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3.2 Precariousness and the standard model of working 
time 
Another strand of scholarship that illuminates the contours of domestic work is the 
burgeoning literature on precarious employment (see, for example, Vosko, 2006a; 
Kalleberg, 2009; Vosko et al., 2009). Much domestic service can be characterized as 
precarious in the sense that this concept has been elaborated in the literature as ―work 
involving limited social benefits and statutory entitlements, job insecurity, low wages, and 
high risks of ill-health‖ (Vosko, 2006b, p. 4). Moreover, elaborations of the working time 
elements of precariousness centre on features that characterize domestic work: hours that 
are excessively short or long, irregular in number or timing or scheduled during unsocial 
periods
 
(Campbell et al., 2009). Although Campbell et al. (2009) single out ―working time 
insecurity‖ as a neglected facet of precariousness, this notion is particularly illuminating 
for the analysis of domestic work, tying it to the broader expansion of precarious forms of 
work while generating concepts and techniques for regulation. 
As part of such an analysis it is useful to isolate, as a driver of precariousness, 
domestic work‘s divergence from the ―Standard Employment Relationship‖ (SER) 
(Muckenberger, 1989; Bosch, 2004; Vosko, 2006a). Domestic work deviates from the SER 
along multiple axes, most obviously its location, but also its working time configurations, 
in the often striking contrast between the actual working hours of domestic workers and 
the traditional 9-5/Monday-Friday workweek embodied in the standard model. The 
complex intersections of precariousness and ―non-standard‖ configurations have a 
particular resonance in the field of regulation, given the strong affinities of conventional 
labour law frameworks with the standard model (McCann, 2008). The extent to which 
domestic work deviates from the SER has shaped its legal treatment, often being 
considered so profound as to render domestic work resistant to regulation. In other 
contexts, this deviation has had a particularly intense dynamic in placing domestic workers 
beyond the reach of working time laws, which, as mentioned in Section 2.1, are frequently 
restricted in their coverage of domestic work even where other standards are applicable. 
Simultaneously, however, the working time dimension of the SER holds promise for the 
regulation of domestic work, a point returned to in Section 4 below.