The Evolution of Job Quality

1
The Evolution of Job Quality

• Francis Green
• Presentation to the IIPPE Political Economy of
  Work Conference, University of Leeds, 5 May

2
Context

• Background
• affluence, but differentiation
• age of the computer
• increasing international competition
• recession
• the Lisbon strategy more and better jobs
• increased perceived importance of intrinsic
  aspects of job quality

3
Outline

• Concept and theory
• Indicators
• Stories about job quality
• increased skill requirements,
• polarisation,
• intensification,
• control,
• (in)security.
• Some implications for worker well-being consider
  along the way

4
Concepts of job quality

• Subjective Utility (Economics)
• Job that delivers complexity and autonomy
  (sociology)
• Needs-based job that delivers, first, external
  need satisfaction and second, internal need
  satisfaction e.g. in marxian terms,
  self-validating labour.
• Competing models in practice
• more and better jobs (OECD and others)
  usually meaning better-paid
• EC from quality in work to quality of
  employment and flexicurity
• decent labour (ILO)

5
Grand narratives

• e.g.
• Neoclassical/technicist
• Growth delivers rises in standards of living job
  quality is a luxury good which we demand more
  of as we become richer
• De-skilling and upskilling Fordism and
  post-Fordism
• Declining worker power and ubiquitous lean
  production systems
• Precarious work
• Inevitable combination of intensification of
  global competitiveness with the feminisation of
  the workforce?
• Contingent, non-secular, development shaped by
  national legal frameworks?

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Core Indicators of job quality

• Wages
• Including fairness of wages
• Job skills
• Including skill matching
• Effort and hours
• Autonomy/discretion
• Security
• employment security (financial and psychological)
• physical

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Story 1 SBTC

• A prima facie good-news story for job quality
• Evidence
• Direct measures of rising skills use
• Persistence or increase in education premia, in
  face of rising quantities of more-educated
  workers
• Increased skills use and deployment of educated
  labour is
• in similar industries across countries
• associated with new technologies

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(No Transcript)
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Changes in the Use of Generic Skills, 1992-1997.
Source Skills Survey series
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Changes in the Use of Generic Skills, 1997-2006.
Source Skills Survey series
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Explaining Literacy Skills Within-Industry
Analysis
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Education and Skill Mismatches in Britain
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Quantile Regression and OLS Estimates of Returns
to Graduate Education for Men. 3-year moving
window.
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Story 2 POLARISATION OF THE LABOUR FORCE?
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Explanations

• Technical change and polarisation a nuanced
  version of SBTC
• Demographics and inequality
• Structural choice the low road?

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Story 3 Intensification

• Technology and organisation
• EBTC
• more effective monitoring technology
• Changing balance of power, linked to intensified
  global competition
• Insecurity??
• Consumerism the work/spend treadmill?
• Evidence typically based on comparison of
  required effort questions across time or in-depth
  case study

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Source EWCS
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Evolution of Work Intensity, EU15, 1991 - 2005
1991 for EU12 only
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1991 for EU12 only
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Job requires hard work
Private Sector
Public Sector
Source Skills Survey series
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Job requires hard work
Men
Women
Source Skills Survey series
Related facts over 2001-6 work intensification
notable among school teachers and in Hotels and
Restaurants
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who strongly agree that My job requires that I
work very hard
Source WERS establishments with at least 10
workers.
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Story 4 Autonomy

• Central to marxian conception of job quality
• Also to psycho-social models of workplace
  well-being
• On contested terrain, and with contrasting
  predictions
• Post-Taylorism/fordism rising autonomy
• Neo-Taylorism renewed assault on autonomy

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Task Discretion in Britain, 1992-2006
Source UK Skills Surveys
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Control over pace of work, 1989-2001, Sweden
responding that they can decide their work pace
themselves all the time. 1989-2001.
Source The Work Environment survey
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Task discretion in Finland, 1984-2003
Source Quality of Life Surveys, Statistics
Finland.
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Decision latitude, 19962006, Norway ( of
workers citing high levels)
Source SSB, Level of Living Surveys
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The Paradox of Teamwork in Britain
See Gallie et al. Teamwork, Productive Potential
and Employee Welfare
Source UK Skills Surveys
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Implications of Combined Story 3 and Story 4
Proportion of High-Strain Jobs
See Green (2008) Work Effort and Worker
Well-Being in the Age of Affluence
Source Skills Survey series
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Men and women constantly thinking about work and
having limited control over their
work,1989-2001, Sweden.
of women and men who cannot stop thinking about
work on their time off, combined with limited
control over their work.
Source The Work Environment survey
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Changing Well-Being
Full-time employees
Source Skills Survey/ EIB series
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Story 5 Security

• Employment insecurity has several dimensions
  including risk of job loss, length of
  unemployment, loss of wages.
• Influence of external context on perceptions
• Perceived risk of job loss rises with
  unemployment
• Perceived difficulty of re-employment rises with
  unemployment and rate of change of unemployment
• So must be very poor now
• However, the movement of perceived insecurity, on
  average, is cyclical not secular, despite the
  rise in use of temporary labour contracts in many
  countries

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Perceived Risk of Job Loss
reporting at least an evens chance of job loss
and unemployment
Source UK Skills Surveys
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who disagree or strongly disagree with I feel
my job is secure in this workplace
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Perceived insecurity by unemployment rate across
nations
Classification L Liberal mkt econ T
transitional N Nordic C Corporatist O Other
industrialised D developing
Source ISSP, pooled 1997 and 2005
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Perception that health and safety is at risk
because of work
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Conclusions 1

• 4 unpleasant tales
• Upskilling but polarisation
• Persistence of low-autonomy jobs
• Persistence of high-effort jobs
• Still increasing high-strain jobs
• The movement of perceived insecurity is cyclical,
  and widely varying, but not secular
• Emerging gender differences in these trends

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Conclusions 2

• Impact of recession
• Massive increases in perceived insecurity
• High u, and rate of change of u ubiquitous
  presence of crisis
• Impact on work effort??
• Labour hoarding
• Fear effect??
• Radical work re-organisation
• Impact on autonomy ?
• Wages
• Likely to be reduced