Sweden has had a considerably higher excess mortality among the elderly during the pandemic compared to the other Nordic countries. This failure to protect the elderly has highlighted the unreasonable working conditions in elderly care. Despite political commitments to ensure individually adapted care, the enormous socio-political challenge remains while the demands for care are expected to increase and care workers wish to leave their jobs in increasing numbers.

This presentation argues that the adverse situation can be understood in terms of organised insecurity, which is linked to the development towards temporary forms of employment in elderly care.

The trend towards new forms of employment has created uncertain terms of employment for care workers. Our studies show that also non-fixed term employment now involves working conditions characteristic of more precarious types of employment to solve insufficient staffing. As a result, organised insecurity is a central aspect of how work is perceived. The concept includes various employment forms, from being called in at short notice on an hourly basis to non-fixed employment with scheduled hours. Organised insecurity is thus understood as a process of more or less predictability, from organised security to organised insecurity with a range of socially excluding consequences in between.

The gap is widening between the policy discourse about ensuring a dignified elderly care and how this is organised in practice. The failure to reconcile political ambitions with decent working conditions affects not only the quality of care but also the care workers through the process of organised insecurity.