace ethics, labor rights, and non-violent managerial practices of the supervisory staff focusing on accountability and human dignity. Fourth, it is significant that state institutions should include psychosocial support services, which are grounded on the mental health effects of the long-term insecurity and abuse conditions. Last but not least, the labor inspections and the bodies of oversight will be required to extend their mandate to the contractual workers and to make the employment in the public sector equitable and dignified as per the constitutional requirements of equality and dignity. Finally, the resolution to the problem of violence against the contractual employees is outside the cosmetic changes, and must address a structural change. 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