Private and public elderly care - Swedish caregivers view of work environment and political control

Private and public eldercare Swedish care workers’ opinions on work environment and local government This article reports findings from a mail survey sent to all local politicians and employees in publicly financed eldercare services in eight Swedish municipalities in the year 2003 (response rate 72 percent among politicians and 66 percent among employees). The present article compares publicly (n=3046) and privately employed (n=498) care workers. Very few differences in the assessment of the work environment were found between publicly and privately employed care workers when controlling for sex, age, working hours, length of current employment and municipality. The conclusion is that private and public care workers experience no systematic, significant or crucial differences in work environment. By studying other possible aspects that could be related to private vs. public employment, it was found that in comparison with public care workers, privately employed care workers attributed significantly less influence to local politicians on issues such as the organization of care and work environment, municipal finances and quality of care services. Among public employees there was a consistent and comparatively strong negative opinion regarding out-sourcing of eldercare services, whereas private employees had a neutral or slightly positive opinion. Among private employees, the most positive opinion was found among those who had the most favourable perception of their work environment (with no significant relation to how they perceive the role of local politicians). On the other hand, no significant relation between work environment and opinion regarding out-sourcing was detected among public care workers. Most negative towards out-sourcing were those public employees who perceived local politicians as having a strong influence on the work environment. A tentative interpretation of these results is that private care workers with »good« working conditions regard their work environment as a result of out-sourcing, whereas public care workers with »poor« working conditions seem to have little hope that out-sourcing will improve their situation. Public care workers rather seem to hope that local politicians will play a more active role.